“Am I that obvious?”
“Not a problem. You’re already on my insurance.”
“It would give us a chance to bond. See what he’s all about. I have foster training now as well, because you made me do the classes with you. It’s all legal, above board, and…I can do it.”
“You sure you want to?”
“No. I’m not sure of anything. Am I mad even contemplating this?”
“Yes.” I smiled. I actually smiled. Was I going along with this madness? Apparently so.
“Emma, I’ll have your back. Noah will have your back. Even Bailey will. Give them a ring.”
“I already did,” she whispered.
“I wouldn’t have expected anything else.”
And then she hugged me. Weird, but. Perhaps this was the new me. The advanced and improved me. Mr Fox Fairweather. Husband. Father. Friend. Just words, but still. They fit. Maybe Bailey was right about me, being…good. Good at all of this.
Perhaps I even believed it myself.
Noah
Nothing was much different this time. Almost a year later, and here I was. On a plane, eating food from a plastic tray and trying to follow the film on the screen in front of me.
Yet this time? My parents were in the row in front, with my son in between them. Bay hadn’t stopped talking since take-off, and Mum was showing him the maps of our hotel resort and Dad was asleep.
Fox? He was trying to read some kind of file on his laptop, his eyebrows tightly knitted together like he was trying to figure something out.
“She’s picked up the kid, and they’re now heading back. She’s sent me all the paperwork she has, and it’s…poor kid. This is not going to be easy, but in a way? Perhaps this is exactly what this little boy needs.”
“It will be fine. There are loads of children his age in Kilmartin. He’ll slot in, and Emma will have so much support. Mrs Thakur is great. Did I tell you we had breakfast the other day? Such a nice woman, we talked a lot.”
“She’s fantastic. But I am wondering if this is what Emma needs. It’s sudden and…”
“Have you seen us, Fox? Sudden? We’d spent four nights in total together, and then I moved in and then Bailey sorted his room and then? Four nights, Fox?”
“Yeah, but we’d like…talked every night for weeks, and we knew each other. You knew all about me and I knew all about you, and the sex thing was a certainty and…”
“You loved me.”
“I did. And you loved me right back.”
“Sometimes, it’s just right.”
“It is. And I think Emma needs this. She can try to be all independent woman-Beyoncé-whatever, but at the end of the day? She’ll have her kid. And he’ll have the best mum. He won’t even know how bloody lucky he is, sitting in that car with her. Both of them…”
“She’s terrified. He’s terrified. She made a playlist with all the songs she loves. I hope he’s…into music.”
“He’s seven. He’ll be… Are you into music at seven?”
“Ask Bay, he’ll know.”
“Bay will be great with him. We’ll have to make plans.”
“The first plan is to have a holiday. Just us. No drama, no stupidity and lots of sunscreen.”
“Yup.”
