Chpater 61

'Stand back, stand back!' Ray burst into the side ward, almost flattening an auxiliary nurse against the wall. 'It's all right, don't panic, I'm here now, make way for the official birth partner. Oh now, will you look at that? He's only gone and done it without me. For heaven's sake, Max, couldn't you have waited?'

'Did my best,' said Max as Ray enveloped him in a massive hug. 'Crossed my legs and everything. Sorry.'

'In that case I forgive you. So.' Ray turned his attention to the baby, lying fast asleep in her Perspex cot. 'You managed on your own, then. Look at her, what an angel! Phew, bet you're glad she looks like you and not Hiro.'

'Well –'

'And has Takao seen her yet? I must say, we were all pretty amazed when he rushed out of the salon like that.'

'Actually, he's –'

'Quite the knight in shining armour, in fact. You'll never guess what my client said when she heard what was going on! She thought Takao must be the father –'

'Ahem. Which client was this?'

At the sound of Takao's voice, Ray spun round. There he was, leaning against the door, for all the world as if he were the baby's father.

'Um, Magdalena Rosetti.'

Takao looked startled.

'You mean you cut her hair?'

'I had to.' Ray beamed at Takao. 'There wasn't anyone else.'

'Jesus, what did you do?'

'Just an asymmetric urchin crop and dyed it olive green.' Ray shrugged. 'She said she wanted something different.'

'This is a joke, right?' Takao lowered his voice as the baby stirred in her crib.

'Of course it's a joke. Haven't I been telling you for ages how brilliant I am? Oh, and you left your phone behind.' Ray tossed it across the room at Takao. 'There's a message on there somewhere, too. Honestly, you wouldn't believe how nosy Magdalena is – she actually wanted to listen to it.' He returned his attention to Max while Takao listened to his message. 'So, tell me everything. How did it go?'

As he sat on the edge of the bed and listened to the gory details, Ray couldn't help feeling relieved that he hadn't, in the end, been called upon to do his birthing-partner bit. Max truly didn't seem to mind, and it had all ended well. Phew.

Except . . . except, why did the niggling suspicion persist that something else had happened that he didn't know about?

What in heaven's name could it be? Max was looking elated – well, that was understandable, given the circumstances – but wasn't he looking the tiniest bit apprehensive? And why, Ray wondered, did he keep glancing across at Takao, almost as if Max was waiting for Takao to get off the phone before he said whatever else it was Max was clearly plucking up the courage to say?

'Is everything alright?' said Ray, when Takao had finished listening to his message.

'Yes.' Max sounded breathless.

'Are you sure?'

'Um, yes . . .'

There was a long, long pause. Ray saw Takao look at Max and smile slightly. Max went pink, like someone on stage who had forgotten all their lines.

The silence lengthened.

Mystified, Ray said, 'Would someone please tell me what's going on?'

Takao held out his phone.

'Here.' He pressed Replay, turned up the volume to maximum and handed it to Ray. 'Perhaps it would help if you listened to this.'

Ray took it.

'Takao, hi, it's Tina!' sang a female voice with a faint twang to it.

'That's his sister. She lives in New Zealand,' Ray explained in a kindly aside to Max, who was listening as intently as he was.

'Now look, I haven't spoken to you for a fortnight,' Tina carried on, 'and I need to know what's happening over there. It's not fair, Takao – you can't tell me you've fallen in love with this pregnant Max person –'

'What?' shrieked Ray.

'- and then clam up on me like this. Okay, I know I wasn't thrilled when you first told me, but if he's that important –'

'WHAT?' howled Ray.

'- if he really means that much to you, then go for it. Maybe I overreacted a bit. The thing is, if you've met someone you're completely crazy about and you're sure he's the one –'

THE ONE! mouthed Ray, jabbing an astonished finger at Max.

'- then I'm happy for you. And when we fly over to London next month I'd love to meet him. So tell this Max how you feel and fix something up, will you? I can't wait to meet the man who made my little brother finally fall in luuurve . . .'

