Midwives On-Call. Alison Roberts

right to bring up the past, but neither do you have a right to question what I’m doing. Our marriage is over and we need to remember it. We need to finalise our divorce. Meanwhile, thank you for tonight, for Adrianna’s birthday. I’m deeply appreciative, but if you want to pull out of Saturday’s childminding, I understand.’

      ‘I’ll be here.’

      ‘You don’t need to …’

      ‘I will be here.’

      ‘Fine, then,’ she said, and took a step back in the face of his sudden blaze of anger. ‘That’s good. That’s great. I’ll see you then.’

      ‘I’ll see you at the hospital tomorrow,’ he said. ‘With Ruby.’

      And her heart sank. Of course. She was going to see this man, often. She needed to work with him.

      She needed to ignore the pain she still saw in his eyes. She needed to tell herself, over and over, that it had nothing to do with her.

      The problem was, that wasn’t Em’s skill. Ignoring pain.

      But he didn’t want her interference. He never had.

      He didn’t want her.

      Moving on …

      ‘Goodnight, then,’ she managed, and she couldn’t help herself. She touched his face with her hand and then stood on tiptoe and lightly kissed him—a feather touch, the faintest brush of lips against lips. ‘Goodnight, Oliver. I’m sorry for your demons but your demons aren’t mine. I give my heart for always, non-negotiable, adoption, fostering, marriage … Ollie, I can no more change myself than fly. I’m just sorry you can’t share.’

      And she couldn’t say another word. She was suddenly so close to tears that she pushed away and would have stumbled.

      Oliver’s hand came out to catch her. She steadied and then brushed him off. She did it more roughly than she’d intended but she was out of her depth.

      ‘Thank you,’ she whispered, and turned away. ‘Goodnight.’ And she turned and fled into the house.

      Oliver was left standing in the shadows, watching the lights inside the house, knowing he should leave, knowing he had to.

       ‘I give my heart for always.’

      What sort of statement was that?

      She’d been talking about the kids, he told himself, but still …

      She’d included marriage in the statement, and it was a statement to give a man pause.

       CHAPTER SIX

      EM HARDLY SAW Oliver the next day. The maternity ward was busy, and when she wasn’t wanted in the birthing suites, she mostly stayed with Ruby.

      The kid was so alone. Today was full of fill-in-the-blanks medical forms and last-minute checks, ready for surgery the next day. The ultrasounds, the visit and check by the anaesthetist, the constant checking and rechecking that the baby hadn’t moved, that the scans that had shown the problem a week ago were correct, that they had little choice but to operate … Everything was necessary but by the end of the day Ruby was ready to get up and run.

      She needed her mum, a sister, a mate, anyone, Em thought. That she was so alone was frightening. Isla dropped in for a while. Ruby was part of Isla’s teen mums programme and Ruby relaxed with her, but she was Ruby’s only visitor.

      ‘Isn’t there anyone I can call?’ Em asked as the day wore on and Ruby grew more and more tense.

      ‘No one’ll come near me,’ Ruby said tersely. ‘Mum said if I didn’t have an abortion she’d wash her hands of me. She said if I stayed near her I’d expect her to keep the kid and she wasn’t having a thing to do with it. And she told my sisters they could stay away, too.’

      ‘And your baby’s father?’

      ‘I told you before, the minute I told him about it, he was off. Couldn’t see him for dust.’

      ‘Oh, Ruby, there must be someone.’

      ‘I’ll be okay,’ Ruby said with bravado that was patently false. ‘I’ll get this kid adopted and then I’ll get a job in a shop or something. I just wish it was over now.’

      ‘We all wish that.’

      And it was Oliver again. He moved around the wards like a great prowling cat, Em thought crossly. He should wear a bell.

      ‘What?’ he demanded, as she turned towards him, and she thought she really had to learn to stop showing her feelings on her face.

      ‘Knock!’

      ‘Sorry. If I’m intruding I’ll go away.’

      ‘You might as well come in and poke me, too,’ Ruby sighed. ‘Everyone else has. I’m still here. Bub’s still here. Why is everyone acting like we’re about to go up in smoke before tomorrow? Why do I need to stay in bed?’

      ‘Because we need your baby to stay exactly where she is,’ Oliver told her, coming further into the room. He had a bag under his arm and Ruby eyed it with suspicion. ‘Right now she’s in the perfect position to operate on her spine, and, no, Ruby, there’s not a single thing in this bag that will prod, poke or pry. But I would like to feel your baby for myself.’

      Ruby sighed with a theatrical flourish and tugged up her nightie.

      ‘Go ahead. Half the world already has.’

      ‘Has she moved?’

      ‘Nah.’ She gave a sheepish grin. ‘I feel her myself. I’m not stupid, you know.’ And she popped her hand on her tummy and cradled it.

      There was that gesture again. Protective. ‘Mine.’

      Oliver sat down on the bed and felt the rounded bump himself, and Em looked at the way he was examining the baby and thought this was a skill. Ruby had been poked and prodded until she was tired of it. Oliver was doing the same thing but very gently, as if he was cradling Ruby’s unborn child.

      ‘She’s perfect,’ he said at last, tugging Ruby’s nightie back down. ‘Like her mother.’

      ‘She’s not perfect. That’s why I’m here.’

      ‘She’s pretty much perfect. Would you like to see a slide show of what we’re about to do?’ He grinned at Ruby’s scared expression. ‘There’s not many gory bits and I can fast-forward through them.’

      ‘I’ll shut my eyes,’ Ruby said, but he’d caught her, Em thought. She wasn’t dissociated from this baby. Once again she saw Ruby’s hand move surreptitiously to her tummy.

      He flicked open his laptop. Fascinated, Em perched on the far side of the bed and watched, too.

      ‘This is one we prepared earlier,’ Oliver said, in the tone TV cooks used as they pulled a perfect bake from the oven. ‘This is Rufus. He’s six months old now, a lovely, healthy baby, but at the start of this he was still inside his mum, a twenty-two-weeker. This is the procedure your little one will have.’

      The screen opened to an operating theatre, the patient’s face hidden, the film obviously taken for teaching purposes as identities weren’t shown. But the sound was on, and Em could hear Oliver’s voice, calmly directive, and she knew that it was Oliver who was in charge.

      She was fascinated—and so was Ruby. Squeamishness was forgotten. They watched in awe as the scalpel carefully, carefully negotiated the layers between the outside world and the baby within. It would be an intricate balance, Em knew, trying to give the baby minimal exposure to the outside world, keeping infection out, disturbing the baby as little as possible yet giving the surgeons space to work.

      There were many doctors