A Father by Christmas Read online

  He was right, for the man, a burly-looking thirty-something in footy shorts and a bright Hawaiian shirt, let go of the little boy he’d been holding, patted his shoulder and turned to Gib, the open penknife wavering in his hand.

  ‘Come on, mate, I’ll take you up,’ Gib said, putting his arm around the man’s shoulders and leading him out of the centre. ‘Out of the way,’ he ordered the police, holding tight to the man in case someone moved too suddenly or said something to freak him out again. ‘Someone get a lift down for us. We’re going straight upstairs.’

  He was so intent on getting the man somewhere quiet so he could explain his lie, he barely noticed Sophie staring at him as if transfixed, white horror still etched on her face, although she must know by now that Thomas would be safe.

  The police fell back and although someone suggested the man give up his knife, he clung to it, holding it still open but by his side.

  Once in the lift, Gib pressed the button for the floor they needed, then turned to the man and put his hands on his shoulders.

  This was the moment when things could get nasty but he couldn’t let the man continue to believe the lie. At least with just the two of them in the lift, he, Gib, was the only one who could get hurt.

  ‘I lied to you, mate,’ he said quietly. ‘But I had to get you out of there. Hurting a child down there wasn’t going to make things right for your Michael, and how would your wife have coped if you’d ended up in jail? Now, more than ever before, she needs you by her side. She needs you with her when she says goodbye to Michael, needs you to hold her, and needs you to share her grief.’

  The man looked at him with stricken eyes.

  ‘He’s not alive?’

  ‘Not really,’ Gib said gently, aware this could be the moment when the man used the knife.

  ‘But it’s me that killed him. I backed over him. We were going to the beach—I was getting the car out—I thought he was with Lisa then there was a bump.’

  Gib put his arms around the man and gave him a hug.

  ‘She won’t want to talk to me—she won’t want me near her. Why would she?’

  The words were broken by sobs and Gib stopped the lift between floors, a trick he’d learned while in med school, and held the man until the wild flood of grief had eased.

  ‘It must be the very worst thing that can ever happen to a human being, but don’t you think your wife will be blaming herself as well—blaming herself for not watching him? Neither of you are to blame—it was an accident. You can’t carry that kind of guilt through your lives. These things happen and we can only suppose that for some reason they are meant to be.’

  The man pushed away and folded up his knife, then held it in the palm of his hand and stared at it as if trying to work out what it was.

  ‘We were going to go fishing. That’s why I had the knife. It’s got little tweezers on it for holding the fish hook while you tease it out of the fish’s mouth.’

  Gib swallowed hard, then started the lift again, sending it up to the children’s ICU. The doors opened on three policemen huddled around a third figure.

  ‘Lisa!’ The man fell into the arms of the woman they were escorting, and she held him close, then, ignoring the police, she led him back into the ICU, crying brokenly while he now soothed and comforted her.

  Resisting an urge to rearrange the features of the insensitive oaf who’d approached the delicate subject of organ donation so brutally, Gib made his way back to his own domain.

  Sophie sat on the floor of the child-care centre, Thomas on her knee, her arms clasped around him, her mind not on the story Vicki was reading in an attempt to restore normality to the group but on Gib’s words.

  But no matter how she twisted them, they still made no sense.

  She should have phoned Paula and sorted out the paternity thing once and for all, but she’d been wrapped in a selfish little cloud of bliss, wanting only for today to come so she and Gib could progress to the next stage of their relationship.

  He’d said ‘my son’. It had to mean something.

  She did the sums again. Thomas was just over three so he’d been conceived four years ago. Would a man who’d still been wearing his wedding ring four years after his wife’s death have had an affair with Hilary either just before or just after that death?

  Unlikely!

  And where would they have met?

  Medicine and science crossed paths often, but Hilary wasn’t the kind of person who would have rushed into an affair.

  Surely not with a man whose wife was ill.

  But what if it had happened that way, and what if Gillian had found out, and what if…?

