A Family Worth Waiting For. Josie Metcalfe

His voice was calm. Emotionless.

      ‘Just go, Campbell,’ she said quietly.

      ‘This isn’t over, Claire,’ he warned. ‘Every time your head hits your pillow, you’re going to be thinking about me. About me inside you. I hope it drives you mad. As mad as it’s going drive me.’

      Claire heard his footsteps retreat and it took all her willpower to stand her ground. Her arms shook with the effort of keeping them firmly planted on the window-sill. She would not call him back. It was better this way.

      * * *

      Later that day, Claire found herself back at the birth centre with another of her clients in labour.

      The birth stretched into the night and she paged Barbara Willis, the night-shift midwife, to tell her not to bother coming in as she would stay until her patient had delivered.

      Finally around three a.m. the tiny baby boy made its entry into the world, much to Claire’s delight and the mother’s relief. Baby Jonathon slept on obliviously as Claire fussed around, settling him into the mobile crib.

      The first embers of dawn were glowing in the heavens when Claire finally left St Jude’s. She yawned as she pushed open the front door. Two nights with little sleep had really taken their toll. But her work wasn’t over yet.

      Claire poked her head into her mother’s room. She was awake, as Claire knew she would be. ‘Hello, Mum,’ Claire said softly. She opened the curtains to admit the early morning sunshine. ‘How about I read you the paper and then I wash your hair?’

      The pump that delivered hourly metered doses of a special nutritional formula into her mother’s feeding tube beeped that it was empty, and Claire switched it off. She opened the newspaper that had been on the front lawn and thumbed through it with one hand and stroked her mother’s hand with the other. Claire picked out stories she felt would interest her mother … had once interested her anyway.

      She looked into her mother’s vacant, staring eyes. Who knew what went on inside her head any more? Speech had been difficult for a few years and non-existent for a year now. Did she understand? Claire wanted to believe that she did.

      One thing was for sure, seeing her mother like this reinforced her reasons for rejecting Campbell. She’d definitely done the right thing.

      Campbell … Would he be awake yet? Would he still be mad with her? Spending time with her mother like this always left her feeling flat. It was like looking into a mirror. She was scared for her mother and anxious of what would become of her father after …

      It would have been so nice to go to Campbell, crawl into bed beside him and have him hold her until all her fears went away. To confide in him.

      She shook herself. What was wrong with her? Surely years of denial had annihilated such temptations? Had sleeping with Campbell triggered these feelings? She should have known it’d be more complicated than just two people having sex. Intimacy was never that straightforward—that’s why she had avoided it!

      She pushed these confusing thoughts aside as she lifted Mary onto the mobile shower chair with ease. Years of nursing had taught her to lift properly and, despite the nightly supplements, her mother had wasted away to practically nothing in the last year.

      The en suite bathroom had been modified as her mother had become more dependent, so there was ample room for Claire to shower her mother and wash her hair. She chatted as she saw to her hygiene needs, prattling on about baby Jonathon and baby David.

      Claire yearned to tell her about Campbell. Confide in her mother as daughters the world over usually did. But something held her back. Telling her mother made it seem like they were involved. And they weren’t.

      All these thoughts whirred around in Claire’s head as she finally collapsed into bed a couple of hours later. Fortunately they weren’t enough to halt the pressing need for sleep. She closed her eyes and for the first time in a long time it was not her mother she dreamed about as sleep claimed her. It was Campbell.