‘I remember that outfit,’ Jackson said from the doorway. She hadn’t even heard him come up the stairs. Putting the flat-packed boxes to one side, he came to stand beside her. ‘Harriet had to prise that dress off her every night for weeks.’

  Lucy smiled. ‘Yeah?’ Jackson’s aftershave was nice. It matched the room, she thought—light, but woodsy, strong but gentle somehow. ‘She definitely knows her own mind.’

  His head dipped closer as he took the board off the wall. ‘I’ll put this in my room for now.’

  She reached for it, seeing something. ‘Is that...us?’ Jackson’s gaze followed her finger to the photo in the centre. ‘From the paintballing day?’

  It was a group photo, a crowd of blues and reds, paint-and mud-splattered.

  ‘I don’t know.’ He went to leave but she stopped him.

  ‘It is!’ She took the board from his grasp, leaning in to peer at the sea of faces. Jackson was laughing, head tilted to another player. When she found her own face in the crowd, she knew why—there she was, bright-red cheeks and mud smeared face, flipping him off. ‘How do you even have this? That’s so funny.’

  When she turned to look at him, he looked as if he wanted the ground to swallow him up. ‘Jackson?’

  ‘I asked for it.’ He shrugged, but the action was too forced to be real. ‘No biggie.’

  She passed it back, watching as he left the room.

  What was that? He kept a photo of her where he could see it all the time?

  She was still looking at the door when he came back, busying himself with making up boxes. He didn’t meet her eye as he started to pack away the coloured files. Taking a box, she got to work, not sure what, if anything, she’d done wrong.

  ‘It’s a nice photo,’ she muttered when she couldn’t stand the awkward pause in their conversation any longer. He side-eyed her, and she witnessed the sag in his tight shoulders.

  ‘I like it.’

  * * *

  It didn’t take long to clear everything away. Putting the boxes in a neat stack in the corner, they got to work on the furniture.

  ‘Careful,’ Jackson warned as they navigated the stairs. ‘Don’t drop this desk and flatten me.’ She pretended to consider it, a playful look on her face that made him shake his head.

  ‘And raise a kid on my own? Death by desk would be the easier option.’

  She felt his deep laugh through the desk, and the tension slid away. They managed not to maim each other getting the rest of the furniture down, which surprised them both.

  They had just brought the last of the boxes down to the corner of the dining room that was now an office nook when she noticed the time.

  ‘We need to go. We’re going to be late for your mother.’

  Looking around the now empty third bedroom, Jackson sighed. ‘I forgot about dinner. Least we got this done. The blinds will do for now, till we can decorate at least. What does she have in her room again?’

  Lucy tried to remember what Zoe’s room looked like. It felt as if she’d not been there for ever.

  ‘I think it was still decorated as a nursery. Yellow, maybe?’ She rubbed her forehead. ‘I know she has a cot bed, a dresser and a toy chest.’

  Jackson was looking around the room as if he could picture it all in place.

  ‘Cool. It should all fit, I think.’

  The longer they were in there, staring at the furniture marks in the carpet, the closer the air felt. Lucy pulled at her T-shirt, feeling as if the collar was tightening around her neck somehow.

  ‘Is it hot in here? I feel hot.’ She went to the window, opening it and gulping at the air. ‘I can’t get my breath.’

  ‘Lucy? Are you okay?’

  Her chest was so tight, she felt she couldn’t breathe. ‘I... No... I...’

  She felt Jackson’s arms around her. ‘It’s okay. You’re okay.’

  ‘How is this okay?’ she managed to push out. ‘This was your office, and now it’s a kid’s room! How are you just okay with this?’

  ‘Breathe,’ he kept saying over and over in an even voice. ‘It’s okay. We’ll be okay.’

  When the panic released her long enough to cry, she bawled, gut-wrenching, stomach-hurting sobs. ‘It’s not my house. It’s not Zoe’s house. It shouldn’t be like this, and we’re just playing house and pretending that the world’s not on fire.’

  ‘I know,’ he mumbled, his arms holding her tight, which for once she didn’t even think to object to. They were necessary to hold her up, hold her together. ‘We can do this. I promise, Luce. Rent your place out, move in here and we’ll bring Zoe home. Do this one day at a time, okay? Breathe. You’re okay.’