  Would that explain the guilt Gib felt about her death?

  The thought made Sophie want to cry.

  Thomas, not in the least concerned about the drama that had been played out, eased himself out of her arms and took off to play with a friend, and Sophie stood up. Enough useless speculation. She’d phone Paula.

  Right now!

  Not from her office but from one of the public phones in the foyer.

  She said goodbye to Thomas, borrowed some change from the centre manager, who was sitting, still shaky, in her office, then made the call.

  ‘Paula, I know this will seem like a strange question, but was Hilary friendly with any particular man at the institute?’

  ‘Only Gib, but you’d know that, having seen him at the service. As you know, she was a very private person, but I’d say if she talked to anyone about anything, it would have been Gib.’

  The words resounded meaninglessly in Sophie’s suddenly empty head, and her stomach lurched with physical denial.

  ‘Gib?’ she managed at last. ‘My Gib?’

  He wasn’t her Gib but Paula apparently knew what she meant.

  ‘Alexander Gibson from the NICU,’ she clarified. ‘Didn’t you know he worked here for some years? His wife was sick and he needed a job with regular hours so he could care for her at night. I think he had a carer living in for the daytime. We were working on genetic links with pre-term births and he has a science degree as well as his medical one, and his specialty was neonates, so it was a terrific fit. He worked alongside Hilary so naturally they’d have grown close.’

  Naturally they’d have grown close?

  He had a sick wife! Sophie wanted to yell into the phone, as hopes and dreams came crashing down around her.

  ‘Thanks, Paula,’ she managed, but Paula wasn’t appeased by the simple words and asked why Sophie needed to know.

  Sophie scrabbled around in her devastated mind.

  ‘Hilary left something that could be his.’

  It had been intended as an excuse, but even as Sophie said goodbye the horrible truth of the statement struck her so forcibly she shuddered.

  Thomas could be his child.

  Not only that, but if he wanted to claim him, he already had a built-in carer for him.

  My son! he’d said, less than an hour earlier.

  He knew!

  And hadn’t said anything to her?

  Sophie sighed and rested her head against the plastic privacy bubble that surrounded the phone.

  She’d fallen in love with her sister’s lover.

  And if that wasn’t bad enough, he wasn’t the man she’d thought him. He obviously hadn’t loved Hilary because he’d cravenly refused to have anything to do with her child.

  He’d taken advantage of Hilary’s feelings for him, betrayed his wife—or her memory—then denied his own child.

  Bleak black clouds of despair hovered in Sophie’s head, while her heart wept blood for the love that might have been.

  But he wouldn’t get Thomas! No man who could be so callous was going to have her beloved child.

  Confused and terrified, she searched for a solution.

  Not that there was any choice. She had to see Gib. Had to demand to know what had gone on in the past—and what was going on in his mind now.

  Fear gave way to anger as she made her way back
up to the NICU, where she was relieved to find it was quiet, and no nurses were demanding she look at this baby or that.

  Then she remembered she’d last seen Gib disappearing into a lift with a man who’d had a knife, and, in spite of her anger, her heart stopped beating.

  ‘Is Gib back?’ Dry lips formed the question, directed to the nearest nurse, who tilted her head in the direction of his office.

  Sophie charged towards it, manners dispensed with as she barged straight in.

  ‘Sophie? Are you all right? Is Thomas OK? The other kids?’

  He stood up and came towards her, putting his hands on her shoulders and looking searchingly into her face.

  Her resolve weakened, though she knew she should be strong, so it took a mammoth effort to pull away from those comforting hands and confront the man who had just destroyed her happiness.

