by Penny Jordan
‘I have the same congenital disorder as Michael Sullivan. I seem to have escaped suffering the normal physical symptoms and disabilities suffered by male children inheriting the disorder, but I am a carrier and it’s more than likely that Jessica may be as well.’
Lacey started to get up out of her chair and to go to him, driven by an overwhelming impulse to do so, to wrap him in her arms as she had done little Michael, to cradle him against her body and tell him that it was all right, that she was there and that she loved him; and then she realised what she was doing and sat down again abruptly, her whole body starting to tremble, not so much in shock at what he had just revealed, but from shock at what his words had brought to the surface, had made her recognise; namely, that time made no difference at all, that her heart remained frozen in time, the heart of the young girl who had fallen so deeply in love with him. But she couldn’t still love him. He was a stranger; physically familiar, perhaps, but in every other way…
‘I know you must be shocked. I might have had twenty years to get used to the idea, but I can still remember how it felt the day I discovered the truth. I had no idea you were having my child. I thought…’ He stopped. ‘She’ll have to be told of course.’
It took Lacey several seconds to realise what he meant. She was still trying to come to terms with his earlier bitter statement. What did he mean—the discovery? How had he found out? Why had he said nothing to her?
‘God knows, this was the last thing I wanted—to pass on to an innocent child my inherited taint, to be responsible for causing someone else the anguish…It should never have happened. If I’d known you had conceived—’
‘You’d have what?’ Lacey demanded shakily. ‘Forced me to have an abortion…to get rid of our child…just as you got rid of me, your wife? If you felt like that why didn’t you say something…why did you marry me in the first place? You said you wanted children.’
‘It’s a long story. I haven’t come here to wallow in self-pity, Lacey. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw you up on that platform and then again at the restaurant; and then today to learn that you had a child…an adult daughter—’
‘What are you doing here anyway?’ she interrupted him bitterly.
‘I’m rather unique apparently. It’s very rare for male carriers of the defect to survive to adulthood, never mind not suffer any physical effects of the disease. My specialist had suggested I might come here to meet Ian. There’s some research being done on injecting antibodies from carriers into male children suffering from the disease. It’s a very new form of treatment, but it seems to help put the disease into remission. The only problem is it works only with antibodies from adult male carriers, and there aren’t too many of us around.’He moved awkwardly in his chair, causing her to frown. His leg. Was that why it was bothering him? She gave a tiny shudder at the thought of him in pain…suffering.
‘So it was purely by chance that you guessed about Jessica?’
‘Yes,’ he confirmed. ‘But now that I do know—well, she has to know. There will be steps she may want to take to ensure that she in turn does not pass on the disease. Not an easy decision for a young girl on the threshold of her life, but ultimately…’
Lacey’s frown deepened.
She turned and looked at him.
‘You’re not suggesting that Jessica ought to contemplate being sterilised, are you?’ she demanded, outraged.
‘It would seem the logical…the sanest course,’ Lewis agreed slowly, avoiding looking at her.
‘You mean you’d deny her her right to have children?’ Her voice shook with emotion.
‘I mean that I’d want to protect her and any child she might have from the threat of pain…suffering…and ultimately death,’ he told her soberly.
His words made Lacey wince and brought tears to her eyes.
‘It doesn’t have to be like that now,’ she told him. ‘There are new tests…new methods. Jessica could choose to have only girls. How could you even think of denying your own child her right to have children?’ Again her voice thickened with emotion.
‘Do you think this easy for me?’ Lewis demanded, standing up. ‘All these years of believing, of thinking…As soon as I discovered the truth I had a vasectomy.’
‘A vasectomy? But—’
‘But you’d already conceived,’ he interrupted her grimly. ‘I didn’t know that. Have you any idea what it means to me to discover that I have a child?’
‘Yes, I think I do,’ Lacey told him bitterly. ‘And I thank God that you left me when you did, Lewis, because I think it would have truly broken my heart if I’d ever learned that you wanted me to abort our child. Thank God you never knew that I’d conceived.’
He had gone an odd, pallid colour that made his cheekbones stand out starkly beneath his taut skin, his eyes so dark that they appeared totally colourless. He was, she saw, a man suffering from acute shock, but she could not afford to have any compassion for him. Not after what she had just learned.
‘Thank you for taking the trouble to come and see me,’ she told him quietly, going to open the sitting-room door and standing determinedly beside it. ‘I’ll make sure that Jessica knows…everything.’ Somehow she managed to keep her head high and her face expressionless as she added curtly, ‘And now if you wouldn’t mind leaving…’
As he got to his feet he half stumbled, and instantly pain flashed through her. She ached to go to him, to hold him…to tell him that it didn’t matter…that nothing mattered…that she loved him; but she already knew that he didn’t want her love, just as he had never wanted it or her. Just as he had never wanted their child.
‘Lacey, please; you don’t understand. I—’
‘You’re wrong, Lewis; I do understand,’ she corrected him sadly. ‘You hate me for conceiving your child, and I expect you hate Jessica too for being that child and for not being perfect. Is that how you feel, Lewis, that only perfect children have a right to be born?’
