‘The lady’s fine,’ he said into the intercom as his warm grip eased her fingers off the button to replace them with his own. ‘Just get us out as soon as you can, OK, buddy?’
‘Twenty minutes, tops. I promise.’
As Ren broke the connection, she yanked her hand out of his grasp, and walked back across the lift, her legs now as shaky as the rest of her.
Twenty minutes, she could keep it together for twenty minutes. Surely?
‘I never knew you hated me that much,’ he murmured.
She looked up, to find him studying her, his hands braced on the rail and his expression heavy with regret. She shook her head. Now he wanted to talk about it? Was he trying to send her right over the edge?
‘I don’t hate you, Ren,’ she said. Although given the way her heart was battering her chest wall she was forced to admit she still had strong emotions where he was concerned. ‘I simply don’t want to be stuck here.’
‘With me,’ he added.
So he’d finally got the message. Although she couldn’t quite believe how self-absorbed he was being. Hadn’t he matured at all in the last twenty-two years? Did he honestly still believe this was all about him?
‘Yes, with you. What on earth did you expect, Ren? I was sixteen and pregnant and you abandoned me. Of the top ten people I would least like to be stuck in a lift with, you’re right up there with Adolph Hitler and Gary Numan singing “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?”.’
He sent her a wry smile. ‘Adolph I get, but please tell me I at least rank below Gary.’
She sent him a rueful smile back, devoid of humour. ‘I can’t. It’s a very close run thing.’
He let out a long sigh. ‘That bad, huh?’
‘Yes, that bad.’ She should probably resent the fact that he had managed to turn even this into a joke. But somehow it didn’t seem to matter anymore.
‘You’re right,’ he said, the serious tone surprising her. ‘There’s no excuse for what I did that day. It was unbelievably selfish and pretty damn unforgiveable.’ He pushed upright, slung his hands into his pockets. ‘But I was seventeen and scared to death and if it’s any consolation at all, I regretted it for months afterwards. And if I’d been able to, I would have come back and apologised.’
She laughed the sound hollow. ‘You were scared.’ She placed a hand on her breastbone, desperately trying to hold back the angry recriminations that she had never been able to voice. ‘You were scared. I was bloody terrified.’ She clamped her mouth shut. There were so many other things she could say. But she stopped herself.
In eighteen minutes, if the engineer kept his promise, they’d be out of here and this would all be nothing more than a bad dream.
‘Jesus, Lizzie. I know you were terrified.’ He threw up his hands with an exasperation she didn’t understand. What right did he have to be exasperated? ‘And I know you were doing the right thing. For both of us. And as I’d been man enough to get you pregnant, I should have been man enough to support your decision and stand by you, instead of running away. But…’ His shoulders slumped and he stared down at his feet, the dark hair falling over his face –she strained against the knee-jerk reaction to reach up and push his fringe back off his forehead, just as she always did with Josh. ‘But I kept thinking about the baby. Our baby. And what was going to happen to it. And I just couldn’t…’
She frowned, the boulder in her throat making it hard for her to decipher the words properly. They swirled round in her head like the lame excuse they were, but something about them didn’t quite fit. ‘What are you talking about?’
Those deep emerald eyes met hers as he swept the hair back from his forehead, his expression bleak. ‘All I’m trying to say is, I couldn’t bear to be there when you had the abortion.’
Ren Kelly felt something shrink inside him at the look of shocked disbelief on her beautiful face. Her pale skin had gone so white it was almost transparent, the subtle brown shading on her eyes making them look as big as dinner plates.
He shouldn’t have tried to explain. He should have known this would be her reaction. Stupid to expect her to give him the benefit of the doubt twenty-two years after the fact. Why should she? Why would she? No one else ever had when he was growing up. And anyway, what had he ever done to make amends in all the years since that day? How would she know that he had always regretted being such a gutless coward? He’d been unable to even find her, once he’d returned to the UK?
