Their Own Little Miracle

‘It won’t! And this is my sister, Joe—my identical twin sister, so genetically it would be identical to a child of her own. It could be her own. It’ll be just like being the incubator for their own baby, and I want to do it for her because I love her and I want to help her—’

‘I know you do, but...?’

‘But? How many siblings do you have?’

‘None.’

‘None?’ She laughed disbelievingly. ‘None. So how can you possibly judge my motives?’

‘I can’t. I’m not judging your motives, I wouldn’t presume to do that and I’m sure you’re doing it for the all right reasons. I have immense respect for your courage in even contemplating it. I’m only thinking of the impact it would have on you, knowing how hard it’s been for me, and what I’ve done is nothing compared to what you’re talking about. Please tell me you’ve thought it through.’

‘I thought you were making me a coffee?’ she said, changing the subject abruptly, and he swore softly, threw away the one he’d made ages ago and dropped another capsule in the machine. Then he scrubbed a hand through his hair again and sighed as he turned back to her.

‘Sorry.’

‘Are you?’

He sighed again. ‘Yes and no. I know I keep banging the same old drum, Iona, but I’m really worried about you now.’

‘You really don’t need to be, Joe, I do know what I’m doing. It’s not an idle thought. I’ve researched it, I’ve considered it at length, discussed it endlessly—I’m not stupid.’

‘I never said you were. Just maybe too kind for your own good. Whose idea was it?’

‘Mine. All mine.’

‘And they said yes?’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Yes, they said yes, but not until they’d tried to talk me out of it, but I could tell they didn’t really want to do that, they just wanted to be sure that I was sure, and I am.’

‘Have you ever been pregnant?’

She shook her head, feeling a pang of regret because they’d tried and failed. ‘No. Have you?’ she asked, and he laughed.

‘I don’t believe so.’

‘Then how can you lecture me on what it’ll feel like?’

‘Because I have imagination? Because I have empathy? Because I know how hard I’ve found even doing what I did?’

‘But it’s different to your situation. I know who the baby’s going to, and I know it’ll be loved and cherished and brought up with my values. Did you have any control over who had your sperm?’

He shook his head. ‘No. And that’s at the root of my worries, I have to admit, because I can never be utterly sure my ch—’ He cut himself off. ‘My offspring will be loved and cared for as I would have loved and cared for them.’

She searched his eyes—those gorgeous, penetrating, honest eyes—and she could read them clearly, could see the genuine worry he felt for his unknown children, the responsibility he felt for their happiness over which he had no control.

‘You’re a good man, do you know that?’ she said softly, and he laughed and turned away, making a production of spooning out the froth onto her new coffee.

‘Chocolate sprinkles?’

‘Is it powder?’

‘No, it’s flakes of real chocolate.’

‘Oh, yes, please. I love those.’

‘Me, too. Here.’

He handed it to her, and she went up on tiptoe and brushed a kiss against his cheek.

‘Thank you.’

He looked slightly startled. ‘It’s only a coffee.’

‘It’s not for the coffee, it’s for caring—about the children you don’t know, about me—just—for caring.’

He hesitated, staring down into her eyes, and then he gave a fleeting smile.

‘You’re welcome. I didn’t mean to interfere, but I can’t stand by and watch a friend sleepwalk into potential unhappiness without saying anything.’

‘Am I a friend?’ she asked, and he gave her a thoughtful half-smile.

‘I think you could be. I’m not in the habit of spilling my guts to people who aren’t.’

He turned back to the coffee maker, and she perched on a chair at the big old table, a funny warm feeling inside, and watched him make his own coffee, his movements as deft and sure as they’d been in Resus. He rinsed out the milk frother, sat down opposite her and met her eyes.

‘Talking about spilling my guts, it’s a bit late to worry about this, but you’re the only person outside my family who I’ve ever told about any of this stuff, so I’d be grateful if you’d keep it to yourself.’

She nodded, surprised that he’d even felt he had to ask her. ‘Of course I will. I’m amazed you told me. It’s not the sort of thing people talk about—and snap, by the way. Only my sister and brother-in-law know. We haven’t even told the rest of the family.’

‘Yes, I can understand that.’ He gave a wry chuckle. ‘I didn’t mean to tell you, by the way, it just sort of came out, but—Iona, please be careful, and if you do decide to do it, do it properly? Don’t go and have some unpremeditated random one-night stand with someone just because they’re tall and blond and have good bone structure.’

