A Flame On The Horizon

by Daphne Clair

  Guiltily she began planning to take more interest in Reid’s business. She’d suggest that if he gave her warning she’d be pleased to entertain clients or associates with him. Giving up an occasional evening for that wouldn’t hurt her.

  She walked down the wide carpeted corridor to the glass door that stood open. The receptionist’s desk was empty. Three doors opened off the reception area. The one with Reid’s name printed on it in black lettering was not quite closed. She pushed it wider and stopped in the doorway, transfixed with shock.

  Behind the desk, Reid was seated in his large swivel chair, turned slightly to one side. He had his arms clasped tightly about a slim blonde woman who stood in front of him with her back almost to the door. Carla. Her head was bent, one hand stroking Reid’s hair, the other on his shoulder, and his face was buried in the front of her blouse, half hidden by her lilac linen jacket.

  Neither of them looked up. They hadn’t heard her. Then Reid murmured something incoherent, and Carla whispered, ‘Oh, Reid! My dear!’

  Annys backed away, her mind reeling. She almost ran from the office, and along the corridor. The lift, she saw, glancing at the red light on the wall, was up on the sixth floor. Anyway, she didn’t want to be locked in a small box with other people.

  She fled down the stairs, running faster and faster, thinking of nothing but getting away as quickly as possible.

  She was approaching the last landing when one of her high heels slipped on the marble surface, and she turned her foot and fell down the final half-dozen stairs, landing heavily with a sickening jolt.

  Shakily she picked herself up, and limped down the rest of the flight holding on to the railing, trying to steady her breathing.

  Carla. ‘We work together a lot,’ Reid had told her. Was she the real reason he wanted to spend more time in New Zealand rather than abroad? Not Annys, certainly not the baby, which he’d only found out about last night.

  No wonder he’d been less than overjoyed. Perhaps, she thought in sudden panic, he had been planning to divorce Annys and marry Carla? Or did he want to have his cake and eat it? Annys and Carla. And how many others?

  She walked all the way home, sometimes in a blank daze, sometimes with her thoughts in such chaos that she nearly stepped on to the road in front of a bus and, terrified, pulled herself together. The baby, she’d thought in that instant of danger. Never mind her life; there was another life to consider now.

  When she got home and unlocked the front door she found she was very tired. And something else impinged on her consciousness. Her emotional confusion and anguish had been such that the physical symptoms had seemed just a part of it. But now it dawned on her that for some time there had been a dragging pain in her groin. She lay on the sofa and closed her eyes and willed the pain to go away, but it got worse, and at last she couldn’t ignore it.

  She didn’t have a regular doctor, had never needed one. She looked in the Yellow Pages with fumbling fingers and found the number of a private twenty-four-hour outpatients’ clinic. The nurse said, ‘Can you get a taxi and come in?’

  When she came home hours later, Reid was there. He got up from the sofa where he’d been sitting and said, ‘Where have you been? I called the shop—you look terrible!’

  They had wanted to book her into hospital overnight, but it was all over now, and she’d insisted on coming home. They’d given her pain-killers and other pills and told her to phone if she was worried. She’d already had some pills at the clinic, and they’d left her a bit lightheaded. The staff had made her assure them that she wouldn’t try to drive. They’d been a bit happier when she’d asked them to call her a taxi, and told them her husband would be at home.

  ‘I’ll be OK,’ she told Reid. She was confused, foolishly surprised to find he looked just the same. She had been inspecting his face for signs of his betrayal.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he asked her again.

  ‘At a clinic,’ she said, the words sounding disembodied, unreal. She felt ready to drop at his feet with sheer weariness.

  ‘The baby?’ he queried sharply, taking a quick step towards her. ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘There isn’t going to be any baby,’ Annys said starkly. ‘Not any more.’ Then, as the room swayed gently around her, she added, ‘I really have to go to bed.’ She ignored the hand he had been extending to her and walked out of the room.

  She heard him say, ‘ What?’ But she was already grimly making her way down the passageway to the bedroom.

