LITMIR.BIZ

      ‘You’re crazy.’

      ‘Dan, I had no choice. I broke the last bottle and the things weren’t sterilized.’

      He smiled and shook his head. ‘I didn’t mean that. I meant you’re crazy trying the pump in the first place when you should have been doing this all along.’

      ‘I was trying to keep some distance,’ she explained, and he laughed softly.

      ‘You? I don’t think so. I think you’re doing what you should have been doing all along—and I think you think so, too.’

      She looked down at Kizzy, so dear to her, and swallowed. ‘Except when she goes to her new home, it’s just going to be even harder for her.’

      ‘Well, I guess there’s only one thing for it.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘You’ll just have to adopt her yourself.’

      She stared at him, aghast, and then turned back to Kizzy, blinking away the sudden tears.

      ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, her throat clogged. ‘I can’t do that. I’ve already got Beth and Freddie.’

      ‘So what’s one more? And you can’t tell me you don’t love her. I’ve seen you with her. Look at you—made for each other. How can you let her go?’

      She couldn’t—and it was going to tear her apart. She looked up at Dan in anguish. ‘What part of no don’t you understand? I can’t do it. I can’t afford another child. Especially not this one.’

      ‘Because she isn’t really Harry’s?’

      She shook her head. ‘No. Because she is, in every way that matters. And—’

      She broke off, and Dan finished the sentence for her. ‘And because you love him?’

      She looked away. ‘I’m so silly. I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t mean to let myself get so involved.’

      ‘So why go to him in the night?’ he murmured.

      ‘We watched the sun come up,’ she said, remembering. ‘And because it was in the east, I realised that he’d see it hours before me, and if I go and watch it come up, it’ll be over him, getting low in the sky, but he’ll still be able to see it.’ She looked at Dan and smiled sadly. ‘I couldn’t let him go again. Not without knowing. I could lose him, Dan. He might be killed. Maybe not this time, but the next, or the next. Maybe when he’s reporting on a war. They get shot, taken hostage, murdered, blown up—it happens regularly. And there could be another earthquake where he is now. It’s terribly dangerous, everything he does. And I thought, if he dies, and I’ve never found out what it would be like with him, never held him, never shared that…’

      She broke off, not knowing how to say it, but she didn’t need to. Dan was beside her, holding her, offering her a tissue and giving her a gentle hug. ‘I understand. I would feel the same. And I guess he did, too.’

      ‘It was sort of goodbye,’ she said unevenly. ‘And maybe—perhaps there was a part of me that hoped it might bring him back to me. Bring him to his senses. Make him realise all the things here waiting for him at home.’

      ‘Maybe this tour will. Maybe it’s just what he needs—to go from this to that.’

      She shook her head. ‘It’ll just remind him of what it’s like to be free, to have nothing more significant to think of than picking up his passport on the way out of the door.’

      She looked down at Kizzy. ‘Dan, I can’t adopt her. I have to let her go. If I don’t, I’ll never be able to let go of Harry and move on.’

      She was sleeping now, her little rosebud lips still white with milk, and carefully, so as not to wake her, Emily lifted her against her shoulder and walked with her until she brought up her wind, then carried her upstairs and changed her and put her down.

      Then she went into Freddie’s room and stared down at him, her baby, flat out on his back, arms and legs outstretched, sprawled the full length of his cot. He was outgrowing it, she realised. He’d need a bed soon. Maybe Beth’s. She was getting big for her little bed, but it would be perfect for Freddie.

      And then who would have the cot?

      No! She mustn’t let herself think about it. It was madness. Anyway, he probably wouldn’t want her to have Kizzy, because it would mean he would never be able to let her go, either. He’d always be thinking about her, and if he ever came back, he’d want to see her, and they’d never be able to move on, any of them.

      And she wasn’t foolish enough to imagine that one short hour in his arms would make any difference to him, no matter how wonderful it was. For her, at least.

      For him, it had probably been simply a matter of propinquity. She’d been there, he’d felt a need to hold someone close.

      Freddie stirred, his eyes flickered open and he smiled. ‘Mummy,’ he said, holding out his arms, and she lifted him from his cot and cradled him tight and inhaled the warm baby smell of him.

      She’d been happy before Harry had come back into her life—happy with Beth and Freddie and holding the fort for her parents, happy working for Nick and Georgie and doing other contracts locally.

      Worried about money, yes, but happy, for all that. Contented. At peace.

      Not so now. Now she was in turmoil, and she couldn’t imagine it feeling any better for a long, long while.

      If ever.