That made her laugh. ‘I was sort of joking, but it’s what my brother-in-law looks like, and we’ve been trying to find a sperm donor who at least has some of his physical characteristics. They tried IVF and got a few live embryos, but the quality wasn’t great and none of them implanted, although nobody could say why for certain. Steve’s sperm quality isn’t good, so she’s tried AI with a tall, blue-eyed blond donor, which didn’t work, and I’ve tried AI three times with Steve’s semen and not got pregnant.’

A little frown appeared fleetingly between his brows. ‘I didn’t realise you’d got that far down the line,’ he said slowly.

‘Oh, yes. This isn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing, Joe. We’ve been talking about it for ages. That’s part of the reason I took this job, to be nearer to them. So, anyway, it needs to be another sperm donor since the one she tried has reached his limit of donations, and we can’t find another one that ticks all the boxes on any of the donor sites, at least not the physical appearance boxes. And, yes, I know that’s the least important thing in a way, but it’s tough enough for them without the child looking like a cuckoo in the nest. Maybe I need to go on a cruise up the fjords and try and find a Viking,’ she added lightly, winding him up again, and he spluttered into his coffee and wiped the froth off his lip, his eyes brimming with laughter.

‘Do you know who goes on fjord cruises? Tourists, Iona. People like my parents. And, believe me, they don’t look like Vikings.’

‘Oh, well, there goes that idea, then.’ She laughed, then sat back, cradling her coffee. ‘Tell me about them—your parents.’

‘My parents? What can I tell you? My dad’s called Bill, my mother’s Mary, they’re in their late sixties. Dad’s an ex-army officer, invalided out after an explosives accident that left him with—well, let’s call them life-changing injuries, for want of a better description. And as if that wasn’t enough, my mother, who was pregnant at the time, lost her baby.’

‘Oh, Joe, that’s awful. That’s so sad.’

He nodded. ‘They think it was probably the shock of the severity of his injuries that caused her miscarriage. It might have been, or it might not, but because of his injuries it was their last chance and they lost it. Hence why I’m an only child. And despite his best efforts to get rid of her, my mother’s stuck by him and they have a great relationship, but underlying it all is this sadness, a sort of grief I guess for the baby they lost and the children they never had.’

‘Hence why you were a sperm donor,’ she said slowly, understanding him now at last. ‘To help people like them.’

‘Yes. Or at least partly. I was four when the accident happened, and I spent a lot of that year living with my aunt and uncle here, and it was the nearest they got to having their own children and we’re still really close. Elizabeth, my aunt, is my father’s much older sister, and she’s widowed now, but she and her husband built this house in their thirties as their family home, and the family never happened. She’s never got over that.’

‘Does she know what you’ve done?’

‘Oh, yes. She was the first person I told and she’s been hugely supportive.’ He smiled fondly. ‘Oddly, I can talk to her about things I could never tell my parents.’

‘I don’t think that’s odd. I feel the same. There are things I can tell my aunt I’d never tell my mother.’ She looked up at him again, watching his face carefully as she spoke because she’d just had a crazy idea and she didn’t know how it was going to land.

‘Talking of families—are you busy this weekend?’

‘Why?’ he asked warily, turning his head slightly to the side and eyeing her suspiciously.

‘Because I need a plus one. My baby brother’s getting married tomorrow, and I have to go to his wedding, and I really, really don’t want to go on my own.’

He frowned. ‘Are you suggesting I should come with you? Because there’s no way in hell I’m going to another wedding as long as I live, not after my catastrophic car crash of a marriage.’

She laughed wryly, even though it wasn’t funny. ‘I can understand that. It’s exactly why I don’t want to go, except I never got to the altar. I found out three days before my wedding that he’d slept with the stripper on his stag weekend, and when I challenged him he said something about it just being drunken high spirits, so when I asked him if he’d still been drunk on the subsequent four occasions he started grovelling, but I’d had enough so I called it off, and then he went round slagging me off to all our friends, saying I’d dumped him without hearing his side of it.’

‘What side? It sounds to me like you’re well off out of it.’

‘Oh, tell me about it, but I still don’t want to go to Johnnie’s wedding on my own with all the friends and relatives who would have been at mine, who’ll feel morally obliged to come and tell me how sorry they were and try and get all the juicy details. Especially not since it’s also the same church I should have got married in less than two years ago.’

