by Jo Briggs
After looking over the final additions, which the interior designer had done since, she was last there and doing laundry, she had a quick swim to try and the clear the headache that was developing.
As the afternoon drew, on the headache had not subsided at all. She knew it was due to all the anxiety she felt, as she had suffered from the same symptoms endlessly, during her dark days of depression, and the only perpetual remedy, at the time, had been sleeping.
She was not tired, but hoped, lying down in a darkened room would ease the tension enough to give her some respite. After drawing the curtains, to block out the remains of the afternoon light, she laid upon the bed staring up at the ceiling for what seemed an indeterminate period, her mind mulling back and forth about every major milestone in their timeline together and apart.
They had experienced a rather whirlwind romance in the first couple of months of dating. Their steamy encounter in the office at his home was the start of many more dates, wherever business trips and photo shoots would allow; if she were in a different country, he would fly out to see her whenever he could, trying to cram every available moment into being together. After three short months, she moved out of her house she shared with her sisters, and into his London home initially, while they had outstanding contractual commitments that tied them to stay in the city.
As the summer, of that year ticked by, both slowly wound down their schedule, so they could be free to move to his estate in Derbyshire, for a carefree late summer and early autumn. With no planned work until December, they immersed themselves into a country life of woodland walks, and horse trail rides, each day.
On the second day of their stay at Winster House, William surprised her with an unplanned diversion on their walk to the massive tailored made stable buildings, split into two courtyards, of twenty stables, each that housed the broodmares and stallions that made-up the Winster stud farm.
For several generations, the Dexter's had had a sideline business of breeding horses from strong, flat racing heritage of three thoroughbred stallions and twenty broodmares, including several that had been retired. William's stable management team simply bred the horses, and then sold the majority on to trainers, once they entered their yearling year. Each year, they would keep a selective few back, to use for further breeding, and eventing once they reached age four or five.
“What you are up to?” Elle asked, as he steered her over to a particular stall.
“I thought you would like to meet one of my star pupils.”
“Star pupil?”
“Yes, this is Pepper; she is a budding star performer in the practice ring, for jumping.”
“She is beautiful.” Elle said enthusiastically, as the light grey mare lifted her head over the top of the lower door of her stall, and nudged expectantly at William’s hand that was resting on the door expectedly.
“I am glad you like her, as I want to give her to you. I thought we could get to explore the estate more if we rode out every day, and I thought she would be perfect for you.”
“Wow, I am truly taken back; I never expected to get my own horse.”
“These are her favourite,” William produced several fresh carrot pieces he had removed from a bucket at the front of the stables, and handed them to Elle, to give to her horse.
“I think you have a friend for life, now.” He bantered.
And so, that was the start to their days of idyllic rides among the well-trodden trails of past Dexter’s, into wild meadows and woodlands.
Elle awoke with an abrupt start, as the images faded to nothing, starting up to the ceiling as once again the pounding pain returned, sighing. Oh, to be that carefree girl again.
Her eyes finally succumbed to tiredness, but once again, any hopes at a peaceful slumber were ruined by past events, which forever tied her to William.
As October merged into November, their relationship had become closer with every passing day He had had specially made choker of emeralds and diamonds specially made, for their six-month anniversary, that was a duplicate of one that his mother, had worn and had been left to Gina.
It had been just almost a year after their anniversary celebration that they received a surprise visit from Jess and Charlie. As soon as they arrived, you could sense something was dreadfully wrong. Jess had tried to hide her tear-stained face as her sister greeted her, but it did not work.
“What on earth is wrong?” Elle begged to know, as she looked from the subdued Jess, to a pale Charlie.
“I think you need to sit down,” Charlie began, as he looked towards Jess urging her to speak.
Jess tried to speak, but nothing came out except for another attack of sobs that she had been fighting back. Charlie moved to comfort her, while looking helplessly at Elle. “I am so sorry, but we had a call from the Australia. Your parents were involved in a car crash…,” Charlie had continued to speak, and explain that they had both died at the scene, but Elle’s brain had drowned out the rest of the words he spoke. She knew already that they were no longer here, once he said it was a crash, from just the look on their faces.
The next month was a blur of tormented emotions of pain and anger. Of her sisters, she was the least close to her parents; they had always favoured Jess above the others, whereas they took every opportunity to put down Elle to such an intent that she had spent her early years with serious self-esteem issues, and in general, they had simply ignored Cate altogether.
From the age of seven to seventeen, her parents had not been home much, as they used to travel together, writing books of their experiences. They were never ones to put their responsibilities before their own whims to travel. This left the girls to be brought up by their mother’s brother and his wife. Luckily for Elle, her uncle was nothing like his sister, and she was probably his favourite niece overall. Her Aunt and Uncle had only one son, of whom was older than the triplets were when they had taken over their upbringing. Her Aunt had recovered from cancer the previous year, which left her unable to have further children, so she was happy to take on the additions to her family, and her own son became a big brother to them.