  ‘You said “my son”!’ she said, her voice rising as anger won the battle with desire. ‘What makes you think Thomas is your son? Because you had an affair with my sister? Is that it? While you were married to an ill woman, or did you wait until Gillian died? I saw you at the service and I thought you were there because you cared for me and had somehow found out about it but, no, you were there for Hilary—for the woman who bore the son you didn’t want to acknowledge. I can’t believe it. I can’t understand it. Not you, or Hilary’s behaviour, or anyone not wanting to have contact with their child, not any of it. Not even how you knew. And worst of all that you knew and didn’t tell me! Here I’ve been, organising a memorial service so I could find Thomas’s father, and he’s right there under my nose the whole time, only too cowardly to tell me—too cowardly to want a child.’

  The angst and anger had flowed out with the words, leaving Sophie suddenly depleted, so she wasn’t sure what to do next.

  She’d wanted answers but now she didn’t want to hear them—didn’t want to know her sister and this man had been lovers.

  Didn’t want to know anything!

  She turned to walk away but he caught her and swung her around so she was all but in his arms.

  Her body ached to rest against his—to be held close to him until all the pain and rage subsided—but that would be fatal and her mind retained enough working brain cells to know it, so she pushed away from him again and left the room, hearing his urgent ‘Sophie, we must talk,’ but refusing to heed it.

  ‘Mistletoe!’ Albert greeted her as she returned to the ward. He was holding a sprig of plastic greenery in the air above her head and kissed her soundly on the lips.

  Someone applauded and she turned to see Gib standing not far behind her. A nurse snatched the mistletoe from Albert and held it over Gib’s head, kissing him then twirling away and kissing Albert before heading towards the foyer in search of other men to kiss.

  Albert caught Gib’s attention and the pair went over to the new baby’s crib, discussing, from what Sophie could hear of the conversation, whether the little girl could go home. Normally she would go into the intermediate ward, where babies with slight problems following their birth were kept for a few days, but being Christmas…

  Sophie sighed, then looked around. The young paediatrician was here, Gib was here, she was working on Christmas Day so logically she was due some extra time off.

  She’d collect Thomas early and take him to the park. She’d get some bread and they’d feed the ducks and then they’d go and get a burger and stay there for a very long time.

  Yes, she wanted some answers from Gib—just not tonight, not when it was meant to be their special night together.

  ‘Oh, Sophie, have you seen Mackenzie?’ Maria’s question put paid to her plans—as if she could have left anyway, when her job was here.

  ‘Not since this morning,’ she replied, following Maria to Mackenzie’s crib.

  ‘Look!’ Maria said, and Sophie saw the little girl lying with her eyes wide open, turning towards Maria as she murmured her daughter’s name.

  Smiling?

  Not possible, but no way Sophie was going to dampen Maria’s joy by mentioning wind.

  Anyway, maybe it was a smile—as she and Gib had once agreed, miracles did happen.

  Gib!

  ‘I fed her this morning, just a little after I’d expressed my milk, and she’s not showing any reaction—isn’t that great?’

  ‘It’s wonderful,’ Sophie agreed, her nerve-endings twitching to attention as Gib approached.

  ‘It is indeed,’ he said, standing so close to Sophie she wanted to howl in protest. Or move away. But she was trapped between the crib and the man behind her.

  ‘And Carly, Kristie and Angus are all doing well. I was surprised at how quickly their bilirubin levels dropped. Well done, Sophie, for starting the phototherapy so early.’

  ‘I was following accepted protocols,’ she snapped, not wanting his praise, not wanting him close to her.

  ‘Accepted protocols don’t always help us, though, because situations differ. A bit like promises.’

  He walked away, his shoulder lightly brushing against Sophie’s back as he turned.

  ‘What’s he talking about?’ Maria asked.

  ‘Who knows?’ Sophie muttered, then added an angry ‘Who cares?’ under her breath, although she knew the answer to that one.

  She did.

  But now she was in the nursery, she moved on to see the babies who’d had phototherapy. Helen was nursing Angus, holding the little boy against her breast, while Dan had his big hand resting in the crib with the other two.

  ‘I know I can do this in the special room,’ Helen said apologetically, ‘but he feeds so much better if he’s near his sisters.’

