‘I told you it wasn’t important,’ she said in a hollow, incredulous voice. ‘I had no idea—’
‘Of course you didn’t. It doesn’t matter.’
‘It does!’ she cried softly, turning in his arms and looking up into those beautiful blue eyes. They were in shadow and she couldn’t read them, but his hand came up and cupped her cheek, and his thumb caressed her jaw with tender, slow strokes.
‘I’m glad we made love before you found out. Otherwise I might have thought it was pity. You know—
Tears swam in her eyes, but she blinked them away. ‘Don’t,’ she protested. Her arms slid round him, and she buried her face in his chest and bit her lip hard. ‘How long?’ she mumbled.
‘How long have I had it? Five years.’
Her head came up sharply. ‘Five years? So you knew? When you were with me, you knew?’
‘I began to suspect. I’d found a lump in my groin—just a pea, really, nothing significant. It didn’t hurt, I had no other symptoms. I thought it was just a lymphatic reaction to infection, probably—something I didn’t know I’d done. A little cut, a splinter or something. I couldn’t find anything, and it didn’t go away.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘I took a biopsy and sent it off.’
‘Yourself?’
He nodded. ‘And it came back positive. I went to an oncologist privately and he confirmed low-grade follicular non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. That was the day before I left.’
She eased away from him, sliding her arms into the sleeves of his dressing-gown and belting it tightly, as if to protect her from what she was hearing.
‘Why did you leave?’ she asked desperately. ‘Why like that, with just that note? Why didn’t you tell me?’ Her voice was starting to crack, and she wheeled away, going to stand by the window and staring out into the dark, quiet night. In the distance a dog barked. She hardly registered it. All she could think was that he’d gone, run away when he should have stayed and talked it through with her. If he’d loved her at all—
‘All what?’ she stormed, turning on him furiously. ‘Sharing the burden? Supporting you in your treatment? Cheering you up and helping you when you were down?’
‘Exactly,’ he said sadly. ‘How could I ask that of you after only three weeks—even if they were the best and most wonderful three weeks of my life? I missed you, Annie. Believe me, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and so many times I nearly tried to contact you.’
‘You should have done.’
He shook his head. ‘Why? To tell you I wasn’t in remission any more? That it had come back, and was threatening me again? Or the next time? Or when I was lying in hospital, being blasted by drugs before having the stem cell treatment as a last-ditch attempt at knocking it on the head?’
He laughed softly. ‘You wouldn’t have wanted me, Annie. I was thin to the point of gaunt, I looked like death. I’d lost my hair, I’d lost my faith in myself. I wasn’t worth having.’
Tears welled up and scalded her cheeks. ‘Oh, Max. Do you really think that would have made any difference to me? I would have been there for you.’
‘Sacrificing yourself. I thought if I left you, you might find someone else—someone you could marry and have children with. It was the only thing that comforted me, thinking that you might have found happiness.’
She laughed, a tiny, humourless huff of sound. ‘Happiness? Yes, I found happiness, eventually. With your son. Our son.’ She clenched her fists, hanging onto her
right to make that decision for me. It was my decision to make, not yours.’
He was silent for a while, then shook his head. ‘Maybe I didn’t want you there,’ he said softly.
She felt the rejection right through to her bones. It held her stunned, unable to move, to breathe, to think.
She dragged in a lungful of air and let it out again in a whoosh. ‘I’ll go,’ she whispered, frantically scrabbling around on the floor for her clothes. ‘If you don’t want me here…’
‘Annie, stop it.’
‘I can’t stop it,’ she wept. ‘Just let me go.’
‘No.’ His hands came out and caught her shoulders, drawing her up against his chest. ‘No, Annie, don’t run. Stay and talk about it—’
‘No!’ She drummed her fists against his chest impotently. ‘Max, please!’
‘Shh.’ His hands soothed her, stroking slowly up and down her spine, and she sagged against him, sobbing helplessly.
‘It’s all right, my love,’ he murmured, but she knew he was lying. It wasn’t all right, and it hadn’t been all right in a long, long time, and it probably never would be again.