‘Lacey, please.’
‘No. I don’t want to hear any more. Morally and ethically you’ve done all you need to do. I’ll make sure that Jessica knows what’s happened.’
‘If you’d like me to be with you when you tell her…’
She gave him a bitter look. ‘Why, so that you can take advantage of her and persuade her to be sterilised? No, thank you, Lewis. I’ve brought her up on my own and I think I’m capable of dealing with this without your help as well.’
She noticed that as he walked down the hall he favoured his right leg and she felt her anger drain away, anguish taking its place. Why hadn’t he been honest with her from the first? Why had he married her when…?
He had reached the front door. He paused and then turned round, saying quietly to her, ‘I didn’t know any of this when we married. It was later, after—’
‘After you met her…the woman you loved more than me…more than our marriage,’ Lacey concluded bitterly. ‘Well, I’m glad you didn’t know, Lewis, because if you had known you’d never have allowed me to conceive Jessica and, no matter what pain you caused me…what misery…what anguish, I’d go through it all ten times over to hold Jessica in my arms the way I did the night she was born. That one moment made everything else that had happened seem totally unimportant. She was worth every second of misery you caused me.’
She opened the front door and watched as he walked slowly through it, his head bowed, his face slightly averted from her, but not before she had seen how strained he looked, and that something metallic or moist glistened in his eyes.
Tears from a man like Lewis. She smiled bitterly to herself as she closed and then locked the door after him.
HALF AN HOUR LATER Lacey was standing in the garden, without having any real idea of how she had got there. It was the shock, of course, she acknowledged while she frowned over the tightly closed bud of a pink peony with a concentration that really had nothing to do with the flower’s unreadiness to open.
They had had an early spring without much
rain, and the garden was bearing testimony to the unexpected bonus of early warmth and sunshine.
Later these same plants which stretched so eagerly towards the sun now would be wilting, scorched by that sun they had embraced so eagerly, longing for rain.
She gave a tiny shiver. So, too, did the human race reach out to embrace that which gave it the illusion of being loved…cared for…wanted…and suffered the same bitter effects once it realised that what it had thought was love was merely a fiction, a cruel deception.
The scene in front of her started to blur and shimmer. She was, she realised, on the verge of tears. Shock again. She was aware of a frantic pulse of anxiety beating fiercely inside her, giving birth to an urgency that demanded that she do something…that she cease to stand staring uselessly into space and instead…
And instead what? It was too late to protect Jessica now. To keep her in ignorance of what Lacey herself had just learned was something she simply did not have the moral right to do.
Jessica was a very strong and courageous young woman, but to learn totally out of the blue that she could be the carrier of such an ultimately destructive gene…
Fear, love, anxiety, the need to protect…the need to soften the blow…to ease the pain her daughter would have to experience—these and a hundred other maternal emotions welled up inside her, and with them was another emotion: guilt. If she had known…
What would she have done—opted not to have children? Perhaps. Chosen not to marry Lewis in the first place?
It surprised her how instantly her heart rejected that latter thought. Lewis, the man, her husband…her lover. He had been more important to her than her becoming a mother. She had loved him too deeply to have turned her back on him and found another man…a man who could give her healthy children.
And yet she had wanted a family; they both had—or so it had seemed. She remembered how passionately she had talked about it. How often she had told him that in forming a family unit of her own, in having children, she felt that she might finally wipe away the unhappiness and loneliness of her own childhood.
Those had been the daydreams of someone who was still very much a child herself, she recognised now, her reasons for wanting the family she had declared so passionately was necessary to her happiness dangerously emotional ones.
And yet what would she have done if Lewis had told her about his medical history once she was pregnant with Jessica? Would she have chosen to go through with the pregnancy, to take the risk of giving birth to a boy with all that that entailed, not just for herself, but more importantly for that child as well? Or would she…?
She moved restlessly, knowing with the wisdom that had come to her over the years that it was a question to which there was no clear-cut answer.
Knowing the anguish the Sullivans had suffered, she wondered if she would have had the courage to live through the terrible mental and emotional anguish they had suffered. She had been lucky: her child had been a girl.
And for Jessica it would be a little easier. She would have the choice of taking advantage of modern medical science, and of opting to conceive only female children. Of not having sons…
Shadows clouded Lacey’s eyes. It could never be easy, simple, pain-free, and Jessica would carry the burden of knowing that when she fell in love…when she wanted to make a commitment to a man…when she wanted to build a life with him, to have his children, she would have to tell him about her medical history.
If that man loved her as her daughter deserved to be loved, as Lacey wanted her to be loved, unequivocally, without restraint, or hesitation, without doubts or reservations, then there would be no problem; but life wasn’t always so easy…or so kind.
She wished now that she had more time to prepare Jessica, that her daughter had grown up with the knowledge she now had to enforce upon her.
She frowned again, bitterness touching her heart. Why hadn’t Lewis told her…warned her? Why was she such a fool that she still found it so hard to equate the man she had loved, the man she had so foolishly created out of that love, with the actual reality?