  ‘He’s a funny wee scrap, isn’t he?’ Sophie said, looking down into the angelic pink face and the little red lips sucking greedily at his mother’s breast. ‘Do you think it’s a macho thing? That he feels responsible for his sisters?’

  ‘More likely he’s got used to his sisters looking out for him.’

  This time she hadn’t heard—or felt—Gib approach, although this time he was wheeling the crib with Baby Neilsen in it, so maybe that had cut off the vibes.

  ‘My sisters have always believed I was their responsibility—still do, though we’re all over forty. Poor Angus, he’s got a lifetime of being bossed by females ahead of him.’

  This was normal NICU chat—the stuff that went on all the time when no one was in crisis. Even during crises, at times. But how could Gib do it? How could he be so unconcerned when the—what, love?—that had been building between them had blown up in their faces?

  ‘If everything’s under control, I might leave now,’ she managed to say, reverting to her earlier idea of getting out of the place.

  ‘Go right ahead. Thomas could probably do with some extra mothering.’

  She spun towards him, wanting to yell at him again, to tell him not to use Thomas’s name, but his blue eyes were burning into hers—telling her things she didn’t understand. Telling her everything would be all right…

  How?

  She turned away, then heard his voice, introducing Baby Neilsen to Maria and Helen and Dan.

  ‘This is Alexander John Neilsen,’ he said, and Sophie had to smile. Baby Neilsen finally had a name; Carly, Kristie and Angus were over their jaundice; Mackenzie was showing no ill effects from enteral feeding—Christmas joy was flooding through the NICU.

  Flooding through the child-care centre as well, she realised when Thomas pushed stars and cards and a crushed-looking present into her hands.

  ‘For under the tree. Did you know Santa puts presents under the tree, Sophie? And we can put presents there as well. Can we put a present there for Aunt Etty? And for Gib?’

  She chose to ignore the last question.

  ‘I’ve got a present for you to give to Aunt Etty,’ she assured him.

  ‘And one for Gib? I like Gib.’

  Only because Gib could lift him on his shoulders, and could throw him into the water with a huge splash.

  She pushed the ungr
acious thoughts aside.

  ‘What do you think Gib might like?’ she asked.

  ‘Chocolate elephants,’ Thomas announced, so certain of the choice Sophie could only stare at him.

  ‘Because I know he likes chocolate, Aunt Etty told me, and he knows I like elephants because he read me the elephant story, so we could give him chocolate elephants and he might share.’

  Three-year-old logic, was Sophie’s first thought, but the second one, following close on its heels, was a question.

  ‘When did Gib read you the elephant story?’

  ‘When he put me to bed.’

  They were at the car, and conversation ceased while she buckled him into his seat, but at least Sophie had one answer. He’d seen the photo of Hilary by Thomas’s bed and done the sums.

  But hadn’t told her.

  And Thomas wanted her to buy chocolate elephants as a gift?

  They fed the ducks, wandered through the park, had dinner at McDonald’s, then hired some DVDs from the video store and went home. Thomas was asleep in the car by the time they arrived.

  Sophie changed him and tucked him into bed, then, not wanting to run into Gib, she phoned Etty and asked if she’d be around for an hour or so.

  ‘Last-minute shopping,’ Sophie explained, wondering if there were such things as chocolate elephants and assuming if there were, then the chocolate shop in the big local shopping centre would have them.

  ‘Just turn the monitor on,’ Etty said, ‘and when you get back, why don’t you come in and have a Christmas drink with me?’

  Just you? Sophie wanted to ask, but she couldn’t.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she said to Etty. ‘It’s been a big day. On top of the normal Christmas stuff happening in the hospital, we had a drama at the child-care centre. Early night for me. I’ll give you a buzz on the monitor when I get back.’

  She left the flat by the outside door, relieved to get away. She wanted answers from Gib, but she was too distressed to handle them right now. Too hurt, and confused, and, yes, still too angry.

  CHAPTER TEN

  HE WAS sitting on her doorstep when she returned, and no avoidance tactic would work.