Blue Christmas ✓

16 / epilogue

She tutted at him. "The one that should be screaming for a feed right about now." She moved his hand away from her sensitive chest when his fingers crept higher. "Raph?"

"Don't worry, she's with March," he said. "And don't worry, I only left them alone for long enough to come and check on you." He kissed her again. He couldn't keep his hands off her. "I must say, I'm very proud that I intercepted her morning cry before you woke up."

Relief sagged Tala's shoulders, and a curl of something else. "Should I be concerned that I didn't wake up naturally?" she asked, though she didn't really mean it. Her maternal instinct had kicked in stronger than she'd expected, as though her body had just been waiting to bear a child.

"No." He kissed her yet again, his hands running over the silky material of her nightdress. "You more than deserve a rest, Tal. I turned off all your alarms anyway, and I made sure to leave very quietly."

"What time was she up?"

"Seven," he said. "She's a good sleeper, just like her daddy." He grinned, his hands finding Tala's, and he kissed her knuckles. "Now that you're up, d'you fancy kicking off Christmas?" His eyes shone in the winter sun.

Her heart warmed to see his excitement and she nodded, her cheeks warming with anticipation and overwhelming love. "Flo's first Christmas," she murmured, and at the mention of her daughter's name, she ached to hold her baby and inhale the sweet scent of her soft hair, to feel the tight grasp of her little hand.

Although Tala couldn't pinpoint the exact date of Florence's conception, she could take a pretty good guess. At some point during the week she had spent in Scotland, she had fallen pregnant, and she had a feeling that it was the fourth time she and Raphael had slept together, the lazy morning after Christmas Day.

She had found out just a week after he and March had returned home for school and work after a week with her in Farnleigh. Alone and gripped by an inkling, she had taken a test, and then another, and she had called Raphael in a kind of tearful hysteria when three consecutive tests had given her the same answer.

Her tears weren't born of sadness. She had been overjoyed to find out she was pregnant - it was soon, but it felt right, given how their relationship had progressed up until that point. At no point had she feared that she would end up alone with her baby. She had just been devastated that Raphael was so far away and she had turned up weeping at her brother's house. He had begun to console her for what he assumed was a break-up, until she had shared her news.

Seven hours after the call, Raphael had shown up on her doorstep with red eyes and a bunch of flowers.

Two months later, March was enrolled in Tala's reception class and Raphael had taken on the role of a secretary in the high school. Tala's flat was no longer hers: the three of them lived under one roof now, in a pretty cottage by the river.

On the nineteenth of September, almost exactly nine months after meeting Raphael, she became a mother when her baby screamed her way into the world at four o'clock in the afternoon. Raphael kept his word when it came to naming the tiny baby: he wanted his daughter's name to tell a story, and it did,

Tala chose the first name: Florence. A nod to her own last name, Flores, which she was sure she would one day relinquish - Florence was a Marino - and also a nod to the little girl's Italian heritage. Raphael chose the first of her middle names, taking time and effort to find the perfect one. He landed on Chesa, a Filipina name that meant celestial. Like her mother, his little girl was a star. March had approved of that name, and he had chosen the last, adding Virginia to his sister's name. His reasoning was simple: she was a virgo, and that was the closest name he could find.