Baby on Board: Secret Baby, Surprise Parents / Her Baby Wish / Keeping Her Baby's Secret

‘Michael…’ She swallowed. ‘Michael didn’t know.’

Grace was propelled back by the shock that came off him in waves. She grabbed for the back of a kitchen chair, then sank down on it as her shaking legs finally refused to support her.

She gestured weakly at the chair beside her. ‘Sit down, Josh.’ He didn’t move and she said, ‘Please.’

For a moment she thought he was going to ignore her plea, turn around, walk away, just as he had when she’d told him she was pregnant with her sister’s baby. That there was nothing he could do or say to stop her going ahead with the surrogacy.

And so he’d said nothing.

But, after endless seconds, he pulled out the chair beside her and sank down onto it.

‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Tell me everything.’

Grace looked across at the crib, then back at Josh.

‘I couldn’t bear to see what they were both going through after the failure of that last cycle, when the consultant called a halt, saying that Phoebe wasn’t strong enough to go through any more.’

She reached out, wanting him to understand, but there was something about the way he was holding himself, something so taut, so close to cracking, that she didn’t quite dare cross that line.

‘You have to understand how hard it was for them,’ she pressed, wanting him to feel their pain. ‘It was as if someone had died.’

‘I understood,’ he said tersely.

‘Did you?’

Josh understood only too well.

Maintaining that cheerful, positive front for Phoebe had been tough on his brother. Michael had taken to calling him late at night when Phoebe had been asleep, pouring out his desperation, his sense of failure. There had been one call, when his brother had sounded so desperate that Josh had dropped everything and flown home, seriously concerned that he was on the point of a breakdown. Something Phoebe had been too wrapped up in her own loss to recognise.

Grace pressed him for an answer. ‘Did you really, Josh?’

‘I understood that it had become an obsession, that it was destroying them both,’ he said. ‘I wanted Michael to put a stop to it. Let it go. Adopt.’

‘That seems such an obvious choice to the outsider,’ she said. ‘For a woman yearning for a baby of her own…’ She let out a long shuddering sigh. ‘I loved them both so much, to see them hurting like that was unbearable.’

‘So it was you who suggested the surrogacy?’

‘Not until I was sure it was a possibility. Like you, I did my research on the Internet, found a Web site run by and for people who’d already been through this. Then I saw my doctor, talked it through with her. Had all the health checks. I didn’t want to raise Phoebe’s hopes, not until I had the medical all-clear.’

‘You should have had counselling. What if you’d found you couldn’t give up the baby? It happens.’

‘I know.’

‘But then you weren’t really giving her up, were you?’

She didn’t argue. She could see how it must look to him, but he hadn’t been the one lying in the upstairs flat listening to her baby crying in the night, screwing the sheet into knots as she clung to the bed, waiting for Phoebe to call her, ask her to help. A call that she knew would never come.

‘When I told them I was ready and willing to have one of Phoebe’s fertilised eggs implanted, they both wept.’

‘They didn’t try to talk you out of it? Either of them?’

Her eyes flashed impatiently. ‘Of course they did. Michael said that it was time for them to take the adoption route.’

‘But Phoebe was hooked.’

‘They weren’t that young any more. We all knew that adoption would not have been easy. And I was absolutely certain that it was something I wanted to do.’

‘So?’

‘Michael had to go to Copenhagen to put in a bid for a new project. He said we’d talk about it again when he got back.’ She shrugged. ‘While he was gone, Phoebe and I went to see her consultant so that we’d have all the options when he got back. He gave it to us straight. While he was prepared to attempt implanting a fertilised egg, he didn’t need to labour the point about how much harder it is to get a result that way.’ She was staring at her hands. ‘Phoebe had tried and tried, Josh. I’d seen what it did to her. Simple artificial insemination is much easier, much more reliable. By the time Michael came home, it was done.’

Josh rose slowly to his feet.

It was true, then.

Some sound must have escaped him, because Grace said, ‘She’s still Michael’s baby—’

He shook his head and for a moment she faltered, but she quickly rallied and, on her feet, came back at him with a fierce, ‘Yes! Posie is still just as much your niece as if Phoebe had given birth to her.’

