Larenzo's Christmas Baby. Кейт Хьюит

you badly, Em,’ Meghan said quietly. ‘More than it did me. I was at college. I was already out of the way.’

      ‘She was your mother too,’ Emma answered, still not looking at her sister. By silent agreement she and Meghan had never really talked about their mother. Emma hadn’t even seen her in at least five years. Louise Leighton had moved to Arizona with her second husband when Emma was still in high school; Emma had spent a wretched few months out in Arizona with her, but it had been awkward and stilted and just generally awful, and she’d left pretty quickly, after one blazing argument. Her mother hadn’t protested.

      Since then, beyond a few pithy emails, her mother had never made any attempt to contact her. She didn’t know if Meghan was in touch with her or not; she’d never asked, told herself she didn’t care.

      ‘Anyway,’ Meghan resumed, ‘what I’m trying to say is, I understand if motherhood scares you. You didn’t have the best example.’

      ‘I’m not scared,’ Emma answered. She pressed a hand against her middle, almost as if she could feel the tiny life moving inside her. ‘I just feel like my whole life has been upended. Everything that happened in Sicily...’ She trailed off, fighting against the memories that continued to swamp her, and Meghan came over to give her a hug.

      ‘It’s hard,’ she said. ‘And you have some time.’

      As the days slipped by Emma had come to accept this new life inside her, and realise that, to her amazement, she actually welcomed it. She watched her sister with Ryan and knew she wanted that same kind of bond, that closeness with another person. Already she felt a surprising and unshakeable love for this person who was a part of her.

      Once she had pictured her life unspooling like a rainbow-coloured thread as she traipsed about the world, having adventure after adventure. But perhaps motherhood would be the greatest adventure of all.

      It had been that, she thought now as she gazed at her sleeping daughter. From the moment she’d been born, dark-haired and grey-eyed, Ava had possessed the Cavelli charisma. Whether she was screaming to be fed or simply demanding to be heard, the force of her personality could not be denied. She was her father’s daughter.

      And her father was serving life in prison.

      Emma had had a year and a half to become accustomed to the fact that Larenzo was a Mafioso, and yet the knowledge still had the power to stun her. She couldn’t look back on their one night together without experiencing a shaft of bittersweet longing, as well as a sense of bewilderment that the man she’d thought she’d known, at least a little, was someone else entirely.

      ‘Are you almost ready to go?’ Meghan asked as she walked up to her in the park. Her cheeks were red with cold and she cradled a thermos of coffee. ‘Ryan will want his lunch before playgroup, and, if I’m not mistaken, your little madam is going to wake up soon and want hers.’

      ‘Undoubtedly.’ With a wry look for her sleeping daughter, Emma reached for the handles of the pram.

      ‘Emma...’ Meghan began, and Emma tensed instinctively. She’d known a conversation was coming; she’d been living with Meghan and her husband, Pete, for over eighteen months now. They’d been happy to support her through her pregnancy and she’d taken a few odd cleaning jobs until she’d been too ungainly to manage it, in order to contribute to the household expenses.

      Then Ava had been born, and her life had become a sleepless whirlwind; she’d stood in its centre, dazed and helpless to do much other than care for this baby that still managed to startle her with her existence.

      But her daughter would be a year soon and Emma knew she needed to find her own way. Make her own life, for her own sake as well as her sister’s.

      ‘I know,’ she said quietly, her gaze on Ava sleeping in the pram, the pink blanket pulled up to her chin, which had a cleft the same as Larenzo’s. ‘I need to get a move on.’

      ‘No.’ Meghan put a hand on Emma’s arm. ‘I wasn’t going to say that. I’d never say that, Emma. You’re welcome to stay with us as long as you like. Always.’

      Emma shook her head. She knew her sister meant well, but she also knew that she couldn’t stay. She hadn’t contributed anything to the household finances since Ava’s birth, and she and Ava had taken up the spare bedroom for far too long. Meghan and Pete wanted more children, and they needed the space.

      ‘I’ve been meaning to get my act together for months now,’ she told her sister. ‘I’ve just—’ she let out a long, low breath ‘—felt frozen, I suppose. And keeping Ava fed and changed has taken more energy than I care to admit.’ She let out a shaky laugh. ‘I don’t know how you do it.’

      ‘Motherhood is never easy, and Ava is a demanding baby,’ Meghan answered. ‘But this isn’t about me or Pete, Emma. It’s about you. What’s best for you. I want you to have your own life. Maybe meet someone...’

      Emma shook her head. She couldn’t even think about meeting someone. She might not have loved Larenzo Cavelli or had her heart broken, but even so something in her felt a little dented. A bit bruised. And she’d never been interested in a serious relationship anyway. She was even less so now, with a bad experience and a baby in tow.

      ‘I know I need to get a job.’

      ‘It’s not about money—’

      ‘But it is, Meghan, at least in part. As wonderful as you are, you can’t support me for ever. I’m twenty-seven years old, and I chose to have a child. I need to step up.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I know I seem like a sleep-deprived zombie most of the time, but I have been thinking about possibilities. Maybe moving to New York and getting a job there, something to do with photography.’

      As far as a plan went, it wasn’t very sensible, and Emma could tell her sister thought so from the look on her face. ‘New York? But it’s so expensive. And I’m not sure there are too many jobs in photography going...’

      ‘I know, but...’ The other option was staying in New Jersey, finding some poky apartment she could afford on the salary she’d get as a waitress or cleaner, the only kind of job for which she was qualified. ‘I like to dream,’ she admitted with a wry sigh, and Meghan nodded in understanding.

      ‘What about another job as a housekeeper? A live-in position, so you could have Ava with you?’

      ‘I’m not sure there are many of those going around.’

      ‘You only need one.’

      ‘True.’ Emma glanced down at her daughter, who was starting to stir, her little face turning red as she screwed her features up in preparation for one of her ear-splitting howls. ‘We’d better get going,’ she told Meghan. ‘Princess Ava needs her lunch.’

      Back at the house she and Meghan fed Ava and Ryan, and then ate their own lunch while the two children played nearby.

      ‘All right, let’s do this,’ Meghan said, ever practical, and resolutely Emma nodded as her sister pulled her laptop towards her and brought up the webpage for an agency that supplied jobs in the cleaning and hospitality industries.

      Emma suppressed a groan as some of the available jobs scrolled by: night-time cleaning at a business park in Newark, janitorial work in a local elementary school.

      ‘I don’t...’ she began, but Meghan cut her off with a quick shake of her head.