Page 34 of The Midwife By the Sea

‘No, I’m fine…’ She shook her head then and sighed deeply. ‘My back’s just twinging a bit, that’s all. My body seems determined to remind me that I’m of advanced maternal age.’

‘It could be worse, you could be a geriatric mother.’ Esther grinned and for the first time since she’d arrived, Danni laughed. Esther had to admit that the new way of labelling older mothers wasn’t that much of an improvement on the previous terminology, but she’d be willing to be called anything as long as she was pregnant. She wasn’t going to think about that right now though. She’d made a promise to Danni that she was ready to celebrate the upcoming arrival of the baby, and she had no intention of breaking that promise.

‘I may well be a geriatric by the time my brother gets home, the way things are going.’ Danni rolled her eyes, but at that exact moment, Joe opened the door that led from the back garden into the kitchen. It was the way he always came in after work, to the heart of their home, where he and Esther would cook together and talk about their days. Her heart lifted every time he came through that door, and on the days when he came home first, greeting her with a hug when she arrived and immediately offering to make her a drink. It was a simple thing, but it meant so much to her, and she’d made a vow to notice and appreciate those little things more often. She and Joe might not have a baby, but they already had so much to be thankful for.

‘Well look at this, my two favourite women in the entire world in one room.’ Joe kissed Esther warmly, holding her in the way that always made her feel so safe. Afterwards he turned towards his sister and gave her a hug too. Danni looked awkward and another frisson of apprehension made Esther’s scalp prickle, but she shook it off. It was just Danni’s baby bump coming between her and Joe, making her look as stiff as the Tin Man, that was all. But then Danni said something that made the prickling sensation on Esther’s scalp intensify.

‘I need to talk to you both.’

‘I knew there was something wrong. Is it the baby?’ She went cold at the thought of it.

‘No.’ Danni shook her head, her hands tightly balled into fists and her face blanched of colour.

Esther was really starting to panic now.

‘Whatever’s wrong, sis, you know you can tell us, don’t you?’ Joe’s eyes were as filled with concern as his voice; Esther clearly wasn’t the only one who was worried.

‘I don’t know where to start and I’m scared, when I do, that it’ll change everything. In fact, I know I will.’

‘Danni, just tell us, please. You’re really scaring me.’ Nausea churned in Esther’s stomach, her mind going to all kinds of places she didn’t want it to go. Was Danni seriously ill? Thoughts of cancer or some other kind of life-threatening illness were already filling her head. Maybe it was Charlie who was ill, or having an affair, but the idea of that seemed unthinkable. Holding on to whatever it was she needed to say looked as though it was causing Danni pain and Esther would do whatever it took to help her friend release that burden. ‘If you tell us, we might be able to help.’

‘I’ll tell you, but I need you both to sit down first.’ Danni waited for them to do as she’d asked.

‘Okay.’ It was Joe who answered first, and all Esther could do was reach out and grab his hand as they both took a seat, certain that whatever it was Danni was about to say would be easier to hear with her hand in his.

‘I’m sure you remember this girl, Joe. Her name was Laura.’ Danni slid a strip of passport photographs across the table towards them. As Esther stared at the photographs, the unease she’d been feeling seemed to treble, but she couldn’t have explained why until she looked up at Danni again and saw the expression on her best friend’s face. It was the kind of look she got when she had to deliver life-changing news to someone at the hospital, and what she said next certainly fit that description. ‘When Laura left Cornwall at the end of her holiday, she was pregnant and the baby was yours.’

For a moment, it was as if the whole world seemed to stop and Esther tried to hold on to the possibility that Danni was wrong. This couldn’t be true; Joe barely looked like more than a kid himself in the photos. Her mind whirled. It would mean he had an adult child, if Laura had kept the baby. No, that couldn’t be right. It was all she could think as the nausea in her stomach continued to swirl. Joe was a father. No. No. No.

Esther opened her mouth to protest, but the words wouldn’t come out. She wasn’t certain Danni would have heard them even if she’d managed to speak. In the end it was Joe who directed a string of questions towards his sister, his voice sounding almost otherworldly, as though this was some kind of dream – and maybe it was.

‘How do you know all of this? Who gave you the photographs? Was it Laura? Have you seen her?’

‘I haven’t seen Laura, but I’ve met your daughter.’ The last two words of Danni’s sentence sounded so alien that Esther couldn’t believe she’d heard them. Did Joe really have a daughter?

‘You’ve met her?’ Esther blinked rapidly as though her vision might suddenly clear and reveal this really was all an illusion, but Danni nodded.

‘I found out by accident, because I overheard her telling someone that she was Joe’s daughter and that meant she had to tell me everything.’ Danni let go of a deep breath and then shook her head, almost as if she was still in disbelief herself.

‘What do you mean you overheard her? How did you even come into contact with her?’ Joe sounded incredulous, but at least he was asking some of the questions they needed the answers to. None of this made sense. It had to be some kind of horrible mistake.

‘She came to Port Agnes to find you.’ Danni shut her eyes for a moment and shook her head. ‘But after I overheard her talking to someone about you and asked if what she’d said was true, she told me she couldn’t face telling you. She didn’t know how you’d react, and I think she was scared. But now that you know she exists, she should have the chance to tell you the rest herself. It’s not my story to share and I think, if she explains why she hasn’t been in contact before now, it will give you an insight into the kind of person she is. That might make it easier for you to form a bond, because even though this isn’t the way it should have come out, I don’t have any doubt that she had the best of intentions.’

‘A bond?’ It was another word that felt weird, as though Esther’s mouth couldn’t make it fit. How could they possibly form a bond with this stranger? A grown woman who’d arrived in their lives out of the blue. But Joe was nodding, seeming to understand his sister’s logic, even though a big part of Esther wanted to scream that Danni couldn’t just detonate a bomb in their life like this and not even give them the whole story. Did she really expect them to just let her walk out of there, without sharing everything she knew?

‘Can you at least tell us her name?’ Joe’s question was just one of the things that Esther needed to have answered, but Danni shook her head.

‘If I do, I might as well tell you everything.’

The realisation hit Esther like a bolt of lightning. ‘We’ve already met her, haven’t we?’

‘Yes, at the hospital. I really don’t want to say any more, but I can try to call her now and ask her if she’s able to come over. I just think it will be much better if she’s the one who explains it to you. I don’t want to put words in her mouth or mispresent her. You need to have this conversation face to face, not second-hand.’

‘Do you think she’ll be willing to do that?’ The look Joe was giving Danni was so full of hope and, as his sister nodded, relief flooded his face. He desperately wanted a chance to meet his daughter, and Esther loved him far too much to even try to stand in his way, but that didn’t mean this hadn’t shattered her world. Although, right now, the closest Esther could come to describing how she felt was completely shell-shocked.

She could barely process that this was true and yet she was still wracking her brains trying to think who this woman could possibly be. There were over six thousand staff at St Piran’s and endless streams of patients passing through the emergency department. Any woman of the right age could potentially be Joe’s daughter, but she couldn’t picture the young woman’s face. No matter how hard she tried to imagine it, her brain just wouldn’t let her.

Nausea was swirling so fast now that she was certain it was only a matter of time before she was going to be sick. Her husband, the man she’d spent all these months dreaming of starting a family with, already had one. The realisation of just how much this changed everything was closing her throat up, until it felt as though she’d forgotten how to breathe. Joe was saying something else now, but she couldn’t seem to make out the words. All she could hear was the soundtrack repeating in her head, over and over again. Joe got someone else pregnant.