‘No…’

This time the word felt as if it had been torn from the depths of his soul, as feelings that he’d battling with for a year threatened to overwhelm him.

‘Please, Josh,’ she said, her hand reaching for his, her voice urgent now, desperate. ‘Posie needs you.’

‘No!’ His bellow, reverberating around the high ceiling, was echoed by a startled cry from the baby.

He was beside her in a stride, lifting her from the crib, holding her out in front of him at arm’s length.

‘Posie Kingsley is not my niece,’ he said. Then, tucking the child protectively against his shoulder, he turned to Grace. ‘She’s my daughter.’

‘What?’

‘She’s my daughter, our daughter.’

‘No,’ she said, shaking her head, taking a step back, looking for all the world as if she’d just stepped on the tail of a sleeping tiger. ‘Don’t…’

If ever her eyes betrayed her feelings, they betrayed them now. Then she turned away, as if she couldn’t bear to look at him, walked to where she’d dropped the feeders and bent to pick them up.

‘Give her to me,’ she said.

‘It’s the truth,’ he said, refusing to surrender Posie when, still not looking at him, she held out her arms to take her. He had to make her look at him. Had to convince her. ‘Michael would have done anything and, God forgive me, I conspired in his deception.’

She let her arms drop, turned and walked out of the room.

‘You can’t hide from this,’ he said, following her. ‘Or bury your head in the sand. You’re going to have to fight to keep your baby.’

She stopped at the foot of the stairs, swung around to face him. ‘From you?’ she demanded angrily. ‘Is that what this is all about?’ She gestured at the baby still nestled against his shoulder. ‘Control of Michael’s baby?’

‘My baby. Why else would I have tried to stop the surrogacy?

What I did, I did for Michael. To ease his torment. If Phoebe had become pregnant, if she’d had a baby, I could have lived with it. Been glad for them. But to know that you were carrying my child…’

‘It was the same, Josh.’

‘No, Grace. It was completely different. You were carrying my child. Have you any idea how that made me feel?’

That, at least, gave her pause. The anger died from her eyes, to be replaced by some other emotion. One that was far harder to read.

‘How?’

‘I can’t explain…’ It was true. There was no vocabulary for the anguish he’d felt, knowing that a woman he’d loved was carrying his child only to give it away. That she would never—could never—know the truth. He’d felt as if he were stealing something from her. Losing part of himself.

‘Why didn’t you just tell me, Josh? Instead of going on and on about what a fool I was. How I’d regret it.’

‘Michael had made me swear…’

‘On what? Your mother’s life?’ Sarcasm dripped from her tongue and he didn’t blame her.

‘Not even Phoebe knew,’ he said.

‘I don’t believe you. He wouldn’t have deceived her.’

‘Just like Phoebe wouldn’t have deceived Michael?’ he retaliated, and colour streaked across her cheekbones. ‘I warned you not to put him on a pedestal.’

‘So you did.’

‘If it helps, with Phoebe’s history I didn’t believe there was the slightest chance of her carrying any baby to term.’

‘No, Josh, adding cynicism to deception doesn’t help one bit.’

‘No, I don’t suppose it does.’ Then, ‘If it would have changed anything, despite my promise, I would have told you.’

‘But I told you what I hadn’t told them. That you were too late. I was already pregnant.’

He nodded.

‘Maybe, if we hadn’t jumped the gun, if we’d waited until he came home,’ Grace said, ‘he would have told me.’

‘Maybe.’ But, as their eyes locked, they both knew that it was never going to happen.

‘But…’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t understand. Why? Why would he do it? Why would you?’

‘Michael was desperate and I had no choice.’

‘They were both desperate, but there was no problem with Michael. It was Phoebe. They both knew that…’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know. But while he was holding it together on the surface for Phoebe, he was perilously close to a breakdown. She was going through so much to give them both what they wanted. Michael felt so useless and that somehow morphed into the certainty that it was his fault they couldn’t have children. I tried to get him to see a counsellor but he just begged me…’ Grace was staring at him and he broke off, unable to continue. ‘You’re not the only one who owed Michael and Phoebe,’ he said angrily. ‘They took me into their home, too. I only did what you did, Grace.’

‘You think?’ She lifted one eyebrow. ‘A few minutes in a cubicle with a magazine?’

