Chapter 2
Chapter
Two
You want to leave a baby with me? Have you gone fucking mental?
Milo
I come awake that night suddenly and with a gasp as I realise that someone is in my room.
“Sorry.” Silas’s voice is loud in the quiet. “Sorry to wake you up, Milo, but it’s an emergency.”
I reach over and switch on the bedside lamp and the two of us hiss and shield our eyes for a second. When I uncover them, I cast a quick look at the clock. “What’s the matter?” I ask slowly. “It’s three in the morning.” Then his words sink in and I bolt upright. “What emergency? Is it Cora?”
He shakes his head immediately. “No, calm down. It’s Oz’s mum. She’s fallen and broken her hip.”
“How did she do that?”
“Rollerblading, for God’s sake.” Oz’s voice comes from the doorway and I look up to see him bleary-eyed and dishevelled, dressed in jeans and a crumpled t-shirt and hoody.
He’s holding Cora and doing that slight side-to-side sway that I’ve noticed most people do automatically when they’re holding a baby.
Anything to stop them from potentially crying.
“Is your mum okay?”
Oz nods. “I’ve spoken to her. She’s in pain, obviously, but she’s in hospital. They’re waiting to see the surgeon in the morning to discuss the options.”
I straighten up, pulling my tangled hair away from my face. “So, you’re obviously going to her. That’s fine. We can manage here.”
Silas shakes his head. “It’s not quite that simple.”
“Why?”
Oz comes nearer the bed. “We can’t take Cora with us. I want to, but Silas isn’t keen on exposing her to a hospital and all those germs. She’s just got over that horrible cold.”
“Oh, okay,” I say slowly. “So who are you leaving her with …?” My words trail off as the two of them look straight at me. “Oh my God,” I say slowly but any other words trail away as heavy footsteps sound on the attic steps outside and Niall appears in the doorway.
He’s rumpled like Oz and wearing pyjama shorts, battered old motorcycle boots, and an ancient-looking hoody, but unlike the rest of us he actually looks rested and alert.
“What’s up?” he says deeply. “You said you needed me and it was urgent.” He looks at the three of us with Oz and Silas grouped around the bed with me in it and blinks.
“Okay. If you’re thinking of a threesome, I’d totally leave Cora out of the room. ”
I shake my head.
“You’re disgusting,” Oz mutters but it’s in a slightly admiring tone. He and Niall always spark off each other.
“I know,” he says happily before his eyes take me in. I self-consciously scrub my hands through my hair, wishing it was tied back. His face darkens. “Is the urgency you, Lo? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I mutter, grabbing my hand back that he’s just seized.
“It’s my mum,” Oz interjects. “She’s fallen and broken her hip and Silas and I need to go to her.”
He stands upright, his notorious calmness in a crisis snapping into place. “Of course you do. What do you need?”
Silas pats his arm. “We need to go to London tonight so we can be there when she sees the surgeon. I’m not sure when we’ll be back, but Oz is intending on bringing her back with us.” He pauses. “Oh, and we need to leave Cora with you and Milo.”
Niall’s calmness in a crisis abruptly leaves and he gulps with his eyes bulging. “You want to leave a baby with me? Have you gone fucking mental?”
“And Milo.”
He shakes his head and my hands clench on the sheets at the dismissive gesture. Then I jerk at his next words. “Milo will be fine. It’s me you should be worried about.”
“You love Cora. You’re really good with her,” Silas soothes.
“I’m good at carrying her from one room to the other and then giving her back to one of the three of you. I’m practically an expert at that, but it’s not exactly child rearing.”
“You’re not rearing her,” Oz says smartly. “If we were intending to be gone that long, she’d probably be better off with a pack of wolves than you. She’d certainly end up with more social graces.” He shrugs. “But short-term is fine.”
Niall’s eyes narrow. “How is it that the massive favours you ask from me always manage to sound like insults?”
Oz’s mouth quirks. “It’s a gift.”
Niall shakes his head. “I don’t know. Talk me through it. What if she cries and needs you? What if I break her?”
Then they’re off, all three talking loudly while I sit quietly with Cora in my arms when Oz hands her to me so he can pace.
It’s hardly worth me getting involved. When the personalities are this loud and vibrant, I tend to sink into the background a bit more and I always worry about raising my voice because that’s when the stutter came back in the past. I look down at Cora’s tiny face, her eyes as clear and lively as a little squirrel, and I send one finger dancing through her soft, thick hair.
Becoming aware that the voices have stopped, I look up to find them all staring at me. “What?”
