Page 30 of The Midwife By the Sea

‘Well, if you’re going to hold my calamari to ransom, I’ll just have to say yes, won’t I?’ She leant forward and took the fork off him, pressing her lips against his for such a brief moment that if anyone watching had blinked, they’d have missed it altogether.

‘I’ll have to start stealing calamari more often if that’s the result.’ He held her gaze, still smiling and she didn’t need to visualise kissing him again, properly, to decide whether or not this was really what she wanted. Her body was already reacting, and she was about to step into this new complication with both feet. There was no doubt about that.

16

Esther stretched out in the bed, extending all four of her limbs as far as possible, in the best starfish impression she could manage, but at just over five feet tall she barely extended into Joe’s side of the bed, let alone took up the whole space. Joe wasn’t there, anyway, and she could hear muffled sounds of activity coming from the kitchen, directly below their bedroom. It was going to be a glorious day, she could already feel the warmth on the exposed parts of her skin as the sun streamed through a gap at the top of the blackout blind in their bedroom, where the fixings had come slightly loose in the last couple of days. She really needed to get them sorted out before her next shift change. When she was on nights, blackout blinds were her only hope of getting a decent day’s sleep. She found it difficult enough to sleep without Joe lying next to her, let alone if the light was flooding in too. It was funny – and sometimes a little bit scary – how quickly Joe had come to feel like the centre of her entire world.

They’d been friends for years, bonded by their love for Danni, before anything else had developed between them. It might have happened sooner if he hadn’t spent so many years living in Australia, and if both of them hadn’t been in serious relationships with other people. People who’d turned out to be wrong for them in so many ways. How had Esther ever thought she could be happy with anyone else? It seemed impossible now, and as the sound of Joe singing along to the music he was playing in the kitchen drifted up towards her, she smiled. He was her person; there wasn’t even the tiniest trace of doubt in her mind about that.

Her job meant that all too often she saw how people could have the love of their life wrenched away from them without any warning, and it made her want to treasure what she and Joe had all the more. Most of the time she managed to count her blessings that she had so much more than many people ever found, and that she was incredibly lucky as a result, but their unsuccessful attempts to try for a baby had overshadowed that gratitude too much lately. Joe had told her every single time they faced disappointment that as long as he had her, he was happy, and that anything else was just a bonus. She hadn’t been able to assure him that she felt the same and it was in danger of tainting what they had. It had coloured her other relationships too, not least with Danni. At least now, after their heart to heart, she finally felt like she was putting that right.

Joe was the one she still needed to make things right with, and yet he was the most important of all. With the warmth of the sun still kissing her skin and a glow of contentment she hadn’t allowed herself to experience in months, Esther decided that today was the day. She needed to let Joe know just how much he meant to her and that she believed him when he said they’d find a way to become parents whatever it took, if that’s what they decided to do. More than that, though, she wanted him to know that he was enough for her and that she wouldn’t swap the life she had with him, for any other kind of life with someone else, even one that came with children. She still desperately wanted a family, but not if she couldn’t have one with Joe.

Climbing out of bed, she pulled on the silky dressing gown that had been hanging on the back of the ensuite door, cleaned her teeth and headed down the stairs to find Joe, singing away to ‘What Was I Made For’ by Billie Eilish. He was wearing a blue and white stripey apron over just a pair of boxer shorts, the muscles in his arms obvious as he hand-whisked the eggs for breakfast. He hadn’t heard her come into the kitchen and she smiled as he struggled to hit the highest note in the song.

‘Well, this is a treat, a singing chef, cooking up a storm on a Saturday morning.’ There was a teasing tone to her voice, and he laughed as he spun around to look at her, setting down the bowl he’d been holding.

‘Oh God, sorry. Did my terrible singing wake you up? I was hoping to bring you breakfast in bed.’

‘No, it wasn’t you. It was the light coming through the top of the blind, and your singing’s not terrible. It’s one of my favourite sounds, because I know it means you’re happy.’

‘I always am when I’m with you.’ He pulled her towards him. ‘And after breakfast, I was going to swap the egg whisk for a drill and get that blackout blind sorted. I don’t want the light disturbing you next time you’re on nights.’

‘I think you might be the best husband in the world.’ Her hands snaked around his waist to the bare flesh on his back, just above his boxer shorts.

‘Only think?’ It was his turn to take on a teasing tone, as he raised his eyebrows and waited for her response. He was the most beautiful man, inside and out, and the fact he’d already noticed that the blind needed fixing and wanted to get it sorted on his day off, to make sure it didn’t affect her sleep, was just one more indicator of the way he always put her first. He told her he loved her all the time, but he showed her even more often.

‘I think the final decision rests on whether my handyman husband is only going to be wearing boxer shorts when he gets to work on the blind.’

‘Whatever the customer wants.’

‘What the customer wants is to delay breakfast, and the DIY, and go back to bed.’ She trailed a hand halfway up his spine and back down again, letting it come to rest lower down this time, enjoying the way his body reacted to her touch.

‘Is it…’ He hesitated for a moment, looking into her eyes. ‘…the right time?’

