A Change of Heart for the Cornish Midwife by Jo Bartlett
2
Bailey was the cutest little boy. He was like Dan in a lot of ways, with the same dark hair, and beautiful eyes, the colour of cornflowers. He still didn’t have much speech, but he’d developed the habit of calling every male he encountered ‘Dada’, which Lissy admitted had caused one or two embarrassed looks from men who were out with their other halves. Although Bailey applied the same blanket approach to the women he encountered, too, and he’d spent the last hour calling Ella ‘Mama’ whenever he’d wanted to get her attention. It turned out he was also pretty good at saying no, which was generally accompanied by a vigorous shaking of his head. So the attempts to feed him the sachet of organic mush that Lissy had packed in his bag were rejected with considerable force, with quite a lot of it ending up in Ella’s dark brown, curly hair. In the end, she’d managed to brush most of the rejected meal out of her hair, and the two of them had resorted to checking out what the hospital cafeteria had to offer instead. Bailey had happily wolfed down the best part of a cheese sandwich, despite the fact that it curled up slightly at both ends. He was just starting to get restless again when a text pinged through.
From Dan
Everything okay? We weren’t sure where you’d disappeared to! Niall’s gone to say goodnight to Noah and Tegen at your mum and dad’s, then he’s going to head back to sort some stuff out at the farm. Lissy wants to see Bailey before we take him home and the midwife says it’s okay as long as we’re not here for too much longer. She’s under strict instructions to get as much rest as possible, but I think a cuddle from Bailey can only help. Love you xxx
To Dan
I was just getting Bailey something to eat. On my way now, I’ll be five minutes tops. Love you too xxx
They’d always been affectionate in their texts but finishing them with a declaration of love every time was a fairly new thing. It might seem OTT, but it had started after Ella and Dan had discovered that two of their close friends had nearly missed out on a last opportunity to say how much they loved each other, which had rocked them both. Dan had known Leo Cotton for years and they had first become friends at school. After that, they’d worked together a lot too, with Dan using Leo’s scaffolding company for his own property renovation business and for maintenance on the rental properties Dan owned. But it had been just over a year since the accident that had changed everything for Leo.
On the morning it had happened, Leo had argued with his wife, Jemima, before leaving for work. It was one of those stupid sorts of rows about who hadn’t thrown out an empty orange juice carton in the fridge. Leo had told them later that it had escalated into a bit of a tit for tat, culminating in some snippy texts that would have done absolutely nothing to convince anyone reading them that he and his wife loved each other at all. Jemima had cried when she’d told Ella about the last text she’d sent Leo, before getting the call to say he’d fallen from scaffolding at a third-floor height. The words clearly haunted her, even now: My life would be so much easier if I lived on my own!
It had just been a throw away comment, which she’d told Ella she’d do anything to take back, and Jemima’s actions in the wake of Leo’s accident had borne that out. Discovering that the fall had left him paralysed had been devastating for them both, but the love they had for one another was never in any doubt. Not any more.
When they’d asked Ella and Dan to accompany them on their first holiday since Leo’s accident, it had felt like a privilege to witness the connection between them and the sheer will it took not to give in to asking: why them? Everything about the holiday had needed to be planned in great detail, but there were still so many barriers that Leo shouldn’t have been forced to face. If he was bitter, he didn’t show it. Instead, he’d thrown himself into campaigning for disability awareness, was a member of several forums for people with life changing injuries and had even set up his own online campaign group. He was determined to see a hospital built locally, somewhere with a specialised centre, where he and other people in similar circumstances could initially be treated following their accidents and where they could go for further rehabilitation. Watching him in action was like witnessing a force of nature and if anyone could make it happen, it would be Leo.
Bailey suddenly yawned, bringing her back to the present, and when Ella lifted him from his seat, he wound his arms around her neck, nuzzling his head against her chest. ‘Come on then sweetheart, let’s go and see Mummy.’
‘Mama.’ As the little boy said the words, something in Ella’s chest shifted. She couldn’t be sure if Bailey understood where they were going, or if it was just his habit of calling all women Mama. Either way, she couldn’t help but hug her nephew all the tighter. This was what she wanted – a little person to call her Mama, and Dan Dada. She’d known she wanted a family with Dan the moment he’d come back into her life and now she was more certain than ever.
* * *
Dan would never have thought it possible, but every time Ella walked into a room he still got that feeling. It was like he was a teenager again, that same boy he’d been the first time she’d walked into a room and into his life, when the intensity of teenage infatuation had threatened to overwhelm them both. Even after all this time, when Ella was in the same room, she was the only person he could really see and the one person he was desperate to talk to, even if he’d only seen her moments before. Dan didn’t even have the tiniest shred of doubt that she was his person, and that finding her in this great big world made him the luckiest man alive. When he said all of that on their wedding day, it wouldn’t be just one of those trite lines that bridegrooms up and down the country rolled out in their speeches. He meant every word, because he knew for certain it was true.
