Single Dads Collection. Lynne Marshall

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      ‘Hush, little one,’ he pleaded, jostling her gently. ‘Have a drink, sweetheart, you must be hungry. Is it too cold? Too hot?’

      Hell, how was he supposed to know? He liked his coffee scalding hot and his beer ice-cold. Somewhere in between was just alien to him.

      He stared in desperation at the house next door, the lights just visible through the screen of trees.

      No. He couldn’t go round there. She’d hardly greeted him with open arms, after all.

      ‘Well, what the hell did you expect?’ he muttered, swapping the baby to his other arm and trying a different angle with the bottle. ‘You drop out of her life for years and then stroll back in with a baby in your arms—she probably thought you were going to dump the baby on her!’

      He tightened his grip on his precious burden and the crying changed in pitch. Instantly he slackened his grip, shifted her to his shoulder and rubbed her back, walking helplessly up and down, up and down, staring at Emily’s house as he passed the window.

      The lights were out now, only the lovely stained-glass window on the stairs illuminated by the landing light. Strange. He didn’t remember her being afraid of the dark. Maybe it was because she was alone in the house…

      ‘Stop thinking about her,’ he growled softly, and the baby started to fuss again. ‘Shh,’ he murmured, rubbing her back again and going into the bathroom. ‘How about a nice warm bath?’

      Except she pooed in it, and he had to change the water in the basin one-handed without dropping her, and then it was too hot and he had to put more cold in, and then it was too full, and by the time he got her back in it she was screaming in earnest again and he gave up.

      He could feel his eyes prickling with despair and inadequacy. Damn. He wasn’t used to feeling inadequate. ‘Oh, Gran, where are you?’ he sighed a little unsteadily. ‘You’d know what to do—you always knew what to do about everything.’

      He dried the baby, dressed her in fresh clothes and tried to put her in the baby-carrier, but she wasn’t having any. The only way she’d settle at all was if he held her against his heart and walked with her, so he did exactly that.

      He pulled his soft fleecy car rug round his shoulders, wrapped it across her and went out into the mild summer night. He walked to the cliff top and then down through the quiet residential roads to the prom, strolling along next to the beach and listening to the sound of the sea while the baby slept peacefully against his heart, and then when he could walk no more and his eyes were burning with exhaustion and he just wanted to lie down and cry, he took her home and sat down in the awful chair that the tenants had left and fell asleep.

      Not for long.

      Not nearly long enough. The baby woke, slowly at first, tiny whimpers turning gradually to a proper cry and then ultimately a full-blown blood-curdling yell by the time he’d found her bottle in the fridge and warmed it and tested it and cooled it down again by running it under the tap because of course he’d overheated it, and by the time he could give it to her she’d worked herself up to such a frenzy she wouldn’t take it.

      He stared down at her in desperation, his eyes filling. ‘Oh, Kizzy, please, just take it,’ he begged, and finally she did, hiccupping and sobbing so she took in air and then started to scream and pull her legs up, and he thought, What made me think I could do this? I must have been mad. No wonder women get postnatal depression.

      He wondered if it was possible for men to get it. Clumsy, inadequately prepared fathers who’d never been meant to be mothers to their children—men whose wives had died in a bomb blast or an earthquake and left them unexpectedly holding the baby. Or men widowed when their wives died in childbirth. Or even men who’d taken the decision to be the house-husband and main carer of the children. How did they cope?

      How did anyone cope?

      He changed her, then changed her again when she was sick down her front, then gave her another little try with the bottle and finally put her down in the carrier, shut the door and went upstairs to the bedroom he’d used as a child, leaving her screaming.

      He had to get some sleep if he was going to be any good to her.

      But the only furniture in the room was a bare, stained mattress, and he couldn’t bring himself to lie on it even if he could ignore the baby’s cries for long enough to get to sleep.

      He looked around him critically, taking in the state of the place properly for the first time, and realised that if he was going to live in it, it was going to need a team of decorators to come in and blitz it, new carpets and furniture throughout and probably a new kitchen.

      And in the meantime he’d be living there with the baby?

      He must have been insane.

      He should have let the doctors throw the switch all those weeks ago instead of interfering.

      Acid burned his stomach and he shook his head.

      No.

      Whatever came next, what he’d done so far had been exactly the right thing. The only thing. And it would get easier. It had to. He’d learn to cope. And right now he was going back downstairs, and he’d lift her out of the carrier and lie down on the grubby chair and cuddle her on his chest until they both went to sleep. The rest he could deal with tomorrow…