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pushed me onto the plane. I wasn’t convinced that I should come here but they insisted.’

      ‘Then they can’t be too overprotective. You and Bea have travelled a long way and you’re definitely not under their watchful eyes now.’

      Juliet smiled. ‘What about you?’ she enquired. ‘Are your parents here in the Cotswolds?’

      Charlie’s smile seemed to drop instantly. The cheery disposition Juliet had been enjoying seemed to slip away and she wished she hadn’t asked. She prayed they too hadn’t died. That would be a heavy burden for someone to bear. She watched as he stood up slowly and walked to the window, looking out into the distance. He didn’t appear to be focusing on anything in particular.

      ‘It’s none of my business, really you don’t have to answer.’

      Charlie stared ahead, still saying nothing for a few moments. ‘No. My parents both passed while I was in medical school. They left me a sizable inheritance to ensure I could complete my studies but they left me alone. No brothers or sisters.’

      ‘I’m so sorry.’

      ‘It was a long time ago and it only hits home occasionally. Usually around holidays like Christmas when it’s all about family time.’ Charlie rested back into his chair. ‘On the subject of family, I overheard you tell the nurse in A&E that Bea only has one parent. And tell me if I’m overstepping the line but are you widowed like me...or divorced?’

      Juliet reached into her bag for her bottle of water and took a large sip. She had known the subject could arise but she wished it had not been that day. She had no intention of blurting out to him details around her irresponsible one-night stand. She was a doctor and she slept with a man she didn’t know and fell pregnant. Juliet accepted that it wasn’t the eighteen-hundreds, as her father had often said, but the circumstance of Bea’s conception, in her eyes, still made her look fairly naive and irresponsible.

      Charlie was so conservative in almost every way and to announce that, By the way I was reckless, slept with a man I barely knew, trusted him when he said he’d handled the contraception and as a result became a single mother, but the rest of the time I’m incredibly responsible...except of course for the day we met and Bea was alone in the playground and fell...and last week when I decided on a minute’s notice to drag a four-year-old halfway around the world.

      Any way she looked at the situation, she felt that Charlie might judge her.

      But then why did she care? His opinion shouldn’t matter. But it did. She had been silly enough to trust a man who didn’t deserve that trust the night Bea was conceived and naive enough to think there would be more than one night. Perhaps even forever.

      She doubted that Charlie ever threw caution to the wind and for that reason she felt anxious about confessing her stupidity. But just as Charlie had told her about his wife and his parents she felt she should give him the same level of honesty.

      ‘Bea’s never met her father but he is alive and living somewhere in Western Australia.’ There it was said. Out in the open. And she knew the floodgates were also open to the barrage of questions that would follow. And she would answer all of them truthfully. Or not answer them at all.

      ‘May I ask why?’

      ‘It’s for the best,’ she mumbled. ‘It’s just that he’s not a good person. To be frank, he’s the worst type of bad.’

      ‘Really?’

      ‘Truly.’

      ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

      She momentarily closed her eyes and took a shallow breath. It was a risk to tell such a man about her stupid night, very stupid night with a serial womaniser. It made her appear as young and naive as she knew she looked.

      ‘Then you don’t have to...’

      ‘No, I want to...’ She swallowed pensively. ‘The reason Bea’s father has never met her...is because we haven’t seen each other since I became pregnant.’

      ‘So he left you when he discovered you were having his baby?’

      ‘Not exactly. He left long before I knew.’

      ‘How long before?’ he asked.

      ‘He left the morning after I became pregnant and he’s married so there’s no point going there.’

      ‘Married?’

      ‘He wasn’t at the time...but he married a few weeks later. He was apparently engaged when we met but I had no idea. I discovered later, much later, he was a serial womaniser. He married before I had even known I was pregnant.’

      ‘But he should have been held accountable. A man can’t just walk away from the responsibility of his own child.’

      That was what Juliet’s father had said despite not knowing the identity of the man. No one knew the identity of the father, not even her parents. It was Juliet’s secret. Perth was not a huge city and she did not want her father to confront Bea’s father and tell him what he thought. It would have opened a Pandora’s box and she thought that Bea might be the one to suffer the most.

      ‘It wasn’t long after the wedding I discovered he and his new bride were expecting triplets.’

      ‘How did you discover that?’

      ‘A cruel twist of fate had his wife’s OBGYN reach out to me when a complication arose during the pregnancy. I couldn’t bring myself to consult on the case so I deferred to another neonatal surgeon. How could I operate on the children of a man I despised so completely? If anything had gone wrong I feared that I’d have questioned myself for eternity and far more than anyone else ever would for sure, but it wasn’t worth the risk.’

      Charlie sat shaking his head. ‘Still he should provide support for his daughter. It must be hard as a single mother, financially and emotionally.’

      Juliet rested back into the generous padding on her high-backed chair. ‘It is but I wouldn’t change a thing. I adore Bea. She’s my world.’

      ‘She’s adorable...despite her father. That must be because she’s got more of you in her.’

      Juliet smiled up at the man who was close to capturing her heart but she wasn’t ready to let him. She still couldn’t risk being hurt again.

      ‘Thank you.’

      ‘It’s definitely his loss,’ Charlie began before shifting the direction of the conversation slightly. ‘Will you ever let Bea reach out to him?’

      Juliet felt a warm feeling rush over her with his words. She would never have expected Charlie to say something like that. He wasn’t judging her at all. He hadn’t reacted the way she had feared.

      ‘With three children under his belt and, from the gossip around Perth, more than a few post-honeymoon flings and another one or two since the birth of his children, I don’t want him in her life. He’s a real-estate developer with no conscience and both the means and opportunity to entertain other women and he’s been doing that for a very long time. I will be thinking long and hard about allowing Bea to be the fourth, and unwanted, child of the man who enjoyed a pre-wedding fling with me despite having a fiancée at home waiting for him.’

      ‘And if she asks about her father growing up?’

      Juliet had not decided how she would respond when Bea asked about her daddy. And invariably she would one day.

      ‘I’m not sure how I’ll handle it. Despite my feelings about the man who fathered Bea, he’s after all half of Bea and I want my daughter to grow up proud of who she is, not doubting herself because of her father’s despicable behaviour. It’s a dilemma I’ll face later. Although I must admit recently I’m beginning to believe it will perhaps be sooner rather than later. Almost all of Bea’s little friends at playgroup have fathers and Bea’s beginning to talk about their daddies. She has a grandpa who had just retired but then... But that’s another

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