‘Where is it?’ he asked, surprising her.

‘Where? Norfolk. A village just west of Norwich, not all that different to this one, but at least it’s a nice, easy drive.’

He grunted. ‘It’s not the drive I have issues with, it’s the wedding. Watching someone making their vows and wondering if they have the slightest idea what they’ve let themselves in for.’

‘What, like your parents, who by the sound of it are devoted to each other? Or your uncle and aunt?’

He gave a sharp sigh. ‘They’re different.’

‘No, they’re not. They sound like my sister and brother-in-law, and my parents, and my uncle and aunt. And Johnnie and Kate love each other to bits. They always have. They’re childhood sweethearts, and they’re wonderful together, but I just know I’m going to cry and make an idiot of myself and everybody’ll think it’s because of...’

‘So you want me there to—what? Pass you tissues?’

She laughed at that, at the thought of him handing her tissues like a production line as she sobbed her way through the ceremony that she’d been denied.

‘Well, I think you need to do something fairly mega to make up for being arrogant and then stealing my stethoscope. Is it really too much to ask?’

She was only joking, never for a moment thinking he’d agree, not now she knew he’d had an apparently disastrous marriage, and he stared at her slightly open-mouthed for a moment.

‘I didn’t steal it. I just forgot to give it back.’

‘So you’re not denying you were arrogant?’ she said with a little coaxing smile, and to her surprise he groaned and rolled his eyes. Was he weakening?

‘I’m not staying over,’ he said, jabbing his finger at her to add emphasis to every word. ‘I don’t want to stay over.’

So he’d go? ‘Nor do I, but it goes on until midnight so it’s a bit late to drive back. I should be there now, as well, but I lied and told them I was on call.’

He gave her an odd look. ‘Why would you do that?’

‘To get out of the family dinner, so they didn’t have to tiptoe round the elephant in the room? But I don’t really have a choice about tomorrow night. They’ll be expecting me to stay, and I’m sure there’ll be room for you somewhere. You can have my room if it comes to that. And you’d get to meet my sister and brother-in-law, too, and see why I want to make them happy.’

She left it there, hanging, holding her breath, and he said nothing for an age, just stared into his coffee, swirling it round and watching the froth, then he lifted it to his mouth, drained it and put it down with exaggerated care.

‘OK. I’ll do it,’ he said, his eyes deadly serious now. ‘As much as anything so I can meet them, and find out what kind of people would let you do this for them, because they’d have to be pretty special for you to make that kind of sacrifice.’

She felt her eyes fill and grabbed his hand, squeezing it hard. ‘They are—and thank you! You’re a life-saver.’

‘Don’t bother to thank me. I’ll probably spend most of the journey there and back trying to talk sense into you. So, what’s the dress code, and when do we need to leave?’

* * *

He picked her up at eleven, and she took one look at him in a blinding white dress shirt, black bow tie and immaculately cut black dress trousers, and felt her heart rate pick up.

He took her bag, put it in the back of the car and held the door for her, then slid behind the wheel and clipped on his seat belt, drawing her attention to his hands. He had beautiful hands. Clever hands.

‘OK?’

‘Yes. You scrub up quite nicely,’ she said rashly, and he turned his head and met her eyes.

‘You don’t do too badly yourself,’ he said, and then turned away before she could analyse the expression in them, but he’d looked...

‘What’s the postcode?’ he asked, and he keyed it into his satnav, started the engine and pulled away.

She swallowed, fastened her seat belt and took a deep breath, and he turned the radio on, saving her from the need to break the silence.

* * *

‘So, why interventional radiology?’ she asked after an hour interspersed with the odd comment about landmarks and idle chat.

He gave her a wry look and laughed as he turned his attention back to the road. ‘Are you afraid I’ll start lecturing you again or something?’

She felt her mouth twitch. ‘No, I’m not. I doubt if I could stop you, anyway, you’re like a dog with a bone. I’m just genuinely curious. It’s seems a bit...’

‘Dry?’ he offered.

‘Exactly. Or maybe not, not after what I saw you do yesterday.’

