For Our Children's Sake. NATASHA OAKLEY

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СКАЧАТЬ were covered with graffiti. An ugly place, she thought with a curious detachment.

      ‘We could sit on the bench over there,’ he said, and pointed at a wooden seat underneath some old oak trees. His kind eyes glanced down at her. ‘I shouldn’t be doing this to you. It’s too soon. You’re still in shock.’

      ‘I’ll always be in shock.’

      An almost imperceptible nod of the head before he turned and walked towards the seat.

      ‘Do you want to tell me what they told you?’ he asked as she sat next to him.

      Lucy shook her head. ‘I can’t,’ she whispered. ‘Not yet.’

      ‘No,’ he agreed, and in that one word she could feel his compassion.

      She watched him take the lid off his coffee and sip.

      He looked up and caught her watching. ‘Drink your coffee. At least it’s hot.’

      ‘Everyone seems to want me to drink something. The nurse back at the hospital kept wanting me to have tea.’

      His smile was gentle. With fingers that trembled slightly she struggled with the plastic lid. Some of the hot liquid lurched over the side and scalded her fingers.

      ‘Steady,’ was all he said, reaching out to support her hand.

      And then there was silence for a few moments before he began. His voice was quiet, deep and slightly husky.

      ‘My wife, Eloise, was born with a defective heart. She should never…I should never have—’

      Lucy waited. For the first time his pain pierced hers. This man knew exactly how she was feeling. He knew because he was in the same nightmarish place. Here with her. No one else would ever be able to understand how bleak it was possible to feel. But this man—Dominic—knew. He really knew.

      He began again. ‘Eloise always wanted children.’ He looked down and traced a pattern with his shoe on the dry mud. ‘But they never came. Month after month. There was nothing.’

      Lucy sipped at the bitter coffee and waited as he struggled to get the words out. ‘We didn’t know about her heart then. Not then.’ He looked up at the trees. ‘Later we knew, of course, and we were told she shouldn’t ever have a baby. There was a ‘‘significant risk’’, they told us. But Eloise was desperate. Her life wasn’t ever going to be complete without children. I tried…’

      She understood that desperation for a baby. Month after month of nothing. The feeling that somehow each month you’d lost your baby, even though your head told you there’d never been anything to lose. The sensation of life ebbing away, month after month. Lucy tried to think of something to say, some comfort.

      ‘I let her go for the IVF. When Eloise knew she was pregnant she was so excited. Couldn’t wait to have our baby.’ He pulled himself up straighter on the bench. ‘But there were complications during the Caesarean. She died giving birth to Abigail.’

      Lucy hadn’t expected that. Her right hand, holding the coffee, shook. Died. Her first reaction was one of sympathy, immediate and intense. ‘I’m sorry. So sorry.’

      ‘Abby is everything I have.’

      His head was bowed and she could see the weight of everything resting on his shoulders. His wife had died giving birth to a child that wasn’t his own—and yet he still loved his Abby. Her Abby. Just as she loved Chloe.

      ‘How did you discover Abby—’ her voice hovered over the unfamiliar name ‘—wasn’t your natural child?’

      ‘She has a rhesus—’

      ‘Negative blood type. I remember. Dr Shorrock said.’ She smiled sadly as he looked across at her. ‘So do I.’

      ‘I wish I’d never found out.’ Dominic held her gaze. ‘I love her more than anything in the world. She may not be my natural child but she’s more mine than anyone—’

      He broke off as though he’d suddenly remembered whom he was speaking to. Yet Lucy didn’t mind. She looked at the passion in his face and was glad Abigail had found somewhere safe.

      Safe. It was so strange. This stranger made her feel safe. Just sitting with him had begun to make the panic recede a little. The pain was still there. A hard knot at the very centre of who she was. And yet, looking at Dominic, she could believe she’d survive. That there might be a way to claw through this nightmare.

      ‘I understand,’ she said softly. ‘I love Chloe.’

      His eyes were moist as he breathed the name. ‘Chloe. It’s a beautiful name.’

      ‘She’s beautiful. An incredible little girl.’ Lucy stood up and dropped the empty cup into the remains of a burnt-out litter bin. ‘Shall we walk?’

      ‘Yes.’

      They took the path across the grass. ‘Abigail’s a lovely name too.’

      ‘It means ‘‘father rejoiced’’. I wanted her to know I didn’t blame her. When Eloise died,’ he said awkwardly, and then he shrugged. ‘It seemed important at the time.’

      An understanding of just how much this man must have suffered washed over Lucy once again. His wife had died giving birth to Abigail.

      Losing Michael had been painful, but she didn’t have any sense of guilt about it. From the little he’d said it was obvious Dominic Grayling blamed himself, in part at least, for agreeing to the IVF treatment. Yet even in the midst of that tumult of emotion he’d still thought about his baby girl, how she would feel every birthday, and he’d given her a name that told her she was loved. He had to be a special kind of man.

      ‘Is Abigail like me?’ she asked, suddenly feeling the need to know. She turned to look at him, the wind whipping her hair across her face.

      ‘A little. In the colour of her hair. But more, I think, in the way she moves. She moves like you.’

      It was faintly embarrassing to have this stranger look at her in such a way. Focused. As though he could see nothing but her. Lucy looked away.

      ‘And Chloe?’

      ‘Yes,’ she said hurriedly. ‘She has your shape face, your hands…’ His hands. She hadn’t even registered she’d noticed his hands—and yet Chloe had the same long fingers. She’d always loved her daughter’s fingers. Right from a baby. ‘Artist’s hands,’ Michael had called them.

      ‘I’d like to see her.’

      He’d spoken quietly and yet the words were like a slap. Her head snapped up.

      ‘No.’

      ‘Don’t you want to see Abigail?’

      Lucy let his words flow over her.

      ‘Can you really go your whole life without knowing what she’s like?’ He paused. ‘Whether we like it or not, other people are going to start making decisions for us. When I first found out about Abby…Hell, this is hard.’ СКАЧАТЬ