together,’ she grumbled under her breath.
Jonny stared at her in amazement. Firstly, he’d never heard her swear before, and secondly he hadn’t thought she possessed the perceptive powers to have noticed what was going on with her daughter.
‘What?’ She arched her eyebrows. ‘I’m her mother. I gave birth to the girl. Well, almost, anyway.’
‘Almost?’ Jonny’s mind boggled.
Cecilia waved her arm around in an airy fashion.
‘Heck, Jonny, I’ve told you enough times that I’m built like a Barbie doll down there. She’d never have got out.’
Jonny shoved his fingers in his ears and closed his eyes before she could say anymore.
‘La la la! Stop talking, I can’t hear you.’
Cecilia rolled her eyes and waited for him to stop humming and open his eyes.
‘All I was going to say, if you’d let me finish,’ she shot him the daggers, ‘is that I’m hopeful for an Irish extension to the family.’
‘Still match-making, I see.’
Jonny jumped at the rich voice behind him, and turned to see a vaguely familiar guy in doctor’s whites smiling at Cecilia.
‘Robert!’
Jonny noted the way Cecilia turned pink and straightened her shoulders, and the dishy doc slotted into place in his head as the ex-husband from Franco’s.
‘Cecilia, we must stop meeting like this.’
Something in Robert’s twinkling eyes told Jonny that he didn’t actually mean those words at all, and for the second time in half an hour he felt like a third wheel.
‘I’ll just go and check how Emily’s doing,’ he muttered, and left Cecilia in the capable looking hands of her dishy ex-husband.
‘You have a beautiful son.’
The midwife wrapped a towel around the tiny, gunky-but-perfect child, before placing him in his mother’s outstretched arms. Tom stood beside Emily and smoothed a damp strand of hair back from her brow.
‘You were amazing.’ He kissed her forehead and gazed down at the baby. ‘Hey there, little guy.’
He reached out and the baby’s miniature fists curled around one of Tom’s fingers and held on fast.
Emily couldn’t keep still after the nurses had finished their work. The birth had been quick and mercifully straightforward, and she still couldn’t quite believe that she’d actually brought their baby safely into the world. The midwives melted away and Tom gathered them both into his arms.
‘My family,’ he whispered.
Emily leaned on his chest as tears slid down her cheeks onto the towel wrapped around her new boy.
Tears of joy, and tears of love.
A little while later, Emily belted her dressing gown around her already deflating waistline and shuffled out of the en-suite on her way back to the bed. She was relieved to have been to the loo and not lost her insides down the bowl, as she’d feared she might. Good old mother nature.
Tom had nipped outside to share their happy news with the others, and to grab the camera that had been on permanent standby in the glove box of his car for at least a month. He’d forgotten all about it in his panic to get to Emily’s side.
She froze statue-still in the bathroom doorway. There was a man standing next to the baby’s crib, and it wasn’t Tom.
It was Dan.
‘Hello, baby,’ he whispered. He stepped closer, and Emily’s less than strong legs wobbled with fear.
What was he going to do?
She’d have to intervene if he reached out to pick him up, she knew that much.
But he didn’t. He just shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and watched the tiny child swaddled in pale blue.
‘A boy, huh? Wow. Well, that’s good.’ Emily heard the catch in his voice. ‘That’s really good.’
Dan pressed his hand against the outside of the maternity cot.
‘Listen, bud. You be a good boy for your mum and dad, okay?’ he whispered. Emily stepped back and held her breath, suddenly feeling like an intruder.
These were Dan’s only few seconds with the son that, God willing, she’d have in her life forever. She watched silently as Dan looked at his child, then touched his fingers to his lips and placed them back on the glass.
‘Right then. I better go. You didn’t see me, right?’ Dan tapped the side of his nose and winked at his son.
Emily dipped back into the bathroom, and gripped the sink as the sound of his footsteps receded. Her reflection in the bathroom mirror gazed back at her, familiar yet somehow different. She wasn’t sure what it was exactly, but she wasn’t the same person as she’d been yesterday.
She was a mother.
‘Hey there, handsome.’
Jonny glanced up from his iPhone at the Love God who’d just joined him