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And Em thought … Em thought …

Maybe she’d better not think, she decided. Maybe it was dangerous to think.

What had her mum said? She’d never stopped loving him?

She had, she told herself fiercely. She’d thrown all her love into her children. She had none left over for Oliver.

But she lay and listened to giants stomping, she lay and listened to her children chuckling, and she knew that she was lying.

And she couldn’t get away from him. The next morning she walked into Ruby’s room and Oliver was there. Of course he was.

It seemed the man had slipped back into her world and was there to stay. He was an obstetrician, and a good one, so of course he was on the wards. He’d offered to help with Gretta and Toby, so of course he was at her house every night when she got home. He was the doctor in charge of making sure Ruby’s baby stayed exactly where she was, so of course he was in Ruby’s room.

It was just … Why did he take her breath away? Every time she saw him she lost her breath all over again.

She couldn’t still love him, she told herself, more and more fiercely as time went on. Her marriage was five years past. She’d moved on. Oliver was now a colleague and a friend, so she should be able to treat him as such.

There was no reason for her heart to beat hard against her ribs every time she saw him.

There was no reason for her fingers to move automatically to her lips, remembering a kiss by the bay …

‘Hey,’ she managed now as she saw Ruby and Oliver together. She was hauling her professional cheer around her like a cloak. ‘I hope Dr Evans is telling you how fantastic you’ve been,’ she told Ruby. ‘Because she has been fantastic, Dr Evans. She’s been so still, she’s healing beautifully and she’s giving her baby every chance and more. I can’t believe your courage, Ruby, love. I can’t believe your strength.’

‘She’ll be okay,’ Ruby said in quiet satisfaction, and her hand curved around her belly.

‘We’re going to let you go home,’ Oliver told her. He’d been examining her, and now he was tucking her bedclothes around her again. ‘As long as you keep behaving. Do you have somewhere to go?’

And Em blinked again. This was a surgeon—a surgeon—tucking in bedclothes and worrying about where his patient would go after hospital.

‘Wendy, the social worker, has organised me a place at a hostel near here,’ she told them. ‘Mum won’t let me home but Wendy’s organised welfare payments. She’s given me the name of a place that’ll give me free furniture and stuff for the baby. It’s all good.’

‘You’ll be alone.’ Oliver was frowning. ‘I’m not sure—’

‘Wendy says the lady who runs the hostel has had other pregnant girls there. If I’m in trouble she’ll bring me to the hospital. It sounds okay.’ She hesitated. ‘But there is something I wanted to talk to you about.’

She was speaking to Oliver. Em backed away a little. ‘You want me to come back later?’

‘No,’ Ruby said, firmly now, looking from one to the other. ‘I wanted you both here. I’ve been thinking and thinking and I’ve decided. I want you to adopt my baby.’

For Em, who’d heard this proposition before, it wasn’t a complete shock. For Oliver, though … He looked like he’d been slapped in the face by a wet fish. How many times in his professional career had he been offered a baby? Em wondered. Possibly never.

Probably never.

‘What are you talking about?’ he asked at last. ‘Ruby, I’m sorry, but your baby has nothing to do with us.’

‘But she could have everything to do with you.’ Ruby pushed herself up on her pillows and looked at them with eagerness. More, with determination. ‘I’ve been thinking and thinking, and the more I think about it the more I know I can’t care for her. Not like she should be cared for. I didn’t even finish school. All my friends are doing uni entrance exams this year and I can’t even get my Year Twelve. I don’t have anyone to care for my baby. I don’t have any money. I’ll be stuck on welfare and I can’t see me getting off it for years and years. I can’t give my baby … what she needs.’

‘She needs you,’ Em said gently. ‘She needs her mum.’

‘Yes, but she needs more. What if she wants to be a doctor—how could someone like me ever afford that sort of education? And there’ll be operations for the spina bifida—Dr Zigler’s already told me there’ll be more operations. She’ll need special things and now I don’t even have enough to buy her nappies. And the choice is adoption but how will I know someone will love her as much as I do? But I know you will. I heard … when I was asleep … It was like it was a dream but I know it’s true. You two need a baby to love. You split up because you couldn’t have one. What if you have my baby? I could … I dunno … visit her … You’d let me do that, wouldn’t you? Mum probably still won’t let me go home but I could go back to school. I’d find a way. And I could make something of myself, have enough to buy her presents, maybe even be someone she can be proud of.’

