LITMIR.BIZ

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out of bed and stumbled into the living room. ‘Shh, baby,’ she whispered—but the baby just kept screaming.

      Just as Amy scooped the baby out of the Moses basket, she heard Josh mumble, ‘My turn. I’ve got this.’

      ‘I’m awake now. I’ll do it,’ she said.

      ‘We’ll do it together,’ Josh said. ‘Cuddle the baby or do the milk?’

      Amy inhaled the sweet, powdery scent of the baby.

      A baby she couldn’t afford to bond with. So it would be better not to get too close now.

      ‘Milk,’ she said, and handed Hope to him.

      ‘Shh, baby,’ he crooned.

      On autopilot, Amy boiled the kettle and put the baby’s bottle in a glass jug to heat the milk. She nearly scalded herself when she poured boiling water into the jug, and it splashed.

      ‘Everything OK?’ Josh asked, seeing her jump.

      ‘Yes,’ she fibbed. The last thing she wanted was for him to guess how stupid and useless she felt.

      ‘Sorry I didn’t wake sooner. I guess my shift took more out of me than I thought,’ he said. ‘I’m supposed to be helping. I’ve let you down.’

      And then the penny dropped.

      She wasn’t the only one finding it hard to do this.

      ‘You’re fine,’ she said. ‘We’re both new at this. I always tell my class, you learn more if you get it wrong first time.’

      ‘I guess.’ He sounded rueful. ‘Except a baby is a hell of a lot tougher than a page of maths problems. And, given how many babies I treat in the course of a month, I should be better at this.’

      ‘There’s a big difference between treating a baby and looking after one full time,’ she reminded him. ‘And didn’t you say to me earlier that Hope doesn’t know if we’re doing it wrong?’

      ‘Yeah. I’m glad I’m not doing this on my own,’ he said.

      He’d admitted it first, so it made it easier for her to say, ‘Me, too. I never expected it to be this hard—you’re desperate for sleep, but you’re also too scared to sleep because you want to keep an eye on the baby.’

      ‘All the what ifs,’ he agreed. ‘Being a medic is a bad thing, because you know all the worst-case scenarios and your mind goes into overdrive. You start thinking you’re seeing symptoms when there aren’t any. And then you’re not sure if you’re being ridiculously paranoid or if you really are seeing something.’

      ‘And if you’re not a medic, you look up stuff on the Internet and scare yourself stupid,’ she said. ‘Being a parent—even a stand-in—is way harder than I thought.’

      ‘Especially the first night, when you don’t have a clue what to expect,’ Josh agreed.

      ‘We’re a right pair,’ she said ruefully.

      ‘No. We’re a team,’ Josh said.

      And that spooked her even more. It was so long since she’d seen herself in a partnership that she didn’t know how to react. Then she shook herself. He meant they were a team, not a couple. She was reading too much into this. To cover how flustered she felt, she shook a couple of drops of milk onto the inside of her wrist to check the temperature. ‘I think it’s OK for her, now.’

      ‘Thanks. Go back to bed,’ he said. ‘I’ve got this.’

      ‘Sure?’ she checked.

      ‘Sure.’

      ‘OK.’ And this time she felt more relaxed when she snuggled under the duvet—enough to let her drift into sleep.

      The next time the baby cried, Amy got up and scooped up the Moses basket. ‘Shh, baby,’ she whispered. ‘Two minutes.’

      ‘OK?’ Josh asked from the sofa, sounding wide awake this time.

      He hadn’t been joking about usually being fully awake in seconds, then.

      ‘It’s fine. It’s my turn to feed her,’ she said quietly. And the way they’d muddled through together earlier had given her confidence. ‘Go back to sleep.’

      She took the baby into the kitchen and cuddled her as she warmed the milk, then took the baby into her bedroom, kept the light down low, and cuddled the baby as she fed her.

      This felt so natural, so right. But she had to remind herself sharply that this was only temporary and she couldn’t let herself bond too closely to Hope—or start thinking about Josh as anything more than just a neighbour. By New Year, life would be back to normal again. They’d be back to smiling and nodding in the corridor, maybe exchanging an extra word or two. But that would be it.

      Once the baby fell asleep again, Amy laid her gently back in the Moses basket and padded into the living room. Josh was asleep on the sofa, and this time he didn’t wake.

      * * *

      A couple of hours later, when Hope started to grizzle again, Josh was awake in seconds.

      ‘Shh, baby,’ he whispered, and jiggled her one-handed against his shoulder as he set about making up a bottle.

      When it had been his turn to deal with the baby, he’d made a complete hash of it. Not being used to listening out for a newborn, he’d slept through Hope’s cries. But it turned out that Amy had been having the same kind of self-doubts that he had. Given that she’d seemed so cool, calm and collected, he’d been shocked. And then relieved. Because it meant that they were in this together.

      And they made a good team.

      To the point where he actually believed that he could do this—be a stand-in parent to an abandoned baby.

      Then he realised he’d been a bit overconfident when he burped Hope and she brought up all the milk she’d just drunk. All over both of them.

      He really hoped Amy didn’t wake and find them both in this state. ‘I dare not give you a bath,’ he whispered to the baby. He knew she’d scream the place down, even if he managed to put water in the bath without waking Amy. But when he stripped off her sleep suit and vest, he discovered that luckily the baby wasn’t soaked to the skin. Unlike him—but he was the adult and he’d live with it. He changed the baby into clean clothes, gave her more milk, then finally settled her back into the Moses basket.

      Which left him cold and wet and smelling disgusting. He could hardly have a shower right now without waking Amy, and he couldn’t go back to his own flat because he didn’t have a key to Amy’s. Grimacing, he stripped off his T-shirt and scrubbed the worst of the milk off his skin with a baby wipe.

      Was this what life would’ve been like if he and Kelly had had a family? Would he have made as much of a mess of being a real dad as he was making of being a stand-in dad? Or maybe Amy was right and he was being too hard on himself. But he was seriously glad he wasn’t looking after the baby on his own. It helped to be able to talk to someone else and admit that you didn’t know what you were doing, and for them to say the same to you. And he was pretty sure now that he’d be able to get through this week—because Amy was on his team.

      * * *

      The next time Amy heard Hope crying, her eyes felt gritty from lack of sleep. Either the baby had slept a bit longer between feeds this time, or Amy had been too deeply asleep to hear her crying at the last feed.

      When she stumbled into the kitchen to put the kettle on and checked the top shelf of the fridge, she realised it was the latter; Josh had done the last feed. He’d left her a note propped against the kettle. His handwriting was hard to read and she smiled to herself. Josh was definitely living up to the cliché of all medics having a terrible scrawl. Eventually she deciphered the note.

      On early shift this morning—back for about 5.30 this evening—Merry Christmas, J

      Christmas.

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