Esther shrugged, fighting against the wave of guilt that had washed over her at his words. So often lately she’d only shown any interest in having sex if it was the right time; pouncing on him as soon as he walked through the door or calling to tell him to hurry up and get home. It wasn’t because she couldn’t wait to be with him, but because her temperature chart or ovulation kit was telling her that this was prime baby-making territory. She’d allowed herself to forget the feeling of wanting Joe for who he was and, worse than that, she’d made him feel as though making a baby was all she wanted him for. Something deep inside her had switched, though, and she’d woken up knowing things needed to change. The longing she felt for his touch right now had nothing to do with making babies, and she had to let him know that.

‘I’ve no idea whether it’s the right time and I don’t care. I just want you.’

‘Okay.’ He couldn’t seem to stop a slow smile from spreading across his face, as he pulled her even closer to him. ‘I know you haven’t quite decided if you’ve got the best husband in the world yet, but I already know I’ve got the best wife.’

As he leaned in to kiss her, long and slow, she wasn’t even sure they were going to make it back up to the bedroom.

After Esther had handed Hope and Jess the invitation to Danni’s baby shower, she’d explained that she was holding the event at her parents’ house, so that there’d be no pressure on Danni and Charlie, and because her parents thought of Caleb and his unborn younger sibling as their grandchildren. When Esther had said it was because Danni didn’t have her own parents around and that they thought of her as another daughter, her smile had been unmistakeably genuine. It must have been hard, though, having to balance that with the fact that she was struggling to conceive. If there was even a scrap of resentment about that, Hope would never have guessed.

‘Would it be weird for us to go to the baby shower together?’ Louie had asked two days before the event. ‘I know it’s not the sort of place where you take a date but we’ve both been invited anyway, and I’ve never been to one before so I’ve got no idea how they work. The way that everyone at the hospital is talking about it, and what they’re going to wear, it sounds like a pretty major occasion.’

‘In my experience, they’re not usually that elaborate, but I’ve got a feeling that this one is going to be different. That said, taking a date to a baby shower might seem a bit weird.’ She hadn’t missed the look of disappointment that had crossed Louie’s face, but her response hadn’t been because she didn’t want to go with him, she definitely did. They’d already been out together five times, and she liked him more every time, perhaps even more than she wanted to, because caring that much made her feel vulnerable. Coming to Cornwall was supposed to be about understanding the last part of her origin story, and using the opportunity to develop her career at the same time. It wasn’t supposed to be about meeting someone who might end up influencing how long she stuck around. She hadn’t meant to develop feelings for Louie, even after she’d first agreed to go out to dinner with him, but she had. Hope wasn’t the sort of person to pretend or play it overly cool. If she was going to have a relationship, she didn’t want to have to second-guess things and pretend to be something she wasn’t. She’d lay all her cards out on the table and if it was meant to be, that’s what would happen.

‘I want us to go to the baby shower together, but we can’t call it a date, so why don’t we go to the cinema in Port Tremellien together afterwards, and maybe have dinner somewhere over there. Then we can call that bit the date part?’ Her suggestion had been met with a smile by Louie, and so now here they were, arriving at the baby shower together, but very definitely not in the date part of their day.

Louie had brought a hamper of organic mother and baby treatments from Neal’s Yard and a huge bag of coffee beans to help Charlie through his share of the night feeds. When Louie had explained that Joe and Charlie were both coffee aficionados and that Joe had brought some of their favourite brand of coffee beans into work to use in the machine in his office, Hope had experienced a stab of what felt suspiciously like envy. It made complete sense for Louie to know what Joe’s favourite kind of coffee was, given that they worked together, but she didn’t know any of those sorts of little details about him. She didn’t know them about Laura either, but the door was open to ask those kinds of questions of her if she ever wanted to. With Joe it was different and she was like a magpie, seizing on every shiny new detail she could lay her hands upon.

Hope had wanted to buy something really special for both the baby and Caleb, but pouring too much money into it might have looked odd. So she’d decided to personalise something instead. Even though she’d always wanted to be a midwife, she’d had a talent for art for as long as she could remember too. She’d bought a plain wooden train for Caleb, painting his name and some patterns along the carriage it was pulling, and the words ‘Best Big Brother’ on one side of the train itself with the year painted on the other. She hadn’t been able to personalise anything for the baby, because Danni and Charlie hadn’t said what they’d be calling her. Instead, she’d bought a white wicker basket and filled it with things that would come in useful for the baby, hand painting a panel she’d attached to the front with the words ‘Little Things’. She’d also created a tiny replica of a washing line, strung between two small bamboo poles, that stretched from one side of the basket to the other, adorned with socks, baby bootees and gloves. Even she had to admit it looked lovely and it felt a bit more special than just picking up an outfit in the supermarket. Caleb and the new baby were her cousins and, even if no one ever discovered that, she wanted to mark the occasion in a way that felt memorable, because she knew she’d never forget this day, whatever the future held.

The garden at Caroline and Patrick’s house, Esther’s parents, had been divided into two halves. The first was set up as a paradise for younger partygoers, with a teddy bears’ picnic that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a storybook. The second was more for the adults, with party games, cocktails and mocktails, and an array of food that would put most wedding buffets to shame. Esther, Joe and her parents had pulled out all the stops for the baby shower and had made sure that Danni, Charlie and big-brother-to-be, Caleb, were the centre of attention.

‘Thank you so much for coming,’ Esther greeted them as soon as Hope and Louie entered the garden, and Joe followed on behind.