A Father Beyond Compare. Alison Roberts

Mickey from her arms in the van. She had known there was a distinct possibility she wasn’t going to make it out of there alive and she had trusted him to take her son to safety and do whatever was needed to keep him safe. The depth of love for her child and the desperate plea for help tugged at something deep within Tom all over again.

      There was no way he could betray that trust.

      ‘Do you want to watch TV?’ he asked Mickey.

      Mickey shook his head and kept howling.

      ‘Do you want to go to bed?’

      The small face turned an even darker shade of red and the decibel level increased alarmingly. Small hands punched at Tom so he was forced to move further away. He stood there, looking down at the miserable scrap of humanity on his couch, and felt utterly helpless.

      It wasn’t a pleasant feeling.

      No wonder he’d instinctively avoided having anything to do with kids. In terms of stress levels he’d choose dangling out of a helicopter or climbing into water-filled vehicles any day. Tom had had about as much as he could take.

      ‘I’m just trying to help,’ he told Mickey with a sigh. ‘But I can’t do this by myself, obviously. Do you want me to find someone else to look after you?’

      ‘No-o-o…I want Mummy.’

      ‘I know you do.’ So do I, Tom thought desperately. I want Mummy to come and scoop you up and make everything all right.

      A thoughtful crease appeared between Tom’s eyebrows. The idea was a little embarrassing but who was there to see, other than Max?

      ‘Would a…a cuddle help, buddy?’

      By way of answer, Mickey picked up a small, pink dog from the pile on the couch beside him and threw it at Tom. It bounced onto the floor a few feet away.

      Max pricked up his ears. He looked at the toy and then he looked at Tom.

      ‘I wouldn’t bother.’ Tom sighed more heavily this time. ‘OK, Mickey. I’m going into the kitchen to get a drink. I’ll be back in a minute.’

      A beer. Icy cold and refreshing enough to clear his head. Tom popped the tab on the can and took a long swallow. He wondered what price Phoebe might extract from him in order to offer some hands-on assistance. She worked with kids all the time in her job as a physiotherapist. She’d know what to do to stop a kid making himself sick by crying.

      He took another swallow. Removing himself from the near vicinity seemed to have helped because the noise level had dropped considerably. It was silent in the adjoining room, in fact.

      Tom’s beer can hit the bench with enough of a thump to send foam cascading down its side. Had Mickey rolled off the couch and cracked his head on the coffee-table? Was he lying unconscious on the floor while his carer was swigging alcohol in another room?

      The panic subsided the moment Tom swung into the living room. He stopped in his tracks as he saw Max nudging the pink dog closer to Mickey from where he must have placed it on the couch cushion earlier.

      Mickey was still snuffling and he still looked pretty miserable. He might have been trying to reject Max’s offering when he picked the dog up and threw it again but Max was giving him the benefit of any doubt. The dog waved a still magnificent plume of a tail and went to retrieve the toy.

      This time there was no mistaking a game had begun. Mickey scrubbed a wet nose with the back of his hand and threw the fluffy pink dog with purpose.

      ‘Go!’ he instructed Max.

      Max went. So did Tom, slipping back into the kitchen, still unnoticed. Who was he to argue if his dog could do a better job of babysitting than himself? If it was working, Tom was quite prepared to go with the flow.

      He took another peep into the living room a minute later. Max, bless him, wasn’t even looking bored by the repeated track he was pacing on the living-room carpet. When Tom looked in again, however, Max had given up. He was sitting on the couch beside Mickey.