‘Ruby …’ Doctors didn’t sit on patients’ beds. That was Medical Training 101, instilled in each and every trainee nurse and doctor. Oliver sat on Ruby’s bed and he took her shoulders in his hands. ‘Ruby, you don’t want to give away your baby.’

Em could hardly hear him. Look up, she told herself fiercely. If you look up you can’t cry.

What sort of stupid edict was that? Tears were slipping down her face regardless.

‘I want my baby to be loved.’ Ruby was crying, too, and her tears were fierce. ‘And you two could love her. I know you could. And you love each other. Anyone can see that. And I know Em’s got two already, but Sophia says you’re round there every night, helping, and Em’s mum helps, too, and she has a great big house …’

‘Where did you hear all this?’ Em managed.

‘I asked,’ she said simply. ‘There are so many nurses in this hospital and they all know you, Em. They all say you’re a fantastic mum. And you should be married again. And it’d be awesome for my baby. I’d let you adopt her properly. She’d be yours.’ She took another breath, and it seemed to hurt. She pulled back from Oliver and held her tummy again, then looked from Oliver to Em and back again.

‘I’d even let you choose her name,’ she managed. ‘She’d be your daughter. I know you’d love her. You could be Mum and Dad to her. You could be married again. You could be a family.’

There was a long silence in the room. So many elephants … So much baggage.

Oliver was still sitting on the bed. He didn’t move, but he put a hand out to Em. She took a step forward and sat beside him. Midwife and doctor on patient’s bed … No matter. Rules were made to be broken.

Some rules. Not others. Other rules were made to protect patients. Ethics were inviolate. No matter what happened between Em and himself, the ethics here were clear-cut and absolute.

But somehow he needed to hold Em’s hand while he said it. Somehow it seemed important to say it as a couple.

‘Ruby, we can’t,’ he said gently, and Em swiped a handful of tissues from the bedside table and handed them to Ruby, and then swiped a handful for herself.

The way Oliver was feeling he wouldn’t mind a handful for himself, too.

Get a grip, he told himself fiercely, and imperceptibly his grip on Em’s hand tightened.

Say it together. Think it together.

‘Ruby, what you’ve just offered us,’ he said gently but firmly—he had to be firm even if he was feeling like jelly inside—’it’s the greatest compliment anyone has ever given me, and I’m sure that goes for Em, too. You’d trust us with your baby. It takes our breath away. It’s the most awesome gift a woman could ever give.’

He thought back to the birth he’d attended less than a week ago, a sister, a surrogate mother. A gift.

And he thought suddenly of his own birth mother. He’d never tried to find her. He’d always felt anger that she’d handed him over to parents who didn’t know what it was to love. But he looked at Ruby now and he knew that there was no black and white. Ruby was trying her best to hand her daughter to people she knew would love her, but they couldn’t accept.

Would it be Ruby’s fault if the adoptive parents turned out … not to love?

His world was twisting. So many assumptions were being turned on their heads.

He saw Em glance at him and he was pathetically grateful that she spoke. He was almost past it.

‘Ruby, we’re your treating midwife and obstetrician,’ she said, gently, as well, but just as firmly. ‘That puts us in a position of power. It’s like a teacher dating a student—there’s no way the student can divorce herself from the authority of the teacher. That authority might well be what attracted the student to the teacher in the first place.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘I mean we’re caring for you,’ Em went on. ‘And you’re seeing that we’re caring. It’s influencing you, whether you know it or not. Ruby, we couldn’t adopt your baby, even if we wanted to. It’s just not right.’

‘But you need a baby. You said … it’ll heal your marriage.’

‘I’m not sure what you heard,’ Em told her. ‘But no baby heals a marriage. We don’t need a baby. Your offer is awesome, gorgeous, loving, but, Ruby, whatever decision you make, you need to take us out of it. We’re your midwife and your obstetrician. We look after you while your baby’s born and then you go back to the real world.’

‘But I don’t want to go back to the real world,’ Ruby wailed. ‘I’m scared. And I don’t want to give my baby to someone I don’t know.’

‘Do you want to give your baby to anyone?’ Oliver asked, recovering a little now. Em had put this back on a professional basis. Surely he could follow.

‘No!’ And it was a wail from the heart, a deep, gut-wrenching howl of loss.

And Em moved, gathering the girl into her arms, letting her sob and sob and sob.

