Miracles in the Village. Josie Metcalfe

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      He chuckled. ‘Fair point. These are still good, though. Thanks.’

      ‘Pleasure.’

      ‘So—are they part of this diet you’ve got me on?’ he asked casually. ‘Because, if so, I think I like it. And I should certainly heal fast.’ He looked up, laughing, and was arrested by the guilty look on her face. ‘Fran?’ he said, slowly lowering the next shell to the plate untouched. What the hell was going on?

      She swallowed and knotted her fingers together. She always did that when she was nervous—but why?

      ‘Talk to me,’ he said, and she looked up and met his eyes, her own filled with remorse, and he knew—he just knew—that she was hiding something. ‘It’s nothing to do with my leg healing, is it?’ he said slowly. ‘So what’s it all about?’

      She got up and went out, coming back seconds later with a folded sheet of paper. She handed it to him, and he opened it and scanned it.

      ‘Fertility-boosting diet?’ he said, noticing all the things that were on it that should have rung alarm bells. The lack of tea and coffee, the extra fruit, the smoothies, the raw veg soups, the lack of alcohol—not that they drank much, but if she was going to this much trouble they’d usually share a bottle of wine, but there was fruit juice by their plates, and a jug of water on the table.

      He lifted his head and met her wary and slightly defiant eyes. ‘Fran?’

      ‘I saw Kate—about the baby thing. She discussed our diet with me.’

      She looked guilty, and he had a feeling they’d talked about a lot more than diet. Good, because he’d wanted her to have someone to talk to, but he’d never dreamt she wouldn’t discuss things like this with him.

      ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’ he said, hurt and puzzled that she’d felt the need to lie—lie, for heaven’s sake!—about something so uncontroversial and trivial. Or was it? Was it that she hadn’t been sure if he wanted a child with her? She’d said that last night—did she really believe he didn’t? If so, maybe that was why she’d been reluctant to get it out in the open.

      ‘She said it wouldn’t hurt to try it, to improve our diet, to get fitter—and then, if we decided we wanted to go ahead and try again for a baby, we’d be in the best possible position.’

      He felt a flicker of fear for her, dread that yet again she’d be faced with crippling disappointment or a gut-shredding loss that would leave her devastated.

      ‘If?’ he said softly.

      Her eyes flicked back to his. ‘I wasn’t sure if you wanted one—if you didn’t feel it was just a lot of angst and hassle, if Sophie wasn’t enough for you.’

      ‘This isn’t about me, Fran, it’s about you, and if you want a baby.’

      ‘I do—but I want yours. And I need you to want it, too. And right now I’m not sure you do.’

      He sighed. ‘It’s not so urgent for me,’ he pointed out. ‘I’ve got Sophie, and my clock’s not ticking the way yours is. And anyway …’ he scanned the paper again, noted the section about boosting sperm production and reducing DNA damage ‘ … if you want a baby, maybe you’d be better off with someone else.’

      ‘What?’

      Her soft, shocked exclamation tore at him, but he went on regardless. ‘Maybe, if you want a healthy baby, you’d be safer trying with someone who hasn’t already got you pregnant twice with an embryo that was probably flawed.’

      ‘We don’t know that that was you!’

      ‘We know that some of the sperm were damaged—that the motility was down a little, that they weren’t all perfect.’

      ‘But—everyone’s are like that, Mike! It’s perfectly normal to have a proportion of sperm that aren’t a hundred per cent. It could just as easily have been something to do with the IVF process.’

      ‘Not the first time.’

      ‘Mike, miscarriage is really common,’ she said, repeating to him all the things he’d told her again and again, trying to encourage her, to give her confidence to try again, but it sounded as hollow now as it had when he’d said it, and he felt the burden of guilt settle firmly on his shoulders.

      ‘But if it is me,’ he said quietly. ‘If it is my fault, then I may not be able to give you a baby, Fran. And how many times are you prepared to try? How many miscarriages are you going to go through before you give up? And what if—just consider, for a moment—what if we have a baby that you should have miscarried but didn’t? A baby nature would normally have rejected as unviable? What if we have a baby with problems—physical or mental disabilities, developmental problems—what then, Fran? Will you be able to forgive yourself for not choosing a better partner? Will you be able to forgive me? Because I’m not sure I could.’

      She stared at him for an age. ‘That could happen to anyone at any time. Are you telling me if we had a disabled baby you couldn’t love it?’

      ‘Of course not!’ He didn’t even have to stop and think about that one. In fact, for a while now he’d been on the point of suggesting to Fran that they adopt a child with special needs, but he’d held back, not ready to concede defeat in the fight for their own child until she was. But she didn’t know that, didn’t realise that he’d considered it, and now she thought he just couldn’t hack it if they had a child with problems.

      ‘Of course not,’ he said again. ‘But I don’t know if I could forgive myself for bringing a child into the world if I had a fair idea that that child would be damaged in some way because of my contribution to its existence. And if that was the case, maybe it would be better to adopt. That’s all I meant. Nothing more sinister. And if it is me—’

      ‘But I don’t want anybody else’s baby,’ she said with a certainty that brought a lump to his throat. ‘I want yours, Mike—and if I can’t have yours, then I don’t want one at all. We’ve got Sophie. That’s enough. We should be grateful and concentrate on loving her.’

      Her voice cracked, and he was up and round the table in a second, his crutches abandoned, hauling her into his arms and cradling her against his chest, unable to bear the desolate look in her eyes. ‘Don’t give up,’ he said gruffly, his eyes prickling. ‘We’ll take our time, try the diet, have some more tests. And then—if you want to, if you think you can cope with it—we’ll try the IVF again.’

      ‘But we can’t afford it, Mike, so it’s pointless,’ she said, her voice clogged with tears.

      ‘Maybe we can,’ he told her. ‘Ben and Lucy want to buy some of our land around their house. Joe and I are going to have a look at it at the weekend. Ben’s talking about paying amenity rates—that’s about double what it’s worth, at least. I don’t want to fleece them, but it’ll add significantly to the value of their property, and Joe and Sarah want to do their kitchen—and it would mean we could afford to try again. If you want to.’

      She looked up at him, her eyes uncertain, and as he watched, a flicker of hope came to life. ‘Really?’

      ‘Really.’

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