He laughed again. ‘Oh, that was pure theatre. Most of it’s much more mundane and measured. And the amount of learning, the sheer volume of what you have to know, is staggering. There are so many uses for it, so many different conditions that can be cured or alleviated by what is essentially a very minimal intervention. Every part of the body has a blood supply, and by using the blood vessels we can deliver life-saving interventions directly where they’re needed—stents, cancer treatments, clearing blockages, making blockages to stop bleeding—it’s endless.

‘We used to think that keyhole surgery was the holy grail, but IR is expanding so fast and there are so many potential uses for it it’s mind-boggling. I spend most of my waking hours either practising it or studying it, because if I don’t, I won’t know enough and I’ll make an error and someone will suffer when it could have been avoided.’

‘Is that what went wrong with your marriage?’ she asked without thinking, and he flashed her a glance.

‘What, that it suffered because I didn’t study it enough?’ he asked drily, and she laughed.

‘No, I meant you being a workaholic, but that wouldn’t have helped, either.’

He gave a soft snort, and nodded. ‘Probably not. No, she fancied the idea of being a doctor’s wife—the money, the social status—she had no idea what being married to a junior hospital doctor actually meant.’

‘She can’t have been that clueless.’

‘Oh, she wasn’t—far from it. She just hated her job and thought I’d be a good meal ticket, but then she realised that it wasn’t just for a year or two, it was going to be like it for at least a decade, and so...’

‘So?’

‘She found a way to deal with it. I didn’t know about it, but I knew she was unhappy, and one day I thought, To hell with it, I won’t stay at work practising in the skills lab, I’ll go home, take her out for dinner. And I caught her in bed—our bed—with her lover.’

She sucked in a breath. ‘Oh, Joe, that’s awful.’

His hands tightened on the wheel. ‘Yeah, tell me about it. He wasn’t the first, either, apparently, but it was my fault as much as hers. I was neglecting her, I was constantly tired, we hardly had a social life to speak of—it was no wonder, really, that she’d got bored with waiting for me to notice her and turned to other men.’

‘You still don’t do it like that,’ she said, furious on his behalf. ‘You stay, or you leave. You don’t cheat.’

‘Exactly, and especially not as many times as she told me she had, or for as long. So I left. And then, even though technically she was the one in the wrong, she got half the equity from the house. And we lived in London, so she did very nicely out of it because I’d bought it two years before I met her and pushed myself to the limit, and by the time the divorce settlement was through I’d been priced out of the market.’

She reached out and laid her hand lightly over his on the steering wheel. ‘I’m sorry, Joe.’

His head turned and his mouth flickered into a wry smile. ‘Don’t be sorry. It was a lesson learned. I won’t make the same mistake again.’

He drew in a slow breath, let it out on a huff and smiled again. ‘So, tell me about your family so I don’t put my foot in it.’

‘Oh, there’s not much to tell. My father’s an accountant, my mother was a nurse, my sister’s a town planner, her husband’s an architect, my brother’s a solicitor and Kate, his fiancée, is a legal executive. We’re all boring normal, except that Isla and Steve can’t seem to make a baby, and to put the cherry on top, Kate’s just found out she’s pregnant.’

‘Ouch.’

‘Yes. Ouch. And ignore your satnav, you need to turn left here.’

CHAPTER THREE

‘YOU DIDN’T CRY. There I was, with tissues at the ready—’

‘Oh, I nearly did, but only for the right reasons, and it was a lovely wedding.’

He laughed softly. ‘I suppose it was, as weddings go.’

They were sitting at one of the round tables in the marquee that had housed the reception, alone now because the others had gone off to mingle, and he absently unwrapped another of the heart-shaped chocolates covered in red foil and offered it to her.

She reached over and took it out of his fingers and put it in her mouth. ‘Thank you for coming with me. I know you didn’t want to.’

He unwrapped another chocolate, balled up the foil and flicked it idly into the middle of the table. ‘No, I didn’t, but hey. We’ve survived, and the band’s starting up, judging by the sound of it. Fancy a dance?’

‘Really? You want to dance?’

‘Not really, I’d rather sit here and eat chocolates, but if it’ll keep you out of mischief and stop you crawling off into the bushes with the best man, then I guess I probably should.’

‘Why would I do that?’ she asked, half laughing, half shocked, and he just rolled his eyes and smiled.

‘I was joking—but he is tall and blond and vaguely Nordic.’

‘And happily married to a very pregnant woman, in case you hadn’t noticed. Anyway, I wouldn’t do that!’

‘Good. One less thing for me to worry about,’ he teased.

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