‘It was a cowardly thing to do,’ he continued, even though the justification sounded weak to him now too. ‘I should have been there with you, helped you through it, and I know I didn’t.’ He sucked in a breath and hoped to hell she would at least believe this much. ‘And I would have come round to visit afterwards, I swear, if I’d been able to. But my stepfather found out I’d nicked the money for the abortion from the garage’s petty cash and beat the living crap out of me when I got home that night.’ She still looked shocked rather than accusatory, so he soldiered on. ‘I didn’t want you to see me in that state. Not after what you’d already been through. But before the swelling went down, my mother shipped me off to Italy to stay with her family.’ He buried his hands back in his pockets, glad at least to finally have got the explanation out. ‘I think she was worried he’d end up killing me, or calling the police. When I got back six months later, you’d moved away with your family.’ He shrugged. ‘And I figured it was probably for the best.’
Who was he kidding? He’d spent months trying to track her down. Had even had some stupid idea that she’d forgive him, even though he knew he didn’t deserve it. But he’d been forced to give up eventually. Because every dead end, every missed lead, just felt like another kick in the balls. Telling him he was worthless, and stupid and he had never deserved her in the first place.
She’d been smart and chatty and a total dork, who he’d taken out on a bet, and ended up falling hopelessly in lust with. And then he’d got her pregnant. But worse than that, the night she’d told him, he’d blamed her for it –because he’d skipped all the sex education classes in school, and his best friend Tom had assured him contraception was the girl’s responsibility. Hence the famous kick in the nuts, which he’d richly deserved. And then there was the day when he’d arrived home from Italy and raced round to her house only to find the place deserted, and the window he’d once climbed into so they could make love on her single bed, boarded up. That was the moment when he’d finally figured out he’d fallen in love.
Classic Kelly timing, in every respect.
‘Didn’t you get any of the letters I sent?’ Her voice cracked on the words, confusing him. ‘To your mother’s house?’
‘Letters? What letters?’
‘I sent letters, Ren. Loads of letters and I called too. And she told me she’d get you to call me back, but you never did.’
‘My mother never gave me any messages,’ he said quietly. If she hadn’t been dead for ten years, he would have given her hell about it. But then, knowing her, she probably thought she was protecting him. ‘I’m sorry for that too, then Lizzie. She didn’t like you much. I didn’t tell her why I’d stolen the money but I guess she figured out it was something to do with you.’
‘Oh God.’ She swayed.
‘Hey.’ He shot across the lift and wrapped his arms round her waist to keep her from falling. ‘Are you OK? It’s getting a little hot in here.’ He looked down at her, stupidly pleased that she was letting him hold her. ‘Hopefully they’ll have us out soon,’ he said, hoping no such thing as he took in a deep breath of her hair. The subtle summery scent was completely different from the candy-coated shampoo she used to use, but it still smelled like her, triggering a predictable reaction in his groin. His fingers slid over the cool silk of her blouse, the rise and fall of her breasts giving him a tantalising glimpse of cleavage.
How could he have forgotten how good she had always felt in his arms?
She lifted her hand, placed it on his forearm, and he tensed, waiting for her to shov
e him away. But instead, her slim fingers fisted on the sleeve of his suit and she clung onto him, so tight he could feel her digging into the sinew. Then her eyes lifted to his, the rich caramel wet with unshed tears.
‘What is it, Lizzie, what’s the matter?’
‘Ren, I didn’t…’ She swallowed, her voice raw with emotion. ‘I didn’t have the abortion. I couldn’t go through with it in the end. Any more than you could.’
‘I don’t understand?’ His voice echoed off the lift walls and reverberated in his head.
‘I had the baby, Ren. Your baby.’
‘You didn’t,’ he whispered, the words so jagged they scoured his throat.
She nodded furiously, the tears rolling down her cheeks and splashing into the valley of her breasts.
‘You had our baby?’ So many emotions were racing towards him –joy, shock, awe –he couldn’t catch his breath.
‘Uhuh. Although he’s not a baby any more. He’s a grown man.’
‘How old is he?’ he asked, everything inside him too raw, too real, to be able to do the maths.
