precious gift imaginable. I just can’t believe we’ve got them. But I don’t know if I could have coped with the pregnancy.’
‘So what would you have done if I’d told you?’ she’d asked, and he’d shrugged.
‘I don’t know. I don’t know if I could have gone through all those weeks of waiting, knowing it wasn’t going to be straightforward, watching you suffer, waiting for something awful to happen. I think it would have torn me apart.’
‘And if we were to have another?’
His eyes had been tortured. ‘I don’t know if I could take it. I’d rather not find out. We’ve been so lucky to have the girls. Let’s not push it.’
Not that it was really an issue. She didn’t really want to get pregnant again after the last time, and the doctors hadn’t seemed to think it would be a good idea, but in any case, until their relationship was a great deal more secure, there was no way she was going to risk it.
Even assuming she let him get that close.
But one thing she knew. She wasn’t going to let him sweep it all back under the carpet again. She was going to make him talk about it—about Debbie, and the baby, and how he felt about it—if it killed him. He owed it to them not to let them be forgotten, and so their memory would be treasured, and kept alive, and their girls would know one day that, a long time ago, they’d had a brother.
Oh, hell.
She scrubbed the tears from her eyes and looked up as he walked in, and he took one look at her and sighed gently.
‘Oh, Jules. Are you OK?’
‘Sorry. I was just thinking about when we tell the girls, when they’re older.’
He gave a strangled laugh. ‘Talk about crossing bridges before you get to them. Anyway, never mind that. What does a man have to do round here to get a cup of tea?’
‘Put the kettle on?’ she suggested, and he put it on the hob and crouched down and said hello to the babies, who sat happily in the playpen chewing on blocks.
‘I think they’re teething,’ he said in wonder, and she laughed and got up.
‘Of course they’re teething. They’ll do little else for the next umpteen weeks. Apart from try and escape from whatever means of restraint we put them in.’
‘We’ll have to try handcuffs,’ he said, and she put her hand over his mouth.
‘Shh,’ she said. ‘Not in front of the children.’
And he laughed, the first real, proper laugh she’d heard from him in years, and then the laughter faded and their eyes locked, and he stopped breathing.
She knew that, because she could see his chest freeze, and his heart was pounding, the pulse visible in the hollow of his throat, beating in time with hers. And then he seemed to come out of the trance and dragged in a breath and looked away. Somehow that freed her, too, so she made tea and put bread in the mesh toast-holder that went under the cover of the hotplate, and when the water was boiling she made a pot of tea and put the wire holder under the cover to toast the bread—and all the time all she could think about was the sound of his laugh, and how the tears last night seemed to have freed his emotions.
Did that mean he’d be able to play?
She hoped so. She’d always known there was another side of him, one he kept shut down, and she couldn’t wait to meet the other Max.
‘So what are we going to do today?’ she asked.
‘What’s it like outside?’
‘Cold. Bright and sunny, but cold. The wind’s chilly.’
‘So—something indoors? How about going to find a better stairgate?’
‘That’s a good idea. And they could do with some more clothes, if we’re going to one of the big shops. They’re growing like weeds.’
‘That’ll be chewing the loo brush,’ he said drily, and she stared at him in horror.
‘What?’
‘Ava,’ he told her, and she looked down at her elder daughter in the playpen, happily gumming away on a plastic toy, and felt sick.
‘When?’
‘The other day in the bathroom. Don’t worry, she didn’t actually get it in her mouth,’ he said, and she realised he’d been joking and felt her shoulders sag.
‘Is that how it ended up on the window sill?’
‘Yup.’
‘Oh, the little horror. She’s never done that before.’
‘Probably because you’re more efficient with them than I am. She was at a loose end for rather too long while I prevaricated about the temperature of the water. So—shopping?’
She stared at him. He sounded—good grief—almost enthusiastic. He’d never sounded enthusiastic about shopping before. He’d hardly ever gone shopping before. Except for clothes, and that was more a case of visiting his tailor for suits and shirts. She’d always bought anything less critical for him, and always in a stolen moment from the office during a meeting that he was attending without her.
Quite simply, there had never been time for shopping in their old life, and, if he was looking forward to it now, well, she wasn’t going to waste the experience.
‘Let’s go to Lakeside,’ she suggested. ‘There are all sorts of shops there, and it’s all under cover, so we don’t have to worry about the babies getting cold. We can make a day of it.’
She hadn’t been joking.
He hadn’t really believed that there could be so many shops all selling similar things lined up row after row after row. Well, he’d known they existed, of course he did, but that they should be so heaving with people on a February week-day stunned him.
But they found a stairgate for the babies, and lots of clothes, nappies and toys—so many, in fact, that he ended up making more than one trip back to the car to offload them. And there was a special baby zone, where they were able to feed and change the babies, and for once he managed not to get too messy.
Then it was back to the fray, and he caught Jules looking longingly at a clothes shop. For women.
‘When did you last buy anything new?’ he asked, and she smiled wryly.
‘What, apart from jeans and jumpers? I can’t remember. But I don’t need anything else.’
‘Yes, you do,’ he told her. ‘Of course you do.’
‘When for?’
He shrugged. ‘When I take you out for dinner?’
‘What, with the babies in tow?’
‘No. When we get a babysitter.’
‘I don’t know a babysitter—well, apart from Jane, and she won’t want to babysit for me in the evening. I usually take the girls round to her if I need to go somewhere where I can’t take them.’
‘My mother?’
‘Linda? She lives in London.’
‘She’d come up.’
‘What—just so you can take me out for dinner? That’s a bit of an ask.’
‘We could stay there.’
In their old room? The one where they’d stayed in the past? She was looking doubtful, and he realised why.
‘Sorry. I’m getting ahead of the game here, but—why not buy a dress? Something pretty. A top, maybe, if you don’t want a dress, or some new trousers. You can always dress up at home, if you want to.’
‘But I don’t,’