CAROL MARINELLI - Their Secret Royal Baby

For Elias there was a moment of uncertainty.

Could Mandy find someone else perhaps? Could he swap with Roger?

Almost immediately he realised there was no choice. Being brought up to speed on Roger’s ill child, and having Roger brought up to speed on Beth, would lose vital minutes for both patients.

They were already stretched to the limit.

And from what Mandy had told him this baby was close to being born.

His baby?

He could not afford to think like that.

‘Beth,’ Valerie said. ‘Dr Santini is here...’

Yet her eyes had already opened and met his and recall was instant for she would remember that night for ever.

Not just the romance and kissing and not just the delicious love they had made.

But that the results of that night had torn her life and her family apart.

CHAPTER TWO

BETH FRANTICALLY SHOOK her head when she opened her eyes and saw that Elias was there but then she saw he was wearing navy scrubs.

Squinting, she read his name badge and it registered that he was the doctor who had been summoned to treat her.

She simply didn’t have the breath to speak yet, but she did not want to see him like this, or for him to find out he was about to become a father like this!

Everything was going wrong.

Rapidly so.

Fifteen minutes ago she had been patting herself on the back for a job well done and about to cross the street from the restaurant she had just left and head for the hotel. Now she stared into the eyes of her one and only one-night stand.

Elias.

All Beth wanted was to go back to the hotel and to wake up in the bed there and declare this a bad dream so she tried to climb from the gurney.

‘I want to go home.’

‘Beth, you need to lie back,’ Valerie said, and held her, but Beth shrugged off the arm and as she did so she lost the gown.

‘I can’t...’ Beth said, and she rattled at the side of the gurney. ‘I want to go back to the hotel. I want...’

Elias caught her hands. He recognised her anguish and knew enough to be sure that it was not simply down to his presence.

She was in a rapid, tumultuous labour and that was a very scary place to be.

‘You’re okay.’

His was the voice of reason and she wondered if he even recognised her, he was so completely calm when everything, everything, was going wrong.

As an events co-ordinator, Beth was here in London for the opening of Mr Costas’s London branch of his renowned restaurant.

He was her top client.

The night had gone beautifully and to plan. The restaurant had been filled mainly with friends and relations of Mr and Mrs Costas. Most had travelled to London for the occasion and, because she had liaised with a lot of the guests for a previous event, the opening night had been easy to organise. The hotel opposite the restaurant was hosting the guests and all had gone well.

It had only been at the very end of the night, as the last of the guests had left, that Beth had suddenly felt terribly warm.

She had been wearing a black light wool dress, sheer black tights and high heels and, despite it being a cold night in early January, she hadn’t put on her coat.

The cold air had been welcome on her burning cheeks and she had taken a moment to gulp it in. She had just started to walk when she’d felt a sharp pain in her back.

It was the high heels, Beth had decided, but the pain had been acute enough to stop her and, even though the pavement was wet, she had bent to take her shoes off.

The pain, though, as she’d bent over, had stretched from her back and wrapped around her stomach like a vice, and Beth had placed a hand over her bump and felt that it was hard and tight.

As the pain had passed she’d straightened up and leant against a wall, trying to get back her breath.

She’d been standing in stockinged feet, holding her shoes, when she had broken out into a cold sweat and suddenly felt as if she might vomit.

The hotel, even though it was just across the street, had seemed a very, very long way off.

It had happened as rapidly as that.

Beth had taken out her phone and stared at it, wondering who she should call, trying to fathom what to do. Should she call the hospital she was booked into?

But that was in Edinburgh.

Did she need an ambulance?

No, she decided.

The pain had gone now.

Was it perhaps the beginnings of an upset stomach?

She tried to console herself that it was that.

Even if it meant that all Mr Costas’s family and friends were bent over a toilet right now, somehow she convinced herself that she must have eaten something that had disagreed with her.

But then another pain came.

It wasn’t as severe as the first but it was way more than the practice contractions that the midwife at her last antenatal visit had told her to expect. Then she felt a pulling sensation low in her pelvis that had her gasp and it felt as if the baby had shifted lower and was pressing down.

She knew she had to get to hospital and she saw a taxi and stepped forward and hailed it. Thankfully he slowed down.

‘Can you take me to the nearest hospital?’ she asked.

‘The Royal?’

‘Please.’

Beth sat there with her heart hammering, telling herself she was overreacting and wondering who she could call.

Her parents?

Immediately she pushed that thought aside.

They were furious and deeply embarrassed that she was pregnant and wanted nothing to do with her for now.

Oh, her mother visited occasionally and came armed with knitted cardigans and booties, and her father had sent her a card with a long letter as well as a cheque to buy some essentials for the baby.

It wasn’t the child’s fault, he had said in his letter.

She thought of calling Rory, her ex.

Only it wasn’t fair to call him after midnight when there was nothing he could do.

