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‘I thought she was going to call the police and report a stolen child. I was getting sweaty palms, imagining myself being arrested.’

‘It’s just as well Megan is so unmistakably yours, thanks to those eyes.’

‘It was really embarrassing not to be able to answer any of those questions. How would I know if the pregnancy and birth were normal?’ Jason frowned. ‘I should know. Shelley should have told me.’

‘The doctor was great, giving her such a thorough checkup. She said she looks generally well cared for.’

‘If she’d been well cared for she wouldn’t have been left on a doorstep all night and she wouldn’t have an ear infection now.’

Laura said nothing. If she told Jason that Megan had only been left outside for a matter of minutes rather than hours, she would also have to confess that the mother had been seen driving off in the company of a man and hadn’t bothered with even a backward glance at her child. The implication that she wouldn’t be in a hurry to collect her daughter in the next few days, and the prospect of a longer time with a miserable infant, would surely be enough to ensure Jason found a rapid escape route from this situation. And Laura didn’t want that. It was too early to tell whether this could work out for any of them and she wasn’t going to give up.

Not yet, anyway.

‘And why did the doctor say it was a shame she wasn’t being breast fed?’

‘Breast feeding gives a baby more protection against bugs. Some immunity gets passed on from the mother.’

‘There you go, then,’ Jason said triumphantly. ‘If Shelley was a halfway-decent mother she would have been breastfeeding. And she certainly wouldn’t have just dumped her kid on a doorstep.’

‘No.’ Laura was quite happy to agree to that.

She looked down at the exhausted infant she was holding. The dose of paracetamol administered at the clinic had worked wonders and Megan was now too sleepy to finish her bottle. She had been dozing between short bursts of sucking but now felt like such a dead weight that Laura was sure she was sound asleep.

Hopefully, the GP was right and Megan would be in the fifty per cent of otitis media sufferers whose pain would settle in twenty-four hours without needing antibiotics. If it was any worse tomorrow they would have to take her back, otherwise her ears would be checked in a few days’ time.

‘Could you put her down in the bassinet, please, Jase?’

Jason hesitated. ‘She’ll wake up if I touch her. She’ll start screaming again and my ears are only just starting to recover.’

‘I don’t think she will,’ Laura said confidently. ‘She’s dead to the world. Come on, it’s time you learned how to put your daughter to bed.’

Jason looked as rebellious as a small boy about to have a dirty face wiped but then he gave that lopsided smile that touched something deep within Laura’s heart.

‘Okay, I’ll give it a bash. But don’t blame me if she wakes up. She hates me.’

Gingerly, Jason picked up the floppy baby and carried her to the bassinet.

‘Put her on her side,’ Laura advised. ‘And then tuck the sheet over her firmly enough to make sure she doesn’t roll onto her tummy.’

Jason was arranging the baby as though handling an unexploded bomb. ‘Why can’t she sleep on her tummy?’ he asked. ‘I do it all the time.’

Laura pushed back the image of Jason in those pyjama pants, sprawled prone on a mattress, with tousled blond hair and a stubble-roughened chin turned to one side. ‘It’s thought to be a major factor in protection against SIDS.’

‘SIDS?’

‘Sudden infant death syndrome. Used to be called cot death.’

Jason stared at the tiny face below him as he carefully tucked in the sheet. ‘She’s not going to die, is she?’

‘Of course not.’ The notion that Jason was starting to care about his child caused a wash of pleasure that was unfortunately short-lived.

‘Wouldn’t be a good look, would it? Handing it back to its mother if it had fallen off its perch.’ Jason grinned at Laura. ‘Be a bit hard to cover up my incompetence then, wouldn’t it?’

‘All new parents feel incompetent,’ Laura said quietly. ‘Babies don’t come with personalised instruction manuals. We’ve had a sharper learning curve than most, what with her unexpected arrival and her being unwell, but we’re doing okay.’

Jason simply nodded and Laura liked the fact he hadn’t questioned their partnership as unexpected parents for Megan. It wasn’t a lot but it was enough to be going on with and the silence in the room seemed to herald a peacefulness that bordered on contentment. Almost.

‘I am so hungry,’ Laura had to confess. ‘Did you notice we missed lunch?’