A Mother's Secret

nk that. It was a natural conclusion to jump to—even if it wasn’t true. ‘I swear to you I didn’t. I’ve never mentioned surrogacy to Claire. I wouldn’t...I couldn’t.’

The bad surrogate. The label the press had given her, along with every unflattering picture they could take. Finally. The thing she’d absolutely dreaded. As soon as anyone realised she was the woman from the papers they all had to have an opinion. An opinion they intended to share with her. And Logan was going to be no different.

She gave a sigh. This was all going horribly wrong. ‘There was a court case. It lasted five years. I came here to get away from all that. I came here for a new start.’

But he wasn’t listening. He was fixating on one thing. ‘I don’t get it. Why didn’t you have a proper agreement?’ Bits of the case were obviously sparking in his brain. ‘You’re a doctor, for goodness’ sake. You should have known better.’ He let out an expletive. ‘Or, more importantly, they should have known better.’

She shook her head. ‘I won that court case, Logan. The court agreed that Isla was my daughter. That Isla should stay with me.’

‘And that makes you feel better? How on earth could you look your friends in the eye?’ He started pacing around the room. ‘You swear you’ve never told Claire about this?’

She shook her head.

‘No wonder. You stole your friend’s baby. Why would you tell anyone that?’ It was obvious his mind was jumping from one thing to another. One second it was on Claire, the next it was fixating back on her.

She sagged back onto the sofa. ‘You have no idea what you’re talking about. I did what I had to do. I did what was right.’ It was pointless trying to explain. She already knew he was never going to understand.

‘How is stealing your friend’s baby “right”?’

She put her head in her hands. She’d had this conversation so many times, with so many people. But she’d never been so in fear of someone standing in judgement of her.

For some reason it seemed so important that he understand why she did it. She wanted to persuade him that she wasn’t the worst person to walk the face of this earth. Even though that was the way the press had portrayed her.

Then again, the press hadn’t known the full story. Because she’d always left part of it out. It had been so important at the time. But it wasn’t rational. She had no evidence. So her lawyer had told her not to breathe a word in case it harmed her case.

But the case was over. Now she could say whatever she liked.

She looked at Logan. His hair was rumpled from where he’d run his fingers through it, his pale denim shirt pushed up around the elbows. Just looking at him made her heart beat faster. But the expression on his face was anything but understanding. Why had this conversation even started? Things would have been so much easier if she’d just let him kiss her. Just let herself be lost in his touch. But she’d started now and there was nowhere else to go. She had to finish.

She sucked in a breath. ‘Everything was fine to begin with. Patrick and Lesley were delighted. But as my pregnancy progressed things started to change. Patrick, he started to get really odd, really possessive. He told me to give up work. He started trying to tell me what to do about everything.’

‘Maybe he was just concerned about his baby?’

‘No. It was much more than that. He was controlling. It was a side of him I’d never seen before. I started to feel really uncomfortable around him. He was turning up at my flat unannounced, sometimes with a list of instructions in his hand.’

‘Did you consider he might just be anxious?’

She let her head sag. ‘I considered everything. Because Lesley was one of my best friends,’ she said sadly.

Logan’s brow furrowed. ‘How did you get pregnant in the first place? Did you do it...the old-fashioned way?’

Gemma was horrified. ‘Sleep with my friend’s husband? Absolutely not. I used a turkey baster. It worked first time.’

‘And you just decided not to give them the baby?’

She let out a sigh of exasperation. ‘I can’t explain it properly. I had a really bad feeling. The more Patrick’s behaviour began to alarm me, the more connected to Isla I started to feel. I’d never thought of her as anything other than Patrick and Lesley’s up until that point. But as I started to get bigger, as she started to grow and move I felt more and more uncomfortable around Patrick. She started to feel like my baby and I started to feel like a mother who had to protect her child.’ She shrugged her shoulders in frustration. ‘I had a hunch.’

His voice rose. ‘You had a hunch? You based your baby’s future on a hunch?’ He was incredulous and she couldn’t blame him. It sounded awful.