‘How are you doing?’ Ella placed Bailey on the bed next to his mother and he instantly snuggled into her, making Lissy smile.
‘Okay thanks to you.’ Lissy sighed. ‘I’m so lucky to have so many people who care about me, but I feel really guilty.’
‘What on earth for?’ Ella sat down in the seat by the bed and took hold of Lissy’s hand. ‘You’ve got nothing to feel guilty for, and the last thing you need to do is stress about anything.’
If Dan could have picked the perfect person to be Lissy’s sister-in-law, it would still have been Ella. The two of them got on incredibly well and it was just another reason why he loved her so much. Sometimes he looked at her and tried to imagine what his life would be like without her in it, but he couldn’t, because life without her didn’t bear thinking about. It had been bad enough when he’d lost her the first time around, but when they finally got together again after ten years apart, it had been as if everything he’d ever wanted had fallen into place.
‘I feel bad that you’ve had to finish work early, that your mum and dad have had to look after the kids, and that you guys are going to be looking after Bailey for a bit. But most of all I’m absolutely gutted that I’m going to miss the wedding.’
‘No you’re not.’ Ella’s response was emphatic, but Lissy was already holding up her hand.
‘Don’t even say it. Dan’s already mentioned the possibility of postponing the wedding, but I’m not having you doing that. No way.’
Ella looked across at him. He’d known without having to check first that she’d be okay with postponing the wedding, just as he was sure she’d have known the same thing about him. Giving an almost imperceptible nod, she turned back to Lissy.
‘Well that’s a shame because I’ve already made the call.’ Crossing her arms, she looked directly at Lissy. ‘There’s not a chance in hell we’re getting married without you there. But now you’ve got until July to recover from all of this, and the best bit is that we’ll have an extra guest at the wedding when this little one finally arrives.’
‘Ella, you can’t do that, you’ve been planning the wedding for well over a year!’ There was a very good chance that Lissy’s blood pressure had just shot up again and Dan felt another huge rush of love for Ella. The fact she’d already cancelled the wedding proved that, when it came down to the important things in life, they were always on the same page.
‘You mean my mum has.’ Ella grinned. ‘Now there will be no excuse for all the Valentine’s Day theming she’s gone crazy with. I love her to bits, but you have no idea how big a favour you’ve done me.’
‘What about all the arrangements? How can you cancel them when it’s so close to happening? It’ll cost you a fortune!’ At this rate, the doctors would be insisting on delivering Lissy’s baby straight away. Their instruction for her to stay calm seemed to have been completely forgotten.
‘Mum and Dad were organising the catering, so all it took was a call to the marquee company, the band and Noah, who is just the best vicar we could wish for. Everyone was great about it when I told them why I wanted to postpone and the next date they all had free was the fourth of July. How does that sound to you?’ Ella looked at Dan again and he was already walking towards her, knowing that there was no way he could show her just how much her gesture had meant to him, but wanting to try all the same.
‘You are the best person in the world, you know that, don’t you? And I’d marry you any day of the year, in any place.’ He pulled her to her feet and put his arms around her.
‘As long as Lissy’s there too.’ She smiled, understanding just how important his sister was to him. She knew him inside out, even the bits he tried not to show the rest of the world, and she still loved him.
‘Absolutely.’
‘You two are crazy, but thank you so much!’ Lissy was laughing and crying. ‘And I’m glad if there really is one upside to all the hassle I’ve caused, it’s scrapping the theme you didn’t want.’
‘Oh believe me, that’s a major upside, isn’t it?’ Ella looked up at Dan and he nodded slowly, but he couldn’t stop a slow smile from creeping across his face.
‘You do realise there’s a chance to have a whole different theme with the new date, though, don’t you? July the fourth is American Independence Day and me and Lissy spent half our childhoods talking in American accents from watching so many TV shows made there.’ Dan looked at his sister, who grinned.
‘It used to drive Mum mad!’
‘Do you remember I asked for a birthday party at McDonalds every year, but she’d never let me do it?’ Dan shook his head, feigning a look of abject disappointment. ‘Maybe now’s my chance.’
‘If you even think about hiring Ronald McDonald, I might have to reconsider the whole thing.’ Ella laughed.
‘I thought a wedding breakfast of chicken nuggets might make it really memorable. You can have whatever dips you like.’ Dan winked and Ella shook her head.
‘Thankfully I know you’re joking, because if I thought it’s what you really wanted, you realise I’d have to go along with it, don’t you?’
‘I do.’ Pulling her into his arms again, he looked over her shoulder at Lissy, who gave him a big thumbs up. He couldn’t wait to say ‘I do’ in front of the congregation at St Jude’s, but it really didn’t matter to him where the wedding took place, or what date it happened on. He wanted to marry Ella even more than before and that was definitely something he wouldn’t have thought possible when he’d woken up that morning.