Undertaking Love (32 page)

‘And tell him he’d better make it quick.’

Marla and Jonny collapsed into the car in a fit of euphoric giggles.

‘That was inspired,’ Jonny said, as his phone started to jingle out a Christmas version of YMCA.

‘You are a walking, talking cliché,’ Marla laughed as she turned the key in the ignition, then gasped as the clock glowed neon blue on the dashboard.

‘We’re going to have to step on it if the County Hotel are going to get their glitter balls,’ she said as Jonny hung up the phone.

He shook his head. ‘Forget about the glitter balls. That was your mother. Emily’s gone into labour at the chapel.’

‘Oh my God! With just my mother for company?’

Marla gripped the wheel in horror at the idea of her mother as a midwife. She couldn’t imagine anyone less competent. Jonny laid a hand over hers on the gear stick as she threw the car into reverse.

‘Wait. They’re not at the chapel anymore. They’re on their way to the hospital.’

‘In the name of all that is holy, tell me my mother isn’t driving.’

Marla could barely breathe. Her mother couldn’t drive on the left if her life depended on it, let alone the lives of Emily and her unborn child.

‘You’re mother isn’t driving.’

She sagged with relief and flicked on the wipers to clear the fresh snow from the windscreen. ‘Who is then?’

Jonny pursed his lips and rubbed his hands together with excitement.

‘Angel Gabriel.’

Gabe pushed Emily’s Micra as hard as he dared through the snowy lanes towards the hospital. He was well aware that every four minutes had become more like every two minutes, and Cecilia’s constant nasal chatter from the back seat was doing more to hype Emily up than calm her down.

At last the lights of the hospital loomed into view through the swipes of the windscreen wipers, and he screeched to a halt outside maternity. He dashed inside to grab a wheelchair from the foyer, then dashed back and flung Emily’s door open.

‘Ready?’

She nodded with a wince of pain and held her arms out to him.

Gabe had never known relief like the moment when a flurry of nurses crowded in and took charge of Emily. One look at her contorted face had been enough to galvanise them into action. In a blink Cecilia, Gabe and Emily were hurried down a corridor into a room full of scary-looking lights and metal equipment strapped to the walls. A small woman in a dark blue uniform looked him over expectantly.

‘Right then, dad. Let’s get Emily up on the bed so we can check what’s going on down there.’

‘Oh, I’m not the father,’ Gabe said, thoroughly alarmed.

‘No, I am.’

Everyone turned at the sound of a new voice in the room.

‘Thanks Gabe. I’ll take it from here.’

Emily burst into noisy tears.

‘Tom. Thank God.’

Snowflakes settled on Gabe’s shoulders as he leaned against the wall outside the maternity unit. He was frozen, but it was preferable to the cloying heat of the waiting area and having Cecilia snoozing on his shoulder.

Why did things never go as he expected them to around here?

This was the first time he’d set foot near Beckleberry since the day after the fire, and already his well-laid plans had been ripped to shreds. His phone bipped in his pocket, and he grinned as he scanned the predictable message from Dan. Everything else in his life might shift like quick sand, but Dan would always be Jack the lad.

‘Pub. Now. Wall 2 Wall totty.’

In the hot pub, which was packed out with tinsel-draped revellers, Dan felt his mobile vibrate in the back pocket of his jeans. He reached down for it without disturbing Trisha, the comely barmaid, who at that very moment was in the process of delivering his Christmas snog with considerable tonsil-probing skill.

He flicked the message onto the screen and squinted at it over her naked shoulder.

Sorry bud. Sink a Guinness for me. Mercy dash to the hospital with Emily.

Dan read it twice over then shrugged Trisha off unapologetically and shouldered his way through the crowd, his jacket and cigarettes forgotten on the table behind him.

He had to get to the hospital.

Gabe stood in the shadows and watched Marla skate across the snowy car park towards him. He shook his head at her thoroughly unsuitable choice of footwear. Did the woman possess anything else except high heels? Her hair swirled around her pink cheeks, and her laugh danced on the crystal cold air as she clung to Jonny’s arm – not that he was much of an anchor for her in those ridiculous cowboy boots.

He liked Jonny a lot, but at that moment he’d have loved nothing more than for the other man to disappear in a puff of smoke. For it to be
his
arm that Marla clutched, and
his
jokes that brought out that big laugh.