It didn’t matter how futile things sounded. She had to try and explain. ‘Don’t make it sound crazy. We base our clinical decisions on hunches all the time. We just feel something isn’t right but we can’t explain it. Look at the assessment the health visitor does on families for child protection. She’s allowed to give marks based on her “health visitor hunch” when she knows something isn’t right but she can’t put her finger on it.’

Something else sparked in her brain and she didn’t hesitate to use it. ‘Look at the clinical symptoms for an aortic aneurysm. One of them is “a feeling of impending doom” by the patient. There’s no rational explanation for it. But it happens so often it’s now considered an evidenced based clinical symptom.’

She could see the recognition on his face but he just kept shaking his head. She could see the pain on his face at her using the condition that had killed his father as a way of explanation. ‘You’re being unfair. Medicine isn’t an exact science—we know that. But you didn’t have any evidence. How on earth did you win the court case?’

For some reason she was determined to try and make him understand. ‘It was more than that. One day I was with Lesley and I noticed she had a bruise on her thigh. It was unusual—in a place that no one would normally see—and I only glimpsed it while she was getting changed.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She gave me a reasonable explanation of what had happened.’

‘And you didn’t believe her?’

‘At first I did. But then there was a mark on her shoulder—a scrape. Something else that would normally be hidden. It started setting off alarm bells in my head.’

‘Did you ask your friend if she was being abused?’

‘I tried to. I asked if there was anything she wanted to tell me. But she made a joke out of it—as if I was being ridiculous—and cut me off. It was almost as if she knew what I was going to ask.’

Logan shook his head. ‘So what did you do?’

The big question. The one she still asked herself when she lay in bed at night.

Her voice was quiet. ‘That’s just it, Logan. What could I do? Lesley wasn’t telling me anything and I didn’t know—not for sure.’ She looked him in the eye. ‘I didn’t have any evidence. And if I’d tried to report it...’ Her voice tailed off for a second. ‘I was worried. I was worried people would say I was making it up to try and discredit them. Try to keep my baby from them. So I didn’t say anything. My job was to protect my daughter. I just said I’d changed my mind and wanted to bring Isla up on my own. She was biologically my child. We didn’t have a formal agreement. The judge found in my favour.’

The frown lines in his forehead were deeper than she’d ever seen them. It was clear he was trying to understand, even if he didn’t really. ‘I just don’t get it. Why didn’t you try to prove there was a risk?’

‘Because my lawyer told me not to. It would have been my word against theirs. Lesley was an adult. If there was abuse in the household, it was up to her to report it.’

Silence, as he contemplated her words. Was he trying to rationalise her actions in his mind?

He moved over towards the wall, leaning against it and folding his arms across his chest. ‘So, why did you tell me?’

His voice was quiet. He couldn’t hide the air of exasperatio

n in it, but it was obvious he was curious as to why she was sharing something with him that her lawyer had told her to keep quiet.

She met his gaze. There was none of the compassion or desire that she’d seen before. He looked angry. He looked as if he didn’t understand any of this. It seemed as though all the underlying sizzle and attraction had been snuffed out in an instant—ruined by her being honest with him.

‘Because I wanted to tell you the truth.’

He didn’t say anything. She could see him take a few steadying breaths. The rise and fall of his chest was calming. She rested back against the sofa, her hands in her hair. ‘Do you think I really wanted to have this conversation with you, Logan?’

He looked at her again, and her heart ripped in two because it was almost a look of disgust.

Anger started to build inside her. This was pointless. He was never going to understand. He was never going to try to understand. Why was she even bothering?

‘I can’t believe this. I can’t believe you would do something like this.’ He’d started pacing around her living room, the glasses of wine, box of cakes and almost-kiss long forgotten. ‘It sounds to me like you just got cold feet. You started to connect with the baby and you were just looking for any excuse.’

He stopped at a photograph of Isla with her red bouncing curls and pale skin. ‘Isla—she doesn’t look like you at all. Is she like her father?’

A horrible tremor crept down her spine. She loved her daughter with her whole heart. But Patrick’s genetic traits were there for all to see. Her brown locks and sallow skin were nowhere in sight. She gave the slightest of nods. ‘He has red hair too.’

Logan held his hands up. ‘So what do you tell her? Does she ever ask about her father?’