A Mommy for Christmas Read Free

all right?’
    Rory shrugged uncommunicatively. ‘S’pose,’ he mumbled, dropping down onto the floor and turning on the television, his back to his father.
    James put the kettle on, went back into the sitting room and stared broodingly down at his sleeping daughter, still lying where he’d put her when they’d got in a minute ago, out for the count. She was oblivious to the noise of the cartoon, but she’d been up in the night and she was exhausted—and there were tear stains on her downy cheeks.
    Oh, damn. Why? Why him? Why Beth? Why any of them?
    He wanted to throw back his head and howl at the moon, but it wouldn’t get them anywhere and the kids had enough to deal with without their father going off the rails, so he scooped Freya gently into his arms, carried her up to her bedroom and undressed her, changed her nappy and slid her into her cot without waking her.
    He’d bath her in the morning. For now she needed sleep more than anything, and he needed to spend some time with Rory and brush up on a few things for work, then phone the childminder and talk to her about their diet.
    And then he could go to bed.
    Â 
    â€˜So how was your new registrar?’
    Kate gave her father a fleeting smile. ‘Oh, very good—if you don’t count the fact that he was an hour late because he’d failed to send a vital form back to HR.’
    â€˜Oops,’ her mother said softly from the Aga. She stirred the gravy thoughtfully and cast her daughter a searching look. ‘Will you forgive him?’
    â€˜Not if it happens again,’ she retorted, and then sighed. And of course her parents both noticed.
    â€˜So what’s the problem with him?’
    â€˜I have no idea,’ she said quietly, her thoughts troubled. ‘Family problems, I think. Personal commitments, he described them as at his interview, but he looked tired today as if he’d been up all night.’ As well as drop-dead gorgeous.
    â€˜Married?’
    â€˜I don’t know. We can’t ask that sort of thing any longer, but…he has a ring,’ she said slowly, for some reason holding back on saying yes because she just felt, somehow, that he wasn’t married. Not any more. So—what, then? Divorced? Widowed? Divorced, most likely. Sharing custody. A messy divorce, then—the sort of divorce that had led children to this house and her parents over and over again, to be loved and cared for and put back together again until things were a little straighter at home.
    If they ever were. Sometimes it just didn’t happen.
    â€˜Sounds as if there’s a story there,’ her father said, handing her a plate laden with tender slices of roast chicken and crunchy golden roasties. He pushed the bowl of steaming Brussels sprouts towards her and stuck a spoon in it.
    â€˜Oh, I’m sure there is,’ she said, toughening up. ‘There’s always a story, but I don’t want to hear it. He shouldn’t have taken the job if he couldn’t hold it down. His personal life is nothing to do with me, and I don’t want it affecting his work. If he can’t keep it sorted, he shouldn’t be there.’
    â€˜I think that sounds a little harsh,’ her mother said, sitting down at the other end of the battered old farmhouse table and setting the gravy jug down in the middle. ‘I know you don’t want to get involved, and I realise he has to do his job, but surely, if there was some mix-up?’
    â€˜He didn’t send in the right forms. If he does that with a patient, fails to get the paperwork in order, then tests could get missed and results disappear and people could die.’
    â€˜I’m sure he’ll be aware of that,’ her father put in, which earned him a look that he returned evenly until finally she sighed and smiled and gave a tiny nod of concession.
    â€˜Yes. Yes, of course he’s aware of it. And he’s a brilliant