And Alan was still there-a nightmare in her background.

Sometimes the responsibilities were far, far too much.

‘Let’s just concentrate on food,’ she told Cady. ‘One step at a time.’

‘Why can’t he be our daddy?’

Because he’d never look sideways at the likes of me, she thought bitterly. What man would? A woman encumbered with debt and child and responsibility up to her ears. And Alan…

Damn. To her horror she felt tears stinging the back of her eyes and she blinked them back with a fierceness that surprised her.

She must be more exhausted than she’d thought.

‘We’ll just get food and then we’ll go,’ she told him, and set him down at the first table she came to.

And he swayed.

‘Cady…’ Her hands came onto his shoulders to steady him. What was wrong? ‘Are you OK?’

‘N-no,’ he whispered, and she had to stoop to hear him. ‘Gemma, the room’s doing funny things. My eyes are doing funny things. Make them stop.’

‘Sure, we can keep her overnight.’ Jane, the cheerful night charge nurse accepted Mia with easy equanimity. ‘What’s wrong with her?’

‘As far as I know, nothing.’

‘She’s been abandoned,’ Donna chirped in from behind. She’d accompanied Nate across the road to the hospital and stood waiting-still bearing his dinner suit. ‘And we need to go to the Jazzfest.’

‘Of course you do. But…did you say abandoned?’ And then Jane lifted away the blanket covering the baby’s head and her breath sucked in with astonishment. Her eyes flew from the baby’s head to Nate’s and then back again.

Gemma was right. He’d never be able to disown this baby, Nate thought grimly. And the news would be from one end of the valley to the other by the morning. Dr Ethan’s baby, abandoned in Terama.

‘Just look after her for me for the night,’ he told Jane wearily. ‘I need to sort out a few things-in the morning.’