There was the sound of merry laughter, then a click as the message ended.

Ray gazed at Max in wonderment.

'I don't believe it. This is . . . incredible! And he's done it, hasn't he? He's already told you, and you're both looking so smug and smirky and disgustingly happy, it's obvious you feel the same way about him.'

Imagine, all this stuff had been going on and they didn't even have the decency to so much as hint at it before now. Outrageous! Ray made a brave stab at sounding suitably outraged but he couldn't pull it off. His heart wasn't in it. He was happy for them too, dammit.

Takao and Max, who'd have thought it for a moment?

But the weird part was, when you did actually think about it, it made absolute sense.

The baby, flailing her feet and fists, opened her long-lashed eyes at last and gazed up at Ray.

'Blimey, she really does look like you!' Instantly smitten, Ray picked her out of the crib and held her up to the light for closer inspection. Solemn sky-blue eyes, white-blonde hair like a dandelion clock, strategically positioned dimples designed for flirting, and a fabulously pouty rosebud of a mouth with a streamer of saliva trailing down . . .

'So cute when babies do it,' said Ray, ducking out of the line of fire, 'so attractive on grown men.' He kissed each dimpled cheek in turn. 'Oh, look at those eyebrows . . . isn't she just fab? I can still be her mad uncle, can't I? Missing the birth doesn't mean I'm disqualified.' A thought belated struck him and he turned to Takao. 'So where were you when all this was happening? Pacing up and down outside smoking an imaginary cigarette?'

'I was in the delivery room.' Takao couldn't conceal his pride.

'He stayed all the way through,' said Max, reaching for Takao's hand.

'Talk about jumping in at the deep end.' Ray goggled. 'It must be love.'

'It is.' Takao gave Max's fingers a squeeze. 'I've asked Max to marry me.'

Good grief.

'And they haven't even had sex yet,' Ray told the wide-eyed baby in his arms. 'Honestly, some people do things in a funny way round, don't they?' Abruptly, he looked up. 'You haven't even told me her name yet. What are you calling her?'

Max shook his head. 'We haven't decided.'

Ray noted that 'we' with secret delight.

'Something that goes with Kinomiya,' said Takao.

Ray ruffled the baby's dandelion-puff hair and beamed at the pair of them.

'I've got it. You can call her L'Oreal.'

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'No sense of adventure, that's what you've got,' Ray told Takao, lifting a beaming Mattie out of her car seat and weaving her through the air like Superman. 'I still think you should have called her L'Oreal.'

'That's why I'm marrying Max and not you,' said Takao. 'Now, any more cases to bring out, or is that the lot?'

Florence and Tom were off on the cruise of a lifetime, flying from Heathrow to Miami before boarding ship and spending the next thirty days sailing in indecent luxury around the Caribbean. Takao and Max had come over to Tredegar Gardens to see them off. Mattie, now seven weeks old, flashed her toothless grin at everyone she clapped eyes on, captivating even the taxi driver who was loading the cases into the boot.

Ray held Mattie, wrapped up in her scarlet snowsuit, against his shoulder. Bending his head and breathing in the scent of just-washed infant, he watched Takao help Florence out of her chair and into the back of the cab. In less than two months Takao had acquired a live-in lover and a baby, both of whom he adored beyond measure. It suited him, too; Takao had never looked happier.

Sometimes, Ray was beginning to discover, doing things the wrong way around turned out – mysteriously – to be the best way after all.

'How's Bruce getting on in the shop?' Max was eager to know. Bruce hadn't been able to disguise his glee when Max had rung him up after the birth.

'So you're telling me you won't be back this afternoon? This is too much, Max. It's the final straw. I'm sorry, but you're fired.'

'Okay.' Shrugging happily, Max had smiled at Takao. 'Fine by me.'

'Bruce?' said Ray. 'Oh, he's got a new assistant, called Petunia. Apparently she's twenty-three stone and looks like a bulldog chewing a wasp.'