He had a child. A son. With Lizzie. The child he’d wondered about often, dreamed about even, but had always believed had been lost long ago.
Was he nineteen. Christ, twenty. Not a child. A man.
‘He’s twenty-one and his name’s Josh. And he’s an amazing human being. Although I would say that because I’m his mother.’ She gave a soft laugh, like the shy, sweet ones he remembered, and it felt as if he had skipped back in time. And taken a different path.
And then everything went dull and ragged and disjointed. The long, sickening roll of grief hitting right under the joy, because he hadn’t taken that path. Lizzie and Josh had taken it. Without him.
He’d had a child. For twenty-one years, he’d had a son and he’d never had any idea. And because of a misunderstanding, bad timing, his overprotective Italian mother, and his own cowardice, he’d missed everything.
His child’s first smile. His first step. His first word. He’d never given his son a piggyback. Or shown him how to tie his shoelaces, or held his bicycle while he learned to ride, or helped him with his homework –not that he would have been much good at that. But he could have told him all about girls, he knew a heck of a lot about…
His hands dropped from her waist and he stepped back. Sick with longing and regret and a blunt, futile anger. For all the things he’d lost that he could never get back.
‘Sit down, Ren, before you fall down,’ Liz whispered as she guided him to the lift wall, and watched him collapse. She sat next to him, brushed her own tears away. He looked shell-shocked. Even more shell-shocked than she felt.
‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have told you straight out like that,’ she said, touching his arm, worried he might pass out. He looked so fragile.
‘I don’t think there’s an easy way to tell someone that.’ He gazed at her, his eyes so full of pain her heart wrenched.
She’d spent years exorcising all her memories of him but now they came flooding back, like water breaking through a dam. The taste of tobacco and need, the first time they’d kissed. The smile in his eyes when he teased her. Sinead O’Connor playing on the radio the first time they’d made love. Her elation when he’d told her it was his first time too. The excitement whenever his head appeared at her bedroom window after dark. The world of wonders they’d discovered under her Fresh Prince of Bel Air duvet. The bone-numbing agony when he’d gone.
Over the years she’d persuaded herself those memories didn’t matter, that he wasn’t important to her or to Josh. To realise now all that pain and denial had simply been the result of a terrible mistake was too much to contemplate, almost too much to bear.
He drew his legs up, draped his wrists over his knees. ‘I’ve missed everything,’ he said, the words so forlorn her heart hurt.
She pressed her palm to his cheek, her hand trembling against the hint of stubble. She wanted to say something, to make the pain go away. But what could she say? He had missed so much. And so had Josh.
He blinked, and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. ‘Do you think I could meet him?’
She nodded. ‘I could speak to him. Tell him your name, who you…’
‘He doesn’t even know my name?’ He swore softly. ‘Didn’t he ever ask about me?’ His head dropped back against the carpeted wall, his distress palpable.
Shame engulfed her.
‘He did ask when he was little, but I think he knew I found it too painful to talk about and so he stopped.’ She threaded her fingers through his, gripped his hand tightly. ‘I’m so sorry, Ren, I didn’t know you wanted to be…’
‘Don’t, Lizzie.’ His fingers tightened around hers, and he turned towards her. ‘Don’t apologise. It’s not your fault. You were just a kid, we both were.’ He held onto her, their joined hands swinging lightly.
But the guilt still lingered. At the thought that she’d allowed her own resentment, her own heartache, to rob her son of his father during all the years of his childhood.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any pictures of him with you?’ The tentative words ripped through the fog of recriminations.
‘Oh my God. Yes, of course.’ She scrambled across the lift on her hands and knees, pulled her iPhone out of her briefcase. Rushing back to sit beside him, she switched on the phone, opened the photo app and flicked to the album of photos she’d uploaded a year ago, the day after Josh had left for university, and she’d been suffering horribly from empty nest syndrome.
‘Here.’ She flicked to the first set: Josh’s early years. ‘You can start there and then just flick through them. I’ve put all my favourites of him in there.’