  Listening to his voice, she looked around the bare room.

  ‘I’m rubbish at painting,’ she muttered when her breathing was even. She felt his laughter jolt her as they stood squished together. ‘Don’t laugh.’

  His hand rubbed circles along her back. She felt her skin warm from his heat, her muscles unclench.

  ‘I’ll get you a paint gun.’ His deep voice was full of warmth too. ‘I seem to remember you could handle that.’ She huffed, squeezing him to her like a reflex, before stepping away. This touching thing was getting out of hand.

  Wiping her tears, she widened the gap between them. ‘Come on; your mother will be worried if we’re late.’

  She didn’t see the expression on Jackson’s face when she left the room but the deep, throaty ‘I’ll drive’ sent an oddly familiar shiver down her spine.

  Keep it together, she told herself for most of the car ride over. Grief does strange things to us all.

  * * *

  Sheila and Walt were happy to see them both, but the fatigue on their faces was evident. When Jackson said they’d like to take Zoe home, they didn’t object. They had dinner, and before they knew it, the pair of them were driving away with Zoe in the back seat, a load of toddler paraphernalia and enough food in containers to feed them for a week.

  A couple of hours later, Zoe was well and truly making her presence known. Sheila and Walt had packed a travel cot and some supplies for them but they’d barely had a chance to set it all up before Zoe started to scream the place down.

  ‘I wonder if she’s just unsettled,’ Jackson tried to say over the noise of her ear-splitting screams. ‘I read that kids pick up on things, even when really young. Emotions, changes, you know.’

  ‘You think?’ Lucy snapped back, panic overruling every sane thought in her body. ‘I’m not stupid, Sasquatch. My medical speciality trumps your parenting blogs.’

  ‘Never said you were stupid, Trigger.’ His jaw tensed, making his whole cheek judder from the sudden tightening. ‘I hate my nickname too, shorty!’

  Zoe started to cry louder the second he raised his voice, and both of them stilled. She could see the tension in Jackson’s jaw as he lifted her higher up in his arms. ‘Hey, Zo-Zo, it’s okay! You hungry?’

  ‘We tried that.’ She pointed to the spaghetti hoop stain on her hoodie. ‘We’ve tried changing her, she won’t go to sleep...’ The wailing intensified the second Jackson tried to put her down on the floor.

  ‘She had a nap earlier but Mum said it was barely twenty minutes.’

  Jackson lifted Zoe onto the kitchen counter. ‘Does she feel warm to you? She’s not warm, is she?’

  Lucy placed a cool palm on the little girl’s forehead. ‘A little. No fever, though, I already checked her temperature earlier and it’s normal.’

  Zoe was sobbing now, tears spilling down her cheeks as her whole face went beetroot-red.

  ‘Is she thirsty? What about a drink?’

  ‘She’d a beaker of milk at dinner, and she had—what?—sips of juice half an hour ago.’

  ‘What?’ Zoe’s wails had drowned out her words.

  ‘Sips of juice!’ she repeated, retrieving the beaker of cold apple juice from the fridge and showing him the measuring scale. ‘See? It was at the top before.’

  Jackson frowned. ‘Maybe we should take her into work.’

  ‘For crying? I’m not going into work for that. We’d get laughed out of the place!’ Lucy scoffed, picking a now screaming Zoe up and passing her the beaker. Zoe screeched harder and knocked the cup away. ‘Have a drink, come on.’ She tried again, and this time Zoe pelted the beaker across the kitchen. The ear-splitting decibels she emitted make them both jump. ‘We don’t need to take her in.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know what’s wrong. It could be a stomach-ache.’

  Lucy didn’t answer. She was too busy running irrational scenarios in her head. Her training was lost to her as she ran through every possible condition from hand, foot and mouth to meningitis...and the screaming thought that Zoe knew she had been left to her aunt and uncle and was just distraught at their lack of parenting skills. Trying to stop her inner panicked monologue from giving her another panic attack with her niece in her arms, she took her through to the lounge and tried to lay her down on the sofa. Zoe’s whole body went as rigid as an ironing board so she gave in and changed tack.

