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Her eyes never left his face. She was like a scared fawn. Her dark eyes were frightened and her whole body was tense.
‘I think perhaps we ought to talk.’
She nodded.
He wanted to put her at ease, and yet what could he say that would make this any easier to bear? It was as though a door had opened to hell itself. And here they were, two strangers brought together by a human tragedy with no easy way to navigate a path through it.
‘There’s a park around the corner. Perhaps that would be best. There’s a place to get coffee nearby. Perhaps that would be better than—’ He broke off again. They were complete strangers. Why should she agree to this? He could be anyone. Some strange crank. ‘Or would you rather leave it for another time?’ He reached into his pocket to pull out a notepad and pen. ‘I could give you my number. We could talk later. When you’ve had time to think about it.’ He started to write.
‘No.’ He looked up as she spoke. She shook her head firmly. ‘I don’t want to go home yet.’
That was a feeling he understood. He knew how hard it was to discover the child you loved, believed was your own, was not. And, knowing that, you then had to go home and pretend nothing had changed. That the centre of your world hadn’t been ripped out and shredded as though it were some discarded document. He’d walked out of this same hospital and wandered in the rain for over two hours before he’d summoned up enough courage to take himself back to Abby.
‘I’d rather talk.’
He nodded. With tacit agreement they turned and walked along the pavement. Despite her words neither spoke but, in the strangest way, the silence was comforting.
Lucy put her hands deep in her coat pockets and let the wind dry the tears on her face. The pain had settled deep within her heart and she felt cold. Frightened. Nothing in her life had ever prepared her for this.
Covertly she looked up at Dominic Grayling. In any other circumstances he might have been an attractive kind of man. Handsome, even. He was tall, loose-limbed and wiry, with an intelligent face and kind eyes. Not particularly like Chloe, though, she thought. She was much fairer; her hair was a shining curtain of ash blonde. Yet maybe there was something indefinably like her in this man. Perhaps in the shape of his face? An expression?
Who knew why she’d agreed to talk to him? Surely she’d have been more sensible to wait until the professionals were involved. They’d be able to work out a way through this nightmare. And yet…Dominic’s eyes told her he shared her pain, understood what she was feeling. Dr Shorrock, with all his calm, professional detachment, hadn’t even touched on the agony she was feeling.
‘We can get a coffee here.’
His deep voice broke into her thoughts and she looked up to see him pointing across the road at a narrow shop frontage with a chipped sign above reading Sarah’s Teas.
‘Fine.’
They crossed the road and Dominic held open the door to allow her to pass before him. The shop was full, a lunchtime crowd of busy, bustling people. Some were sitting round melamine tables reading newspapers over limp sandwiches. All infuriatingly normal. Yet here she was with her life in tatters.
‘How do you like your coffee?’
‘Coffee?’ she repeated stupidly, until her mind shifted back into gear. Oh, yes, she was going to have coffee. ‘White, one sugar.’
Lucy turned back to look at the room and caught sight of herself in the mirror. Her reflection looked normal. That surprised her. Was that what everyone else saw? How strange. Surely if the world as you knew it had just ended, something of that should show on your face? Was that why everyone had gone on and on saying how well she’d looked after Michael had died? It had puzzled her at the time.
‘Coffee.’ Dominic’s voice interrupted her as he held out a cardboard cup with a plastic lid on top.
Once again his eyes held complete understanding. They were nice eyes. Steely blue with golden flecks like sunshine. You could trust eyes like that. She took the cup. ‘Thank you.’
‘The park is round the corner. It’s not too far.’
Lucy didn’t care. She’d have followed him anywhere at this moment. Just knowing she didn’t have to make a decision was enough. Her brain couldn’t cope with anything. He wanted to walk in a park—she’d walk in a park.
It wasn’t much of a park. It was smaller than the ones near her home, surrounded by high iron railings and hemmed in by densely packed housing. The concrete walls of a nearby high-rise were covered with graffiti. An ugly place, she thought with a curious detachment.
‘We could sit on the bench over there,’ he said, and pointed at a wooden seat underneath some old oak trees. His kind eyes glanced down at her. ‘I shouldn’t be doing this to you. It’s too soon. You’re still in shock.’
‘I’ll always be in shock.’
An almost imperceptible nod of the head before he turned and walked towards the seat.
‘Do you want to tell me what they told you?’ he asked as she sat next to him.
Lucy shook her head. ‘I can’t,’ she whispered. ‘Not yet.’
‘No,’ he agreed, and in that one word she could feel his compassion.
She watched him take the lid off his coffee and sip.