Even with all the love and doting with which they smothered her and her sisters, it still did not remove the deeply embedded low confidence, and her parents had caused her to suffer with.
Although she grieved their death somewhat, and was sad, it had been in such a violent way, the majority of her emotion stemmed from the fact she could now never confront them, about their careless upbringing, and harsh comments that had caused so much pain to her younger self. That frustration of non-closure, on such an enormous part of her life, started to cause a strain on her relationship with William.
As someone who had lost both his parents, and had grieved hard for them, he had initially tried to be supportive in their common loss, but her later attitude, once the shock had worn off, had begun to rile him into arguments over her coldness towards them. She never bothered to explain to him why she felt such coldness for them, and it was something he only learned from Cate, once Elle had already long departed from their relationship for New York.
With the snow on the ground, William was uneasy about Elle riding alone. She remained stubborn, and continued to ride, so they compromised that she took her mobile, in case she was caught unawares in the middle of nowhere, and could not make her way back.
That fateful day, she had taken a less familiar route. She had not wanted William to follow her, as he had taken a habit of doing, when the snow had not had a chance to melt, and could be deceptively deeper than it looked. Her mind was awhirl that day, with the uncertainty she felt about her life, and its place in William's life; she still loved him until it ached, but the intensity of loving someone so much, had begun to scare her.
Before her parent's crash, she had not thought about the impact of death could have on someone else’s life, but with the deep longing, she felt for him made her contemplate the pain of losing him tragically, as well. To be alone, where no one could hurt her or in turn be hurt b
y her, than to love so powerfully, and have it torn from her heart when tragedy struck.
With that, dark thought stinging in her mind, with the rush of cold winter wind against her cheeks, she galloped up to a short jump, and cleared it with ease. However, as the horse landed, her hooves were at an awkward angle, caused by its distracted rider shifting her balance suddenly, and fell from the saddle, knocking the full wind from her being, as her hip and lower stomach caught against a rock that jutted itself from the snow hiding the size of its outer mass.
It had taken her what seemed like hours, to get her breath back enough to bear the agonising pain that movement caused when she tried to reach for her phone, which was strapped to her armband that also held her music player. She had tried to duck and roll, but it had all happened so quickly, she was not certain she had been successful, until she pulled it out, and saw it was undamaged except for a slight crack on the screen.
Once William knew her location, her rescue by the paramedics had been swift, aided by easy access to a road the ambulance could drive along, parallel to the trail she was laying on.
Arriving in the hospital, she was surrounded by multiple doctors and nurses, and was soon hooked up to a blood transfusion bag, as she had seemed to lose a lot of blood vaginally, which had since stopped. Later bloods tests revealed, for the first time, her pregnancy that she had not been aware of.
The pregnancy hormone level had been pretty low, and her doctors had concluded she could only be around two or three week gestation. With the bleeding ceased, and the ultrasound revealing nothing to indicate she had an internal injury, they prepared her for the scenario that the trauma of the fall had caused the newly implanted foetus to miscarry, accounting for the volume of bleeding.
She was placed on observation for a couple of days, while they monitored her to see if the bleeding restarted, or if the hormone level continued to climb, or decrease. The hormone level did start to decrease, so she was released, with the knowledge she had suffered an early miscarriage.
That knowledge was the final nail in the coffin that was her relationship with William, from Elle's perspective. The guilt she felt, for causing her own fall, was like a spear through any sane thought she could conjure up at the time. All she could think about was that she must leave before she hurt William even more. She spoke to her old agent and commissioned for a job in New York, starting the following week, when she knew William would be away on business.
Staring up at the ceiling for the third time that night, Elle was exhausted, her mind in turmoil, with all the old pent up emotions and pain she had felt back then rushing forth again. She made a decision that she would not leave him again, no matter how hard it got. She resolved to do almost anything to make him forgive her, because she could not bear to go through another night alone.
She contacted her friend, Rachel who ran the deaf school that Christian was boarding at organising that she would collect him the next day, knowing William would be around to demanding to see him soon enough.
Christian was not a fully enrolled student within the school, he only stayed at the school for part of each term, and spent the remainder under a special one to one tutor at home with Elle. With her constant travelling, it would be too disruptive to have him schooled with a mainstream school.
She had only agreed to place him in the school to allow him to interact more with other similar children. Elle was extremely protective and did not entrust Christian's care to just any headmistress. She had met Rachel many years earlier when Rachel had contacted her to patron a charity she was starting up for deaf children.