  He had followed her. ‘What are you talking about, Annys? What have you done?’ But the questions seemed very distant, and struggling out of her dress and shoes took all her energy. She had none left to answer him.

  After she’d crawled between the sheets in her underwear, she was dimly aware of him shaking her, of his voice somewhere far away. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered. ‘They gave me some pills...’ And then she slid into blessed sleep.

  When she woke there was light shining on her closed eyelids, and a waiting silence, and she felt like nothing. A curiously empty, weightless sensation assailed her, followed by a piercing dread and then a gut-wrenching, thundering depression.

  She knew that Reid was in the room before she opened her eyes, in spite of his stillness. Her lids lifted slowly, and she saw him standing by the window. He looked as though he hadn’t been to bed. His hair was untidy and his cheeks shadowed, his shirt rumpled.

  He turned his head and came over to the bed. ‘How do you feel?’ he asked her. His face was austere, as though he was holding himself in.

  ‘All right.’ It wasn’t true, but the last thing she wanted was Reid’s pity. ‘Shouldn’t you be at the office?’

  ‘Later. Want to talk about it?’

  Annys shook her head, looking away from him. She didn’t want to talk about anything to him. He hadn’t wanted the baby, anyway. Was probably relieved.

  ‘You still look terrible,’ he said. ‘Can I get you anything?’

  ‘No.’ She wouldn’t look at him. ‘Please go away, Reid. I’d rather be alone.’

  ‘If that’s what you want.’ He paused. ‘I’ll make you a cup of tea. You don’t have to drink it.’

  He left it on the bedside table minutes later. ‘Call me at the office if you need anything,’ he told her. ‘You look as though you’d better stay in bed.’

  She managed to say, ‘Thank you,’ and then he was gone. He hadn’t kissed her goodbye, she thought, and foolishly, weakly, she began to cry.

  Later she’d dragged herself from the bed and packed a couple of suitcases, written Reid a brief note and left.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ‘I remember it vividly,’ Annys had just told Reid, three years later. She drew her wrap tighter about her body, standing very straight. The reading lamp he had been using cast a glow over her spare-room bed behind him, leaving his face in shadow. ‘It was the day before I...left you. I went to see you at your office, and your receptionist had just gone out—for lunch, I suppose. You and Carla were there, sharing what I can only describe as an intimate embrace.’

  Reid said, ‘We didn’t see you.’

  She saw that he remembered. There was a flicker in his eyes, and he had flushed, the colour darkening his skin. ‘I know you didn’t. You were too... occupied.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’ he demanded. ‘You just—went?’

  ‘What was I supposed to say? “Excuse me for intruding”? Or, “Kindly unhand my husband”?’

  ‘You could have asked what the hell we were doing!’

  ‘Why? That was perfectly obvious, thanks!’

  ‘Not so obvious as you thought.’ The flush was receding. ‘Not at all obvious, actually. It was... comfort, that’s all. I needed comfort, and Carla’s a compassionate woman. And you can take that sneer off your face,’ he added sharply. ‘It happens to be true.’

  Annys wasn’t aware that she’d been sneering, but she certainly felt like it. ‘Why did you need comfort?’ she challenged him.


  ‘Can’t you guess?’

  He had a pretty good line in sneers himself, Annys thought. ‘Because I was pregnant? She was consoling you for that?’ Anger shook her. How dared he ask another woman for her compassion when his wife had just given him the greatest gift a woman could offer to a man? ‘And anyway, I don’t believe you!’ she raged. ‘You looked as guilty as hell just now when I told you I’d seen you with her.’

  ‘I wasn’t guilty!’ Reid said forcefully. And then, on a different note, he added, ‘If you want to know, I was embarrassed. I don’t habitually cry on a woman’s shoulder—’

  ‘It wasn’t her shoulder you were so interested in—’ Annys said acidly.

