by Liz Fielding
‘It must have been a big story at the time,’ she said after a while, ‘but I don’t recall the name.’
‘It was fifteen years ago. No doubt you were still at school.’
‘I suppose, even so-’
‘A juicy political scandal is hard to miss.’
It hadn’t just been the papers. His father had been the poster boy for the perfect marriage, a solid family life. It had brought out the whole media wolf pack and the television satirists had had a field day.
‘You’re right, of course. The fact is that I don’t use his name any more. Neither of us do. My father was dignified, my mother stood by him and, in the fullness of time, he was rewarded for a lifetime of commitment to his country, his party, with a life peerage. Or maybe the title was my mother’s reward for all those years of keeping up appearances, playing the perfect constituency wife. Not making a fuss. But then why would she?’
It was obvious that she’d always known about the affair, the child, but she had enjoyed her life too much to give it up. Had chosen to look the other way and live with it.
‘She was the one who spent weekends at the Prime Minister’s home in the country,’ He said. ‘Went on the foreign tours. Enjoyed all the perks of his position. Got the title.’
‘What did they say to you?’
He shook his head. ‘I went home, expecting to find my mother in bits, my father ashamed, packing.’ It had taken the police presence to get him through the television crews and the press pack blocking the lane, but inside the house it was as if nothing had changed. ‘It was just another day in politics and they assumed I’d come down to put on a united family front. Go out with them for the photo call. My mother was furious with me for refusing to play the game. She said I owed my father total loyalty. That the country needed him.’
He could still see the two of them going out to face the cameras together, the smiling arm-in-arm pose by the garden gate with the dogs that had made the front page of all the newspapers the next day. Could still smell the rosemary as the photographers had jostled for close-ups, hoping to catch the pain and embarrassment behind the composed smiles. As if…
‘What I hated most, couldn’t forgive,’ He said, ‘was the way the other woman was treated like a pariah. Frozen out. She had to give up her job, go into hiding, take out an injunction against the press to protect her daughter. Start over somewhere new.’
‘You don’t blame her at all? She wasn’t exactly innocent, Nick, and someone must have leaked the information to the press. Maybe she hoped to force your father’s hand.’
‘If she did she was a fool,’ he said dismissively.
‘She didn’t go for the kiss-and-tell? Even then?’
‘No. Everyone behaved impeccably. Kept their mouths shut and my father was back in government before the year was over.’
‘She loved him, then.’
‘I imagine so. She was a fool twice over.’
‘I suppose.’ Miranda’s shivering little sigh betrayed her. Was that how she saw herself? A fool?
‘If it wasn’t for herself, maybe it was for her daughter.’
She swallowed nervously, as if aware of treading on dangerous ground.
‘Perhaps she wanted some of what you had,’ she said when he didn’t respond. ‘To be publicly acknowledged by her father. In her place…’
‘In her place, what?’ he demanded when she faltered.
‘It’s what I would have done,’ she admitted.
‘Poking a stick into a wasps’ nest,’ he said, realising that she was probably right. ‘Poor kid.’
‘She’s a woman, Jago. About my age. Your sister. And you’re wrong about your parents losing nothing,’ she said before he could tell her that he didn’t have a sister. That she was nothing to him. ‘They lost you.’
‘The people I thought were my parents didn’t exist. Their entire life was a charade.’
‘Truly? All of it? Even when they came to your school open day?’
‘They did what was expected of them, Miranda,’ he said, refusing to give them credit for anything. ‘It was just another photo op. Like going to church when they were in the constituency. Pure hypocrisy. It didn’t mean anything.’
She sucked in her breath as if about to say something, then thought better of it. ‘You changed your name? Afterwards?’
‘I use my grandfather’s name. Part of it, anyway. He emigrated from eastern Europe. Nothing as grand as Russian royalty, you understand, just a young man trying to escape poverty. They put him off the boat at the first port they came to and told him he was in America. We have a lot in common.’
