Baby on Board: Secret Baby, Surprise Parents / Her Baby Wish / Keeping Her Baby's Secret. Raye Morgan
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she’d touched an unexpected nerve.
‘Will you stay and keep an eye on Posie while I go and take a shower?’ she asked, easing herself to her feet, laying the sleepy babe in her crib, then fetching the milk jug from the fridge. ‘Milk?’ she asked, after fishing out the tea bags.
He didn’t answer and, when she looked up, she realised that he was staring down at the overlarge dressing gown she was wearing, or rather at the way it was gaping open where she’d held Posie against her breast as she’d fed her from the bottle, as Phoebe had, giving the same skin to skin closeness as breastfeeding.
‘This is Phoebe’s,’ she said, self-consciously pulling it around her, tightening the belt. ‘It’s a bit big, but I’ve been wearing it so that Posie has the comfort of her scent.’
‘Until yours and hers become indistinguishable?’
‘No! It was just while she was away.’ Except, of course, her sister wasn’t ever coming back. ‘I hadn’t thought that far ahead.’
‘No,’ he said, with a heavy finality that suggested she hadn’t thought very much about anything. ‘Although I suspect that, unless her table manners improve, all she’s going to get is the smell of stale milk or dribble.’
She frowned.
‘There’s a damp patch,’ he said, then, when she looked down. ‘No, on the other side…’
‘Oh, nappy rash! I’m leaking.’
‘Leaking?’
She opened a cupboard, grabbed a sealed pack of sterilised bottles. ‘Make yourself comfortable. I may be a while,’ she said, heading for the door.
‘Wait!’ He caught her arm. ‘You’re feeding Posie with your own milk?’
He sounded shocked. Instantly on the defensive, she said, ‘Of course. Why wouldn’t I?’
‘You have to ask?’
Confused by his reaction, she said, ‘Apparently.’
He shook his head. ‘You’re expressing your own milk, putting it in a bottle and then sitting down and feeding Posie with it. Do I really have to explain what is wrong with that picture?’
‘There’s not a thing wrong with it. Breast milk is the very best start for a baby. Everyone knows that.’
‘In an ideal world,’ he replied, ‘but I suspect that precious few surrogate mothers stick around to play wet nurse.’
‘I’m not!’
‘As near as damn it, you are.’
She stared at him, shaken by the fierceness of his reaction. ‘You know this isn’t a normal surrogacy, Josh.’
‘Really?’
How could anyone invest such an ordinary word with such a mixture of irony, disdain, plain old disbelief? Grace didn’t bother to respond, defend herself, since clearly he was a long way from finished.
‘In what way isn’t it normal?’ he asked. ‘You’re not married, so there was nothing to stop Michael’s name being put on the birth certificate. I assume that happened?’
‘Of course.’
‘And presumably you went through all the legal hoops with the court-appointed social worker? Signed all the paperwork so that the Parental Order could be issued, along with a new birth certificate in which Phoebe and Michael were named as Posie’s parents?’
‘Of course. We were really lucky. It can take up to a year to get everything settled, but there was space in the court calendar and, since the social worker was happy, the paperwork was completed in double quick time.’
‘So you are aware that you’ve surrendered any legal rights you had as Posie’s birth mother?’
Grace clutched the plastic container of feeding bottles against her breast, a shield against words that meant nothing and yet still had the power to hurt her.
‘You’ve done your homework,’ she said, more than a little unnerved at his thoroughness in checking out the legal formalities. Trying to figure out what, exactly, he was getting at.
‘I did, as a matter of fact,’ he replied, ‘although, since Michael explained everything in his regular progress bulletins, it was more for my own peace of mind than necessity.’
That was Michael, she thought. He would never have given up trying to make Josh see how perfect it all was. Trying to break down whatever his problem had been with this arrangement.
Poor Michael….
‘So why are you asking me all this?’ she demanded, making an effort to concentrate, trying not to think about what had happened, but how totally happy Michael had been. ‘Since you already seem to have chapter and verse.’
‘I just wanted to be sure that you fully understand the situation.’
‘Of course I understand. And I didn’t “surrender” Posie. She was always Phoebe’s baby.’
‘Truly?’
He slipped his hand inside the gown and laid his hand over the thin silk of her nightgown, fingers spread wide across her waist to encompass her abdomen in a shockingly intimate gesture. Her womb quickened to his touch, her breast responding as if to a lover’s touch.
‘Even while she was lying here? When you could feel her moving? When it was just the two of you in the night? You didn’t have a single doubt?’
It was as if he were reading her mind. Had been there with her in the darkness, the restless baby in her womb keeping her awake, thinking about how different it could have been. How, all those years before, she’d longed for the protection he’d used to have failed, knowing that a baby was the one thing that would have brought him back to her.
She’d hated herself for wishing it, knowing how wrong it was to want a baby only to bind him to her. If he’d loved her, he would not have left. Or, if he had, would not have been able to stay away.
Knowing that carrying his brother’s child for her sister was the nearest she was ever going to get to having Josh’s child growing within her womb. But that was for her to know. No one else.
She knew she should move, step back, stop this, but the warmth, strength of his hand against her body held her to him like a magnet.
‘Well?’ he demanded, pressing her for an answer.
‘No,’ she mouthed, no sound escaping. Then again, ‘No!’ No doubts. Not one. ‘It isn’t unknown for a woman to carry a baby for her sister,’ she told him. ‘It was once quite normal for a woman to give a childless sister one or even two of her own babies to raise.’
‘This isn’t the nineteenth century.’
‘No. And I’ve no doubt some of the neighbours believe I actually had sex with Michael in order to conceive but, since you’ve done your homework, you couldn’t possibly think that. Could you?’
‘Of course not—’
‘Only, for your information, he was at a conference in Copenhagen when all the planets were in alignment but since the clinic already had his contribution in their freezer that wasn’t a problem.’
‘I know how it’s done, Grace.’
‘You have been thorough.’
‘I didn’t need to look that up on the Internet,’ he said, his face grim now.
‘No? Well, know this. Since I was here, living under the same roof, it made perfect sense to give Posie the very best start possible.’
‘Did it? And whose idea was that? The whole breast is best thing.’
‘Does it matter?’ He didn’t answer, just waited for her to tell him what he