Niall smiles. It’s a fond, warm smile that still has the power to make my heart skip a bit. “I said what do you think?”
I swallow. “About what?”
He blinks. “I mean, do you think we can do it? If you say we can manage, I’ll go along with you.”
“ Me ? You’ll listen to me?”
“Yes. You. Who else?”
“Who knows?” I mutter. I look down at the baby and then back at them.
“Of course we’ll manage,” I say quietly.
“I know how to do bottles and what you’re giving her to wean her, so she’ll be fed.
I’ll move into your apartment so Cora has familiar surroundings.
She can come around with me during the day.
I’ll use the sling that Oz has.” I think hard.
“I’ll stop restoring the Hamilton portrait though.
I don’t think the fumes will be good for her.
I’ll do your job instead, Oz, which shouldn’t present any problems since Silas spent a year trying to make me into a house manager. ”
“You’d have been good at it,” Silas says loyally but I shake my head.
“I’m better with pictures. They don’t talk back.”
“Not something that could ever be said about Oz,” Niall muses. “Any jobs left for me?” His tone is wry but his eyes look proud, which makes me squirm a little.
“Maggie’s away on holiday next week, so you can cook.
” Then Oz, Silas, and I groan. “No, ignore that,” I say quickly.
“We’ll have takeaway.” Niall sniffs but doesn’t correct us, which he couldn’t anyway.
He’s a fantastic but very erratic cook. I don’t know whether it’s because he’s so busy with his phone going all the time and people wanting his attention, or whether he gets distracted, but his meals can be either amazing or so dreadful you swear off food for a few days.
I look up at him. “You’ve got enough on your plate this week,” I say quietly. “Aren’t you repairing the walls in the bottom field?”
His eyes sharpen as his brain almost visibly runs through his itinerary before he nods. “Fair enough. I’ll do my bit around the house, though, and you’ll ring me if you need anything. I’ll tell Barb that you’re to be patched through wherever we are, no matter what.”
I nod and he grins. “Okay, we’re sorted.”
“Just like that?” Silas asks and Niall frowns.
“Milo’s organised it. You need to start paying more attention.” His face softens. “Take Oz and go. Wish your mum all the best from us and don’t worry about a thing.”
Oz looks at Cora in my arms and the war between his worlds is obvious in his eyes. “Don’t worry,” I say quietly. “She’ll be fine. Ring whenever you want, and we can Skype so she can hear your voice.”
He nods and I get up and troop after them, holding Cora tight. Within half an hour they’re packed and ready and after several pauses, while they kiss Cora, Niall and I stand on the steps of the house and watch their taillights disappear down the drive.
Silence falls for a second until he stirs. “Well?” he says meditatively.
“Shit,” I mutter.
He looks at the disappearing car. “Yep, that’s what I wanted to say too.”
The next morning, I sit in the kitchen looking thoughtfully at Cora.
She’s sitting in her high chair with a very stubborn look on her face.
I look down at the breakfast of mashed-up Weetabix.
“Look, I know it isn’t the best thing and you’d rather have milk, but you can’t have that forever and really, I think you’d be bored if you did. ”
She yawns, and I seize the opportunity to stick the spoon full of the disgusting mixture in her mouth.
For a second I think I’ve triumphed, but then she pokes her tongue out and the food neatly reappears.
‘Okay, I know you think you’ve won, but this is a battle that no child triumphs in.
All babies are weaned.” I look at her. “ All babies,” I emphasise.
For a second she stares at me, her little topknot bobbing and her eyes big and wide. Then she screws up her mouth and starts to cry.
“Oh dear,” I soothe, mopping her face. “I know how you’re feeling. I like strawberry Pop-Tarts and chocolate milkshakes, but I can’t eat that all the time.”
“I can’t believe you eat that at any time,” an amused voice comes from the door.
Cora immediately brightens. She’s a sunny child and easily distracted but no more than with Niall. She holds up her arms imploringly and I tut.
“You’d think I’d kept her captive on an island for fifteen years, not in a high chair for a few minutes.”
He looks at the bowl in front of me. “I’d have opted for the island myself,” he says with a moue of disgust. “Can’t you give her something else?”
“What, like bacon and eggs? Or maybe steak and chips?”
He shoots me a slightly startled look, the way he always does when I say something that isn’t meek and quiet.
It irritates me like a splinter stuck in my skin.
Makes me want to say more. Really push his buttons.
I mentally shake my head at myself and reach out to try another spoonful as he moves to the counter where the coffee machine sits.
“Do you want one?” he asks.