Chapter 15: The Crack in the Wall
I lay in the dark with my hand flat on my belly, the way I had done every night for months. The babies were still now, worn out from their showing off. But I could not still my own mind.
His face. I kept seeing his face. The tears that had slid down his cheeks in that dim room, the way he had whispered hello to the screen as though our daughters could hear him. I had watched Mycroft Holmes negotiate with foreign ministers. I had seen him cool and unreadable at functions where every word was a chess move. I had never seen him cry.
I pressed my palm deeper into the curve of my belly. Ariadne kicked, a sharp little protest, and I smiled in the darkness.
"You saw him," I whispered. "You saw your father."
The crack in my heart had widened. I could feel it, a fissure running through the wall I had spent months building. I had told myself the scan was for the twins. That I was letting him in as far as the waiting room door and no further. That when it was over, I would step back and rebuild.
But the door had shifted. I had felt it, like a hinge giving way.
I reached for my phone on the bedside table. The screen glowed, too bright in the darkness, and I squinted against it. I opened the message thread.
He had sent me nothing since the scan. I had expected messages. Questions about how I was feeling, whether the babies had moved, whether I had eaten. But there was nothing. Just the silence of a man who was waiting for me to set the pace.
My thumb hovered over the keyboard.
I typed the word before I could think about it.
Tomorrow.
I stared at it. A single word. No context, no explanation. Just an invitation, or a test, or something I did not have a name for. My heart hammered against my ribs.
I pressed send.
The reply came in under a minute. I will be there.
I let the phone fall onto the mattress and lay back against the pillows, staring at the ceiling. Outside, a siren wailed somewhere in the city, fading into the hum of traffic.
I put my hand on my belly and felt a flutter, two little movements, one after the other. As if they were listening.
"Your father is not a monster," I whispered. "He's just a man who was afraid."
The words felt strange on my tongue. I had spent so long telling myself he was cold, that he had ended us because I did not mean anything to him. But I had seen his face in that scan room. I had felt his hand shaking in mine.
He had been afraid. I understood that. I had been afraid my whole life, in one way or another.
I closed my eyes and let the night take me.
I woke to sunlight.
It poured through the thin curtains in a warm golden wash, falling across the bed in a long rectangle of light. I lay still for a moment, letting the morning settle around me. The babies moved, a slow roll that made my belly shift under my hand. Elspeth, always the calmer one.
I sat up and swung my legs over the edge of the bed. The flat was quiet, save for the distant sound of traffic from the street outside. I padded to the kitchen in my bare feet and put the kettle on, leaning against the counter as I waited for it to boil.
The kitchen was small but bright. The morning sun caught the dust motes drifting through the air, tiny glittering specks suspended in the light. My gaze fell on the wooden table by the window, where a single envelope sat abandoned amongst scattered papers.
I had been ignoring it for days. Bills, mostly. A letter from the hospital about my antenatal leave. An invitation to a baby fair I had no intention of attending.
I left the envelope where it sat and carried my tea to the window. The street below was waking, a man walking a dog, a woman with a pushchair, the milk float lingering at the corner. Normal life. Ordinary morning. And I stood there with a single word still humming in my chest.
Tomorrow.
I had sent it without thinking. He had answered without hesitation. I will be there. I had not told him where, or when, or what I wanted from him. Just one word, and he had said yes.
I finished my tea and went to shower. The water was hot, and I stood under it longer than I meant to, letting it work on the tight knots in my shoulders. The babies rolled, slow and contented, and I pressed a palm against the swell of my belly.
"Today," I said. "You'll see your father today."
I dressed carefully. Jeans, soft and loose. A cream jumper that fell over my belly without clinging. I left my hair down, the way I knew he liked it, and I told myself I was not dressing for him. I was dressing for myself. For the woman I was becoming.
My phone buzzed on the kitchen counter while I was making toast. Kate.
How did it go? I forgot to ask. I'm sorry. Tell me everything.
I had not told her. The scan, the tears, the way he had held my hand. I had meant to call her that evening, but I had fallen into the dark instead, and the word 'Tomorrow' had taken everything else with it.
I typed back: It went well. Both babies are perfect. Talk later.
Her reply came almost instantly. PERFECT? Tell me EVERYTHING. Don't you dare leave me hanging.
I smiled, despite myself. I would tell her everything. Just not yet. Not before I understood what 'tomorrow' meant.
I put the phone face down and ate my toast standing at the counter, looking out at the rooftops. The day stretched ahead of me, empty of plans. I had no shift today. The nursery was finished, the boxes unpacked. There was nothing to do but wait.
