The Surgeon's One-Night Baby

were ready. Waiting. Her back glued to his chest.

Somehow that inability to face him lent her confidence.

‘Why are you doing this?’ she asked suddenly, surprising even herself.

Kaspar frowned.

‘Sorry?’

Despite the relative quiet of the plane now the hatch door was closed, one still had to speak loudly and clearly to be heard and her murmur hadn’t been nearly loud enough.

‘Why are you doing this?’ she repeated, grateful that no one else would stand a chance of hearing.

‘Why am I doing this?’ Kaspar repeated slowly, as if checking he’d heard right.

But she knew that cadence. Realised it meant he was choosing his words carefully. It felt like a tiny victory. She still knew him. Or a part of him anyway.

‘Like a lot of people up here today, I’m doing it in memory of someone.’

‘Who?’ The question was out before she could swallow it back.

She could picture his face tightened, his jaw locked. So familiar even after all these years. The unexpectedness of it knotted in Archie’s stomach and stopped her heart for a beat.

‘We’ll be at altitude soon.’ He jerked his head to the door, clearly sidestepping her question, but she couldn’t help it. She couldn’t explain why but suddenly she needed to know.

‘Who?’ she insisted.

His jaw spasmed but, presumably because it was meant to be a charity jump and people had been sharing stories all day, he schooled his features into a neutral expression.

‘His name was Peter. I knew him...a long time ago.’

He stopped curtly, as though it was more than he had intended to say. But it was more than enough for Archie.

Peter? Her father?

Archie shook her head, her lungs burning with the effort of continuing to breathe. He was doing this in memory of her own father? An odd sense of pride surged through her that even now, five years after his death, her big-hearted father still touched lives. And yet a sickening welling of emotion quickly snuffed out the pride. Kaspar clearly had absolutely no idea who she was. Despite all her earlier reasoning, that feeling of hurt, of rejection, coursed through her with all the power of a tsunami. She couldn’t possibly hope to stop it, as illogical as she knew her reaction might be.

She opened her mouth, trying to find a way to tell him who she was. But at that moment the hatch door had reopened and her words were sucked out and into the ether before Kaspar had heard them. And as she sat there, her body feeling like lead, she was semi-aware of the other skydivers making their jumps even as her eyes blurred to everything around her.

The next thing she knew, Kaspar was hauling her to her feet, carrying out the final procedures, and then they were moving to the door, exiting the plane, dropping for what seemed like for ever but was probably no more than thirty seconds or so.

And without warning every thought, every emotion seemed to fall from Archie’s mind, leaving her strangely numb.

At some point, it had to have been quite quickly, Kaspar tapped her shoulder to remind her to spread out her arms and legs in the freefall position as they rushed towards the ground, although it was as though the ground was rushing to them, her back pressed to his solid, reassuring chest. There was no chance for conversation up here, they could shout and yell and the other one would never hear them, and to Archie there was something freeing in that. For all intents and purposes she was alone, even if she could feel Kaspar’s rock-like mass securing her. As the adrenalin coursed through her veins, pumping along like nothing could hold it back, it was as though the wind not only blew away the stiffness from her body but the fog that had clouded her mind for so long.

Too long.

Kaspar opened the chute at what Archie knew would have been around five thousand feet, the loud crack ripping through her entire being as they were yanked up into a more upright position, as if breaking her open and allowing the first hints of fear and anger and regret to seep out.

And then absolute silence.

Peace.

Her heart, her whole chest swelled with emotion.

They were still descending but, with the parachute above them now slowing their rate of descent, if she didn’t look at the ground, it almost felt as though they were floating. Suddenly time seemed to stand still.

Another thrill rippled through her.