He looked up and caught her watching. ‘Drink your coffee. At least it’s hot.’
‘Everyone seems to want me to drink something. The nurse back at the hospital kept wanting me to have tea.’
His smile was gentle. With fingers that trembled slightly she struggled with the plastic lid. Some of the hot liquid lurched over the side and scalded her fingers.
‘Steady,’ was all he said, reaching out to support her hand.
And then there was silence for a few moments before he began. His voice was quiet, deep and slightly husky.
‘My wife, Eloise, was born with a defective heart. She should never…I should never have—’
Lucy waited. For the first time his pain pierced hers. This man knew exactly how she was feeling. He knew because he was in the same nightmarish place. Here with her. No one else would ever be able to understand how bleak it was possible to feel. But this man—Dominic—knew. He really knew.
He began again. ‘Eloise always wanted children.’ He looked down and traced a pattern with his shoe on the dry mud. ‘But they never came. Month after month. There was nothing.’
Lucy sipped at the bitter coffee and waited as he struggled to get the words out. ‘We didn’t know about her heart then. Not then.’ He looked up at the trees. ‘Later we knew, of course, and we were told she shouldn’t ever have a baby. There was a ‘‘significant risk’’, they told us. But Eloise was desperate. Her life wasn’t ever going to be complete without children. I tried…’
She understood that desperation for a baby. Month after month of nothing. The feeling that somehow each month you’d lost your baby, even though your head told you there’d never been anything to lose. The sensation of life ebbing away, month after month. Lucy tried to think of something to say, some comfort.
‘I let her go for the IVF. When Eloise knew she was pregnant she was so excited. Couldn’t wait to have our baby.’ He pulled himself up straighter on the bench. ‘But there were complications during the Caesarean. She died giving birth to Abigail.’
Lucy hadn’t expected that. Her right hand, holding the coffee, shook. Died. Her first reaction was one of sympathy, immediate and intense. ‘I’m sorry. So sorry.’
‘Abby is everything I have.’
His head was bowed and she could see the weight of everything resting on his shoulders. His wife had died giving birth to a child that wasn’t his own—and yet he still loved his Abby. Her Abby. Just as she loved Chloe.
‘How did you discover Abby—’ her voice hovered over the unfamiliar name ‘—wasn’t your natural child?’
‘She has a rhesus—’
‘Negative blood type. I remember. Dr Shorrock said.’ She smiled sadly as he looked across at her. ‘So do I.’
‘I wish I’d never found out.’ Dominic held her gaze. ‘I love her more than anything in the world. She may not be my natural child but she’s more mine than anyone—’
He broke off as though he’d suddenly remembered whom he was speaking to. Yet Lucy didn’t mind. She looked at the passion in his face and was glad Abigail had found somewhere safe.
Safe. It was so strange. This stranger made her feel safe. Just sitting with him had begun to make the panic recede a little. The pain was still there. A hard knot at the very centre of who she was. And yet, looking at Dominic, she could believe she’d survive. That there might be a way to claw through this nightmare.
‘I understand,’ she said softly. ‘I love Chloe.’
His eyes were moist as he breathed the name. ‘Chloe. It’s a beautiful name.’
‘She’s beautiful. An incredible little girl.’ Lucy stood up and dropped the empty cup into the remains of a burnt-out litter bin. ‘Shall we walk?’
‘Yes.’
They took the path across the grass. ‘Abigail’s a lovely name too.’
‘It means ‘‘father rejoiced’’. I wanted her to know I didn’t blame her. When Eloise died,’ he said awkwardly, and then he shrugged. ‘It seemed important at the time.’
An understanding of just how much this man must have suffered washed over Lucy once again. His wife had died giving birth to Abigail.
Losing Michael had been painful, but she didn’t have any sense of guilt about it. From the little he’d said it was obvious Dominic Grayling blamed himself, in part at least, for agreeing to the IVF treatment. Yet even in the midst of that tumult of emotion he’d still thought about his baby girl, how she would feel every birthday, and he’d given her a name that told her she was loved. He had to be a special kind of man.
‘Is Abigail like me?’ she asked, suddenly feeling the need to know. She turned to look at him, the wind whipping her hair across her face.
‘A little. In the colour of her hair. But more, I think, in the way she moves. She moves like you.’
It was faintly embarrassing to have this stranger look at her in such a way. Focused. As though he could see nothing but her. Lucy looked away.
‘And Chloe?’
‘Yes,’ she said hurriedly. ‘She has your shape face, your hands…’ His hands. She hadn’t even registered she’d noticed his hands—and yet Chloe had the same long fingers. She’d always loved her daughter’s fingers. Right from a baby. ‘Artist’s hands,’ Michael had called them.