~~~
With Richard long gone, William settled down in the study once more. He knew this was going to be the most difficult call he had had to make in a long time. His trembling hand dialled the phone number Elle had left on the pierce of paper, before she stormed off. He could not believe he was this nervous, when he was used to dealing with high-risk multi-million transactions that could make or break peoples’ lives, if he made a serious error. He took a swig of brandy from a nearby tumbler to steady his nerves.
It rang and rang. He almost gave up hope of her answering at all, when he finally heard a click, and a sleepy voice saying Hello.
“I am sorry,” he blurted out.
Elle was silent, for what seemed like an eternity.
“Do you want to come over? We could talk better face to face, rather than on the phone.”
Truce
It was already just after nine, when a drained William pulled into the driveway that his GPS had indicated was his destination. The property was larger than he had imagined from her descriptions of how it would look. Locking the car, he began to make his way up the small path, to the double fronted door, that reminded him of the entrance to his Winster House property that Elle, and he had spent all their time.
“Hello,” William offered, as a pale Elle as she opened the door, before he had even had a chance to press the doorbell.
As he stepped through into the lit hallway, he likened the glass, mixed with steel and stark white walls to the inside of his Sydney apartment that had been converted from a disused industrial building. Facing her, he could see just how pale and puffy she looked. Concern etched over his face, “Have you been crying because of what I said?”
Elle avoided his eyes, embarrassed, “Not just because of that.” Her headache was still pounding behind her eyes, but she did not want to reveal that detail to him. She felt she did not want him to hold out on being brutally honest during their conversation, which he might do, if he knew she felt unwell.
He stretched his hand out, in an attempt to touch her, but she shrank away from him, and started to walk further into the house.
“Come through.”
Hurt by her avoidance, he scowled at her retreating back, as he followed.
He walked into the room, observing that many of her possessions had already been laid out as if she had been living here for some time.
Elle moved over, to a bar area within the large open plan section of the house, which zoned into areas for the contemporary kitchen, dining, and living space.
“I don’t know about you, but I could seriously do with a drink.” Elle laughed uneasily, truly not knowing what to expect for the evening’s outcome.
“I have drunk one rather large brandy already, so I better not, or I will not be, in a fit state, to drive back.
“I can get my housekeeper to make up one of the other bedrooms.” She shrugged. “In fact, it might be easier for you to stay, as I imagine you might want to meet Christian as soon as possible?”
“You mean we can see him tomorrow?” William asked, surprised, expecting her to be more resistant towards him meeting Christian straightaway, as things were frosty between them.
“Yes - you seemed surprised by my suggestion.” Elle tilted her head questioningly at him, as she continued to pour herself a drink.
“I guess I am. I perhaps expected you might not be so willing after you walked out,” He worded his reply carefully.
“Do you really think I am capable of still keeping him from you, now that you know the truth?”
“I did not mean you would withhold access maliciously, I just expected you to want to settle things between us beforehand.” His voice was slightly tight; he could feel the tension sparking between them again.
She sighed. “I do not think things between us can be settled in just one night, and I do not want that to hold up your meeting him.”
William had a sudden urge for a drink after all. “Is your offer of a drink still open?” Hoping a slight change of the subject might ease them into a truce.
“Of course, what do you want?”
“A brandy would be good, thanks”
Elle remained silent, as she poured his drink. He watched her move towards him; even in anger she moved gracefully. William was determined to break her angry barrier, and make her sit down next to him, rather than across the other side of the room where she had been lingerin
g, up until now.
She tried to hand him the drink without touching him, so she could go back to the other side of the room. It was not that she did not want to be near him, but she was still feeling vulnerable to his earlier reaction. Even with the buzz of alcohol easing the pain in her head slightly, she felt on the verge of either bursting into tears, or screaming at the top of her lungs.
Making a grab for her wrist with his free hand, as he accepted the drink in the other, he spoke softly. “Elle, please do not shy away from me. I said I was sorry about earlier.”
“I know you did, but… I just cannot think straight…”
He pulled her on his lap. “You do look quite pale. Have you eaten since you came home?”
“No, I have had a headache all day, and it actually took my appetite away.”
William shook his head in disapproval. “Elle, you seriously need to eat something, especially if you are drinking. Do you have food here?”
“Yes.”
“Ok, let’s make you something to eat, while I explain certain things I have decided to do about the Charlotte problem that might help you feel better.”
For the next fifteen minutes, he pottered around in her kitchen, creating her the most filling-intensive sandwich she had ever seen. Despite her protests that it would not fit in her mouth, she managed to break it into edible pierces, as he told her everything that Elijah Croft was setting in motion.
Hearing his idea, about making a public statement that Christian was his, made her feel humbled. Even if, this were just a small gesture, with enough baby steps forward, they could start laying down a positive future for their child.
“Are you all right with the idea?”
“Yes, anything is OK with me, if it put pay to Charlotte’s plans to manipulate us.”