Chapter 25
25
Colin Armstrong answered Noah’s call on the first ring.
‘No… I sent Laura home hours ago. She shouldn’t have been here in the first place. She said it wasn’t going to happen, but did you know she was due to have her baby today?’
Noah gritted his teeth. ‘She’s not at home. I’m parked outside her mother’s house and there’s nobody here.’
There was a moment’s startled silence on the other end of the line and then it crackled and Colin’s words were blurred. Reception seemed to be dodgy, probably due to these high winds.
‘…just checking… Hang on…’ There was a long silence. ‘Her mother’s still at work at the medical centre. She said Laura would have called if she needed to go to the hospital.’ There was another short silence and then a sound like a groan. ‘Oh… no … she wouldn’t have done that.’
‘What? Gone to the hospital without telling anyone?’
‘No. Gone to see a house that I gave her the keys to this morning. She said she wanted to have a look but I told her it wasn’t a good idea.’
Noah was looking up at a leaden sky. The wind and rain had dropped for the moment and he could feel an almost ominous stillness outside the car. Then he saw fat, flakes of snow beginning to drift down and stick to his windscreen.
‘Give me the address,’ he demanded.
It wasn’t that far but it was startling how isolated it began to feel as soon as he left the outer edges of Oban behind. He found himself passing a golf course and farmland, with roads too narrow to allow for two directions of traffic even if they weren’t cluttered with broken branches from the trees on both sides of some stretches. He reached a fork in the road but he’d lost reception on his phone completely now and there was no satellite navigation to assist him. With a silent but desperate plea that he was making the right choice, Noah bumped the car over several large branches and kept going. Until he couldn’t go any further. A huge tree had been completely blown over and it was blocking the road and almost covering a small car with its canopy.
A small car that was parked right in front of a small stone cottage – like the one Colin had described. The one that Laura had expressed a desire to go and see.
Noah left his car right where it was, in the middle of the road. He left the driver’s door wide open as he jumped out. He forced his way through the smaller branches until he got to the driver’s door.
And what he saw in Laura’s eyes was far more than he’d expected to see.
There was astonishment, of course. Shock, even, that quickly gave way to relief. Joy, even, judging by the way her eyes filled with tears. There was fear there as well, but more than anything else he could see exactly what he’d been dreaming of seeing ever since he’d almost fled from Julien’s house last night to get to the airport and wait for the first available flight to Scotland.
He could see that he was the person Laura wanted to see more than anyone else in the world.
The person that she loved.
He had to hold her. He might never want to let her go. There was a branch that was making it impossible to open the door and it was thick enough to present quite a challenge to break, but Noah found a strength he didn’t know he had and, with his entire body weight behind that, the branch snapped with a satisfying crack, high enough to make it possible to wrench the door open. He helped Laura out of the car and wrapped his arms around her and they stood there, the foliage of the fallen tree not providing enough protection from the snow that was falling even more heavily. Soft white flakes were catching in the waves of Laura’s hair as she made sounds that were like words but so broken they made absolutely no sense.
‘ Tout va bien ,’ he told her. ‘ Je suis là .’ He kissed her, in case she wasn’t understanding what he was saying. And then he kissed her again. ‘You are safe, mon coeur. Et… je t’aime… je t’adore. Je suis là et je ne te quitterai plus jamais. ’ Somehow he’d lost the ability to translate what he was saying but it didn’t seem to matter. When Laura lifted her face it looked as though she understood him perfectly.
‘You’re here,’ she whispered. ‘And I love you. I love you so much, Noah… I… I…’ Her face crumpled and her fingers were digging into his arms with a force that was painful, but it was Laura who cried out.
‘Oh, mon Dieu ,’ Noah said. ‘Is it the baby?’
Laura nodded, unable to speak.
‘We have to get you into my car. I can get you to the hospital.’
But Laura shook her head. ‘There’s no time…’ She took a gasping breath. ‘The contractions are too close now…’
‘You have the keys to this house, yes?’
‘In my bag…’
‘ Ne bouge pas .’ Noah had the keys in his hands seconds later. He held the smaller branches back to give Laura a pathway through the foliage, opened the gate to the cottage garden, then scooped her into his arms to carry her to shelter.
* * *
The living area of the cottage was tiny. And cold. But there was a couch and a blanket draped over the back of it. Noah grabbed the blanket and wrapped it around Laura’s shoulders.
‘You’re shaking. I will light the fire. Can you lie down?’
‘I think I need to stand up at the moment.’ Laura pulled the blanket around her. She walked to the back of the couch and leaned on it, knowing that another contraction wasn’t far away. She’d been timing them over the hours she’d been stuck in her car. They’d been fifteen minutes apart to start with and lasting only about forty seconds, but the last two had only been six minutes apart and they’d lasted so long she’d almost forgotten how to breathe.