What if he’d died? She would never have known! All these years she’d pictured him with another woman, and instead he’d been ill, fighting death alone…
‘You should have told me!’ she yelled, pummelling his chest again, the hot tears refusing to be held in check.
‘I’m sorry. Maybe I should have done. I just wanted to spare you the pain. It was such a brief affair. I thought you’d get over me.’
She dropped her hands and moved away, drawing herself up and hugging her arms around her waist again to
He sighed. ‘I don’t know. I’m in remission at the moment. It’s as near as I’ll get to a cure. It may come back, it may not. They may be able to destroy it again if it comes back, they may not. I have no idea. It’s just one of those damn things, like dog muck on your shoe. You can wipe it off, you can get rid of it, but that last trace seems to linger.’
He shrugged. ‘You just learn to live with it. It’s like asthma or high blood pressure or diabetes. You treat it, you deal with it, and you know that it will probably kill you in the end, but it’s a vague sort of end. It may be years—many, many years. A lifetime. It may be just a few short months. No one knows. That’s the hardest thing to deal with, to learn to live with—the terrible uncertainty. It’s like the sword of Damocles hanging over you, held by a bit of frayed thread. I couldn’t ask you to share that, and I wouldn’t.’
She swallowed, trying to visualise such an uncertain future. No wonder he wouldn’t settle down.
‘What about Harry?’ she asked, choked by tears. ‘Is he ever going to know you’re his father?’
‘No.’
‘But he has a right—’
‘He has a right to a secure future. He has a right to happiness, and confidence in his own mortality. I won’t take that away from him, Anna, and I won’t let you do it either.’
Anna. He’d called her Anna.
It made her feel cold inside.
‘He has a right to his father, too.’
‘To watch me die? To watch me endure another series of treatments? To not know if this time I’m coming home?’
But not you. Please, God, not you. She turned away, blinking hard and biting her lip until she could taste the salt of her blood.
‘Annie.’ His voice was soft, his hands gentle. ‘Come to bed. Let me hold you.’
She turned, burrowing into his chest, and he led her to the bed and tucked her under the quilt, their snack forgotten. He held her close, his heartbeat steady under her ear, and he seemed so alive, so well and normal and vital that she could hardly believe what he’d told her.
Maybe she’d wake up soon and find it was all a dream?
Max held her, his hands moving rhythmically over her shoulders and down her back, soothing her. Tears clogged his lashes, and he blinked them away. They could have had so much together.
He tipped her chin, his mouth finding hers and kissing her tenderly, and she clung to him, kissing him back as if she was starving for him.
Maybe she was. He understood that.
He peeled away the dressing-gown and kissed every inch of her, noting the changes—the softer fullness of her breasts, the gentle curve of her abdomen, the slight widening of her hips. She’d lost that youthfulness, become a ripe, fertile woman in her prime, and he found her somehow more beautiful, more intoxicating than the slender
girl she’d been.
Her hands were all over him, fluttering feverishly as he
She felt so good. So well. So alive. He sought her mouth frantically, as if he could draw life from her to conquer the demon that stalked him.
He felt her body start to tighten, and she bucked beneath him, crying out. He caught her cries, their kiss muffling his deep groan as his body stiffened against her, shuddering with the force of his release.
‘I love you,’ she whispered, and he couldn’t hold the tears any longer. They fell on her face, running down into her hair, mingling with her own as they welled from her beautiful eyes.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said raggedly. ‘Annie, I’m sorry.’ He didn’t know what he was sorry for—for dragging her into this sorry mess, for leaving her the first time, or because he was going to leave her again.
And this time, he’d make sure it was for ever…
‘You can’t go,’ she said flatly. ‘You have to stop running. You have a son. Even if I don’t mean anything to you, he should. At least get to know him, even if you don’t tell him who you are. You can at least spend some time with him, with us. I can tell him you’re here for a while and you’re lonely, and so we’re going to be your friends.’
