Playing Nice

—

THE FEELING OF RELIEF in the room is palpable. As if by mutual agreement, the discussion breaks up not long afterward. Pete makes an admiring comment about the house and Miles offers him a quick tour, while Lucy and I stay to watch the boys.

“Can I hold him?” I hear myself say.

“David? Of course.”

I reach down and take David into my arms. He feels so slight after Theo—he must be at least three pounds lighter, like picking up a delicate little girl instead of a chunky, well-built boy. And while Theo, even on one of his quiet days, would wriggle and swing his legs and probably throw himself backward over my arm to see what would happen, David sits quietly, nestled in the crook of my elbow. After a moment he turns his head and examines me solemnly. His eyes are lighter than mine, but even so there’s something in them that feels eerily familiar. Involuntarily, I grin at him and bounce him gently on my arm. He doesn’t smile back, but he holds my gaze pensively, never looking away.

“They each look so like one parent, don’t they?” Lucy comments. “Theo’s just like Miles, and David’s so like you.”

“Yes.” I glance at her. “How did you find out, by the way? What made you first think David might not be yours?”

“Oh.” Lucy reaches inside the collar of her shawl and frees a row of pearls that she rubs between her fingers a little nervously. “David’s problems have always been a bit of a mystery to the doctors. At one point, they wondered if there might be a defective gene involved. So they tested him and, although they didn’t find anything directly relevant, they did find an autosomal recessive—a gene inherited from both parents. But it turned out neither of us carried it. That’s when it became apparent he couldn’t be ours. Miles spoke to an investigator, who immediately homed in on the fact that I’d given birth in a private hospital. That was the weak link, he predicted—the transfer between there and St. Alexander’s. Even so, it took months to track you down. The hospitals refused to give out any names to begin with—trying to hide behind data-protection laws. But I remembered your first name and that our boys were born on the same day, so Don had something to work with.”

“Pete said you’re suing the hospital.”

Lucy nods. “It wasn’t really about the money, though. It was more about forcing them to give up the names.”

“So you’ll drop it now?” A little reluctantly, I put David down so he can play with the baby gym again.

“I’m not sure,” she says vaguely. “Miles still thinks they should pay for what they’ve done. To stop them from letting it happen again, I suppose, to somebody else. And even if we don’t absolutely need the money, it might come in useful for you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Didn’t Pete tell you? Miles has invited him to join the action.” She gives me a quick smile. “Of course, we probably won’t tell them we’re all getting on like a house on fire. Because it is distressing, isn’t it, however reasonable we’re all being. At the end of the day, we’ve both lost our real children. I’ve shed some tears over that, I can tell you.”

* * *

—

“THAT WENT WELL,” PETE says when we’re in the car. He waves to Miles and Lucy, who’ve come to the front door to see us off.

“Yes.”

He looks at me, alerted by my hesitant tone. “What do you mean?”

I pull my coat around me. “I don’t know, exactly. But while you were looking around, Lucy mentioned that David had been tested for a defective gene. That was the word she used—defective. I’m not an expert, but I think it means any more children we have could be at risk of being like David as well.”

Pete’s silent a moment. “I guess we should get ourselves tested, too, then.”

“She also talked about us all getting rich from the lawsuit.”

“I know. Miles mentioned it when he came to see me. That doesn’t feel right, though, does it? Suing a hospital, if we’re happy the way we are.”

“If it can help Theo’s future, maybe we should think about it. And who knows what problems David will have later on? He may need round-the-clock care. We can’t really get in their way.”

“I guess not.” Pete glances at me as he pulls up for a red light. “You found it hard back there, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” I admit. “Not them, particularly—they seem nice, and as Lucy said, we’re lucky that we’re all similar people who think the same way about this. But just now, walking out of there and leaving David behind…It felt like I was abandoning him. I keep thinking of myself in his position, being left all alone in a stranger’s house.”

“But they’re not strangers. They’re his parents.”

“We’re his parents.”

“You know what I mean,” Pete says gently. “They’re the people he loves. It’s all good, Mads. We’re going to see lots of David as he grows up, and they’ll see lots of Theo.”

“I know that’s the right thing to do. But I can’t help how I feel.” I look out the window. If I’m honest, I’m finding Pete’s insistence that not being Theo’s biological parent makes absolutely no difference a bit frustrating. Not because I disagree with the principle—love is what matters, and families aren’t made in people’s tummies but in their hearts, et cetera et cetera. But there is a genetic pull as well. It’s almost—I think disloyally—as if Pete actually relishes some aspect of this mix-up; or at least, the chance it gives him to prove that there’s nothing atavistic or proprietary about his devotion to Theo. He’s even shown me a study he found on the internet, proving that, on balance, adoptive parents take better care of their children than natural parents do.

I add, “Back there, when I first saw David and realized there was something wrong with him, just for a moment, I thought…”

“Thought what?” Pete’s voice is studiedly neutral, which is how I know he’d actually thought exactly the same thing.

“How lucky we are. We’ve ended up with…” Theo’s drifting off to sleep in the back, but even so I choose my words carefully. “Everything normal, and they’ve got something much more challenging, haven’t they? You couldn’t blame them if, right now, they’re thinking that the situation isn’t very fair.”

Pete snorts. “I doubt they’re thinking that. After all, they’re the ones with the big house, the brand-new BMW, and the live-in nanny. They’re exactly the sort of people who can take a child like David in their stride. And they clearly adore him. We should just thank our lucky stars we all see things the same way.”

15

PETE

ON THE WAY HOME I did my best to reassure Maddie, repeating how fortunate we were that this had happened to people with such similar outlooks.

And it was true—we were lucky, incredibly so. We could have done so much worse than Miles and Lucy. But even so, I could tell it wasn’t going to be plain sailing.

When he showed me around, Miles took me down to the basement—his manshed, as he jokingly called it. It was vast. The previous owners had excavated the original cellar right out under the garden. There was an air-conditioned wine room down there, a gym, even a small swimming pool.

“Wow,” I said, which seemed like the only possible reaction.

“It’s all right, isn’t it?” Miles gazed around. “But it’s only material things, Pete. I’d give it all for David to be able to walk and talk properly.”

“Is there any chance he’ll catch up?”

He shrugged. “The doctors keep saying, Wait and see. Their best guess is that he’ll be mildly retarded. But he won’t be playing for the first eleven, put it that way.”

Retarded. The word sounded so harsh. In the NICU they’d tended to use euphemisms like challenged or delayed.

“We were lucky with Theo,” I said. “He seems to be progressing pretty well. In everything but his speech, anyway.”

“Yes.” Miles hesitated. “Look, I wasn’t planning to mention this today, but since we’re all getting on so well…When Lucy was pregnant and we found out it was a boy, I put down a deposit for my old schools—Radley and the Dragon School. I know it sounds ridiculous, but you need to get their names down at birth to have the faintest chance of getting in these days. Both are out of the question for David now, of course, given how competitive the entrance is. I’d like to put the places into Theo’s name. He’s clearly bright enough, and you can tell he’s going to be sporty. I think he might benefit from the opportunity.”