grow along with the baby.
Yes, there was an awful lot to sort out.
‘Come on,’ he said.
The restaurant was gorgeous and intimate and they were led to a lovely secluded table; it was so small that their knees touched, though neither minded that.
The menu was gorgeous and Victoria groaned when she saw all the lovely cheeses and raw egg sauces that she’d been told to avoid.
‘When I’m not pregnant I’m coming here again and having everything on here that I can’t have now!’
‘Bad choice?’ Dominic asked because he hadn’t really given the menu a thought beforehand.
‘Oh, I’m not complaining.’
She ordered coq au vin and he ordered steak béarnaise. Conversation was awkward at first, but then the food arrived.
‘This is delicious,’ Victoria said as she tasted her chicken. ‘I make it sometimes but mine doesn’t come close to this...’
‘Well, it wouldn’t, would it?’
She looked up. ‘Why not?’
‘You’re not a French chef, Victoria.’
And he made her smile because he stood up to her; he challenged her. ‘I could have been, had I put my mind to it—well, apart from the French bit.’
They chatted a little about the campaign to save the hospital and the fundraising ball and then she asked if he missed his old hospital in Scotland.
Dominic paused to think about it. He had been happy where he was, but working at Paddington’s he was stretching his skills and really starting to settle in and enjoy it. ‘More than I expected to,’ he admitted. ‘When I left Edinburgh, I wasn’t planning on making a career move as such, yet I have. It’s a great position and I doubt it would have opened up if there hadn’t been the threat of closure.’
‘A lot are leaving?’
Dominic nodded. ‘They’ve just recruited a new cardiologist but I know a lot of departments are being held together with locums.’
‘Was it hard to leave Edinburgh?’
‘Of course,’ Dominic said.
‘Do you still miss it?’
He didn’t really know the answer to that. Going back while on annual leave he had asked himself the same, but the fact was, he was enjoying work and had looked forward to returning to London.
He glanced over to Victoria, who had given up on her main and was waiting for his response. ‘In part.’
She was scared to ask which part?
There was so much she wanted to know.
But some conversations were best had over chocolate crepes and vanilla ice cream.
Lorna and Jamie was one of them.
The food was delicious, the topic not so, but they chewed their way through both.
‘Did you ever suspect there was something between them?’ she asked.
‘No, they only met the once...’
He swallowed and carried on.
‘Every couple of years I go for a stint of working in India. I first went when I was in medical school and a few of us have kept it going. The week before I was due to go we had a get-together, and Jamie, my brother, came along. Until then he and Lorna had never met. He’d been overseas and had just got back. Well, they got on really well...’
‘Clearly!’
She had spent too long chatting on the road to be shocked, Dominic guessed. And it was actually refreshing just to let it out in the open with someone who wasn’t shy or coy.
‘Apparently they met a few days later by chance.’
‘Do you believe that it was by chance?’
She was asking the same questions that Dominic had asked himself. ‘No.’
‘Does it matter?’ Victoria asked.
‘It did to me at the time, but no, not so much now.’
And instead of saying he didn’t want to speak about it, this lone wolf shared.
Once upon a time, he had discussed things with family. Not everything, of course—Dominic did not readily share his emotions—but for the most part, he and his family would generally talk. About this they could not. His parents wanted to move on and put it aside, to simply act as if it had never happened.
Victoria was the first person he had felt able to explain to about how it had all unfolded.
‘When I got back from India, Lorna was throwing up...’
‘Tell me about it.’ Victoria groaned.
‘Do you have morning sickness?’
She nodded. ‘It’s fading now.’
But they were not here to discuss their baby; they were there to find out about each other, and so she was quiet. But Dominic wanted to know how she had been faring.
‘Tell me.’
‘It’s pretty much gone now—I just get really tired. You’re keeping me up—I’m usually in bed by eight.’ She gave an eye roll. ‘And I’ve got night duty next week.’
He looked at her and there was a twist of guilt that he hadn’t been there for her, that Victoria was doing it all on her own.
‘Can you change your shifts?’
‘I don’t roll like that,’ Victoria said, and then changed the subject back to what had happened with him. ‘So Lorna had it bad?’
‘Yes.’ He nodded. ‘I told her that she was very probably pregnant and she said no, that she couldn’t be. I went and got a test and, of course, she was.’
‘Were you pleased?’
‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘I think so, but it all felt a bit rushed...’
And together they smiled at the irony of their situation.
‘Lorna wanted to wait before we told our families.’
‘I’ll bet she did.’
‘I told Jamie though,’ Dominic said. ‘We were always that close.’
‘What was he like when you told him?’
‘He said congratulations, but not much else.’ Dominic shrugged. ‘He’s always been a lot more the party type than I am. I thought his lukewarm reaction was because he didn’t really see becoming a father as anything to get excited over.’
‘So you found out at the ultrasound?’ Victoria asked, bemused. ‘Wouldn’t she have known you might work it out there?’ It seemed very cruel to have said nothing.
‘In fairness to her, Lorna had a bit of spotting so we went to the hospital, and of course they did an ultrasound. For early pregnancy the dating is very accurate. I guessed she’d be nine weeks, but she was six.’
‘So you realised then and there?’ Victoria asked, understanding a bit better why he had been so opposed at first to attending her ultrasound.
‘I did,’ Dominic said. ‘I asked the doctor to repeat the dates. I honestly thought at first that she must have them wrong, but of course she hadn’t.’
‘What did you do?’
‘We had company at the time,’ Dominic answered, referring to the doctor who had been present. ‘So I said nothing. Lorna kept looking away when I tried to catch her eye. The doctor said that everything was fine with the baby and when she left we had a talk. Lorna admitted that while I was away