  ‘All right, then, her bosom!’ Reid acknowledged edgily. ‘That’s what you saw, isn’t it? I was at the end of my tether. That morning I could hardly concentrate on what we were supposed to be doing. Carla had worked with me enough to know that something was seriously wrong, and she asked if she could help, offered her sympathy—and I finally let it all out. I’d been going spare trying to save our marriage from the rocks it was heading for, and frantically working all hours in an attempt to get systems into place so that I could be sure the business wouldn’t collapse while we sorted our relationship out. I was determined somehow to make you slow down for a while too and put some of the effort into our marriage that you were spending on your career. And then you told me you were pregnant, and I wanted to cheer and shout and toast you in champagne, but that obviously wouldn’t have been exactly the thing to do—’

  Annys said feebly, ‘Why—?’

  But he wasn’t listening, ‘—and I was trying to figure out how the hell I could convince you it wasn’t going to be the end of the world—’

  ‘What—?’

  ‘And it didn’t make any difference, anyway. You went

  and—’ He stopped there and said in stricken tones,

  ‘That’s not why you did it, is it?’ He shook his head, and said, ‘No. You’d planned it, hadn’t you? You’d have had to have an appointment.’

  ‘Appointment where?’ Annys said, bewildered. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’

  ‘The clinic!’ he said impatiently. ‘You didn’t go and do it just because you’d seen me with Carla, did you? Out of spite, or jealousy? You can’t have!’

  Her mouth opened in horrified astonishment. ‘I didn’t! It was an accident and emergency clinic I went to, because I fell on the stairs from your office, and when I got home—I’d started to miscarry. Reid, it was an accident! That’s how I lost the baby.’

  Reid swallowed. He was staring at her as though he’d never seen her before. ‘You mean, you didn’t—it wasn’t deliberate?’

  ‘No!’ She shook her head vehemently, and fought back tears. ‘I could never do that to our baby!’

  The sudden movement made her feel dizzy, and Reid said, ‘You’re pale. Come here, you’d better sit down.’ He stretched out his hand to her and drew her over to the bed, bending to sweep the papers and folders roughly on to the floor and sit her down against the pillows. ‘Put your feet up,’ he said, and sat on the edge of the bed, facing her.

  ‘How could you think that?’ she asked him indignantly.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But you didn’t want to have a child in the first place—’

  ‘I what?’ Shock upon shock. ‘Whatever gave you that idea?’

  Reid blinked at her, and frowned. ‘You did,’ he said curtly. ‘The way you told me, you were less than happy about it. I know you wanted to establish your business first, but I hoped—’

  ‘I was less than happy?’ Annys repeated blankly. ‘Reid. I was over the moon, but when I told you about it you just reacted so coolly—you said it was a disaster!’

  ‘No, you said that!’

  They stared at each other. ‘What you said just now,’ Annys murmured, ‘about wanting to cheer and shout and toast me in champagne. Oh, Reid, why didn’t you?’ Her eyes suddenly filled with tears, running hotly down her cheeks.

  ‘Annys?’ He looked thunderstruck for a second, and then he moved and pulled her roughly into his arms.

  ‘I thought I was being tactful,’ he confessed, his face against her hair. ‘You didn’t seem in a celebratory mood.’

  ‘I had been...earlier,’ Annys said, between sobs. ‘But it was... a bit anticlimactic... you were so late.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that,’ he said belatedly. ‘If I’d known—’

  ‘So I tried to be casual instead,’ she said, sniffing as she drew away from him a little, wiping her eyes. ‘And you thought that meant I didn’t like the idea?’

  ‘I thought you were telling me you hated it, that it was going to interfere with your plans for your business. I was trying to talk you into seeing that you could have both a career and a family. We managed to get ourselves into a right mess,’ Reid said. He still had his arm about her, but he lifted his other hand and passed a thumb over her wet cheek. ‘I’ve never seen you cry before,’ he told her, as though he’d made a wondrous new discovery.

  ‘I’m sorry. I know you don’t like it...’

  She made to move out of his hold, but he tightened his arm. ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘You hate clinging vines, weak women. You said so. I suppose... your mother—’

  ‘Hang on a minute. What does my mother have to do with this? You never even met her!’

