Twins For Christmas. Alison Roberts

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СКАЧАТЬ poor Aimee. Four weeks longer than the previous two pregnancies and she’d really begun to hope that this time she would get to take her baby home. He’d tried to keep her calm until the ambulance arrived and he couldn’t have let her go to the hospital alone. Not when her husband was out on the oil rig for another two weeks.

      Not even noticing the muddy streak Benji’s paw left on his trousers, Adam kept moving. Maybe a wee dram of whisky before his tea would help. And some time with the children. He could read them a story before bed.

      The words of the song were audible now. ‘“Little donkey, little donkey, on the dusty road …”’

      Maybe the children would prefer to hear songs than a story.

      Adam stepped into the kitchen. He was expecting warmth and the smell of hot food. The loving greeting his children always gave him and the prospect of winding down in the comfort of his favourite part of his house. He wasn’t expecting to be hit in the face with a blinding kaleidoscope of colours.

      ‘What in heaven’s name is going on in here?’

      ‘Daddy …’ Poppy flung her arms around his legs. ‘We’ve made decorations. Aren’t they bee-yoot-i-ful?’

      Adam took another upward glance at the desecration of the ancient, oak beams.

      ‘And we’ve learned a song all about Jemima.’

      ‘It’s not about Jemima.’ Oliver was right beside his sister now. ‘It’s about another donkey. The one that Mary was riding to get to Bethlehem.’

      Christmas again. How did it manage to accentuate the worst of life in so many ways? Impossible not to think about a donkey carrying the pregnant Mary. With a full-term pregnancy that everybody knew ended up with a healthy baby, despite less than adequate birthing facilities. Unlike poor Aimee who had access to the best of modern care but now had a scrap of a bairn who was on life support in a neonatal intensive care unit in Edinburgh.

      Adam tried to push the concern away. To focus on his own healthy children. Tried to centre himself by a glance around the room below ceiling level. At least that looked relatively normal. Or did it?

      ‘What …’ he actually had to swallow before he could find any more words ‘… are those?’

      The children had fallen strangely silent. Even Poppy, who could never be called a quiet child. It was Emma who answered.

      ‘They’re Advent calendars. You get to open a little door every day until Christmas Eve and there’s a new picture and a little chocolate. Very little and the children haven’t eaten them all from the doors that already needed to be opened. They saved them. For you.’

      She sounded nervous, Adam realised. He looked over the twins’ heads and looked at her properly for the first time since he’d come into the room. He still hadn’t got used to the way she looked, with that air of being a stray gypsy waif, but he was certainly letting go of the idea that she could be unreliable or unable to commit to anything. She’d thrown herself into being his children’s nanny with her heart and soul, hadn’t she? They loved her.

      And she loved them. The way she’d said how much she loved being with them this morning had touched his heart in the way that only total honesty could.

      And now she was looking at him with eyes that looked too large for her thin face. With a glow that was telling him that she was doing this to make his children happy.

      Because she already loved them.

      And because it was Christmastime.

      There was a hopeful expression in those eyes, too, that was a plea that he wouldn’t spoil it all by being cross.

      He found himself unable to look away. Adam got a sudden vision of what it would be like to be seeing himself through her eyes and he didn’t like what he saw. He forced a smile to his lips as he managed to break the eye contact with Emma.

      ‘As long as you don’t eat too much chocolate before dinner.’ He looked up again. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen such long paper chains. You must have been busy all day.’

      ‘I did my practice, too. D’you want to hear what I learned today, Dad?’

      ‘Aye. Let me get my coat off, son. And I need a wee something to drink.’

      He glanced across at Emma, feeling like he should apologise, although he wasn’t quite sure why. ‘D’you drink whisky, Emma?’

      She shook her head but smiled. ‘Let me find one for you while you listen to Ollie’s new tune. You’ve had a long day. Dinner will ready in no time.’

      There was no recrimination in her tone that she’d been left with the children all afternoon and that they’d been left without their promised walk or time with their father. No … Both the tone and the way she was looking at him gave him the odd feeling that she knew exactly how hard his day had been. He didn’t have to say anything about what had happened but she was still willing to try and make it better.

      Even more oddly, it was starting to feel better. He could almost dismiss the edge of panic at seeing how Christmas was invading his house again. Maybe that was because the decorations were so obviously made by children with their wobbly shapes and sizes. Tania might have gone overboard with decorations but she would never have tolerated something so far less than perfect. Even the bunch of holly on the table was real instead of a perfect, plastic replica.

      This was different. This was Emma, not Tania. Couldn’t be more different, in fact. Maybe it would even be okay.

      ‘Thank you.’ It felt like the first time Adam had ever smiled at Emma but surely that wasn’t the case?

      Maybe it was because he’d never seen her smile quite like that. A slow, delighted curl to her mouth that lit up her face and gave her a faint flush of colour on those pale cheeks.

      She was pretty, he realised. Not flaky looking at all. Too young for her years, still, and too thin, but … yes … pretty.

      Beautiful even.

       CHAPTER FIVE

      EMMA HAD A lot of time to herself on Sunday because Adam didn’t get called out, although he seemed to spend a lot of time on the phone and she overheard a snatch of conversation about a sick baby who was in Intensive Care. The children—and the dogs—got their long walk to see whether the pond was frozen and Emma was glad of the time on her own.

      She sat in her room, with her laptop and her guitar, working on her Christmas gift for Sharon. She was writing a song about friendship and the strength it could give someone to get through hard times, and she intended to record it as a background to a slide show of all the best photos she and Sharon had taken over the last few years. She might even use the very private ones—like the one in her hospital bed where she’d been so swollen by the steroids she’d been taking and completely bald from the chemo. Sharon had insisted she needed a photo so that Emma would be able to look back and see how far she’d come and then she’d said something about eggheads and made Emma laugh, and that was the moment she’d captured.

      She’d СКАЧАТЬ