‘Thank you, thank you, thank you,’ Matt said. ‘Thatnoise.’
The baby’s eyes looked firmly closed. James eased the rocking down to a gentle sway. And stood still. The baby’s eyes pingedwideopen again. And his mouth opened wide too.
James started rocking again and the crying stopped.
He and Matt looked at each other. ‘He’s perfect,’ Matt said.
James nodded. Perfect but really bloody loud and really bloody tiring. He was just the godfather and he’d been away for the past couple of months, but after one night he was knackered and had had enough. To be fair, he was jetlagged and the birthday party yesterday afternoon had been ear-splitting– a lot of little girls in princess costumes running around screaming – and he and Matt had had a late one last night. But still. Just one more reason that he never wanted a baby of his own.
Five minutes later and he was ready to stop rocking. But every time he stopped, the baby cried again and everyone turned to stare like he and Matt were murderers.
‘Hello, my beautiful,’ Becca crooned, taking the baby out of James’s arms. Nothing happened. No noise other than a cute, snorty, satisfied little sigh. She wasn’t rocking atall. ‘I’m going to go and give him a feed.’
‘Andwecan go and get another drink,’ Matt said to James.
The other godparents all had children. And again, they all had stories that reminded James, if he’d needed any reminder, of why he absolutely did not want children himself.
‘So James—’ Anna/ Emma’s husband, Richie, back from the very free-flowing bar, slapped him hard on the shoulder. The man had definitely had too much to drink ‘—you planning sprogs soon?’
‘Nope. Very happily single and childless,’ James said.
‘You should have kids. They’re fantastic. Emma has two. I have seven and counting.’
‘Okay. Cool,’ James said. He didn’t want to ask why. Bad joke? Many ex-partners? Whatever.
‘Do you want to know why?’ Richie leaned in. James leaned backwards to get away from his beer breath.
‘Sure,’ he said. No, he didn’t. No interest in a pissed idiot.
‘Emma and I have two together but I’m a sperm donor.’
‘Ah.’ James nodded. He snuck a look at Emma. She’d just finished downing a full glass of champagne and was reaching for another one. ‘Sounds great.’
‘We wanted to give something back, didn’t we, darling?’ He nudged Emma. ‘Em’s eggs were duff, whereas my sperm are great little swimmers, golden balls, what can I say, so we had our two via egg donation and we thought we’d like to help people in the same way. So I did it because Em obviously couldn’t.’
Emma said, ‘Oh, piss off, Richie. Enough,’ and walked off.
James walked off too.
‘Apparently he’s playing away,’ Matt told James. ‘Not for the first time. Poor old Emma. She and Bec were at school together. Such a shame that she married such a dickhead, frankly. Bec thinks she’s going to leave him.’
James nodded. ‘Not surprising.’
So many messy relationships out there. So many good reasons to stick to the single life.
So many shit fathers, too. Like James’s own. Frankly, he’d probably have been a lot better off with someone like Richie. At least he owned up freely to his paternity.
* * *
In the end, it was a relief to leave the christening and head to the airport. It had been great to see his friends, but this weekend had felt like an odd blip in the middle of his summer. Being in London, seeing everyone, had made him feel like an interloper in his own life. It turned out that he’d adjusted a lot better than he’d thought he had to life on the island, and he wasn’t ready for the experience to end. He had a lot of plans for the rest of the summer. Business, obviously, but leisure, too. He was going to go fishing, and sailing. Explore some of the nearby islands by bike. There was also genuinely the possibility that if Laura tipped her head to one side and asked him one more time to join her poker evening, he’d give in and go.
Seriously; he was getting sentimental. Carry on like this and he’d be begging Cassie to remain lifelong pen pals. And, peculiarly, that thought made him smile.
Fourteen
Cassie
Cassie waved the remote at James’s enormous TV and flicked aimlessly between a few more channels. It was so hard to concentrate onanythingwhen you just wanted to know if your IVF was going to work. It looked like they were on track to retrieve eggs soon. The waiting after that would be even worse. Although at least she wouldn’t have to inject herself any more. It would definitely have been nice to have had someone to sharethatwith. Pretty much everything else was better on her own, though, than her first pregnancy. Simon had been way more interested in his golf handicap – and flirting with other women – than in her and the baby.