  ‘You said your father felt guilty about her suicide. From what you told me, I guessed she felt she couldn’t live without him. You were so adamant that you wanted an independent woman—you didn’t want to feel that anyone’s happiness hinged on you. But I’m afraid mine does, Reid. I tried not to let it happen, and I promise I’m not going to kill myself, but I haven’t been truly happy for five minutes since we parted.’

  Reid took her shoulders to hold her away from him so he could see her face. ‘I haven’t either,’ he said. ‘Did I make you feel that you couldn’t cry on my shoulder if you wanted to? Were you trying to be Superwoman for my sake?’

  ‘You admire strong women,’ Annys said.

  ‘I admire you! I love you! If you wept all over me ten times a day I wouldn’t care—’

  Annys grinned suddenly. ‘You’d hate it!’ she accused him.

  ‘Well, maybe. But so long as you were doing it on my shoulder I could stand it. You see, my happiness depends on you, Annys. If I didn’t know it before, I’ve certainly found that out in the last three years. Only I thought the most important thing for you was your career, your business. You put so much energy into it, there seemed damn all left for me. And for any children.’ He paused. ‘Do I take it that this baby is wanted, even though it was unplanned?’

  ‘I wouldn’t give this baby up for anything!’ she said, looking down. ‘I never did stop mourning the other one.’

  ‘Neither did I. I tried not to be angry with you for what I thought you’d done, but I couldn’t help it. And I grieved for that child.’

  ‘We should have grieved together,’ she said, looking up at him, this time not trying to hide the tears.

  ‘Yes,’ Reid agreed huskily. Tears glittering in his own eyes, he took her in his arms again.

  Some time later they lay together on the bed, Annys’s damp cheek against his chest.

  ‘That’s why Carla was holding you that day?’ she said. ‘For comfort?’

  ‘I told you, yes. I was deathly afraid our marriage was foundering, and I thought you resented the baby. Carla’s a good friend.’

  Annys tamped down a quite unreasoning resentment that he’d gone to Carla for comfort that he had never asked of her. She ought to be glad that he’d had someone.

  ‘She’s happily married, by the way,’ Reid went on, ‘with children of her own. I like her, but not as a lover. I’ve never looked at another woman since you came into my life.’

  Annys raised her head and gave him a level stare, and he grinned. ‘Well, hardly. And looking isn’t a crime.’ The smile fading, he said, ‘Serious
ly, Annys. I don’t know how I can convince you. But I also don’t know why you should doubt my word.’

  Annys bit her lip. ‘In a way my parents were right. We got married so soon, I hadn’t had time to get to know you, to know that I could trust you. For ages I’d been jealous for no reason, thinking maybe you were seeing other women when you were away from me—’

  Reid gave a startled exclamation. ‘You thought—why didn’t you say?’

  ‘I despised myself for it. How could I say anything when all I had to go on was unfounded suspicion? I didn’t want you to know how insecure I felt, and I suppose I didn’t want to start acting like a woman who couldn’t bear to let her husband out of her sight. You’d have been furious, and with good reason. You told me that you didn’t want a little woman waiting at home for you. A jealous little woman would have been the end! Then, when I saw you with Carla...’

  ‘I suppose it did look pretty compromising,’ he said, ‘but I’d have expected you to come in with guns blazing, rather than run away and say nothing.’

  ‘Maybe you didn’t know me very well, either.’

  ‘Tell me about the you I don’t know.’

  Annys hesitated. ‘You always said I could do anything, that I was strong.’

  ‘No one can be strong all the time.’

  ‘No. But I thought I had to be. My parents were in their forties when I was born, and I think they had this idea that they might not always be around to look out for me, so I had to be able to make my own security. They were very keen for me to go to university, to have a good steady job. At least until I got married. Something to fall back on, my mother used to say. I always felt I had to do well for their sakes. And when my dad was made redundant I decided that I was never going to be at someone else’s mercy. I wanted to rely on myself alone. That’s why I was so touchy, I suppose, when you offered to help.’