Page 14 of A Found Family at the Cornish Country Hospital

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‘I’ve had sixteen texts from Mum this morning.Sixteen. Asking me more questions about the process of Isla’s eggs being collected, and when we might hear about being matched to a surrogate.’ Jase shook his head, but he was smiling. ‘Can you imagine what she’s going to be like once there’s a baby on the way? The surrogate is going to be lucky Mum won’t have a direct line of communication with her.’

‘Do you realise the one question she hasn’t asked?’ Aidan pulled himself into a sitting position in the bed, leaning his back against the headboard, so that he was side by side with Jase.

‘I’m struggling to think of anything Mum hasn’t asked!’

‘She didn’t ask whose sperm we’re going to be using. None of your family did.’

‘That’s because they don’t care. It won’t matter to them whose baby it is biologically. The poor kid’s going to be sucked right into the centre of the family either way, and I’ve got a feeling Mum’s whole world is going to revolve around being a grandmother again.’

‘I know what it feels like to be sucked into your family.’ Aidan put his hand on top of his husband’s, knitting their fingerstogether. ‘And it’s the best family I could ever imagine a child having. If my family accept the idea at all, it’ll be because they think I’m adding to the Kennedy gene pool, and you can bet the first question out of my mother’s mouth is who the father is going to be. They just won’t understand that we both will be. That’s why there’s no question who the biological father should be. It should be you.’

‘But that doesn’t make any sense. If your family are more likely to accept the idea because they’ve got a genetic link with the child, then let’s go down that route.’ Jase stroked his thumb over the back of Aidan’s hand. ‘I want my child to have your eyes.’

‘And I want the baby to have your crazy curls. But what I don’t want is for our child to have a link with my family that relies on them sharing DNA. If they don’t want to be a part of this, then that’s on them. And it’ll be no loss to us, or the baby, if that’s what they decide.’

‘Shouldn’t you at least talk to them first before you assume this is how they’ll react? I don’t want you making this decision until you know the full picture.’

‘It won’t make any difference. I want our baby to have Taylor DNA; I love every single member of your family and, as much as I wish it wasn’t true, I can’t say the same for mine.’ Aidan sighed, an invisible knife twisting in his chest, as he pictured what his father’s reaction would be. He could never forget the look on his face, when Aidan had told him about his plans to marry Jase: the curl of the lip, and the distaste in his eyes that had said so much more than his words.‘It’s your life.’It could have been taken as benign acceptance, but what it had told Aidan, was that Sean Kennedy thought his son was ruining his life.

‘I really think you should talk to them.’ Jase’s voice was gentle but insistent, his thumb still caressing the back of Aidan’s hand.

‘If I promise to talk to them, can I tell the clinic we’ve made a decision about who the biological father is going to be?’

‘Okay, but if you change your mind, you know that’s okay with me, don’t you?’

‘I do and it’s just one more reason why I love you.’

‘I love you too.’ As Jase replied, Aidan rested his head on his husband’s shoulder, knowing without any doubt that he’d love their child with a fierceness that went beyond anything biology could explain. The thought of telling his family their plans filled him with nothing but dread, but if that was what it took to persuade Jase, then he might as well get it over and done with.

Isla shifted in her seat as the counsellor looked down at the notes in front of her. She hadn’t felt this nervous since her interview for the job at St Piran’s, which she’d been desperate to get, because it had meant working much closer to home. Most people in their mid-twenties could only dream of owning their own place, the way property prices had gone up. It was even harder to get a foot on the ladder in Port Kara, with its sweeping sandy beaches, the main one of which stretched over a mile along the Cornish Atlantic Coast. Then there were the beautiful coves, which according to local legend had been the haunt of pirates and smugglers for hundreds of years. It was part of what had turned it into something of a celebrity hot spot too, with second homes making it even harder for locals to stay in the village where they’d grown up. But Nick Marlowe had made sure his daughters had the option of staying in Port Kara if that was what they wanted, and he’d worked all hours before the Huntington’s disease had forced him to give up. He’d managed to save thedeposits for two apartments in a converted chapel, perched at the top of the hill on the road that led towards Port Tremellien.