He should leave, Oliver thought. He wasn’t needed. He was this girl’s obstetrician, nothing else.

But the offer had been made to him and to Em. Ruby had treated them as a couple.

Ruby had offered them her baby to bind them together, and even though the offer couldn’t be accepted, he felt … bound.

So he sat while Ruby sobbed and Em held her—and somehow, some way, he felt more deeply in love with his wife than he’d ever felt.

His wife. Em …

They’d been apart for almost five years.

She still felt … like part of him.

Em was pulling back a bit now, mopping Ruby’s eyes, smiling down at her, pushing her to respond.

‘Hey,’ she said softly. ‘Hey … You want to hear an alternative plan?’

An alternative? What was this? Surely alternatives should be left to the social workers?

If Em was offering to foster on her own he’d have to step in. Ethics again, but they had to be considered, no matter how big Em’s heart was.

But she wasn’t offering to foster. She had something bigger …

‘My mum and I have been talking about you,’ she told Ruby, tilting her chin so she could mop some more. ‘I know that’s not the thing to do, to talk about a patient at home, but I did anyway. My mum lives with me, she helps care for my two kids and she’s awesome. She also has a huge house.’

What … what?

‘Not that we’re offering to share,’ Em said, diffidently now, as if she was treading on shifting sand. ‘But we have a wee bungalow at the bottom of the garden. It’s a studio, a bed/sitting room with its own bathroom. It has a little veranda that looks out over the garden. It’s self-contained and it’s neat.’

Ruby’s tears had stopped. She looked at Em, caught, fascinated.

As was Oliver. He knew that bungalow. He and Em had stayed in it in the past when they’d visited Adrianna for some family celebration and hadn’t wanted to drive home.

Josh had been conceived in that bungalow.

‘Anyway, Mum and I have been talking,’ Em repeated. ‘And we’re throwing you an option. It’s just one option, mind, Ruby, so you can take it or leave it and we won’t be the least offended. But if you wanted to take it … you could have it for a peppercorn rent, something you could well afford on your welfare payments. You’d have to put up with our kids whooping round the backyard and I can’t promise they’d give you privacy. But in return we could help you.

‘The school down the road is one of the few in the state that has child care attached—mostly for staff but they take students’ children at need. They have two young mums doing Year Twelve now, so if you wanted to, you could go back. Mum and I could help out, too. It would be hard, Ruby, because your daughter would be your responsibility. But you decided against all pressure not to have an abortion. You’ve faced everything that’s been thrown at you with courage and with determination. Mum and I think you can make it, Ruby, so we’d like to help. It’s an option. Think about it.’

What the …?

But they couldn’t take it further.

Heinz Zigler arrived then, with an entourage of medical students, ostensibly to talk through the success of the operation with Ruby but in reality to do a spot of teaching to his trainees.

They left Ruby surrounded by young doctors, smiling again, actually lapping up the attention. Turning again into a seventeen-year-old?

They emerged into the corridor and Oliver took Em’s arm.

‘What the hell …’

The words had been running through his head, over and over, and finally he found space to say them out loud.

‘Problem?’ Em turned and faced him.

‘You’d take them on?’

‘Mum and I talked about it. It won’t be “taking them on”. Ruby’s lovely. She’ll be a great little mum, but she’s a kid herself. She made the bravest decision when she chose not to terminate. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that she loves this baby to bits and this way … we could maybe help her be a kid again. Occasionally. Go back to school. Have a bit of fun but have her baby, as well.’

‘She offered it to you.’ He hesitated. ‘To us. I know that’s not possible.’ He was struggling with what he was feeling; what he was thinking. ‘But if it was possible … would you want that?’

‘To take Ruby’s baby? No!’

‘I was watching your face. It’s not possible to accept her offer but if it was it’d be your own baby. A baby you could love without complications. Is this offer to Ruby a second-best option?’

‘Is that what you think?’ She was leaning back against the wall, her hands behind her back, watching him. And what he saw suddenly in her gaze … was it sympathy?

‘You still don’t get it, do you?’ she said, gently now. This was a busy hospital corridor. Isla and Sophia were at the nurses’ station. They were glancing at Em and Oliver, and Oliver thought how much of what had just gone on would spin around the hospital. How much of what he said now?

He should leave. He should walk away now, but Em was tilting her chin, in the way he knew so well, her lecture mode, her ‘Let’s tell Oliver what we really think of him’. Uh-oh.