I did not want to wait.
I sent the message before I could think too hard about it. I have something to show you. The nursery. If you want to see it.
The reply came in under a minute. I would like that very much. I could come this afternoon. Or now, if you prefer.
Now. I typed it, then pressed send before I could question myself.
I will be there in thirty minutes.
I stared at the screen. Thirty minutes. I had thirty minutes to make the flat look like a home, thirty minutes to prepare myself to see him again. To let him into the nursery, into the room I had built with my own two hands, into the life I was building without him.
I moved through the flat, tidying things that did not need tidying. I plumped the cushions on the sofa. I wiped the kitchen counter. I stood in the nursery doorway and looked at the cot, at the changing table, at the tiny clothes folded in the drawers, and I wondered what he would see when he looked at it.
A room for two. A room I had made alone.
The bell rang. I was on the other side of the flat, but I felt it like a current running through me. I walked to the door, my hand flat on my belly, and I opened it.
Mycroft stood on the landing, a heavy coat over his suit, no umbrella, his dark auburn curls damp from a fine drizzle. He looked at me, and his grey eyes softened, just a fraction.
"Hello," he said.
"Hello."
I stepped back to let him in. He crossed the threshold into my small hallway, and I closed the door behind him, sealing us in together. He hung his coat on the hook by the door, carefully, as though he were handling something precious.
"Thank you for letting me come," he said.
"I said I had something to show you." I turned and led him down the hallway, past the kitchen, past the living room. The door to the nursery was closed. I hesitated with my hand on the handle, and looked back at him.
"It's not finished," I said. "There's still a lot to do. But I wanted you to see it. To see where they'll sleep."
He nodded, his jaw tight. I opened the door.
The afternoon light fell through the window in a soft golden wash, catching the pale wood of the cot. The changing table stood against the wall, drawer fronts gleaming. The mobile I had hung over the cot swayed gently, tiny stars and moons turning in an unfelt breeze.
Mycroft walked past me into the room. He stopped in the middle, his shoulders very still, and looked.
"They built it yourself," he said.
"The cot," I said. "The changing table too. Small Allen key and a lot of swearing."
He did not laugh. He walked to the cot and reached out, then stopped, his hand hovering over the rail. He looked at me, asking permission.
"You can touch it," I said. "It's yours too."
He laid his hand on the rail and ran it along the smooth wood. His fingers were long, careful. I watched him take in the folded blankets, the tiny sheets, the little stack of muslins I had folded into perfect squares. The mobile swayed above him, and he reached up and touched one of the stars, setting it spinning.
"Elspeth," he said quietly. "Ariadne."
"They're still just names," I said. "I don't know them yet. Not really."
"You will." He turned to face me. "You'll know them better than anyone."
I felt the crack widen again. It was one thing to hear him say the names in his flat, across the careful distance of a sitting room. It was another to stand here, in the room I had built, and watch him touch the cot they would sleep in.
"Your flat," he said. "You've made it into a home."
"I'm trying."
He crossed the room to the window and looked out at the street below. The rain had stopped. "This is a good street," he said. "Quiet. I looked it up."
"You looked up my street?"
"I looked up the crime statistics, the school catchment, the nearest parks. I wanted to know you were safe." He said it simply, without embarrassment. "I would have looked up the hospital too, but I already knew it."
I leaned against the wall and crossed my arms over my belly. "You've been keeping tabs on me."
"I have been worrying about you. There is a difference."
"Is there?"
He turned from the window and met my eyes. "I do not keep tabs on you, Jill. I think about you constantly. I worry about you and our daughters. I wonder, every hour of every day, whether you are safe and happy and well. That is not surveillance. That is love."
The word landed in the quiet room like a stone dropping into still water. He had said it at his flat, in the heat of that conversation. But here, in my nursery, surrounded by my careful preparations, it sounded different. It sounded like a promise.
"Would you like to see the rest?" I asked.
"Yes. I would like to see all of it."
I showed him the flat. The living room with its mismatched furniture and the bookshelves I had filled with paperbacks. The kitchen with its worn counters and the herbs I had planted on the windowsill. My bedroom, the door left open a crack, the unmade bed visible. He walked through it all with the same careful attention, touching nothing, taking everything in.
"It's small," I said.
"It's yours."
We stood in the kitchen, the afternoon light falling across the wooden table where the envelope still lay abandoned. He looked at it, then at me.
"Are you going to open that?" he asked.
