Matilda Next Door - Kelly Hunter Page 0,29

with him. ‘You will.’

*

For all that Henry had planned for Tilly to have an apartment for herself so she could shower and rest after her flight, the fact that she’d so readily left him and Joe with no instructions whatsoever and a wide-awake baby to get to know still managed to take him by surprise.

He didn’t know what to do, but then neither had she and she’d managed well enough.

Was he supposed to look at the child and instantly recognise part of himself in her? Because that hadn’t happened yet.

If he picked her up would he bond with her then? Feel overwhelming fatherly love rather than this vague terror that such a tiny, vulnerable little human was now his responsibility?

Maybe if he’d seen her being born … Nope, no, don’t go there. That wouldn’t have helped do anything but make him incredibly grateful he wasn’t a woman. And he was already grateful enough about that, thanks.

It was time to pick this tiny little being up before he proved his grandfather right and turned out to be utterly inept at the fatherhood thing.

One hand to support her head and neck and his other hand beneath her little body and lift.

See?

And then just bring her closer so she doesn’t look as if he was offering her up as a sacrifice.

‘Smells like she needs a nappy change,’ his grandfather said with no little amusement, and given it was the first time the older man had smiled in days, Henry could hardly begrudge him the moment.

‘Yep.’

‘You going to do it?’

‘Working my way up to it, old man.’ His grandfather’s laughter was its own reward. ‘Can’t rush these things.’

Baby Rowan Aurelia Church got a new nappy eventually.

And then he picked her up again and settled her in the crook of his arm and looked around for something to do. ‘So this is a door.’ He spelled the word aloud and his grandfather snorted. ‘And apparently I’m now a comedian. No, I didn’t see that one coming either. So my name’s Henry. Henry Church and you’ll curse me for that last name before we’re through, especially once you start school.’

‘Which won’t be next week, so don’t worry about it for now,’ offered the other man wryly as he came over for a closer look at the baby in Henry’s arms. ‘She doesn’t look like a Church.’

‘No.’

‘Maybe she takes after her mother?’

Again, ‘No.’

‘Or her family?’ offered Joe.

‘I wouldn’t know. Neither would Amanda if she were still around to ask. She was left at a train station in Ireland at three years old and no one ever came forward to claim her. They gave her an Irish identity. She looked the part. Dark hair, medium to olive complexion, light-coloured eyes.’ He couldn’t remember her eye colour exactly. They weren’t grey like Tilly’s. ‘Church or not, this baby has nowhere else to go.’

What a mess. Charging him with the raising of a child, any child, and thinking he’d do a decent job. When had he ever given Amanda enough information about himself to make that call? ‘I don’t know how to do this.’

‘No one ever does, at the start. You’ll learn.’

‘I’ll fail.’

‘I doubt it.’

You failed, old man. The thought stole in, cruel and unspoken, but it had always been between them. You’re a good man, but you failed your daughter. She broke on your watch. Cut down by her mother’s vicious tongue and your studied silence, and she couldn’t get away fast enough. Same as me. Is that what happened? Is that what you’ll never say whenever I ask?

‘Why did my mother leave Wirralong at fifteen, with barely a cent to her name?’ he asked again, bald and blunt, with a baby in his arms that he’d been asked to commit to for a lifetime. No throwing her out if she wasn’t shaping up the way he wanted, no handing the job off to someone else. ‘Why did she never, ever speak of you, in particular, without longing and sadness?’

His grandfather’s face was a study in pain and regret, and Henry hated himself for causing it, but he needed to know. Surely he had a right to the truth so he didn’t make the same mistakes?

‘She and Beth didn’t get along.’

‘She has a name. I’ve never heard you say it.’ Not once.

So much silence between them. Years of it, during which he’d never uttered his mother’s name either, internalising this man’s shame and making it his too. Maybe it was time that stopped. ‘Her name was Ruth.’

*

Tilly woke slowly,