Episode 5 Part 2
For a moment they were frozen in time.
All around them tourists and passerbyers hurried left and right while Sara watched as Michael stared down wide-eyed at his daughter.
Speechless he crouched down and picked the toddler up carefully holding her under her armpits. Kala looked back at him fearlessly and shot a chubby fist out and grabbed his long-ish strands of wavy dark hair.
They made their way to a bench nearby and sat down next to eachother with Kala still in Michael's arms.
'You never told me.' His eyes were still focused on Kala and Sara couldn't read his emotions although his tone was accusatory.
'Would it have made a difference?' She replied bitterly,
He tore his eyes away from his daughter to glare at her.
'Yes. I have a daughter. Of course it would have made a difference.'
She roughly took the child from him startling her and causing her to writhe anxiously for a moment before she relaxed against the familiar figure of her mother.
'Do you remember what you wrote when I told you that I was getting married?' She demanded.
Michael looked slightly wary.
'I wanted your reaction. I'd hoped that it would shock you into thinking about what I'd said. That you might come back for me. Even on the wedding day I half thought you might turn up and stop me from going through with it. But no. You told me you were glad.' She concluded bitterly.
'I was glad.' He retorted. 'I wanted you to be happy.'
'Well I wanted you to want me. You say it would have been different if you'd known about Kala? Why wasn't I enough? You didn't want to be with me.'
Her voice was gradually getting louder and his voice matched hers as he replied angrily.
'Of course I wanted to be with you. You think I didn't think about what you kept suggesting?'
He was stood up now.
'You think that you getting married was easy for me? Well it wasn't.' He practically spat his words out at her. 'But it wasn't possible for us to be together so what choice did I have?'
Realising that people were stopping to stare at their argument he sat down abruptly and continued in a more level tone.
'I had nothing to give you. I could bring you nothing but trouble and misery. But if I'd known you had a baby I would have tried to live up my responsibilities.'
'We don't need your money.' She replied acidically
There was a pause as they both watched Kala pull first her baby shoe and then her sock off. The shoe fell on the floor and she waved the sock around in the air.
'What's your husband like?' He asked eventually.
'Callum?' Sara sighed heavily. 'He's a good man, a good father to Kala.'
Her eyes narrowed slightly. 'But he's not you.'
Michael digested this as he picked up the babyshoe from the ground.
'Can I?' He asked holding his arms out for his daughter again.
There was a slight pause before Sara handed Kala to him.
He hugged his daughters small frame to his chest before looking up and asking the million dollar question.
'So where do we go from here?'
Callum Horbury finally finished his rounds and was able to shut himself away in his office. He was a senior consultant in a busy city hospital and the pace was relentless. Today in particular he wasn't able to portray his usual calm, collected persona. Not when he was so agitated at the thought of his wife meeting up with her ex.
He'd always known that Sara came with baggage. It was a given. She'd nearly been struck off after some scandle in her previous work in a prison infirmiary after it had been suggested that she had played a part in a break out. Utterly absurd, in his opinion, and they had certainly never brought any charges in the end. After most of the prisoners had been recaptured or shot the rumours and gossip had died down and she'd got a job working with 'Healthcare for Homeless' charity. She had referred several patients to the ER and eventually they'd met at a health outreach meeting.
He'd known that she would be the lady he would marry from the moment he met her. It was just a case of convincing her to forget about her ex and choose him. And she had. Of course he had known she was pregnant when they first started dating. Doctors often have a sixth sense about this, something to do with the radiance in her face he thought. Not that she had realised herself straight away, ridiculous really, but he had been convinced she was in denial about it when he eventually told her.
As far as Callum was concerned Sara's ex meant nothing. Sara was his wife and Kala was his daughter. Nothing could change that. They were happy together, he reassured himself. And yet Sara's manner this morning when she spoke about her ex had triggered shockwaves of foreboding.
Leafing though his notes Callum eventually pushed them away angrily. He couldn't concentrate. Sod this. Everything would be fine. And if it wasn't he would do everything in his power to fight to keep his family.