‘Don’t you think-’
‘No,’ he said abruptly. ‘I don’t.’ It was the last thing he wanted to think about. ‘What about you? Do you see your parents these days? Did they manage to find time for their granddaughter’s christening?’
She shook her head, then, realising that he couldn’t see, said, ‘They died in an accident years ago. When Ivo was just out of university and I was in sixth form taking my A levels.’
Jago found himself in the unusual situation of not having a clue what to say.
To offer sympathy for the loss of parents who had never been there for her would have been as hypocritical as anything his parents had ever done. Saying what was expected. Hollow words. Yet he knew there would still be an emptiness. A space that nothing could ever fill…
‘How did you cope?’ he asked finally.
Manda caught a yawn. She ached everywhere, her hands were sore, her mouth gluey. The only comfort was the heat of Jago’s shoulder beneath her head. His arm keeping her close. His low husky voice drowning out the small noises, the scuffling, that she didn’t want to think about.
‘Everything suddenly landed on Ivo’s shoulders. He’d been about to take a year off to travel. Instead, he found himself having to deal with all the consequences of unexpected death. Step up and take over. He was incredible.’
‘I don’t doubt it, but I was asking about you. Singular.’
‘Oh.’ How rare was that…? ‘I suppose the hardest thing was having to accept that, no matter what I did, how good I was, or how bad, my mother and father were never going to turn up, hold me, tell me that it was going to be all right because they loved me.’
It was all she’d ever wanted.
‘And?’ he said, dragging her back from the moment she’d stood at their graveside, loving them and hating them in the same breath.
She wished she could see him. See his eyes, read him…Cut off from all those visual signals that she could read like a book, she was lost. And in the dark she couldn’t use that cool, dismissive smile she’d perfected for when people got too close. The one that Ivo said was like running into a brick wall.
She had no mask to hide behind.
‘There must have been an “and”,’ He persisted. ‘You’re not the kind of woman who just sits back and takes it.’
‘Not only a hero but smart with it,’ she said, letting her head fall back against this unexpected warmth that had nothing to do with temperature.
No visual clues, but his voice was as rich and comforting as a mouthful of her sister-in-law’s chocolate cake. And, like that sinful confection, to be taken only in very small quantities because the comfort glow was an illusion.
She wasn’t fooling herself. The magic would fade with the dawn as such things always did in fairy stories, but for now, in the dark, with his shoulder to lean on, his arm about her, she felt safe.
‘And…’ he insisted, refusing to let her off the hook.
He really wanted to know what she’d done next, did he? Well, that would speed reality along very nicely and maybe that was a good thing. Illusions were made to be shattered, so it was best to get it over with. The sooner the better.
‘You’re absolutely right,’ she said. ‘There’s always an “and”.’
‘You’re stalling.’
‘Am I?’
Who wouldn’t?
‘And so I we
nt looking for someone who would,’ she said. ‘Just one more poor little rich girl looking for someone who’d hold her and tell her that he loved her. Totally pathetic.’
Just how dumb could a girl get?
‘You were what? Eighteen?’ he guessed. ‘I don’t suppose you found it difficult.’
‘No. It wasn’t finding someone that was difficult. There were someones positively lining up to help me out. Finding them wasn’t the problem. Keeping them was something else.’ Looking back with the crystal clear vision of hindsight, it was easy to see why. ‘Needy, clinging women desperate for love frighten men to death.’
‘We’re a pitiful bunch.’
She shook her head. ‘It wasn’t their fault. They were young, looking for some light-hearted fun. Sex without strings.’
Something she hadn’t understood at the time. And when, finally, it had been made clear to her, it had broken her.
‘I think you’re being a little harsh on yourself.’
‘Am I?’ She heard the longing in her voice and dismissed it. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘There’s no such thing as sex without strings, especially for women.’