‘And then leave, when Suzanna comes back to work? Walk out on you again?’
She shook her head, trying to stay calm. ‘I would like you to stay—or take us with you.’
‘You don’t know that. Give yourself time. Max, I’m a health professional. I understand that we can’t save everyone. What I do, as a nurse, is improve quality of life. There are many ways of doing that and, if you’ve only got a limited amount of time, don’t you owe it to yourself to make that time happy?’
His jaw clenched, and he turned away. ‘I can’t, Anna,’ he said in a strangled voice. ‘Don’t push me, please.’
‘At least stay until Suzanna comes back,’ she pleaded. ‘Even if you don’t see Harry, at least stay with me. Let me have some memories—please?’
He looked back at her, his eyes tortured. ‘You don’t know what you’re asking,’ he said roughly.
‘Yes, I do. I know exactly what I’m asking, and I know it takes courage—more courage than running away again.’
She let the words hang, and after a while he bowed his head and gave a heavy sigh. ‘I’ll think about it.’
Her shoulders dropped with relief. It was only a slight concession, but at least she wasn’t going to come out of her morning surgery and find him gone.
‘Just promise me something—if you decide you have to go, say goodbye. Don’t leave me again—not like that.’
He nodded slowly. ‘All right.’
‘Thank you.’
She wheeled round and yanked his consulting-room door open, almost running down the corridor to her room. She had five minutes before her first patient—five minutes to get her wildly see-sawing emotions under control and dredge up a professional demeanour.
She managed it, but only just.
‘You look a bit wat’ry, my dear,’ he said as she bent over his finger. ‘Took the hay fever, have you?’
She nodded, hoping he wouldn’t know she’d never suffered so much as a single sneeze from a pollen allergy. ‘It must be bad at the moment—there must be something about that gets to me.’
Called Max, she added to herself, and dismissed the thought firmly. She had to work, had to concentrate and deal with her patients. It would give it time to sink in, give her subconscious time to assimilate it.
‘It’s looking better,’ she told Mr Bryant, peering critically at his fingertip. ‘I think it’s starting to heal properly at last. I should think you’re relieved.’
‘Tell you the truth, it’s never really troubled me,’ he confessed. ‘It were the wife sent me along. Said it looked unsightly and she weren’t going out with me again till I did something about it. Not that we go out much, mind. Just Friday nights down the Rose and Crown, for the darts. I’ve played for years, but she’s just decided to join in, and she’s in the women’s team,’ he said, clearly proud of her. ‘I couldn’t mess that up because of my finger, now, could I?’
Anna smiled. ‘Well, you’re safe now, then. You can still go down to the Rose and Crown together on Fridays. It sounds like fun.’
He nodded. ‘We enjoy it. Bit of light relief at the end of the week, ‘specially in the winter. You ought to come along—you ever played darts?’
Mr Bryant’s eyes softened. ‘He’s a lovely little chap. Saw him the other day out for a walk with your mother, bless her. Dear little fellow. Gave me a great big smile, he did. Shame you haven’t got a man to take care of you, my dear. I know it’s none of my business, but a boy that age needs his mother, and I reckon you need him, too. Less hay fever that way.’
And he lifted his hand in farewell and stomped out of the surgery, leaving her laughing wryly. And she’d thought she’d fooled him!
Friday afternoon was her afternoon off, and she left the surgery at lunchtime without seeing Max. He was out on call, apparently, and so she went home with a strange, hollow feeling inside, changed out of her uniform and went round to see her mother.
Perceptive woman that she was, she took one look at her only daughter and pushed her into a chair. ‘Stay here,’ she ordered softly, took little Harry by the hand and led him off to find her husband.
Moments later she was back, walking straight up to Anna and engulfing her in a wordless hug.
All the fears she’d stifled for the past twelve hours or so welled up in a great hideous tide, and she buried her face in her mother’s soft and comforting bosom and howled her eyes out. Finally, after what seemed like an age, she hiccuped to a halt, and her mother smoothed her hair one last time and handed her a fistful of tissues.