‘If you knew how helpless men feel,’ he said. How helpless, how confused he’d felt, knowing that she was carrying a child he’d so unwillingly helped make. ‘If I’d had any idea where it would lead, I’d never have gone through with it….’

Grace was in turmoil, couldn’t begin to think straight, but one message was coming over loud and clear. That while he had been prepared to assist Phoebe to get pregnant, he’d flown half way around the world in an attempt to stop her from having his baby.

‘It’s okay, Josh. No need to labour it,’ she snapped. ‘I get the picture. Phoebe could have your baby, but I wasn’t good enough.’

‘No! That’s not right. How could you not be good enough?’

‘Then why?’

‘Phoebe was just Phoebe. Michael’s wife. You…’ She’d never seen Josh struggle for words like this.

‘What?’ she demanded. ‘How bad can it be?’

‘Not bad. Far from bad, but we were lovers, Grace.’

‘Lovers?’ She’d never thought of them as lovers. ‘Were we lovers?’

‘I was the first man who knew you.’

First, last… She didn’t want to think about how pathetic that was. ‘I still don’t understand what your problem was.’

‘Don’t you?’ He looked at Posie for a moment, then back at her. ‘My problem was that when Michael told me you were going to have a baby for Phoebe—not his, but my baby—it made me feel the way I did when I left you sleeping after the night we’d spend together, flying away like a thief in the night. I felt as if I was stealing your virginity all over again.’

‘You didn’t steal my virginity, Josh, I gave it to you with a whole heart, but we were never lovers.’

It struck her now so clearly. All those years she’d clung to something that had been unreal—nothing.

‘To be lovers is more than sex. For lovers the whole person is engaged. Not just the body, but the head and heart. My head was missing that night and so was your heart. I don’t believe you know how to love.’

She might as well have slapped him. Yesterday she’d wanted to, now…

Now she had to deal with the fact that it was Josh, not Michael who was the father of her baby. That it wasn’t simple biology, a surrogacy without emotional involvement or ties, but that, ten years too late, her darkest dream had come true.

She didn’t want to slap him, she wanted to hold him. Wanted him to hold her, tell her that it would be all right…

It was never going to happen.

He’d made his feelings plain. He hadn’t expected or wanted this child. But then he’d once told her, when she’d found him burning photographs of his father, that he would never have children.

Later, when Michael and Josh had gone to the sports centre to beat a squash ball to pulp, Phoebe had told her that there had been an announcement in The Times that morning, telling the world that his father’s new young wife had just given birth to a baby girl.

‘I have to deal with this,’ she said, clutching the pack of feeders to her.

‘You can’t run away from this, Grace. Can’t hide. Can’t curl up in your armchair and make it go away. Posie is our daughter and we’re going to have to sit down and decide what’s best for her.’ He looked down at the dark curls of the baby who was chewing at his shoulder. ‘Make decisions that will alter all our lives.’

‘She’s Phoebe and Michael’s daughter,’ she replied, a touch desperately. She wasn’t ready to talk about anything else right now. She needed time to come to terms with what he’d told her. That she’d had Josh Kingsley’s baby. ‘It says so on her birth certificate, as you’ve just taken great pains to remind me.’

‘All the more reason…’

‘No. You didn’t want her, Josh. You never wanted her. You flew from Australia to try and stop her from being conceived.’

‘And failed.’ He came close to a smile. ‘Not that I’m the first man to face that situation. Although I’m probably the first not to at least have had the fun of getting myself there.’

‘Sorry, I can’t help you with that one, Josh,’ Grace said with a desperate flippancy that she was far from feeling. ‘You’ll just have to dig deep in your memory for consolation.’

‘Not that deep,’ he replied without hesitation, his eyes glinting dangerously as he lifted a hand to her face, ran his thumb down the side of her cheek. And for a moment all she could think about was how he’d kissed her—not ten years ago, but yesterday, when he’d woken her. Kissed her, kissed his baby. Because he’d always known that Posie was his. And now he knew that she was hers, too.

This was the first time either of them had ever talked about the night they’d spent together and Grace discovered that at twenty-eight years of age she could still blush like the shy fourteen-year-old who’d first come to this house.

