Page 62 of Baking Battles

Two years later

“Emi!!!” Sara shouts, running down the stairs into the large empty floodlit area that will eventually become the main restaurant floor. “Mummy is going to find you! You can’t hide forever!!”

She knows full well where Emi is hiding, having taken up residence in one of the many very large cardboard boxes littering the restaurant, and Sara is just playing along, delaying the inevitable crash when Emi will burst out of the cardboard box, shouting and screaming until Sara catches her and wraps her up in a hug.

“I’m coming to get you.” Sara laughs and lowers herself down on the rustic wooden floor. She gets tired easily these days and has to take frequent breaks to sit down. Mattias still gets all soft watching her, the memories of her being pregnant with Emi flooding over him. She was beautiful when she carried Emi, and looking at her now, her rounded belly held in her wrap dress, she’s stunning. A little bit older, and a little bit wiser, she is still his Sara.

Not that he says that out loud. She doesn’t belong to him anymore, and he’s glad. She belongs to the stocky man who is fitting the electrics in the new kitchen area. Peter, the kindest man Mattias has ever met. Patient and with a burly laugh. He might not win any Supermodel of the Year competitions, but Mattias can clearly admit that he adores the man who now calls Sara his wife.

Not that it has been easy. Not that there hasn’t been unkind words and disagreements, but they have kept their promise. Team Emi. It’s always about Emi. And now their little family is steadily growing, and Mattias laughs as he lets himself think the thoughts rumbling around in his head. Life is never going to be the same again.

It never was after the damn baking show. Mattias signed his resignation a year later, as he just couldn’t do it anymore. He couldn’t sit in his damn glass cage, watching the numbers flick on his screen, when there was a whole life out there that he felt he was missing out on. He signed the paperwork and walked out of the TV3 building a free man. Not that he was free in any sense of the word. He had married his husband the week before, and they had bought an empty building. Which was total madness, but at the same time it was fate.

Christopher’s parents had once owned that building, a rustic house with a rundown restaurant on the ground floor. The Pedersen’s had sold it when they retired, only for the new owners to let it fall into disrepair. The building is theirs now, the flat above the restaurant is their home and it is Christopher’s childhood room that now has sparkling pink wallpaper and a big girly bed in the middle. Emi still sleeps in their bed most nights. Curled up in a ball with her arms around her brother. Because they are a family. A family of four. Plus two. Soon to be three. Chris and Matt. Emi and Tobias. Sara and Peter and the bump. He smiles as he watches Tobias emerge from one of the boxes, squealing with laughter as Sara catches him in a hug. Tobias. The tiny raven-haired boy that became theirs on a cold winter’s day just before Christmas. A small terrified child who had never known life as he should have. A little boy with a mother who had repeatedly chosen drugs over motherhood and left a tiny child to fend for himself, bouncing around in foster care until the day Mattias took a phone call from a distraught Christopher, a Christopher who is stuck at an airport in some godforsaken part of the world, tired and weary after a long photoshoot, aching to come home. He had cried and snuffled, barely coherent, but he managed to get the message across. They had a little boy lined up and they are going to be his forever parents. If they still wanted him. If they would agree to take him on.

And Mattias had no doubt in his mind that they would. They had applied, undergone the training. Been scrutinised and tried and tested until Christopher almost had a breakdown. He is stronger now, they both are, stronger than they realise, and they have each other. They can do this. Of course, they can, not that they haven’t doubted themselves, and thought about throwing in the towel. Thought that maybe this was all a terrible mistake. Perhaps they were all wrong, trying to foster a child. Maybe Christopher isn’t brave enough, maybe Mattias isn’t patient enough. In the end they always agreed that they needed to fight for it. They want a family, and they will be a family. For Christopher it had been the push he needed, the start of a new page where he finally learned to say no. No to jobs, no to castings, no to fruitless auditions. No. No. No. Enough. Instead they moved into the flat above the restaurant, and started the renovations, Mattias left his job, and whilst their finances were not catastrophic, it had been a stretch. A few months of worry until they got things under control. Where Christopher carried a small boy on his hip for weeks on end, until the boy stopped looking so distraught. Where Mattias had bursts into tears the first time Tobias said his name. Where Christopher used to fall asleep with Emi on his chest next to Mattias sitting up in bed rocking Tobias to sleep.

It hasn’t been a fairy tale of any sorts. It has been a nightmare at times. It has been hard. It has often been a messy disaster.

Mattias has promised not to shout. Christopher has promised not to leave.

They haven’t kept any of their promises, but they are solid, and that is all that matters. And they aren’t alone, Sara and Peter have proved their worth. Christopher’s family have rallied around them. Mattias’s dad has come out of retirement to help. Sara’s sister manages their recruitment, and Magnus Steingrímsson is the face of their new advertising campaign. Things have just worked out fine.

Nothing is fine, that is a lie. It is more than fine.

Which makes Mattias smile as he looks over at his husband, who is talking to someone on the phone, his face is etched in shock. It makes Mattias worry, if not for the calming smile that creeps in as he walks up to the man who he is so very proud to call his husband. The man he loves. He says it all the time now, the words tumbling out of his mouth whenever his brain feels like it. When he needs to say it. When he needs to hear it himself.

“Thank you very much, and yes, we will see you on Monday.” Christopher says into the phone, gripping Mattias’s arm a little too hard. “Yes, yes. No problems. Not a problem. Thank you. Bye.”

“What?” Mattias says. Christopher is not calm. He’s nowhere near calm.

“Oh fuck, Matt.” Christopher whispers, tears slowly pooling in the corners of his eyes.

“What?” Mattias wraps his hands around Christopher’s face. “Please tell me what’s wrong.”

“Oh god.” Christopher sighs and wipes his eyes. “Oh, fucking hell.”

“Chris?” Mattias tries, placing a kiss on his husband’s lips.

“Siri turned up at the labour ward two weeks ago. She hadn’t been clocked for months, and you know she didn’t turn up last time we had Tobias’ visitation booked in. “

“Yes? I know. What was she doing on the labour ward?”

“She gave birth. To twins. Two little girls.”

“Oh hell.” Mattias sighs.

“Exactly.” Christopher coughs and wipes his eyes again glancing nervously over to where Emi and Tobias are playing with the cardboard boxes, throwing pieces of cardboard at each other whilst Sara tries to keep them under control.

“Tobias has siblings then.” Mattias says calmly.

“Siri won’t be keeping them. She has already signed her parental rights away.” Christopher almost whispers. “She is insisting that the twins come to us. She says that’s her only stipulation, that the girls are brought up with their brother. That was social services on the phone, they want us to come in on Monday and talk it through. We will need to be inspected and approved again, but they don’t want the girls to go to a foster home only to be moved here in a few weeks’ time, so she says they want to push it through as quickly as they can, and have the girls with us in two weeks as long as everything gets approved. They are both going through withdrawal, but are responding well to treatment.”

“Fuck!” Mattias almost shouts.

“Don’t shout.” Christopher whispers.

“Four kids.”

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