Paddington Children's Hospital Complete Collection. Kate Hardy

hurt.

      On so many levels it hurt.

      Victoria knew he had never wanted her. She was certain that had her mother not left first, then he would have gone.

      As she got to the door Victoria turned and could see that she was forgotten already—her father was straight back to work, though she still stood there.

      Dominic was right—her father was cold to the bone.

      ‘I can see why she left you,’ Victoria said. ‘My mother, I mean.’

      Professor Christie looked up from his notes and he stared at his daughter for a long moment and then, just before resuming writing his notes, he, as always, had the last word.

      ‘She left you too.’

      * * *

      His words shadowed and clung to her right through into the next day.

      ‘You’re quiet,’ Glen observed as she was driven towards the children’s hospital with Glen, for once not in an ambulance.

      Glen had offered to come with her for her ultrasound appointment. Victoria had declined, though she was touched that her colleague had given her a lift. She had felt very sick on the underground but that was fading.

      Glen knew that she was pregnant.

      Of course he did.

      He had no idea, though, who the father was.

      They worked together, and when Victoria had started to turn as green as her overalls at the smallest thing, he had asked if everything was okay.

      Victoria had said she was fine.

      Then, a couple of days ago, he had asked outright.

      ‘Hayley had terrible morning sickness, with Ryan,’ Glen had told her.

      It had been hard to deny a pregnancy when you were sitting holding a kidney dish in the back of an ambulance.

      ‘You have to tell work,’ Glen said.

      ‘I know.’ Victoria closed her eyes.

      It was starting to be real.

      For the last couple of weeks she had been in denial, but now she was facing up to things and telling work was something she knew she had to do.

      She had this week to get through and then a weekend of nights before she went on two weeks’ annual leave and she had decided that she would tell them at the end of her nights.

      And now they sat in his car as Glen offered some further advice that she certainly didn’t need.

      ‘You have to tell the guy he’s going to be a father.’

      ‘Thanks, Glen,’ she snapped.

      ‘Listen to me, Victoria—’

      ‘No.’ She turned and looked at him. ‘I accepted a lift, not a lecture.’ And though she told Glen to stay back she knew he was right and that Dominic needed to be told.

      When he came back from his leave she would tell him.

      If he came back.

      He might have decided that he missed home.

      Victoria really didn’t know him at all.

      They had gone straight back to being strangers.

      There was no flirting and certainly there had been no reference to what had taken place.

      He was still moody and she was her usual confident self.

      Really, if it hadn’t been for the fact that she was pregnant, by now Victoria would be wondering if it had even taken place.

      That night still felt like a dream.

      Albeit her favourite one.

      ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?’ Glen checked, but Victoria snorted at the suggestion of needing someone to hold her hand.

      ‘For an ultrasound?’

      ‘Hayley gets nervous whenever she has one...’ Glen started, referring to his wife, as he always did.

      ‘I’m not Hayley,’ Victoria pointed out as she often did. ‘I’ll be fine on my own.’

      She would be better on her own, in fact.

      It was what she was used to after all.

      Victoria walked through the familiar corridors of Paddington’s and turned for the Imaging Department. There she handed over her referral slip to the receptionist.

      ‘We’re running a bit behind,’ the receptionist explained.

      ‘That’s no problem,’ Victoria said, even though she was desperate to go to the loo.

      She had been told to have a lot to drink prior to the ultrasound so that they might get the best view of the baby.

      Still, she had expected to have to wait and had plenty to do.

      Apart from a baby, something else had been created that night.

      Victoria was on the social committee and had decided to use her position there to start a campaign to save the hospital from the merger.

      They met each week over at the Frog and Peach and there was a meeting being held tonight.

      It was proving difficult to get things rolling though.

      Most people seemed to think it was a foregone conclusion that Paddington’s would close. Apart from the odd small write-up in the press, the campaign was not getting any real attention and Victoria was at a bit of a loss as to what to suggest next.

      Rosie, a paediatric nurse, along with Robyn, who was Head of Surgery, were both a huge support and Victoria was hoping to catch up with them before the meeting kicked off.

      Victoria sent a group text, reminding everyone of the meeting, and then she answered a few emails, but though she was passionate about doing all she could to save the hospital from closure, she could not give it her full attention right now.

      She was nervous.

      Oh, Victoria would never let on to Glen that she was, but she had butterflies fluttering in her chest. She was seated next to a heavily pregnant woman who, from the conversation taking place, was accompanied by her mother.

      When Victoria was less than a year old, her mother had decided that motherhood and marriage were not for her and had walked out; Victoria hadn’t seen her since.

      Not once.

      Growing up, she had asked about her, of course. She had craved information, but there had never been much. Her father refused to speak of his first wife and, apart from a couple of photos that Victoria kept to this day in a drawer in her bedside table, she knew very little about her, other than that she had worked at Paddington’s.

      As Victoria had got older, and she could more readily see her father’s very difficult behaviour, Victoria had decided her mother had walked away because she was depressed. A few years ago, Victoria had decided that no mother could walk away like that and have nothing to do with her child.

      And so she had to be dead!

      It had been a shock and black disappointment to find out that no, her mother was alive and well.

      Thriving, in fact, Victoria discovered when she found her on social media.

      She lived in Italy with her second husband.

      And was a proud mother of two grown-up sons.

      Victoria didn’t merit a mention.

      She had contacted her but there had been no response.

      That had been the final hurt and Victoria had decided she would never allow herself to hurt over her mother again.

      Yet she was, and today, especially so.

      Sitting