‘You’re referring to that old thing about men giving love for sex, women giving sex for love, no doubt.’
‘I’m not sure anything as complex as the relationship between a man and woman can ever be reduced to a sound bite,’ he said.
‘It can when you’ve just taken your finals and the world beckons. No young man with the world at his feet wants to be saddled with a baby.’
‘You were pregnant?’ That stopped him. She’d known it would.
‘My last throw of the dice. I thought if I had his baby a man wouldn’t ever be able to leave me. Stupid. Unfair. Irresponsible beyond belief.’
‘People do crazy things when they’re unhappy,’ he said.
‘No excuses, Nick. Using a child…’ She shrugged. ‘Of course he insisted I terminate the pregnancy and, well, I’ve already told you that I’d have done anything…’
‘Where is this child now?’
‘You’re assuming I didn’t go ahead with it.’ How generous of him. How undeserved…
‘Are you saying you did?’
They were lying quite still but when, beside her, Nick Jago stopped breathing, it felt as if the world had stopped.
‘My punishment,’ Manda said, at last, ‘is not knowing. I was standing at the kerb, looking across the road to the clinic, when I collapsed in agony in front of a car and matters were taken out of my hands.’
And with that everything started again. His breathing, her heart…
‘You lost the baby?’
‘Not because of the accident. The driver saved my life twice over that day. First stopping his car. Then realising that there was something seriously wrong and calling an ambulance.’
‘You were in that much pain? Was it an ectopic pregnancy?’
She nodded. ‘By the time Ivo made it back from wherever he was, I was home and it was over. A minor traffic accident. Nothing to make a fuss over.’
‘You never told him? You lost your baby and you never told him?’
‘He already had the world on his shoulders. He didn’t need me as well. And I was so ashamed…’
‘You didn’t do anything.’
‘I thought about it, Jago. I was so desperate…’
He muttered something beneath his breath, then said, ‘And this man who could demand such a thing? Where was he when all this was happening?’
‘Keeping his fingers crossed that I’d go through with it?’ she offered. Then, with a shrug, ‘No, that’s unfair. He came rushing to the hospital to make sure I was okay, but I couldn’t bear to look at him any more. Couldn’t bear to see his relief. Face what I’d done.’
‘You hadn’t done anything,’ Jago said, reaching for her, taking her into his arms in that eternal gesture of comfort.
Did he think she would cry again? Before, her tears had been of relief. A normal, human reaction. But this was different. She had no more tears to cry for herself…
‘You would never have gone through with it,’ he said, holding her close. And he kept on saying it. Telling her that it was not her fault, that she shouldn’t blame herself. Saying over and over, that she would not have rejected her own baby.
This was the absolution she’d dreamed of. And why she’d never told anyone.
She didn’t deserve such comfort. It had been no one’s fault but her own that she’d been pregnant. It was her burden. Her loss. And she pulled away.
‘How did you guess it was ectopic?’ she asked. How many men knew what an ectopic pregnancy was, without it being explained in words of one syllable?
‘My grandfather was a doctor, wanted me to follow in his footsteps and maybe I would have, if I hadn’t been taken to Egypt at an early age…’ For a moment he drifted off somewhere else, to a memory of his own. Happier times with his family, no doubt. Then, shaking it off, he said, ‘I remember him talking about a patient of his who’d nearly died. Describing the symptoms. He said the pain was indescribable.’
It wasn’t the pain that she remembered. It was the emptiness afterwards, the lack of feeling that never ceased…
‘What happened to you, Miranda? Afterwards.’
‘The next logical step, I suppose. My parents, my boyfriend, even my baby had rejected me. All that was left was to reject myself so I stopped eating.’ Then, because she didn’t want to think about that, because she wanted to hear about Egypt and Jago as an impressionable boy, however unlikely that seemed, she said, ‘What about you?’
‘Manda…’
‘No. Enough about me. I want to hear about you,’ she insisted, telling herself that his use of the diminutive had been nothing more than a slip. It meant nothing…
‘In Egypt?’ he asked.
