Every time he’d tried it, it had gone wrong. And he knew he was at fault, because he couldn’t let people close.
But was Georgie right in that all he had to do was reach out? Was it really that simple?
Did he want a family?
This felt like picking a scab. Sore, stupid and a waste of time. He had to stop thinking about it, he told himself.
Except he couldn’t.
He kept wondering. Did he want a family? Did he want a family with Georgina Jones?
He was beginning to think the answer was yes.
And he needed to find the right time to tell her. Reach out. Ask her to be his.
Two days later, Ryan reviewed Mollie’s obs. ‘I think we can try taking her off sedation today,’ he said. ‘If I’m not happy with the way she reacts, I’ll put her back on sedation for another day or so, but let’s give this a try.’
Georgie joined him for the procedure and checked that Mollie was managing to breathe adequately on her own; and between them they monitored her while she woke.
Had there been too much damage before she’d gone on the ventilator, or had she turned a corner? Ryan’s heart was in his mouth. After Truffle had gone missing, he had a much better idea of how hard situations like this were for parents.
Yeah. He knew now that Georgie was right about that. For him, Truffle was just like the child he’d refused to make with Zoe. He’d worried himself as sick over a simple operation as Mollie’s parents had over something much more complicated.
Like it or not, he was a dad. Of sorts.
Finally, the baby opened her eyes.
‘Talk to her,’ he said to Mollie’s mum.
‘Mollie? It’s Mama,’ she whispered, her voice thick with tears.
When the little girl smiled, Ryan felt tears of mingled relief and joy pricking his own eyelids. He looked over at Georgie and saw that her eyes were glistening with unshed tears, too.
He knew there was still a way to go, but it looked as if Mollie was going to make it.
If only, he thought, he and Georgie could make it. Because seeing the love between Mollie’s parents, seeing how they’d supported each other in a crisis and watched over their precious, desperately wanted child...it had made him think. Made him want. Made him think that maybe he’d been wrong to keep that distance between himself and Georgie, that maybe he should’ve given them both a chance.
She’d be an amazing mum. And maybe she could teach him to be a good dad. A good partner.
Could he let Georgie close, the way he hadn’t been able to let Zoe close?
But she was so professional with him, at Hayloft Cottage as well as at work. She kept her distance. How, then, could he find the right words to tell her that he’d changed his mind, that he’d made a mistake and wanted to try things her way?
Maybe he needed to make a huge gesture. Hire a skywriter to say, Forgive me, I was wrong, I want to make a go of it.
He wanted to tell her. He just didn’t know how. And the thoughts just kept spinning in his head.
Mollie progressed so well during the next week that she was able to go home. Georgie had just finished the discharge process when she realised that she was feeling odd. There was a weird metallic taste in her mouth. Was she going down with some kind of virus?
She shrugged it off, but a bit later on she noticed that her breasts were feeling tender.
It took the rest of her shift to realise that, actually, there might be a different reason for feeling that way. Her periods were regular almost to the hour, and she was late.
She took a deep breath. How ridiculous. Of course she wasn’t pregnant. She and Ryan had used a condom.
But the only completely reliable contraception was abstinence. And a teeny, tiny proportion of condoms failed.
Telling herself that she was being utterly ridiculous, she drove home via a supermarket she didn’t normally use. Thankfully she couldn’t see anyone she knew in the aisles, but even so she hid the pregnancy test in her basket underneath a magazine.
Ryan was on a late, so she had time to do the test, reassure herself that everything was fine, and get rid of the evidence.
Once she’d made a fuss of Truffle, she went up to the bathroom and did the test.
Of course it was going to be negative. She’d bought the sort that would give you a result even before you’d officially missed a period, just for that extra layer of reassurance.
She washed her hands, then stood and watched the screen on the pregnancy test; the hourglass flashed to show that the test was working.
According to the instructions, it would take up to three minutes to see the result.
It felt like the longest three minutes of her life. Every time she checked her watch, only a few seconds had passed.
And then, finally, the words came up on the screen: but not the ones she had hoped for.
The black, bold type told her the truth very clearly.
Pregnant 1-2 weeks
She went cold. Ryan, who was absolutely adamant that he didn’t want children.
What was she going to do?
She’d wanted a baby with her husband, a man who hadn’t wanted a family with her but had made a baby with his mistress. And now she was accidentally pregnant by a man who’d told her all along that he didn’t want children.
There were no guarantees that she’d carry this baby to term. She had a twenty-five per cent chance of having a miscarriage. Or she could choose to terminate the pregnancy.
She wrapped her arms around herself. Now she knew she was pregnant, the yearnings she’d suppressed were back in full force. So maybe this baby wasn’t a disaster: maybe this baby was a gift.
From Joshua’s experience, she knew that being a single parent wasn’t an easy