‘I’d like to see her.’
He’d spoken quietly and yet the words were like a slap. Her head snapped up.
‘No.’
‘Don’t you want to see Abigail?’
Lucy let his words flow over her.
‘Can you really go your whole life without knowing what she’s like?’ He paused. ‘Whether we like it or not, other people are going to start making decisions for us. When I first found out about Abby…Hell, this is hard.’ He rubbed the back of his neck. ‘My instinct was to keep it all quiet. Make sure no one discovered the mistake. Keep her mine. Just mine.’ And his voice rang with possession.
Lucy met his eyes and the intensity in his kept her looking.
‘But we can’t do that. Either of us. Both girls have the right to know their genetic make-up. Chloe could perhaps need that more than Abby.’
A shiver of cold washed through her as she understood the implications of what he was trying to tell her. ‘Is Eloise’s heart condition hereditary?’
‘It’s possible for her to have inherited the same problem,’ he stated baldly. ‘But not likely.’
Lucy turned away as she felt the panic begin to rise up again. ‘I can’t bear this.’
‘We have to.’ Dominic caught her arm. ‘Our girls are only six. Far too little to deal with this. We’re the grownups here and we’re going to have to deal with it.’
His fingers held her arm still, preventing her from walking away. She could almost imagine the warmth from his hand was giving her strength. Passing from him to her. She turned back towards him. ‘I’m scared,’ she whispered.
‘If I could tell you everything’s going to be all right I would. But I don’t know that. I only know I’m going to do anything to protect Chloe and Abby from the consequences of this. I don’t want to sue the hospital. I don’t want any publicity.’
The mention of the word ‘publicity’ took the whole situation into another dimension. Lucy hadn’t had time to think about the full ramifications of what had happened. She’d heard the defensive tone in Dr Shorrock’s voice but it hadn’t registered with her as anything other than awkwardness. But, yes, they could sue the hospital for negligence. But if they did, what then? A tragic mix-up at an IVF clinic would have all the elements needed to shoot the story to front-page prominence.
And then she thought of Chloe. A bright, sunny little girl who was already having to live her life without her daddy. Who had so few memories of the man who’d loved her for the first five years of her life.
‘I don’t want any publicity either.’
The tension in Dominic’s face relaxed and he let go of her arm. ‘I’m sure the courts will do everything they can to protect the girls. They’re so young…I don’t want to make this any more difficult for you and your family than it already is—but we can’t pretend it hasn’t happened either. I imagine we’ll be asked to sign something that gives up all legal right to our biological children.’
Lucy frowned as she struggled to keep up with his conversation. He’d had longer to come to terms with the truth.
‘But I’d like to see her,’ he continued. ‘Maybe have a photograph. A letter at Christmas. I can’t make this situation right but I want my natural daughter to know I would have loved her. That I’ll be there for her if ever she needs me.’ His sincerity was tangible. ‘And you must want that too. For Abby? Don’t you?’
The little girl she didn’t know? Abby? Yes, she wanted Abby to know she’d have loved her. ‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘I do want that.’
‘I think they’re too young to be told everything. If you let me see Chloe occasionally you can be certain I’ll never do anything to hurt her. I would just like to meet her. Talk to her for a little while so I can imagine her when I think about her.’
‘And Abby?’
He nodded. ‘I’d like her to know who you are. For you to be someone she likes so that when I have to tell her the truth she won’t feel abandoned. I want her to know I did everything I could to make things right for her.’
Lucy looked back the way they’d walked unseeingly. ‘I’d like to see Abby.’
‘Good.’
‘And you can meet Chloe. But later. I can’t do it now. Not now.’
His eyes softened and she felt the panic recede again. Dominic Grayling was a man to be trusted. The words popped into her head and they were comforting.
‘First you must have Chloe checked out. Let’s know what we are playing with.’
Lucy kept looking at his eyes, as though they were a life raft that was going to stop her being smashed against the jagged rocks. ‘She was a very healthy baby.’
‘That’s good, then, isn’t it? Let’s just make sure.’
‘I want to go home now.’
Dominic pulled a notepad from his pocket and finished filling out his name and address. ‘Here,’ he said, passing it across.
Dr Dominic Grayling. ‘You’re a doctor?’
‘Not of medicine. I did a PhD. May I have your address?’
Lucy kept staring at the paper. ‘Grayling. That’s what Dr Shorrock meant. I hadn’t realised before.’ She looked back up at him. ‘He said ‘‘possibly there was some confusion over the names’’. I’m Grayford.’