He’d rented the flats out, and the girls hadn’t had any idea that they’d each be gifted an apartment on their twenty-first birthday. Lexi was almost four years older than Isla, and Nick had been able to give her the key himself. The disease had already robbed him of so much by that stage. It had been ten years since the first symptoms had started to show, and he was having more and more difficulty finding the words he wanted, and his speech was laboured and difficult to understand. But he’d been able to tell Lexi he loved her, that he hoped having the apartment would give her the freedom to live wherever she wanted to, and that she shouldn’t feel like she needed to stay in Port Kara when he was gone. His prediction that she might choose to leave had been right, and Lexi no longer owned the apartment that she’d continued to rent out until their father died, but the proceeds of the sale had helped her and Josh buy their first home together in Florida. When Isla had turned twenty-one, her father had already been gone six months. She’d known that the gift was coming, but had felt robbed of the conversation she should have been able to have with her father, and the opportunity to thank him. Instead, it had been her mother who’d handed her the key.

‘You were always your father’s shadow, from the moment you could walk.’ Clare had hugged her daughter tightly, before she’d pressed an envelope into her hand. ‘He was a Cornish lad through and through, and the call of the sea would always have drawn him back here. I knew better than to ever try and make him leave, and I can see that in you too. You’re like your dad in so many ways, sometimes it’s almost impossible to believe you don’t have the same DNA.’

‘I love the fact I’m like him.’ Tears had fallen all too readily back then, at the mere thought of her father, and she hadn’t even tried to hold them back.

‘Dad knew there was a chance he might not be here to give you the key, and it broke his heart that you wouldn’t get to have the same moment he had with Lexi. So he wrote you a letter, just in case.’ Her mother had given a shuddering sigh.

‘Thank you. Do you mind if I read it on my own?’ Her mother had nodded, and it had been the closest thing Isla could get to having a final conversation with her father. Isla had re-read it so many times since then, and she could remember it word for word, even now.

My darling Isla,

I hope you know how proud I am of you. By now, you’ll be training as a nurse and any patient you care for is going to be so lucky.

I’ve got a feeling that Lexi will never live in her apartment, and that’s okay. From the first moment we took her to visit your mother’s family in America, it was like she’d found the place she was meant to be. But not you. You always wanted to come back to Cornwall and, every time we came home, you’d tell me you never wanted to leave Port Kara again. Mum and I would laugh about it, but deep down, I had a feeling you might end up meaning every word.

Maybe I’m wrong and you’ve discovered a wanderlust that will take you around the world. But even if that’s true, your love for where you came from will always occupy a huge space in your heart. That space is where I’ll be, even when I’m gone, and you can find me there, any time you need me.

Meeting your mum and having you and Lexi made me the luckiest man on earth. I just wish I could have stayed. I love you so much, and I hope, whatever you decide about theapartment, that your life is filled with the kind of joy you gave me.

All my love now and always, Dad xxx

Her father had been right in his second prediction too. Isla had never once thought about selling the apartment, and she’d commuted from there to her first nursing job in Truro. But getting a post at St Piran’s had made it feel as if she was even closer to her father. She could picture him on the beach in Port Kara or walking up the high street, before the muscle contractions and balance problems had resulted in him needing to use a wheelchair to go any kind of distance. She could imagine him swimming in the sea, and having a pint in his favourite pub. It was something else he’d understood perfectly, when he’d written her that letter. When Isla was in Port Kara, it was as if her father had never really left, because every corner of the village held memories of him, and she couldn’t imagine ever wanting to live anywhere else.

‘I’m sorry you had to go through the general health questionnaire twice.’ The counsellor’s voice jolted her back to the present. ‘But changing clinics meant we needed to go through our own questionnaire.’

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