She’d been so convinced she was about to give birth, in a car, entirely alone, and she’d been terrified. She’d seen the headlights of an approaching vehicle through the screen of the branches and leaves and she’d hoped with all her heart that it was someone from the emergency services. If she could have waved a magic wand and had her greatest wish come true, the vehicle would turn out to be an ambulance and some skilled paramedics would be by her side in seconds. Until she saw Noah’s face at the window and knew that the greatest wish she would ever have in her life was to be with him. To be held by him.
And… maybe somewhere, somehow, it looked like a magic wand had been waved because, judging by the look in his eyes, she could add being loved by him to the list.
He was crouched in front of a fireplace that had been left piled with pine cones and kindling twigs and there was a basket of neatly cut logs beside the hearth. Even seeing the flames start to flicker made Laura feel warmer but she was still shaking. An odd, rather violent kind of shaking. And then another contraction began and Laura gasped in horror as she felt the wetness soaking the legs of her maternity jeans. She could feel something else, too. Something she’d never felt before, but she knew instantly what it was.
‘The baby’s coming,’ she said in alarm. ‘I can feel her head …’
Noah was there. Right beside her. ‘What do you need me to do?’
‘I… I think I need to get on the floor. You’ll have to take my jeans off… We’re going to need some towels…’ She had to stop talking as the contraction built. She couldn’t even move to get onto the floor. All she could do was lean into Noah’s arms and hang on for dear life.
Things got a little blurry for Laura after that, but she found she was on the floor on her hands and knees, in front of the fire, with soft towels beneath her and more in a pile beside Noah. He took hold of her hand.
‘Feel this,’ he said, his voice awed.
He took her hand and put it between her legs and she could feel her baby’s head had been born. She could feel the damp whorls of hair under her hand and Noah’s hand on top of hers. They could both feel their baby being born as a final contraction built and their daughter slipped out into her father’s hands and into the world.
‘She’s not crying.’ Laura twisted her body so that she could see what Noah was doing. If felt like her heart was about to stop beating. ‘Babies are supposed to cry.’
Noah was wrapping the newborn in a clean towel, being careful of the umbilical cord that was still attached. ‘She’s looking at me,’ he said. ‘Her skin is pink and she’s breathing. I think she’s good… maybe she’s too happy to cry?’ He gently put the baby into Laura’s arms as she lay down on her side.
She opened the towel and pulled up her jumper so that the infant could be against her own skin.
‘ Non …’ Noah’s voice sounded suspiciously clogged with tears as he knelt beside Laura. ‘I don’t think she’s good.’
Her swift upward glance was fearful but Noah was smiling.
‘I think she’s perfect,’ he whispered.
He leaned down to place a heartbreakingly tender kiss on Laura’s lips. He touched his daughter’s head with the tip of his finger but his gaze went straight back to Laura’s.
‘Just like her mama.’
Noah took cushions from the couch to make it possible for Laura to sit up enough to cradle her baby against her breasts, and he covered them both with a blanket and then sat with one arm around Laura and the other on the baby’s back so that it felt as if he was holding them both.
It felt as if a family had just been born.
They knew they might not have long like this. From far away, they could already hear the faint sound of a siren.
‘I love you, Noah.’
‘ Je t’aime aussi ,’ he said. He pressed a kiss to her hair this time. ‘I thought I could stop myself. That it would keep me safe if I didn’t let myself love you but… I’ve never been safe, Laura. Not since the first moment I saw you.’
‘Same,’ Laura whispered. She looked up to catch his gaze. ‘We can keep each other safe from now on, can’t we?’
‘ Tout à fait ,’ Noah murmured. ‘ Et notre poupée .’ He bent his head enough to kiss their baby’s head.
They could hear vehicle doors slamming outside the house now. Flashing lights were being reflected in the windows. Their precious time alone was over.
But Laura was still looking down at the baby in her arms. The tiny girl who was quietly gazing back at her parents. Then she looked up and found herself falling into the love she could see in Noah’s eyes.
Those eyes suddenly widened. ‘I almost forgot,’ he said softly. He reached behind him and pulled something from his pocket.
‘Ohh…’ How had Laura managed to forget about that little brown bear? The very first thing she had ever bought for her daughter because it was ‘ parfait pour un bébé’ . Her baby.
‘We got a call.’ A paramedic was coming through the door. ‘We heard that you might need us.’
Laura was watching Noah tuck the little bear into the folds of the towel wrapped around the baby. A baby girl that now had both her mother and her father to adore her – and each other.
‘It’s great you’re here,’ she told the paramedic. ‘But I think we’ve got everything we could possibly need already…’