She drew closer, and he could so easily have stepped out of the darkness and called her name, but fear held him still as she rushed by. Besides, it was bloody freezing. Romantic as the notion was, he didn’t want to say what he needed to in an icy car park.

Marla spotted her mother straight away. She was difficult to miss, snoring and resplendent in her gold dress with her shoes kicked off underneath her chair. She was cuddled up against the water cooler, and behind her, a rather sparsely decorated Christmas tree flashed in time with the piped Christmas carols.

‘Christ. It seems the world’s oldest fairy has fallen off the top of the tree,’ Jonny tittered, but Marla was too distracted to laugh with him. Her eyes skittered around the room in search of a familiar dark head, her entire body braced with the anticipation of seeing Gabe again. The disappointment of his absence felt rather like the entire hospital had crumbled on her head.

She touched her mother’s shoulder.

‘Mom?’

Cecilia woke up and detached herself from the side of the water cooler in an undignified manner that involved drool and lop-sided hair.

‘Marla, darling, you’re here.’

Her eyes slid from Marla to Jonny, and then flickered around reception.

‘Where’s Gabriel gone?’

Jonny glanced at Marla’s stricken expression and came to her rescue.

‘I was just about to ask you the same question.’

Cecilia frowned. ‘Oh. Well, he
was
here, and then …’

‘You fell into a drunken stupor and have no idea when he left?’ Jonny supplied in a sympathetic voice, and batted his eyelids at Cecilia with a knowing smirk.

Marla sank down into the seat next to her mother and dropped her head in her hands.

She was too late.

It had been too much to expect that he’d still be here, and the flame of hope within her fizzled out.

He’d gone.

On the other side of the glass entrance doors, Gabe watched Marla drop down dejected next to her mother.

What was wrong?

Had something happened to Emily, or the baby?

He couldn’t stand it any longer.

He knocked the snow out of his hair and went inside.

‘Marla.’

God, she had to get a grip. Jonny had even started to sound like Gabe in her head now. Marla peeled her hands away from her eyes and looked down at the feet in front of her.

Hmmm.

They definitely weren’t Jonny’s cowboy boots, and the purple satin trousers had been replaced by faded jeans that hugged in all the right places. She forced her eyes to skim past the crotch area, even though they wanted to linger.

Gabe’s leather jacket clung to him, and snowflakes clung to it.

Lucky snowflakes.

Marla licked her dry lips and finally looked up into his face.

Still beautiful. But did he look a little gaunt?

Neither Jonny nor Cecilia moved a muscle nor said a word.

‘Is everything okay with the baby?’

Marla frowned, too dumbstruck by his presence to know the answer to any question more difficult than her own name.

What baby?

Again, Jonny rushed to her aid. ‘No news yet, bud.’ He reached down and yanked Cecilia onto her feet. ‘Come on. Let’s go and find you some coffee.’

‘My shoes …’ Cecilia grumbled and tried to bend to retrieve them, but Jonny, who had her tucked firmly under one arm, frog marched her down the corridor.

Marla’s throat constricted with nerves as Gabe sat down next to her.

‘You came back,’ she said.

‘Yes.’

‘How have you been?’

He studied her face for a few seconds before he answered. ‘Okay.’

‘Will you be leaving again soon?’

‘Depends. Will you be done with the small talk soon?’

‘Yes.’

‘Thank God for that.’

He glanced around the waiting area with its constant ebb and flow of people.

‘Come on. Lets go and find somewhere more quiet.’

Dan jumped out of the taxi he’d just paid an extortionate fare for and watched in relief as Gabe and Marla left the reception area
.

How the hell would he have explained his presence here to them, when he couldn’t even explain it to himself?

Cecilia leaned against the side of the drinks machine as Jonny stabbed at the buttons.

‘Well, let’s just hope those two stop pissing around and get their act together,’ she grumbled under her breath.

Jonny stared at her in amazement. Firstly, he’d never heard her swear before, and secondly he hadn’t thought she possessed the perceptive powers to have noticed what was going on with her daughter.

‘What?’ She arched her eyebrows. ‘I’m her mother. I gave birth to the girl. Well, almost, anyway.’

‘Almost?’ Jonny’s mind boggled.