She made two mugs of tea, put them down in the middle of the table and pushed one towards Anna. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ she asked gently.
Anna sniffed and tipped her head back, looking up at the ceiling for strength and inspiration. There was none to be found. ‘He’s dying,’ she said flatly. ‘Max. He’s got lymphoma. That’s why he left me.’
‘Oh, my love…’ Her mother’s warm, capable hand closed over hers, squeezing hard. ‘Oh, darling, I am so sorry.’
The tears started again, and Anna dashed them away impatiently. ‘He’s in remission. He might be all right for years and years, but he won’t stay. He won’t listen to me—he says he’ll think about staying till Suzanna comes back, but he won’t stay after that, and he doesn’t want Harry to know who he is, and I can’t persuade him and I don’t know what to do! I can’t bear to lose him again…’
She dropped her head onto her arms, and sobbed helplessly, while her mother held her hand and murmured the sort of words she said to Harry when he fell and scraped his knees. Universal words, meaningless sounds that soothed and comforted and took away the pain.
Words she should have said to Max when he’d been lying in hospital, all alone.
She pushed herself up and gulped her tea, sniffing hard. ‘He’s so damn stubborn,’ she said on a hiccuping sob. ‘He just won’t listen to me. It’s my decision whether I can cope with it or not.’
‘And can you?’ her mother asked gently.
She broke off, pressing her fingers to her mouth to hold in the fear.
‘How does he feel about you?’ her mother asked.
She shrugged. ‘He said he’d missed me. He said leaving was the hardest thing he’d ever done. He said he thought he must have misremembered how it was with me—’
She broke off, colouring, and wondered what her mother would think if she realised she’d spent the night with him.
‘And had he?’ she asked softly.
Anna shook her head. ‘No. We still…’ She floundered to a halt, unsure how to phrase it, but her mother understood.
‘Sometimes it’s just right, I suppose. Your father and I met and fell headlong in love. There was no doubt, no question of waiting to be sure. We were sure, right
from the first moment we set eyes on each other.’
She coloured softly and looked away. ‘That’s why we were married so quickly. Everyone thought it was because I was pregnant, but it was just that we couldn’t stay away from each other, and it wasn’t like it is these days. People didn’t just live together—at least, not in the country.’
She smiled. ‘So we were married, just eight weeks after we met, and thirty-four years later we’re still here. I suppose we’ve been incredibly lucky. We’ve both got our health, we’re happy, we’ve got a lovely daughter and a beautiful grandson—the only thing I would change is your happiness, and that’s been something that’s troubled me ever since Max came into your life.’
‘You’re very fortunate,’ Anna told her wistfully. ‘Treasure him. Not everyone gets the chance.’
Max drove slowly through the lanes, looking for Culvert Farm. He checked his directions again, and wondered if he’d passed that little turning or not.
He wasn’t exactly concentrating. All he could think about was Anna, and how incredibly sweet it had been to lie in her arms last night. She wanted him to stay. He laughed wryly. If she only knew how easy it would be to do that, to give up being noble and let her share the uncertainty of the coming years.
But he couldn’t, because of Harry. Oddly enough, if it hadn’t been for the boy he might have stayed this time, but he couldn’t trash the kid’s life like that. What if he came out of remission and went downhill fast? It could happen. If he was on his own, nobody else would be affected and it wouldn’t matter.
Still, she’d made a very tempting offer. Stay until Suzanna came back off maternity leave, she’d suggested, and make memories with her. It was unbelievably tempting—so tempting he thought he’d do it. Why not? They were both going to be hurt anyway. It might as well be worthwhile.
A bubble of something rose in his chest, and he realised it was happiness. It was the first time for five years—he almost hadn’t recognised it. Yes, he’d stay, and make memories with her, and then he’d go, taking his memories with him to comfort him through the months and years ahead.
Humming softly, he turned down the little lane he’d missed the first time, swung into the yard of Culvert Farm and cut the engine.
Their Miracle Baby Page 19