"I keep meaning to. It's just bills."
"Some of them are important."
"Is that you being analytical?"
"That's me being a man who has watched you avoid your mail for weeks." The corner of his mouth lifted, just a fraction. "You have always done that. When we were together, you would let letters pile up until I sorted them."
"You sorted my mail?"
"Someone had to. You would have missed your Council Tax deadline and been very cross about it."
I laughed. It came out of me before I could stop it, a real laugh, and he smiled at the sound of it, a full smile, his grey eyes brightening.
"I hate that you know that about me," I said.
"I know many things about you. I know you take your tea too milky. I know you cry at the end of films even when you have seen them before. I know you talk to babies when you think no one is listening."
I felt my cheeks warm. "You eavesdropped on me at work?"
"You were talking to a child called Tom who had sepsis. You told him he was the bravest boy in the whole hospital." His voice was gentle. "I was there to see a consultant. I heard you."
"That was months ago."
"Yes." He looked at me steadily. "I have not forgotten a single thing about you, Jill."
The crack split wider. I could feel it all the way through me, a fissure running from my chest to my belly, and for a moment I thought the babies would feel it too. Ariadne kicked, hard, and I pressed my hand to the spot.
He noticed. He always noticed.
"Is she alright?" he asked.
"She's fine. She's impatient. She gets that from you."
"From me?"
"You're always pushing things forward. Plans within plans. She just wriggles."
He looked down at my belly, and something in his face shifted. Wanting. That was the only word for it. He wanted to be close to them. He wanted to feel what I felt.
"Do you want to feel them?" I heard myself ask.
He looked at me sharply. "May I?"
"They're moving. You might catch one."
I crossed the small kitchen and stopped in front of him. He reached out, his hands hovering, waiting for my permission. I took his wrists and guided his palms to the sides of my belly.
His breath caught. He stood very still, his hands warm through the thin fabric of my jumper, and I felt his fingers curve around the swell of me as though I were something infinitely fragile.
And then Ariadne kicked. A strong, unmistakable thump against his right palm.
His face changed. I watched it happen, the shock, the wonder, the tears that sprung into his grey eyes and spilled over without any attempt to hide them. He did not move his hands. He just held me and looked down at where his palms rested against the children he had helped make.
"Jill," he whispered. "God, Jill."
"Was that too much?"
"No." His voice cracked. "No. It's not too much. It's everything."
Elspeth moved then too, a slower roll, a gentle push against his other palm. He felt it. I saw it in his face.
"Both of them," he said. "I felt both of them."
Tears were running down my own cheeks. I did not know when I had started crying. I only knew that I stood in my small kitchen with his hands on my belly and our daughters moving beneath them, and the door in my heart swung wide open.
I reached up and touched his face, the damp of his tears, the rough line of his jaw. He leaned into my palm, his eyes closing, and I felt the shudder that ran through him.
"I am so sorry," he said. "For everything. For the way I ended it. For the months I missed. For all of it."
"I know."
"I will spend the rest of my life making it up to you. To them. If you let me."
I looked at him, this man who had broken me and rebuilt me, who had walked away and come back, who was standing in my kitchen with tears on his face and his hands on our children. I could see the fear in his eyes, the same fear he had hidden behind for four years. He was terrified that I would say no.
I took his hands and slid them from my belly, then held them in mine.
"Tomorrow," I said. "Come back tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after that. One step at a time."
"Every day," he said. "I will come every day, if that is what you want."
"It's a start."
He looked at our joined hands, then at me. "Jill. May I kiss you?"
I should have said no. I should have told him it was too soon, that I needed more time, that I was not ready to let him back into my heart.
But the door was open.
I leaned in and kissed him. Soft, tentative, the first kiss in months, a question and an answer all at once. His hand came up to cup my face, gentle, careful, and he kissed me back as though I were something precious.
When we broke apart, he rested his forehead against mine.
"Thank you," he whispered.
"Don't make me regret it."
"I won't. I promise you, Jill. I won't."
The babies kicked, both of them at once, a double thump against my ribs. I laughed, and Mycroft laughed with me, a sound I had not heard from him in months, bright and unguarded.
"Your daughters," I said. "They have opinions."
"I would not expect anything less." He looked down at my belly. "They take after their mother."
We stood in the kitchen, the evening light growing golden around us, and I did not think about the envelope on the table, or the bills inside, or the future that stretched ahead, uncertain and unplanned. I thought about the crack in my heart, and how it had turned into a doorway.
Tomorrow, I thought. And the day after. And the day after that.