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Hailey laughed. Maybe she shouldn’t. He was talking about Annie and Tom’s illness and being a single father, but just imagining him pacing late at night, Tom in one arm, his credit card in the other, was exceedingly comic.
Callum laughed too. It felt good to laugh in the midst of the memories that even if they’d been happy were now for ever tinged with grief. ‘Good sympathetic ear you are,’ he mocked.
Hailey tried to model her face into instant contrition and failed. ‘I’m sorry.’
Callum chuckled. ‘It’s OK. Really. People have tiptoed around me for six years. It’s nice to be with someone who doesn’t say the right thing.’
‘Thank you.’ She frowned. ‘I think.’
He laughed again. ‘So what about you, Hailey Winters? What’s your story? Do you have anything you wish to unburden?’ He glanced at the book sitting on the coffee-table, the photo inside.
Hailey sobered. Did he have all night? But her history paled in comparison to his. A dead wife and a son with a potentially fatal disease beat a broken heart and the death of a non-related child.
‘Come on, Hailey. I heard you telling Tom tonight you were nearly a mother and then I was flipping through this book earlier.’ He picked it up. ‘And this photo fell out.’ He located it and passed it to her.
Hailey stared at the picture. She’d forgotten the photo was even there. She’d bought the book while she’d been living in England and had never managed to finish it. She’d brought it home with her when she had fled. She looked at Callum and felt strangely compelled to tell him. He had opened up to her. Maybe it would help to talk about it with someone who knew the meaning of grief.
Callum noted her hesitation, the emotion clouding her soft brown gaze. ‘Is that your husband? Your son?’
She shook her head. ‘No. Eric was my charge. I was his nanny. He died in my care.’
There. She’d said it. Said what no one else would. Not her parents. Or her sisters. And not Paul. Paul’s eyes, his withdrawal from her, had said more than his words ever could. She gave him a direct look. A look that dared him to refute it.
Callum was aware of the slow thud of his heart in his chest. ‘Could you back up? I think you missed a few steps.’
Hailey nodded wondering where to start as her thumb brushed lightly back and forth over Eric’s dear sweet little face in the photo. They’d all been so happy that day.
‘I lived in London for three years. When I left here, I wanted to spread my wings. Try something other than midwifery. I have a counselling degree—’
‘Ah. No wonder you’re a good listener.’ Callum smiled.
Oh, yeah, she was great with other people’s problems. ‘I worked in a refugee crisis centre for a while, counseling kids. That was really hard work. Not physically, like nursing, more emotionally. You know?’
Callum nodded. He could only begin to imagine the problems kids like that must have.
‘Then I got a job at a large London children’s hospital in one of their general paeds wards. I did that for just over a year.’
She was silent for a while, like she was trying to order things properly for him. He didn’t want to pressure her. He wanted it to come out in her own time, in her own way, like he knew it had to.
‘Paul was a pharmacist there. I liked him…a lot. His wife had left him when Eric was a baby and his long-term nanny had left six months before that and Paul hadn’t been able to find a good permanent replacement. Eric was five and such a cutie. I’d often go over to their place and hang out with them after work.’
Callum nodded for her to continue, even though he knew where the conversation was going.
‘Not long after that Paul asked me if I wanted the nanny job and I jumped at it. I was eager to try something different and though the pay wasn’t fantastic it was a live-in position, which meant all my living expenses were taken care of.’
Except there was more to it than that, Callum could tell from the photo. There was an intimacy to the image. A possessiveness in Paul’s arm on her shoulder. It spoke of connection, of family.
‘You were in love with him?’
Hailey glanced at him, the matter-of-factness in his voice echoed in the neutrality of his facial features. ‘We began a relationship a couple of months after I moved in.’
Uhuh! That explained her little speech in the panroom about dating colleagues. It had definitely been a case of once bitten, twice shy.
‘Everything was great. Really, really fantastic. Until about three months before Eric died. His mother turned up on the scene. She wanted to reconcile.’
Hailey would never forget that day as long as she lived. The photo she was holding had been taken the day before Donna’s return. They had never been that happy again.