It wasn’t as if it was his baby.

Beth willed herself to stay calm.

The pain had stopped and even if she was in labour she knew that there were drugs that could be given to halt it. That had happened to a friend of hers. Yes, she’d be stuck in London perhaps for a little while but she could handle that.

Just as long as the baby was okay.

Then another pain hit.

And this was even worse than the first had been.

So much so that Beth let out a long moan as she fought the urge to crouch down on the taxi floor.

‘It’s okay, love,’ the taxi driver called out. ‘We’re just about here.’

He stopped the taxi outside the Accident and Emergency department and started sounding his horn and making urgent hand gestures for someone to come and assist. Beth watched as a security guard raced inside.

The pain had passed but it felt as if her legs had turned to jelly and she couldn’t move. She was starting to shake yet she was still desperately trying to cling to the denial that her baby was on the way. First babies took for ever, Beth knew that, and she had only had a few contractions. She was fine, so much so that she went in her purse to pay the fare.

‘How much is it?’ Beth asked in a voice that sounded vaguely normal.

‘It’s okay, love,’ the driver said. ‘This one’s on me.’

‘Here,’ Beth said, and held out some money, but he didn’t take it. ‘Here!’ she shouted when she never, ever shouted.

She wanted this to be a normal taxi ride, not an emergency one.

‘You’ll take my money!’ she told him.

It was imperative to stay in control—Beth had been taught to.

There might be a wild, feisty streak that ran through her but she had long ago learnt to suppress it.

Bar once.

That lapse was the reason she was here tonight.

Beth didn’t want the sight of two nurses coming towards her and pushing a wheelchair. She handed over the money and watched as the door was opened by one of them.

‘I can make my own way,’ she said, yet her hand was now gripping the handle above the window and she was again fighting not to bear down.

‘Let’s help you out,’ a nurse said.

With no choice, Beth accepted the waiting hands that helped her out.

She was still carrying her coat and shoes yet she was shaking all over.

‘I’m Mandy,’ a nurse told her, ‘and this is Valerie. What’s your name?’

‘Beth.’

‘How far along are you, Beth?’ Mandy asked as they helped her into a wheelchair.

‘Twenty-nine weeks.’

They pushed the chair into the department and Beth could see that it was busy.

The doors to an area opened and she glimpsed a lot of staff around what looked like a very sick child and a man receiving cardiac massage.

Shouldn’t these nurses be in there, helping?

Yet they were both still with her and had wheeled her into a cubicle and were helping her to stand and asking questions about the pregnancy and how long she’d had pain for when she felt a warm gush between her legs.

‘I’ve wet myself...’ Beth whimpered, and she started to cry with the indignity of it all as they helped her up onto the trolley.

Mandy was peeling off her underwear and tights and Valerie was trying to get her out of her dress as a receptionist came in.

Why was a receptionist here when she was nearly naked? Beth wanted to ask. She was a very private person and it felt appalling to be exposed but then Mandy covered her with a blanket.

Beth saw Mandy’s worried look as she took a phone out of the pocket of her uniform and suddenly she had gone.

‘We need your full name and address,’ the receptionist said.

They didn’t seem very relevant to Beth right now.

‘Elizabeth Foster.’

‘And I need your address, Elizabeth.’

‘Beth,’ she loudly corrected, and realised she was shouting again but she hated being called Elizabeth—that was the name her parents used when they were cross.

Oh, and they’d been cross of late.

‘We need your address...’

Beth gave it.

‘You’re a long way from home,’ Valerie commented.

‘I’m in London tonight for work.’

‘We need a next of kin.’ The receptionist was still asking questions but Beth was finding it hard to focus let alone answer and she shook her head. She did not want them contacting her parents about the baby when they had been so angry and had said they wanted nothing to do with it but then Valerie spoke gently.

‘If something happens to you, Beth, we need to know who to call.’

And though she was currently upset with her parents she thought of them in the middle of the night being called with bad news and she didn’t want that for them.

‘Rory...’ Beth gasped.

He would know how to handle them.

‘Is that your partner?’ the receptionist checked.

‘No, he’s my ex but he’s a very good family friend, he knows all that’s happened, he’d know how best to tell my parents if something happened to me.’

‘What’s his phone number?’

‘It’s on my phone.’

She found the number and then watched in terror as a resuscitation cot was brought into the cubicle and plugged in.

‘It’s too soon,’ Beth pleaded. ‘Can’t you give me something to stop it?’

Surely they were going to stop the labour—she was only twenty-nine weeks.

‘It’s okay.’ Valerie put an arm around her.

‘I need to push.’

‘Don’t push,’ the nurse said. ‘Wait till the doctor’s here.’

Beth screwed her eyes closed and fought not to push. It was like trying to hold back the tide yet she did all she could to hold her baby in.

Everything was going wrong.

Every last thing.

Because she opened her eyes and suddenly there he was.