Yes…No…Egypt was a distraction and she refused to be distracted.
‘When you walked away from your family,’ she said.
She felt the movement of muscle, more jerk than shrug, as if she’d taken him unawares. The slight catch in his breathing as if he’d jolted some pain into life. Physical? Or deeper?
Then, realising that she was transferring her own mental pain on to him, that it had to be physical, she sat up. ‘You are hurt!’
‘It’s nothing. Lie back.’ And, when she hesitated, ‘Honestly. Just a pulled muscle. It needs warmth and you make a most acceptable hot-water bottle.’
‘Would that be “Dr” Jago talking?’
‘I don’t think you need to be a doctor to know that.’
‘I guess not.’ And, since warmth was all she had to offer, she eased gently back against him, taking care not to jar his shoulder.
‘Is that okay?’
‘Fine,’ He said, tightening his arm around her waist so that she felt as if she was a perfect fit against him.
Too perfect.
‘So?’ she said, returning to her question, determined not to get caught, dragged down by the sexual undertow of their closeness, a totally unexpected-totally unwanted-off limits desire that was nothing more than a response to fear.
She didn’t want to like Nick Jago, let alone care about him. Not easy when a man had saved your life. When his kiss had first warmed her, then heated her to the bone.
And the last thing she wanted was his pity.
CHAPTER NINE
‘T ELL me about your life,’ she pressed. ‘Away from here. Are you, or have you ever been, married?’ she asked, using the interrogatory technique of the immigration form. Turning the question into something of a joke. ‘How about children?’
Jago didn’t make the mistake of shrugging a second time, just said, ‘No, no and none.’
‘None that you know of,’ she quipped.
‘None, full stop. I’m not that careless.’
‘I’m sorry…’
‘It’s okay. It’s one of those hideous things that men say, isn’t it? As if it makes them look big.’
‘Some
men,’ she agreed. Then, before she could stop herself, ‘What about long-term relationships?’
She was making too much of it, she knew. It didn’t matter. Tomorrow, please God, they’d be out of here and would have no reason to ever see one another again.
They’d step back into their own lives and be desperate to forget that, locked in the darkness, they’d shared the darkest secrets of their souls with a stranger.
‘What about the woman who’s been telling the world that this…’ she made a small gesture that took in their unseen surroundings ‘…was all her own work?’
‘Fliss? I was under the apparently mistaken impression that she came under the sex-without-strings heading. She was, allegedly, a postgraduate archaeology student and when she turned up on site looking for work experience I was glad to have another pair of hands. My mistake. I should have made an effort to check her credentials.’
‘As opposed to her “credentials”,’ Manda said, unable to help herself from teasing him a little. ‘Which, let’s face it, no one could fail to miss.’
‘You’ve got me.’ He laughed, taking no offence. ‘Shallow as a puddle and clearly getting no more than I deserve.’
‘Which is?’
‘Being made to look a fool? Although maybe the gods have had the last laugh after all,’ he said, no longer amused. ‘The temples, as a tourist attraction, which was the entire point of that scurrilous piece of garbage she and the Tourism Minister concocted between them, would seem to be dead in the water. And what does my reputation matter? The suffering caused by this earthquake is far more important.’
He took the bottle of brandy from her bag and offered it to her.
‘No. Thanks.’
‘Just take a mouthful to wash the dust out of your mouth,’ he suggested, ‘then maybe it really would be a good idea to try and get some sleep.’
She eased forward, took the bottle, gasping as a little of the hot liquor slid down her throat, for a moment totally unable to speak.
‘Good grief,’ she managed finally. ‘Do people actually drink this stuff?’
‘Only the desperate,’ he admitted.
‘It would be quicker-and kinder-to shoot yourself. Here,’ she said, passing it back to him. ‘Can you pass me my bag?’