  You can do this, she told herself. You save babies on a daily basis. Heck, figure it out!

  ‘Will you just hold her a second? I’ll check her tummy, but I don’t think it’s to do with her digestion.’

  She tried to lift Zoe up to pass her off to Jackson, but she was screaming blue murder and rigid everywhere but her legs. Her legs were not stiff; they were quite the opposite, in fact. She was windmilling them, kicking both of them as she bellowed at the top of her lungs.

  ‘Let me, just... Zo-Zo! You’re okay, darling. Let Auntie Lucy have a look at you.’

  Jackson finally managed to get a grip on her, holding her up and out as if she was a bomb and he was a rookie disposal expert. ‘She’s like an eel! Hurry up, Trig!’

  Lucy was trying to lift up Zoe’s little top, but it was like wrestling an anaconda in the midst of an air raid siren.

  ‘Don’t call me that! I’m trying; I don’t want to hurt her!’

  ‘Hurt her?’ Jackson half-shouted over the ear-splitting wails. ‘She’s got more kick than a striker! I’ve treated easier drunks in A&E! Just pull her top up!’

  ‘I’m trying!’ She managed to do a quick examination, trying to remember her years of training and experience—and not get kicked in the face. ‘Her stomach’s normal, no blockage. She had a bowel movement earlier—that was normal too.’

  Jackson went to put her down on the floor, but she lifted her legs away, clinging to his clothing.

  ‘Well, what’s left? Exorcism?’

  ‘That’s not funny,’ she half-yelled back. ‘And, for the record, you’re a doctor too!’

  ‘Yeah, well, I’m just waiting for her head to spin round.’ He tried to soothe her in his embrace, his hand over one cheek. ‘She’s not hot, but her cheeks are.’

  The pair of them looked at each other at the exact same time. ‘Teething,’ they said in unison.

  Jackson pulled his car keys out of his pocket.

  ‘The supermarket—they have a pharmacy that is open late.’

  Lucy was already grabbing her bag.

  ‘Good thinking.’ She rubbed at her head where a bitter headache was beginning to form. ‘I’ll get her coat.’

  * * *

  The coat didn’t get closer to Zoe than the back seat. She turned purple when Lucy came near her with it, and Jackson turned a ghostly shade of white and muttered something about her throwing up in his back seat. It took them ten minutes to get Zoe to bend enough to fasten her into the car seat, and by then they were both so frazzled they just wanted to get to the local supermarket without driving the car into the nearest brick wall.

  Jackson backed out of the driveway at a slow crawl.

  ‘Jackson, the supermarket closes in three hours. Any chance you could drive faster?’

  He pulled onto the main road, Zoe’s wails now receding into shuddering sobs with the movement of the car. She loved the motion, Lucy remembered. Harriet and Ronnie used to drive her round together when she wouldn’t sleep.

  He made a throaty huffing noise. ‘Last time I was in a car with you driving, I got whiplash. We have a kid on board.’

  ‘Yeah, well, a toddler on a trike would beat you in a race. She’s not a new-born.’

  ‘Yeah, thanks for that, Mrs Paediatrician.’

  ‘That’s Ms Paediatrician, actually, and you’re welcome.’

  A car pipped its horn behind them. When they both looked, they were greeted by a pensioner behind the wheel who promptly mouthed, ‘Put your foot down!’ at Jackson.

  Turning to face the front, Zoe now quiet in the back, cheeks aflame, Lucy pressed her lips together.

  ‘Don’t say it,’ Jackson droned, putting his foot down. Lucy laughed all the way to the supermarket car park.

  * * *

  Zoe was like a different child the second they sat her in the trolley seat. Her cheeks were still flushed postbox-red, but she was happily looking around her as they strode down the aisles.

  They both stopped dead when they came to the baby section the pharmacist had directed them to—very quickly, they noted, which probably had something to do with the people in the queue and the ear-splitting wails Zoe had produced in Lucy’s arms. They reached two long rows of shelves filled with toys, equipment, toiletries and pregnancy gear.