Did she still really not understand that it was possible for a man, a certain kind of shallow, selfish man to claim that he loved a woman and to appear entirely sincere, when in reality all he meant was that he desired her and that the life of that desire would be cruelly brief.
When Lewis had said he loved her she had believed him. She had thought he meant that he would love her forever. She had been wrong. She was now, supposedly at least, a mature woman; old enough to have accepted long, long ago that the image she had created of him was just that—an illusion, an image without substance and reality. So why did she cling so stupidly to it…why did she allow it to stand between her and the opportunities she had had to form other more realistic relationships? Why couldn’t she even now see Lewis as he really was?
If she couldn’t hate him for her own sake, then she should at least hate him for Jessica’s—for the inheritance he had given her beloved child.
But he had also given that child life, and so many, many times over the years she had looked at her daughter and seen in her feminine images of her father.
She tried to clear her mind, to think logically and calmly. Her heart was beating far too fast, she felt sick and nervous, the shock still driving the adrenalin through her bloodstream, sending her nervous system into panicky overdrive.
What would have happened if Lewis hadn’t seen them and realised that Jessica was his child? What would have happened if Jessica had remained in ignorance?
She gave a deep shudder. She ought to be thankful that fate had intervened, instead of wishing in such a cowardly fashion that they had remained in ignorance.
She would have to ring Tony and explain that she needed to have a few more days off. She had plenty of holiday allocation owing to her, and they weren’t particularly busy at the moment. Then she would have to make arrangements to stay in Oxford; book herself into a small hotel there. She wouldn’t ring ahead and warn Jessica to expect her. That would only alarm her unnecessarily.
While her mind raced ahead, dealing with the small practicalities of the arrangements she needed to make, her heart was still beating too fast, her pulse-rate accelerating dangerously.
She wondered if Lewis had now left town. She hoped so. She didn’t think she could endure the thought of many more contacts with him, of even seeing him. And not just because of what he had told her.
She hated the weakness she had shown when he’d left, when she had thought she had seen the betraying glint of emotion in his eyes, and contrarily blamed him for it…blamed him for still having this pull on her emotions…blamed him for still being able to make her feel compassion for him…for wanting to…to what? Protect him; spare him pain?
What a ludicrous thought—her wanting to spare him pain. She closed her eyes in mute despair. What was wrong with her? Why couldn’t she feel what any normal, sensible, sane woman would feel in her shoes? Why couldn’t she hate and abhor him? If not for her own sake, then surely for Jessica’s.
It was only after all her arrangements had been made, after there was no possible reason for her to delay setting out for Oxford any longer, that she actually brought herself to acknowledge that she was deliberately looking for reasons to put off the moment when she had to sit down with Jessica and tell her what she had learned.
And even worse, when Lacey finally made herself climb into her car and start the engine, was the knowledge buried deep inside her that she would have given almost anything to have someone at her side during that interview, someone she could turn to…someone who could support not just her but Jessica as well. No, not just someone, she admitted achingly as she set off down the drive; there was only one person she wanted beside her now, only one person who could lessen the pain both for Jessica and for herself: Lewis. She wanted Lewis. Her lover. Jessica’s father…
He had offered to be with her when she told Jessica, but she had rejected that offer, too proud to admit that
she might need his support.
Too proud? Or too frightened to admit that she might want or need anything from him, that she might be in danger of repeating the mistakes she had made in the past of…of what? Of loving him.
She grimaced self-tauntingly. Had she ever actually stopped loving him? She was beginning to doubt it.
CHAPTER FIVE
LACEY arrived just after lunch, and booked into her hotel.
To her surprise, the receptionist on duty recognised her from previous brief stays when she had visited Jessica, and welcomed her with a warm smile.
It was a small family-run hotel outside the city in what had once been a large private house. The Victorian building was solid, its basic ugliness cloaked by the climbers that softened its walls.
Her room overlooked the gardens, where azaleas and rhododendrons were just beginning to be past their best.
She felt drained and slightly disorientated. In her bathroom she ran cold water over her wrists, hoping to shock her system back to its normal stability, but it only made her shiver.
She had no idea where Jessica would be—if she would be in a lecture or at home, studying in the house she shared with two other girls and two boys.
She gnawed on her bottom lip, wincing as she realised how often she must have been doing so when her sore flesh stung a little.
Perhaps if she drove over to the house…
The terraced house the students shared was only small, but, as Jessica had earnestly pointed out to her mother when she’d announced that the five of them intended to buy rather than rent the property, it would show a good return on their investment when, at the end of their university days, they decided to either sell it or let it to other students.
Lacey had been faintly awestruck by her daughter’s financial perspicacity. This generation was so very different from her own, so very well aware of financial matters in a way she could not remember being shared by her peers. The money for the mortgage came not from Jessica’s grant, but from what she earned during her holidays, and Lacey had only been able to blink a little and respect her daughter’s acumen while at the same time worrying about her taking on a financial burden which might interfere with her studies.