As Ren held the phone and scrolled through the photos, they were able to share at least a small part of their son’s childhood together: Josh blowing out the candles on his Thomas the Tank Engine cake at his third birthday party. The gap-toothed grin on his face on his first day of primary school. His arms draped over his teammates shoulders when his football team got to the final of a local tournament. Holding his new boogie board one hideously wet summer in Cornwall. And a fifteen-year-old Josh looking a little too fondly for Liz’s liking at his first girlfriend, Andie the punk.
Ren peppered her with questions, engrossed in every moment, and she answered every one, her heart bursting with pride and love but aching with sadness and regret at the same time –she couldn’t turn the clock back and give Ren more than just the pictures.
At last they came to the most recent photo: Josh and her leaning against his third-hand Fiat Panda, the car packed to the gunnels with his stuff for college.
‘He’s handsome, he looks like you,’ Ren murmured, his thumb stroking the picture.
Liz smiled, but enlarged the photo so it was magnified on Josh’s face. ‘There’s a lot of you in there, too,’ she murmured, her voice hoarse as she acknowledged all the things about Josh she had forced herself to deny for so long. ‘He’s got your eyes, and the shape of your face, and that deadly dimple.’ She laughed. ‘And girls follow him around, just like they used to do with you.’
He took a deep breath in, let it out and then handed her back the phone.
‘Wow, this is kind of intense.’ He raked his hands through his hair, driving it into furrows. Then he turned and smiled, the deadly dimple winking at her, despite the bittersweet emotion she could see in his eyes. ‘You did an incredible job, Lizzie.’
The words without me’ seemed to hang in the air, torturing her.
But then he cupped her chin, and shifted round. ‘Thank you,’ he whispered, and his lips touched hers.
At first the kiss was sweet and tender and sincere. She kissed him back, desperately grateful that he didn’t blame her for what he’d lost. But then his tongue touched the seam of her lips and gratitude wasn’t all she felt. Opening her mouth, she let him in. And suddenly, all those long-forgotten memories –the heat, the excitement, the longing –shimmered across her skin.
He drew
back, his breathing as ragged as hers as he framed her face in gentle palms. ‘Please tell me you’re not married, or attached.’
She shook her head, her hands covering his on her cheeks. ‘Not at the moment. Are you?’
‘No.’ A slow, steady smile spread across his handsome face.
‘Do you…’ She hesitated. ‘Do you have any other children?’
The smile faltered as he shook his head and let go of her face. ‘I wanted them, Annie didn’t. It was one of the things that split us up.’
‘Annie’s your ex-wife?’
‘Yeah.’
‘How long were you married?’ Silly to feel jealous of this woman, but somehow she did.
‘Ten years,’ he said, the dispassionate tone going some way to assuage the green-eyed monster. ‘Which was six years too long.’ He jerked a shoulder. ‘She got remarried five years ago to an accountant. I didn’t get an invite to the wedding.’
And just like that the monster slinked silently away.
The lift jolted and began to creak upwards.
He stood up swiftly and held out his hand. Tugging her to her feet, he settled his hands on her waist. ‘Listen, Lizzie. I’d really like to see you again, tonight. Would you…’ His voice faltered. ‘Would you like to go out after work?’
She nodded, the thrum of excitement, of possibilities almost too intense to contemplate. Maybe they couldn’t make the past right…But what if there was a chance to have a future? ‘Yes, I’d like that. I’ll ring Josh this afternoon. Tell him about…’ She sighed, more than a little overwhelmed by the events of the last twenty minutes. How did you cope when your life changed so fundamentally in such a short space of time? ‘I’m not sure he’s going to believe it.’
‘I’m not sure I believe it.’ Ren chuckled, the sound incredulous and yet pleased.
‘He’s coming back this weekend,’ she continued, trying not to read too much into that breath-taking smile. ‘Maybe if you’re available?’ she stumbled to a halt. This was such a massive step. For all three of them. And it wasn’t going to be easy.
Truly, Madly, Deeply Page 16