The Baby Swap Miracle. Caroline Anderson

your decision,’ he said brusquely, a painful twisting in his gut as he said the words—words that could end his child’s life. Words he’d had to say, even though they went deeply against his every instinct.

      Her eyes widened, her hand flying down to cover the little bump that he so wanted to lay his hands against, and she stood up abruptly.

      ‘No way. This is my baby, Sam,’ she said flatly. ‘I haven’t asked you to get involved in its life, and I don’t expect you to if you don’t want to, but there’s no way I’m taking them up on their “offer”, as you so delicately put it. I’ll have it, and I’ll love it, and nothing and nobody will get in the way of that. And if you don’t like it, then sue me.’

      And lifting her chin, she scooped up her keys, grabbed her bag off the other chair and walked swiftly out of the café, leaving him sitting there staring after her. The relief left him weak at the knees, and it took him a second, but then he snapped his mouth shut, got up and strode after her.

      ‘Wait!’ he said, yanking open her car door before she could drive off. ‘Emelia, that’s not what I was trying to say. I just thought—’

      ‘Well, you thought wrong,’ she retorted, and grabbed the door handle.

      He held the door firmly and ignored her little growl of frustration. ‘No. I thought—hoped—you’d react exactly as you did, but you needed to know that you have my support whatever course of action you decide to take. This thing is massive. It’s going to change the whole course of your life, and that’s not trivial. You have to be certain you can do this. That’s all I was saying—that it’s your call, and for what it’s worth, I think you’ve made the right one, but it’s down to you.’

      He thrust a business card into her hand. ‘Here. My contact details. Call me, Emelia. Please. Talk to me. If there’s anything you need, anything I can do, just ask. If you really are going to keep the baby—’

      ‘I am. I meant everything I said. But don’t worry, Sam, I don’t need anything from you. You’re off the hook.’

      Never. Not in his lifetime. He hung on to the door. ‘Promise me you’ll call me when you’ve spoken to them.’

      ‘Why?’

      He shrugged, reluctant to let her go like this when she was so upset. Concerned for her. Nothing more, he told himself. Just concerned for her and the child. His child. His heart twisted. ‘Because you need a friend?’ he suggested warily. ‘Someone who understands?’

      Her eyes searched his for the longest moment, and then without a word she slammed the door and drove away.

      He watched her go, swore softly, then got into his car and followed her out of the car park. She’d turned left. He hesitated for a moment, then turned right and headed home, to start working out how to fill his brother in on this latest development in the tragic saga of their childless state.

      Better that than trying to analyse his own reaction to the news that a woman he found altogether too disturbingly attractive was carrying his child—a child he’d never meant to have, created by accident—that would link him to Emelia forever…

      ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’

      ‘Well, before you do, come and see what Brian’s doing in the nursery,’ her mother-in-law said, her face beaming as she grabbed Emelia’s hand and led her through the door.

      Why not? she thought bleakly. Why not do it there, amongst all the things gathered together to welcome their new grandchild? The child they’d thought they might never have.

      The child they never would have. Not now. Not ever.

      She sucked in a breath and stood there in the expectant silence, aware of their eyes on her face, their suppressed excitement as they eagerly awaited her reaction. And then she looked at the room.

      He’d painted a frieze, she realised. Trains and teddies and alphabet letters, all round the middle of the walls. A little bit crooked, a little bit smudged, but painted with love. Stupidly, it made her want to cry.

      She swallowed hard and looked away. Oh, this was so hard—too hard. ‘I had a letter—from the clinic director,’ she said bluntly, before she chickened out. ‘I had to go to there and talk to him. There’s a problem.’

      ‘A problem? What kind of problem? We paid their last bill, Brian, didn’t we? We’ve paid everything—’

      ‘It’s not the money. It’s about the baby, Julia.’

      Her mother-in-law’s face was suddenly slack with shock, and Emelia looked around and realised she couldn’t do this here, in this room, with the lovingly painted little frieze still drying on the walls. ‘I need a cup of tea,’ she said, and headed for the big family kitchen, knowing they’d follow. She put the kettle on—such a cliché, having a cup of tea, but somehow a necessary part of the ritual of grief—and then sat down, pushing the cups towards them.

      They sat facing her, at the table where James had sat as a boy, where they’d all sat together so many times, where they’d cried together on the day he’d died, and they waited, the tea forgotten, their faces taut with fear as she groped for the words. But there was no kind way to do this, nothing that was going to make it go away.

      ‘There was a mix-up,’ she said quietly, her heart pounding as she yanked the rug out from under them as gently as possible. ‘In the lab at the clinic. They fertilised the eggs with the wrong sperm.’

      Julia Eastwood’s hand flew up over her mouth. ‘So—that’s another woman’s baby?’ she said after a shocked pause.

      Oh, dear. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s my baby.’ And then, because there was no other way to say it, she added gently, ‘It’s not James’ baby, though. It’s someone else’s.’

      ‘So—where’s his baby?’ she demanded, her voice rising hysterically. ‘Has some other woman got his baby? She’ll have to give it back—Brian, she’ll have to, we can’t have this—’

      ‘Julia, there is no baby,’ she said, trying to firm her voice. ‘The embryos all died before they could be implanted.’

      She let that sink in for a moment, watched Brian’s eyes fill with tears before he closed them, watched Julia’s face spasm as the realisation hit home. The wail of grief, when it came, was the same as when James had taken his last breath. It was as if she’d lost him all over again, and Emelia supposed that, in a way, she had.

      She reached out and squeezed the woman’s hand. ‘Julia, I’m so sorry.’

      She didn’t react, except to turn into Brian’s waiting arms and fall apart, and Emelia left them to their grief. There was nothing she could add that would make it any better and she just wanted to get out before she drowned in their emotion.

      She was superfluous here, redundant, and it dawned on her that their only thought had been for the baby. Not once in that conversation had either of them expressed any concern about her, about how she might feel, about where she would go from here.

      Not surprising, really, but it was a very good point. Where would she go? What would she do? She could hardly carry on living here, in the annexe they’d created when James was ill—the annexe where he’d lost his fight for life and which after his death, with the IVF conversation under their belts, they’d told her she should think of as her home.

      But not when she was carrying another man’s child.

      So she packed some things. Not the baby’s. As Sam had said, they belonged to a child who never was, and they would no doubt be dealt with in the fullness of time. She closed the door without looking at the little frieze in case it made her cry again, and put a few changes of clothes in a bag, enough for a week, perhaps, to give her time to think, although with very little to her name she wasn’t quite sure where she’d go. She just knew she had to, that staying, even one more night, simply wasn’t an option.

      She