Maybe Josh, too, was experiencing whatever similar response men felt when, without warning, they stumbled into emotional quicksand because, for a moment, neither of them spoke.

Then Grace said, ‘You’re okay, Josh. I don’t have a father who cares enough to get out his shotgun and make you do the decent thing.’

‘I know all about uncaring fathers, Grace. You’re right. Having seen the dark side, fatherhood is not something I ever wanted, but here I am, like it or not.’

And Grace, who hadn’t thought beyond the next hour for more than a week, realised that she had better start putting in some serious thinking time about what future she saw for Posie. For herself.

‘This changes everything, doesn’t it?’ she said, sinking onto the stairs.

Josh sat down beside her, put his spare arm around her, pulled her against his chest. ‘Everything,’ he agreed.

They sat there for long minutes, both of them contemplating the future. Until last week, each had seen the road clear ahead of them. Two separate paths. One a quiet small-town road, the other a challenging climb up a twisting mountain path with the end lost in the clouds. Now their ways merged in a pothole-strewn lane that was shrouded in swirling mists.

It was Posie, waving a hand and grabbing a handful of Josh’s hair, who finally brought them back to now, this minute and, as he yelped, Grace lifted her head, smiling despite everything as she rescued him from Posie’s tight little grasp.

‘Did she pull it out by the roots?’ he asked, rubbing at his scalp.

‘Not much. Get used to it.’

‘Will you help?’

‘I’m in it for the duration, Josh.’

And that, she realised, was all that mattered. She was now the only mother Posie would ever have and she just had to get on with it. If Josh wanted to be a father… Well, that was good, but she wasn’t holding her breath.

And, with that, the world steadied and, realising that she was still clutching the feeders, she got to her feet. Milk. Shower. Work. Concentrate on one thing at a time. Do what had to be done and the rest would fall into place….

‘I’ll be as quick as I can,’ she said, glancing down at him.

‘You’re leaving Posie with me?’ She saw panic flash across his face. ‘What do I do with her?’

She paused, the words ‘Be a father’ burning in her brain. Not fair. She wanted him around for Posie, but she wouldn’t stoop to blackmail.

He hadn’t asked for—or wanted—this.

‘Just keep her amused for a while,’ she said, forcing herself to walk up the stairs, away from them. She got very nearly halfway before she looked back.

He hadn’t moved, but was looking up at her, dark hair still ruffled from bed, ancient jogging pants sagging below his waist, exposing a band of paler skin, feet bare. Posie propped in his elbow, happily sucking at his naked shoulder.

If she had trawled her imagination for a perfect picture of fatherhood, she couldn’t have bettered it.

Don’t go there, she warned herself. It might only take one little tadpole waking up from deep freeze and eager to explore to make a baby, but being a father required a lifetime of commitment.

Josh thought one night made them lovers. He couldn’t even stay married to the same woman for more than a year. He saved his energies for the really important stuff, like dominating his own field of engineering.

‘Better still,’ she said, a catch in her throat, ‘let her amuse you.’

Josh looked at the baby, then back up at her. ‘What does she do?’

‘Do? She’s not a performing seal.’ Then, because he was clearly so far out of his depth he was in danger of drowning, she threw him a lifeline. ‘She’s just learned to roll over. If you put her down on the carpet, she’ll show you.’

She didn’t wait to see what he did, but ran up the two flights of stairs to her own flat, her brain pounding out the words Josh’s baby over and over.

She’d been carrying Josh’s baby inside her for nine months and not known. Had given birth to Josh’s baby and had given her away.

How could she have done that?

How could she have looked at her and not seen? The little eyelid tuck. The grey eyes flecked with amber. A little curl that fell over her right eye.

He was right not to have told her.

To have known and have to give her up, even to her sister, would have been like tearing her heart from her body and, without it, she would never have survived.

Once she finished expressing her milk, Grace took a shower, then sorted through her wardrobe for something suitable for their trip into Maybridge, ignoring her usual bright colours as inappropriate, choosing the navy trouser suit she normally kept for visits to the bank.

She’d suggest walking into town. Apart from avoiding the hassle of parking, it would be good to stretch their legs, get some fresh air. They could cut through the park on the way home, maybe take some crusts. It was way past time that Posie was introduced to the joys of feeding the ducks. Phoebe had always loved doing that.