Cecilia waved her arm around in an airy fashion.

‘Heck, Jonny, I’ve told you enough times that I’m built like a Barbie doll down there. She’d never have got out.’

Jonny shoved his fingers in his ears and closed his eyes before she could say anymore.

‘La la la! Stop talking, I can’t hear you.’

Cecilia rolled her eyes and waited for him to stop humming and open his eyes.

‘All I was going to say, if you’d let me finish,’ she shot him the daggers, ‘is that I’m hopeful for an Irish extension to the family.’

‘Still match-making, I see.’

Jonny jumped at the rich voice behind him, and turned to see a vaguely familiar guy in doctor’s whites smiling at Cecilia.

‘Robert!’

Jonny noted the way Cecilia turned pink and straightened her shoulders, and the dishy doc slotted into place in his head as the ex-husband from Franco’s.

‘Cecilia, we must stop meeting like this.’

Something in Robert’s twinkling eyes told Jonny that he didn’t actually mean those words at all, and for the second time in half an hour he felt like a third wheel.

‘I’ll just go and check how Emily’s doing,’ he muttered, and left Cecilia in the capable looking hands of her dishy ex-husband.

‘You have a beautiful son.’

The midwife wrapped a towel around the tiny, gunky-but-perfect child, before placing him in his mother’s outstretched arms. Tom stood beside Emily and smoothed a damp strand of hair back from her brow.

‘You were amazing.’ He kissed her forehead and gazed down at the baby. ‘Hey there, little guy.’

He reached out and the baby’s miniature fists curled around one of Tom’s fingers and held on fast.

Emily couldn’t keep still after the nurses had finished their work. The birth had been quick and mercifully straightforward, and she still couldn’t quite believe that she’d actually brought their baby safely into the world. The midwives melted away and Tom gathered them both into his arms.

‘My family,’ he whispered.

Emily leaned on his chest as tears slid down her cheeks onto the towel wrapped around her new boy.

Tears of joy, and tears of love.

A little while later, Emily belted her dressing gown around her already deflating waistline and shuffled out of the en-suite on her way back to the bed. She was relieved to have been to the loo and not lost her insides down the bowl, as she’d feared she might. Good old mother nature.

Tom had nipped outside to share their happy news with the others, and to grab the camera that had been on permanent standby in the glove box of his car for at least a month. He’d forgotten all about it in his panic to get to Emily’s side.

She froze statue-still in the bathroom doorway. There was a man standing next to the baby’s crib, and it wasn’t Tom.

It was Dan.

‘Hello, baby,’ he whispered. He stepped closer, and Emily’s less than strong legs wobbled with fear.

What was he going to do?

She’d have to intervene if he reached out to pick him up, she knew that much.

But he didn’t. He just shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and watched the tiny child swaddled in pale blue.

‘A boy, huh? Wow. Well, that’s good.’ Emily heard the catch in his voice. ‘That’s really good.’

Dan pressed his hand against the outside of the maternity cot.

‘Listen, bud. You be a good boy for your mum and dad, okay?’ he whispered. Emily stepped back and held her breath, suddenly feeling like an intruder.

These were Dan’s only few seconds with the son that, God willing, she’d have in her life forever. She watched silently as Dan looked at his child, then touched his fingers to his lips and placed them back on the glass.

‘Right then. I better go. You didn’t see me, right?’ Dan tapped the side of his nose and winked at his son.

Emily dipped back into the bathroom, and gripped the sink as the sound of his footsteps receded. Her reflection in the bathroom mirror gazed back at her, familiar yet somehow different. She wasn’t sure what it was exactly, but she wasn’t the same person as she’d been yesterday.

She was a mother.

‘Hey there, handsome.’

Jonny glanced up from his iPhone at the Love God who’d just joined him in the smoking shelter.

Tall.

Blonde.

Muscles.

Come to Papa.

‘Not many people could pull those trousers off, but you totally do.’

They both looked down at Jonny’s purple satin trousers, and he wondered if it would be too forward to tell Love God that he was more than welcome to pull the afore-mentioned trousers off any time he fancied. He decided that, on balance, it probably was, so he accepted the proffered cigarette instead. A pleasant electric shock rippled through his fingers when he cupped his hands around the flame of Love God’s lighter.