‘You scale it, don’t you?’ Her voice was still soft but there was a note that spoke of years of experience, years of pain. ‘You scale love.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘You think you couldn’t love a baby because it’s not yours. That’s your scale—all or nothing. Your scale reads ten or zero. But me … you’ve got it figured that my scale has a few more numbers. You’re thinking maybe ten for my own baby, but I can’t have that. So then—and this is how I think your mind is working—you’ve conceded that I can love a little bit, so I’ve taken in Gretta and Toby.

‘But according to your logic I can’t love them at ten. Maybe it’s a six for Toby because he’ll live, but he’s damaged and I might not be able to keep him anyway so maybe we’d better make it a five. And Gretta? Well, she’s going to die so make that a four or a three, or maybe she’ll die really soon so I’d better back off and even make it a two or a one.

‘But Ruby’s baby … now, if she could give her to me then she’d be a gorgeous newborn and I’d have her from the start and she’ll only be a little bit imperfect so maybe she’d score an eight. Only of course, I can’t adopt her at all, so you’re thinking now why am I bothering to care when according to you she’s right off the bottom of the caring scale? Baby I can’t even foster—zero? So why are we offering her the bungalow? Is that what you don’t understand?’

He stared at her, dumbfounded. ‘This is nonsense. That’s not what I meant.’

‘But it’s what you think.’ She was angry now, and she’d forgotten or maybe she just didn’t care that they were in a hospital corridor and half the world could hear. ‘Yes, your adoptive parents were awful but it’s them that should be tossed off the scale, Oliver, not every child who comes after that. I work on no scale. I love my kids to bits, really love them, and there’s no way I could love them more even if I’d given birth to them. And I’ll love Ruby’s baby, and Mum and I will love Ruby, too, because she’s a kid herself.

‘And it won’t kill us to do it—it’ll make us live. The heart expands to fit all comers—it does, Oliver. You can love and you can love and you can love, and you know what? All that loving means is that you can love some more.’

‘Em—’

‘Let me finish.’ She put up her hands as if to ward off his protests. ‘I almost have. All I want to say is that you’ve put yourself in some harsh, protective cage and you’re staying there because of this stupid, stupid scale. You can’t have what you deem worthy of ten, so you’ll stick to zero. And I’m sorry.’

She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, regrouped. When she opened them again she looked resolute. Only someone who knew her well—as well as he did—could see the pain.

‘I loved you, Oliver,’ she said, gently again. ‘You were my ten, no, more than ten, you were my life. But that love doesn’t mean there can’t be others. There are tens all over the place if you open yourself to them. If you got out of your cage you’d see, but you won’t and that has to be okay with me.’ She pushed herself off the wall and turned to go. She had work to do and so did he.

‘That’s all I wanted to say,’ she managed, and she headed off down the corridor, fast, throwing her last words back over her shoulder as she went.

‘That’s all,’ she said again as she went. ‘We agreed five years ago and nothing’s changed. You keep inside your nice safe cage, and I’ll just keep on loving without you.’

CHAPTER TWELVE

SHE SPENT THE rest of the day feeling shaken. Feeling ill. She should never have spoken like she had, especially in such a public place. She was aware of silences, of odd looks, and she knew the grapevine was going nuts behind her back.

Let it, she thought, but as the day wore on she started feeling bad for the guy she’d yelled at.

Oliver kept himself to himself. He was a loner. His one foray out of his loner state had been to marry her. Now he’d withdrawn again.

But now she’d put private information into the public domain. He might quit, she thought. He could move on. He hadn’t expected her to be here when he’d taken the job. Would the emotional baggage be enough to make him leave?

She’d lose him again.

She’d told him it didn’t matter. She’d told him she had plenty of love to make up for it.

She’d lied.

That was problem with tens, she thought as the long day continued. If you had a heap of tens it shouldn’t matter if one dropped off.

It did matter. It mattered especially when the one she was losing was the man who still felt a part of her.

Her mother was right.

She still loved Oliver Evans.

He was kept busy for the rest of the day, but her words stayed with him. Of course they did. Tens and zeroes. It shouldn’t make sense.

Only it did.

Luckily, he had no complex procedures or consultations during the day—or maybe unluckily, because his mind was free to mull over what Em had said. Every expectant mum he saw during the day’s consultations … he’d look at them and think ten.