To the outside world they’d look like any ordinary family, she thought. Mother, father, baby. All they lacked was a dog.

She put her hand over her mouth, squeezed her eyes tight shut. Hung on until the urge to howl passed.

Grace’s baby…

The words thumped through Josh’s head as he took the stairs down to the basement flat. Last night he’d stood for a long time in the shadows of the nursery, watching his child sleeping, as every shade of emotion raced through him.

Anger, confusion, guilt. Grief at not just the loss of his brother and Phoebe, but of this last year when he’d walled himself up, unable to come to terms with what he’d done, what his brother had done. Feeling somehow cheated, used. Worst of all, having deep buried feelings for Grace stirred up to torment him.

The minute he’d stopped concentrating on something else, his mind would sandbag him with memories of how it had felt to be buried to the hilt in her sweet, hot body, her legs wrapped around him as she’d cried out his name. Creating pictures of her carrying his child, as if the one had led from the other.

He’d never wanted to be a father. No man had ever been more careful to avoid it. Even when he’d gone to that clinic, done what was necessary, he had managed to distance himself from the reality of it. Any baby would be Michael’s, not his. And it had worked until he had discovered that it was Grace who’d be carrying his seed, at which point dispassion had deserted him.

Now, lifting his little girl from his shoulder, holding her in front of him, he was faced with more reality than he could handle.

‘So, Posie,’ he said, ‘are you going to amuse me?’

Posie, head wobbling slightly, frowned in concentration as if considering his question, just as her mother had once frowned over her homework.

‘Your mother said you can roll. Is that the extent of your repertoire?’

That earned him his first smile.

‘What? You think that’s a funny word, do you?’

Posie made a grab for his cheek, found the short stubble of his beard and tugged.

‘Oh, no, you don’t, young lady,’ he gasped and, eyes watering, put her down on the carpet, pulled on the sweater he’d discarded the night before, then settled down on the floor beside her.

Posie stuck her fingers in her mouth and flung her legs up in the air.

‘Oh, please,’ he said. ‘Is that any way for a lady to behave?’

Posie blew a bubble.

Grace put the feeding bottles in the fridge, laid the table for breakfast and then, since Josh and Posie had still not appeared, she went looking for them.

They weren’t in the living room—the most obvious ‘rolling’ territory—or anywhere else on the ground floor.

The internal door to the basement flat was still open.

She crossed to it, but hesitated on the threshold. It wasn’t that she never went down there. She had always volunteered to prepare it for him when he’d been expected home, whisking through it with vacuum cleaner and duster, checking the bathroom was stocked with everything he might need, the fridge contained the essentials. Smoothing Phoebe’s best linen sheets over the mattress, fluffing up the pillows.

She had always avoided going down there when he had actually been in residence.

She’d even weaned herself off going down there once he’d gone, wallowing in the scent of him clinging to sheets, towels.

It had been years since she’d taken a pillowcase he’d slept on to tuck beneath her own pillow. Her own comfort blanket.

As she hovered at the head of the stairs, the rich, deep sound of his laughter drifted upwards and, drawn by this unexpected, wonderfully heart-lifting sound, she took one step, then another and then she was standing in the small lobby, looking through the open door into Josh’s bedroom.

Unaware of her presence, he was lying face down on the floor, his back to her, playing peekaboo with Posie. Lifting the hem of the sweater he’d thrown on, hiding his face and then popping out with a, ‘Boo.’ Posie responded by throwing up her legs and wriggling with pleasure.

Josh laughed. ‘Again?’

Posie waved her arms excitedly.

The two of them were locked in their own intimate little bubble, totally focused on each other. It was touching, beautiful, unutterably sad, and Grace was torn in her emotions, wanting to laugh with Josh and Posie and weep for Michael and Phoebe.

She did neither.

Instead, determined not to disturb father and daughter as they discovered each other, she clamped her lips together, took a step back, then turned and, as silently as possible, went back upstairs.

CHAPTER FIVE

JOSH couldn’t have said whether it was a movement of air, some almost imperceptible sound or something else, but he looked over his shoulder, certain that he’d just missed something.