'Heavens.' Max was alarmed. 'Poor Bruce.'

'Oh no, don't feel sorry for him. She's just what he wanted. Someone so ugly that no man's ever going to want to have sex with her,' Ray explained. 'That way, she's never going to get pregnant.'

Tom came up to them and gave Ray's shoulder and affectionate pat.

'We're ready to go. You look after yourself.'

'And you look after Florence. If she'll let you.' Ray rolled his eyes at this – it was a pretty daunting prospect – but if anyone could pull it off, it was Tom. Since getting together, the change in Florence had been heart warming.

'Behave yourself now,' Florence ordered from the back seat. She cackled with laughter as Mattie, with a ladylike hiccup, gracefully deposited a mouthful of curdled milk on the shoulder of Ray's black jersey. 'No getting up to mischief.' Florence waggled her eyebrows friskily as she spoke. 'Not unless you know I'd approve.'

'It's been so long, I can't remember what mischief is.' Ray said jokily, but it was horribly close to the mark. Everyone, it seemed, had a rip-roaring sex life these days except him. Even Max, for heaven's sake, who had last week been given the go-ahead from his unsuspecting GP to 'resume relations with his husband',

If Max wished.

Max had certainly wished. And, he had later shyly confided to Ray, it had gone Very Well Indeed. Furthermore, having only ever slept with one man before, Max now realised that contrary to what Hiro had always told him, Hiro wasn't brilliant in bed at all. In fact, compared to Takao, Hiro'd been completely average –

'Send me postcards,' Ray blurted out to Florence, banishing the troublesome memory from his mind. It wasn't that he wanted to have sex with Takao – good grief, no! – but Max's verdict had come as a bit of a bombshell, all the same. If Hiro was only average, well . . .

I must get out more, thought Ray. I'm missing out on goodness knows what.

The trouble was, the only person he really wanted to get out more with had gone off with someone else and was no longer about.

'Are we ready?' said Tom, as Max leaned through the open window to give Florence a kiss goodbye.

'Got my hip-flask.' Florence patted her coat pocket with satisfaction. 'That and a passport is all I need.'

'You should behave yourself too,' Ray said, when it was his turn at the window.

'Are we allowed to get married?'

'Only to each other.'

'Me, marry some pervy vicar? Hah, you must be joking.' Florence exchanged a look of mock horror with Tom. But beneath the folds of Florence's dashing black cape, Ray realised, there was some serious hand holding going on.

Honestly, what were they like?

'If they had acne, they'd pass as a couple of teenagers,' he said when the taxi had disappeared around the corner.

'Except teenagers can't afford to cruise the Caribbean,' Max pointed out. 'Oops, Mattie's just thrown up on your shoulder again. D'you want to give her to me?'

'Come in for a bit,' Ray urged, feeling suddenly lonely. A whole month alone in an otherwise empty house loomed ahead. What if he went a bit mad and started talking to himself?

But Max was still holding his arms out, ready to take Mattie back.

'We can't. We're driving up to my mother's for the day.' Sensing Ray's disappointment, he said, 'It's a big family party. Oh, but you could come along too if you like.'

Ray shuddered and shook his head, recalling the last time he and Max's mother had met, outside Adrian's house in Milligan Road.

'It's okay, I'm fine. Loads to do, really.'

Takao, taking Mattie from him, said, 'Like changing into a clean sweater.'

'Is he always this bossy?' Ray rolled his eyes. 'Because if you decide you can't stand it a minute longer, you could always run away, you know, come back and live with me.'

Takao swiftly fastened Mattie into her car seat in the back of the new Volvo. The days of the black Lotus had gone. Max smiled.

'Thanks, but I think I'll stay where I am.'

Envying them for being so happy, Ray stood and waved until the dark-green Volvo was out of sight. He turned and made his way back into the house, catching a wiff of baby-sick as he went.

Right, now what?

Apart from stripping off his sweater, which appeared to be a bit of a must.