He wasn’t so sure about a couple of the fathers, he decided. He saw ambivalence. He also saw nerves. Six, he thought, or seven. But in the afternoon he helped with a delivery. In the early stages the father looked terrified to be there, totally out of his comfort zone, swearing as he went in … ‘This wasn’t my idea, babe. I dunno why you want me here …’

But ‘Babe’ clung and clung and the father hung in there with her and when finally a tiny, crumpled little boy slipped seamlessly into the world the man’s face changed.

What had looked like a three on Em’s scale became a fourteen, just like that.

Because the baby really was his? Maybe, yes, Oliver thought, watching them, but now … with Emily’s words ringing in his ears he conceded, not necessarily.

Afterwards he scrubbed and made his way back to the nursery. There was a premmie he’d helped deliver. He wanted to check …

He didn’t make it.

A baby was lying under the lights used to treat jaundice. Two women were there, seated on either side. Maggie and Leonie. Surrogate mum and biological mum.

They didn’t see him, and he paused at the door and let himself watch.

Leonie’s hand was on her baby’s cheek, stroking it with a tenderness that took his breath away. Where was the tough, commanding woman of the birth scene? Gone.

Maggie had been expressing milk, the staff had told him. Leonie had paid to stay in with the baby, as his mum.

She looked a bit dishevelled. Sleep-deprived? He’d seen this look on the faces of so many new mums, a combination of awe, love and exhaustion.

Maggie, though, looked different. She’d gone home to her family, he knew, just popping back in to bring her expressed milk, and to see her sister—and her daughter?

Not her daughter. Her sister’s daughter.

Because while Leonie was watching her baby, with every ounce of concentration focused on this scrap of an infant, Maggie was watching her. She was watching her sister, and the look on her face …

Here it was again, Oliver thought. Love off the Richter Scale.

Love.

Zero or ten? Em was right, it came in all shapes and sizes, in little bits, in humungous chunks, unasked for, involuntarily given, just there.

And he thought again of his adoptive parents, of the tiny amount of affection they’d grudgingly given. He thought of Em and her Gretta and her Toby. He thought of Adrianna, quietly behind the scenes, loving and loving and loving.

He stood at the door and it was like a series of hammer blows, powering down at his brain. Stupid, stupid, stupid … He’d been judging the world by two people who were incapable of love outside their own rigid parameters.

He’d walked away from Em because he’d feared he’d be like them.

His thoughts were flying everywhere. Em was there, front and foremost, but suddenly he found himself thinking of the woman who’d given him up for adoption all those years ago. He’d never wanted to find her—he’d blamed her.

There were no black and whites. Maybe he could … Maybe Em could help …

‘Can I help you?’ It was Isla, bustling in, wheeling a humidicrib. ‘If you have nothing to do I could use some help. I’m a man short and Patrick James needs a feed. Can you handle an orogastric tube?’

Patrick James was the baby he’d come to see. He’d been delivered by emergency Caesarean the day before when his mother had shown signs of pre-eclampsia. Dianne wasn’t out of the woods yet, her young and scared husband was spending most of his time with her, and their baby son was left to the care of the nursery staff.

He was a thirty-four-weeker. He’d do okay.

It wasn’t an obstetrician’s job to feed a newborn. He had things to do.

None of them were urgent.

So somehow he found himself accepting. He settled by the humidicrib, he monitored the orogastric tube, he noted with satisfaction all the signs that said Patrick James would be feeding by himself any day now. For a thirty-four-weeker, he was amazing.

All babies were amazing.

Involuntarily, he found himself stroking the tiny, fuzz-covered cheek. Smiling. Thinking that given half a chance, he could love …

Love. Once upon a time he’d thought he’d had it with Emily. He’d walked away.

If he walked back now, that love would need to embrace so much more.

Black and white. Zero or ten. Em was right, there were no boundaries.

He watched Patrick James feed. He watched Leonie love her baby and he watched Maggie love her sister.

He thought about love, and its infinite variations, and every moment he did, he fell deeper and deeper in love with his wife.

She arrived home that night and Oliver’s car was parked out the front. His proper car. His gorgeous Morgan. Gleaming, immaculate, all fixed. It made her smile to see it. And it made her feel even more like smiling that she’d yelled at Oliver this morning and here he was again. Gretta and Toby would miss his visits if they ended.

When they ended?

The thought made her smile fade. She walked into the kitchen. The smell of baking filled the house—fresh bread! Oliver’s nightly visits were spurring Adrianna on to culinary quests. Her mum was loving him coming.