  ‘All this stuff? Really?’ Jackson was clinging to the shopping trolley with white knuckles. Lucy arched a brow and charged forward. In that moment she had never been more grateful that she’d gone into paediatric medicine and not the cardiology specialism she’d once considered. Affairs of the heart she didn’t know, but this, she knew. From watching Harriet and the parents of the patients she cared for, she’d picked up a few things along the way. For some reason, the fact that Jackson wasn’t the polished A&E doctor he normally was helped too.

  ‘Yep. It’s a multi-million-pound industry, Jackson. You been living under a rock?’

  ‘Nope, but that doesn’t sound so bad about now. Ronnie didn’t talk much about this side of things.’

  Lucy headed straight for the teething gel, picking up a couple of boxes and chucking them into the trolley. Zoe was starting to grizzle again, the distraction of the bright lights and people wearing off in favour of her irritable gums. Sanitising her hands, Lucy ripped open one of the boxes and squeezed some of the gel out onto a finger.

  ‘Er, shoplift much?’ he teased.

  Lucy jabbed him with her elbow and started to rub some of the gel onto Zoe’s gums. The little girl pulled a face at first, but then settled down. The relief was evident, and Lucy felt a small frisson of achievement.

  ‘Well, that worked,’ Jackson said, a touch of wonder in his words. He went over to the shelf and picked up another five boxes. ‘We need to stock up on that. What else can we get? I’m guessing that they don’t have holy water in their range.’

  He was looking up and down the products, and Lucy couldn’t help but smile as she pushed the trolley and watched him taking everything in. He was quite funny as an uncle. She’d always known that he loved Zoe, but seeing him take such an interest made her think that perhaps Harriet and Ronnie had not been so far off the mark. If she’d been alone with Zoe screaming the place down in her little unkempt flat, would she have been here now, so calm, getting supplies? She knew the answer to that—heck no. She’d either have driven to work in a panic to get help or been online, desperately looking for same-day-delivery miracle purchases to help her out.

  ‘Hey.’ Jackson shook her out of her thoughts, waggling a teething ring at her. ‘These things go in the fridge; the cold is supposed to help soothe the gums. What do you think?’

  Lucy pushed the trolley closer. ‘I think we should get some.’ She pulled a pack of pull-ups off another shelf. ‘Let’s get stocked up.’

  Jackson’s dark-brown eyes locked onto hers for a moment longer than she was used to.

  ‘Deal.’ The corner of his mouth turned into that smile she secretly liked, the one he’d flashed the day they’d met all that time ago. ‘I say we get some alcohol too.’ He grinned. ‘For the adults—we deserve a treat too.’

  ‘Double deal!’ She laughed, pulling another pack of pull-ups off the shelf. ‘Fifty-fifty, though, right? Anything we spend has to be fifty-fifty.’

  She could swear his eyes sparkled. Supermarket lighting, she told herself, blinking hard.

  ‘Fifty-fifty all the way.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘ARE YOU SURE your parents didn’t mind having her again? I feel like we’re putting a lot on them. They’ve just had her for over two weeks solid.’

  They were sitting in Jackson’s car the next day, parked at the front of Harriet’s and Ronnie’s house. They were both exhausted after Zoe’s first night in her new home. Her bedroom was a priority, now it was emptied. The travel cot looked sad in there all on its own. The poor little love had been unsettled, meaning that they’d each slept in fitful shifts. Over one of Sheila’s lasagnes and a bottle of red, they’d also managed to sort out a rota system for who did what, and Lucy had ordered a wall calendar online for when they went back to work. They’d been so tired and distracted from Zoe that they hadn’t even fought about any of it—progress.

  ‘She can start back at nursery soon, help give them a break. Mum offered—she’ll take Zoe to nursery when we’re at work, and pick her up when we need her to. She has a key for my—our—place already. Trust me, they want to help. When I dropped Zoe off, Dad practically ripped her from my arms. I think they’ve missed her, but at least they got some sleep.’ He sounded almost jealous and, given the fog of fatigue currently swirling around them, Lucy understood his tone. In her early days in the job, studying and working all hours, she’d thought she could never be so tired. Turned out, having a toddler thrust upon her was just as exhausting.