‘Can I ask you something that I’ve always been curious about?’
‘Sure you can ask. I can’t guarantee I’ll answer.’ Having braced himself to defend behaviour that, from any loving parent’s point of view, was indefensible her actual question took him by surprise.
‘Your parents had what most people would call an unhappy marriage.’
‘That’s putting it politely. Others would call it hell.’
‘I always wondered, why did they stay together? They weren’t religious or—?’
Ben gave a dry laugh. It was a question he had asked himself on more than one occasion. ‘Honestly, I don’t have a clue. They both threatened it over the years, but neither carried through... Maybe in some twisted way, for them at least, the marriage worked...’ he speculated with a mystified shake of his head ‘...or it could be that they were just too stubborn to admit they’d made a mistake.’
Elizabeth nodded. ‘Some people should not be together.’
‘Marriage is a leap in the dark,’ he countered cynically.
‘What about your investments? Don’t they involve the same thing?’ she teased gently.
He angled a narrow-eyed look at her face. ‘Are you trying to get in my head, Mrs Gray?’
She smiled. ‘Call me Elizabeth.’
‘Risks are easy when you’re only dealing with money, Elizabeth.’
‘You know, I think I might have that coffee, Ben.’
* * *
He sprinted for the lift, silently cursing the estate agent who’d made him late. He glanced at his watch—had he missed the doctor’s round?
It was all the estate agent’s fault. The guy had been creating problems where there were none, as far as Ben was concerned. He had zero interest in getting the best deal or calling anyone’s bluff. If the vendors wanted more money, they could have it.
In the end, he’d had to spell it out.
‘Give them a blank cheque. I don’t give a damn, so long as I have the keys for tomorrow.’
The guy had looked at him as though he was insane.
‘Blank cheque?’ he’d echoed, sounding scandalised by the suggestion.
Ben had silenced him with a look.
This morning the guy had been sitting with his commission cheque in his hot hand, telling Ben that it had been a pleasure doing business with him and apologising profusely for having one last paper for him to sign.
Walking down the long corridor that led to the specialist unit, he passed a couple he recognised and nodded before continuing on. His stab of sympathy was mingled with a feeling of relief. It was weird, but you quickly got to know when people had had bad news, simply from their body language.
Buzzed onto the ward, he did not hurry the hygiene rules. The strict measures to protect the vulnerable child from infection had become second nature to him over the past couple of weeks. Shrugging on the gown, he almost collided with the two figures standing outside Emmy’s room.
Ben felt as if someone had reached into his chest; the icy fingers tightened around his heart as the implications of what he was seeing hit him. He froze as Lily, oblivious to his presence, her head on her mother’s shoulder, continued to weep uncontrollably.
For the past couple of weeks she had kept a constant vigil at Emmy’s bedside, refusing a bed when one came up in the purpose-built block that housed parents of children who arrived at the specialist centre from all over the country. It was the best; Ben had made it his business to find out. During that time her cheerful, positive façade had stayed firmly in place. On the couple of occasions it had slipped and she’d needed to vent, he had been philosophical about taking the flak—at least he was good for something and there was precious little else he could do.
He had suffered moments of black doubt, but not Lily. There had never been any if, it had always been when Emily Rose got better.
While the doctors had been upbeat about the outcome, apparently it was rare for a parent to be a full match but he was. They had warned that compatibility, even full compatibility, did not guarantee success. They spoke a lot about multiple factors affecting the outcome.
Had Lily heard them? Or had she, as he suspected, tuned out anything she couldn’t cope with? The latter, he suspected. It had been obvious from the outset that she was in denial and intended to stay that way.
Ben had tried not to think how she would react if the worst happened...now he knew. The sound of her sobs tore at him, as did his sense of total, utter helplessness.
Less than three weeks ago he hadn’t known he had a child. He hadn’t known what he’d feel; not feeling anything had been his biggest fear. Yet when he had walked into the room and seen the tiny, terrifyingly frail figure lying asleep in the white hospital bed, her eyelashes fanned out across cheeks that might have once been rosy but were now pale as milk, emotions he had not known existed, feelings he hadn’t known he was capable of, had welled up in his chest. So strong he’d felt as if he were drowning.