about Freya and the friends she had made at Gibson & Grieve and this crazy pretence she and Lex were engaged in. She had chosen them all.
‘No,’ she said in low voice. ‘The only choices I regret are the ones that were made for me. I wasn’t allowed to choose whether my father stayed or not, and nor was my mother. We just had to live with the consequences of a choice
She looked at Lex, still smoothing his hand absently over the piano. ‘I learnt from that,’ she said. ‘I learnt to never give anyone else the power to make a choice for me, and I never will.’
Freya was crying again. Lex squinted at the digital display on the clock by his bed. Three seventeen.
She had been restless the night before as well. Teething, Romy had said. This was the fifth time he had heard Romy get up tonight, and Lex couldn’t stand it any more. Pulling on a pair of trousers, he went to see if he could help.
Romy was walking Freya around the living room, just as he had done the night she had gone out to celebrate with the acquisitions team. She was barefoot, and wearing a paisley-patterned silk dressing gown that she had bought from a charity shop. The merest glimpse of it was usually enough to make Lex’s body tighten with anticipation, imagining the slippery silk against her skin, but tonight it was a mark of how exhausted Romy looked that his first thought was not what it would be like to pull at the belt and let the dressing gown slither from her shoulders, but to wonder how best he could help her.
He rubbed a tired hand over his face. ‘Is there anything I can do?’
Romy felt as if there were lead weights attached to her eyelids. The effort of putting one foot in front of another was like wading through treacle. And yet it seemed there were enough hormones still alert enough to stir at the sight of Lex’s lean, muscled body. His hair was rumpled, his jaw prickled with stubble, and the pale eyes shadowed with concern. She must look even worse than she felt, Romy realised. And that was saying something.
‘I’m sorry-’ she started but Lex interrupted her.
‘Don’t be sorry,’ he said. ‘Just tell me how I can help.’ He moved closer, craning his neck to try and see Freya’s face. ‘What’s the matter? Are you sure she’s not sickening for anything?’
‘No, she’s just miserable with this tooth coming through. And I’m just miserable because I’ve got to go to Windsor for a meeting tomorrow with Tim,’ she added wryly. ‘Although I’m not sure how much use I’ll be. I’ll be lucky if I can string two words together.’
A frown touched Lex’s eyes. ‘In that case, why don’t you let me take her while you try and get some sleep?’
Romy’s body was craving sleep. The need to lie down and close her eyes was so strong that, instead of insisting that she could manage on her own as she would normally have done, she said only, ‘But what about you?’
‘I haven’t got anything urgent on tomorrow-or today, I should say.’ Lex jerked his head in the direction of her room. ‘Go on, go back to bed. You won’t be any good to Gibson & Grieve otherwise,’ he said gruffly. ‘If I can’t manage, I’ll wake you, I promise.’
To Romy’s surprise, Freya allowed herself to be handed over to Lex without a murmur. She subsided, sniffling, into his bare shoulder, and for one appalling moment Romy actually found herself thinking,
She managed four hours’ sleep and felt almost human when she woke. Freya was quieter than normal, but she seemed better, so in the end Romy decided to leave her in the creche and headed off to Windsor with Tim. They were due back by four. Freya ought to be OK until then, she tried to reassure herself.
‘But ring me if there’s a problem,’ she told the girls in the creche, who promised they would. They were used to anxious mothers.
Up in the chief executive’s office, Lex was also feeling the results of a broken night. His eyes were gritty and there seemed to be a tight band snapped around his skull. He was distracted all morning.
‘What?’ he snapped at Summer when he caught her watching him narrowly.
‘I was just wondering if you were feeling all right,’ said Summer, who wasn’t in the least frightened of him. ‘You’re not yourself today.’
‘I’m fine,’ he said shortly. ‘I didn’t get much sleep last night, that’s all.’
When she had gone back to her office, Lex took off his glasses and sat rubbing the bridge of his nose. He was thinking about Freya. She had barely slept all night. Romy seemed sure teething was the problem, but what if it was something else? What if she needed a doctor? The creche presumably had lots of children to deal with. Would anyone notice if she wasn’t well?
He glanced at his watch. Romy would still be in Windsor.
On an impulse, he leant forward and buzzed Summer. ‘Where’s this creche we provide?’
‘On the mezzanine.’ Summer didn’t even seem surprised by the question.
‘I’m just going to have a look,’ Lex said on his way out, and then wondered why he was making excuses to his PA.
He would just go and check that Freya was all right, he decided. And then perhaps he could get on with some work.
The creche manager, flustered by the unannounced arrival of the chief executive, showed him round. The room was full of small children and babies, and the noise was indescribable. Amongst all the tiny tables and chairs, Lex felt like a clumsy giant who had stumbled into a world on quite a different scale. He picked his way carefully across the room, terrified of treading on something.
Freya was being comforted by one of the staff in a quiet corner and looking very woebegone. She had clearly been grizzling but offered a wobbly smile when she saw Lex and held out her arms to him. The girl exchanged looks with the manager as the chief executive took the baby and let her clutch his hair.
‘She doesn’t seem very happy,’ he said severely.
‘We’ve just rung her mother to say that Freya’s a little poorly today. She’s on her way back.’
Lex frowned. ‘It might take her some time to get back from Windsor.’
‘Yes, she said it would be a while, but we’ll keep Freya here. She’ll be fine,’ the manager reassured him.
‘As long as she’s all right.’ Lex tried to hand Freya back then, but she wailed in protest and clung to him until the manager prised her off him.
Feeling like a traitor, Lex headed for the door. Freya’s heartbroken screams followed him until he couldn’t stand it any more. Stopping abruptly, he pulled out his mobile phone and rang Romy.
‘How long will it take you to get back?’ he asked.
‘I’m waiting for a train now. I’ll get a taxi when I get to Paddington, but I’ll still be about an hour, I think.’ Romy’s voice was riddled with guilt. ‘I shouldn’t have left her.’
‘The manager says that she’s fine, but it’s pretty noisy in there,’ said Lex. ‘Shall I take her to my office? It’ll be quieter there.’
Romy was silent. He could almost hear her instinct not to rely on anyone else warring with her concern for her daughter. In the end, Freya won, as Lex had known she would. Romy spoke to the manager on his mobile, and the moment Lex took her back Freya’s screams subsided. They faded to shuddery little gasps as he waited for the lift.
There were three other people already in the lift when the doors opened. After a startled glance at Lex and his unusual burden, they all kept their eyes studiously on the floor numbers as they lit up one by one, but Lex was sure that behind his back they were exchanging looks. In a matter of minutes, the word would have spread around the building that the chief executive had been spotted in a lift with a baby in one arm, a bright yellow bag sporting teddy bears over the other, and a pushchair in his spare hand.
If Summer was surprised to see Lex reappear with a baby, she gave no sign of it. Coming round her desk, she tickled Freya’s nose, and Freya managed a very little smile for her, but refused to be handed over or put down. Lex ended up dictating as he paced around the office while Summer wisely kept her inevitable reflections to herself.
Eventually, Freya dropped off, worn out. Lex wished he could do the same. He tilted the pushchair back as far as it would go and was laying her carefully in it when the phone rang.
‘That was Romy.’ Summer put the phone down. ‘Apparently there’s some delay on the line. She doesn’t know when she’ll be able to get here now. She sounded frantic, but I told her not to worry, that Freya was fine and