She was loving him coming.

‘Mumma,’ Toby crowed in satisfaction, and she scooped him out of his highchair and hugged him. Then, finally, she let herself look at Oliver.

He was sitting by the stove, holding Gretta in his arms. Gretta wasn’t smiling at her. She looked intent, a bit distressed.

Her breathing …

The world stood still for a moment. Still hugging Toby, she walked forward to see.

‘It’s probably nothing,’ Adrianna faltered. ‘It’s probably—’

‘It’s probably Katy’s cold,’ Oliver finished for her. ‘It’s not urgent but I was waiting … Now you’re here, maybe we should pop her back to the Victoria so Tristan can check.’

Congestive heart failure. Of course. She’d been expecting it—Tristan had warned her it would happen.

‘You won’t have her for very long,’ he’d told Em, gently but firmly. ‘Love her while you can.’

One cold … She should never …

‘You can’t protect her from everything,’ Oliver murmured during that long night when Gretta’s breathing grew more and more labored. ‘You’ve given her a home, you’ve given her love. You know that. It was your decision and it was the right one. If she’d stayed in a protective isolette then maybe she’d survive longer, but not lived.’

‘Oh, but—’

‘I know,’ he said gently, as Gretta’s breathing faltered, faltered again and then resumed, even weaker. ‘You love, and love doesn’t let go.’ And then he said …

‘Em, I’m so sorry I let you go,’ he said softly into the ominous stillness of the night. ‘I was dumb beyond belief. Em, if you’ll have me back …’

‘Ollie …’

‘No, now’s not the time to say it,’ he said grimly. ‘But I love you, Em, and for what it’s worth, I love Gretta, too. Thank you for letting me be here now. Thank you for letting me love.’

She was past exhaustion. She held and she held, but her body was betraying her.

Gretta was in her arms, seemingly asleep, but imperceptibly slipping closer to that invisible, appalling edge.

‘You need to sleep yourself,’ Oliver said at last. ‘Em, curl up on the bed with her. I promise I’ll watch her and love her, and I’ll wake you the moment she wakes, the moment she’s conscious.’

They both knew such a moment might not happen. The end was so near …

But, then, define near. Who could predict how long these last precious hours would take? Death had its own way of deciding where and when, and sometimes, Oliver thought, death was decided because of absence rather than presence.

Even at the time of death, loved ones were to be protected. How many times had a child slipped away as a parent had turned from a bed—as if solitude gave permission for release? Who knew? Who understood? All he knew was that Em was past deciding.

‘I’ll take your chair,’ he told her, laying his hand on her shoulder, holding. ‘Snuggle onto the bed.’

‘How can I sleep?’

‘How can you not?’ He kissed her softly on her hair and held her, letting his body touch hers, willing his strength into her. This woman … She gave and she gave and she gave …

How could he possibly have thought her love could be conditional? How could he possibly have thought adoption for Em could be anything but the real thing?

And how could he ever have walked away from this woman, his Em, who was capable of so much love and who’d loved him?

Who still loved him, and who’d shown him that he, too, was capable of such love.

‘I’ll wake you if there’s any change. I promise.’

‘You do … love her?’

‘Ten,’ he said, and he smiled at her and then looked down at the little girl they were watching over. ‘Maybe even more.’

She nodded, settled Gretta on the bed, then rose and stumbled a little. He rose, too, and caught her. He could feel her warmth, her strength, the beating of her heart against his. The love he felt for this woman was threatening to overwhelm him, and yet for this moment another love was stronger.

Together they looked down at this tiny child, slipping away, each breath one breath closer …

Em choked back an involuntary sob, just the one, and then she had herself under control again. There would be no deathbed wailing, not with this woman. But, oh, it didn’t mean she didn’t care.

‘Slip in beside her,’ he said, and numbly she allowed him to tug off her windcheater, help her off with her jeans.

She slid down beside Gretta in her knickers and bra, then carefully, with all the tenderness in the world, she held Gretta, so the little girl’s body was spooned against hers.

Gretta stirred, ever so slightly, her small frame seeming to relax into that of her mother’s.

Her mother. Em.

Somewhere out there was a birth mother, the woman who’d given Gretta up because it had all been too hard. Down’s syndrome and an inoperable heart condition that would kill her had seemed insurmountable. But Em hadn’t seen any of that when she’d decided to foster her, Oliver thought. She’d only seen Gretta.