Playing the Dutiful WifeExpecting His Love-Child

by Carol Marinelli

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  MEG DID NOT get to see him again. Instead she was taken to a police station. There were press clamouring outside as she was taken in to give a statement, and while she was waiting for a translator Rosa arrived.

  Meg gave her statement as best she could. They kept talking about twins, and although she had already worked that out when she was being held in Niklas’s arms, her brain was so scrambled and confused that even with a translator she could hardly understand the questions, let alone answer them.

  Every time she closed her eyes she saw Niklas—or rather the man she had thought was Niklas—lying there dead. The raw grief and panic, the knowing in that moment that she would never see him again, that the man she had fallen so heavily in love with was now dead, was not a memory or a feeling she could simply erase.

  Fortunately Rosa had told the police she would return with Meg tomorrow, but that for now she needed peace, and thankfully they accepted that.

  ‘We will return at ten tomorrow,’ Rosa told her.

  They stepped out into the foyer and she saw him standing there, still dressed in prison denim. He took her in his arms and she knew then that she had to be careful, because the one thing she had worked out before this embrace was that she wasn’t strong around him—that she’d only been able to break up with Niklas when it hadn’t actually been him.

  ‘I’m still angry with you.’

  ‘I thought you might be.’ He kissed her bruised cheek and didn’t let her go as he spoke. ‘We can row in bed.’

  Which sounded a lot more like the Niklas she knew. He held her tight and pressed his face into her hair and she could feel his ragged breathing. For a moment she thought he was crying, but he just held her a moment longer and spoke into her hair.

  ‘The press are outside so we have to go out the back. I am taking you far away from here. I need to stay in the city, but—’

  ‘Não,’ Rosa said.

  Meg heard the word amanhã again, and realised Rosa was telling him that Meg must return to the police tomorrow.

  ‘I’ll ring Carla, then.’

  With his arm still around Meg he took Rosa’s phone and started to dial the number. Whilst he was occupied Meg stepped out of his embrace, and a little later, when they climbed into a waiting car, she sat on the back seat far away from him, needing some time alone.

  Even though they went out the back way the press still got some photos and it was horrible. They scrambled over to the car and blocked their exit, but the driver shook them off. Niklas told her it might be like this for a while, and that he was taking her to a hotel. He saw the start in her eyes.

  ‘We’re not going back there—I’ve asked Carla to book us into a different one.’

  Us.

  So easily he assumed.

  They entered the new hotel the back way too, and were ushered straight to a waiting lift where Niklas pressed a high number. They stood in silence till Meg broke it.

  ‘Did you get off?’

  ‘I’ve been released on bail.’

  ‘So why are you still wearing…?’ And then she shook her head, because she was simply too tired for explanations right now.

  They stepped out of the lift and there was hotel security in the corridor—‘For the press,’ Niklas said, but it felt a lot like prison to her, and no doubt to him too, but he said nothing, just swiped open a door, leading her into a plush suite.

  Meg stood there for a moment, only knowing for certain the city she was in and that Niklas was alive. She remembered her feeling at seeing him dead, and the fear that had gripped her in the moments before, and started shaking.

  ‘I wanted to take you away from the city tonight, but because we need to go back to the police station tomorrow it is better that we stay here. I’ve had your stuff packed up, but it is in the other place…you’ll have to make do for now…’

  It was hardly ‘make do’; there was food and soon she would take a bath, and then she sat and had a strong coffee. Niklas offered her cachaca—the same drink she had been offered a little while ago—and she shuddered as she remembered. He opened the fridge and opened a bottle of champagne instead.

  Which seemed a strange choice and was a drink she hadn’t had it in almost a year.

  Not since their wedding.

  It was the drink they had shared on the day they had met, and he poured her a glass now, kissing her forehead as they chinked glasses and celebrated that somehow they were both here. It was a muted celebration, and there was still so much to be said, but Niklas dealt with the essentials first.

  ‘You need to ring your parents.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say to them,’ Meg admitted. She felt like crying just at the thought of them, was dreading the conversation that had to be had—and how much worse it was going to be now, after not telling them anything.

  ‘Tell them the truth,’ Niklas said. ‘A bit diluted.’ He nudged her. ‘You need to speak to them now in case they hear anything on the news, or the consulate might contact them. Have they tried to ring you?’

  ‘I didn’t even bring my phone with me,’ Meg said.

  ‘It will be at the other hotel,’ Niklas said. ‘For now they just need to know you are safe. I will speak to them if it gets too much.’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head—not at phoning them, but at the thought of him talking to them. She knew how badly things were going to go. ‘I’ll do it…’

  ‘Now.’

  ‘I still don’t really know what happened.’ But she took the phone, because he was right. They needed to know she was safe. ‘Leave me,’ she said, and was glad that he didn’t argue.

  Niklas headed into the bedroom and she dialled the number, then looked out of the window to a very beautiful, but very complicated city. She held her breath when she heard the very normal sound of her mum.

  ‘How’s Brazil?’ Ruth asked. ‘Or is it Hawaii this week?’

  ‘Still Brazil,’ Meg said, and because Ruth was her mum straight away she knew.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  It was the most difficult of conversations. First she had to tell her how Vegas had been and how she had married a man she had only just met. She diluted the story a lot, of course—an awful lot—but she still had to tell them how, the morning after their wedding, Niklas had upset her, how she had been trying to psyche herself up to divorce him.

  And her mum kept interrupting her with questions that her father was shouting—questions that weren’t really relevant because they still didn’t know half of the story. So she told them she was here to visit him, that he had been arrested a while ago, but was innocent of all charges. Her mother was shouting and sobbing now, and her dad was demanding the phone, and they were simply getting nowhere, and then Niklas was back and she was so glad to hand the phone over to him.

  She found out for certain then just how brilliant he was, how clever he was with people, for somehow he calmed her father down.

  ‘My intention when I married your daughter was to take proper care of her. I was on my way to tell you the same when I found out that I was being investigated.’

  He said a few more things, and she could hear the shouts receding as he calmly spoke his truth.

  ‘I was deliberately nasty to her in the hope she would divorce me—of course she was confused, of course she was ashamed and did not feel that she could tell you. I wanted to keep her away from the trouble that was coming—in that I failed, and I apologise.’

  They didn’t need to know all the details, but he told them some pertinent ones, because as soon as they hung up they would be racing to find out the news for themselves. So he told them about the shooting, but he was brief and matter-of-fact and reiterated that Meg was safe. He told them that they could ring any time with more questions, no matter the time of day or night, and that he would do his best to answer them. Then he handed the phone back to Meg.

  ‘You’re safe,’ her mum said.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘We need to talk…’r />
  ‘We will.’

  When she hung up the phone she looked at him. ‘You could have told me the truth that day.’ She was angry that he hadn’t.

  ‘What? Walk back in and tell you that I am being investigated for fraud and embezzlement? That the man you met twenty-four hours ago is facing thirty-five years to life in jail…?’ He looked at her. ‘What would you have said?’

  ‘I might have suggested you didn’t go back till you found out the case against you…’ she flared. ‘I might not be the best one in the world, but I am a lawyer…’

  ‘My own lawyer was telling me to get straight back.’ He kicked himself then, because had he confided in her—had he been able to tell her—he might not have raced back, might have found out some more information before taking a first-class flight to hell.

  ‘I had to return to face it,’ Niklas said. ‘Would you have stood by me?’

  ‘You never gave me that chance.’

  ‘Because that was what I was most afraid of.’ He was kneeling beside her and she could hear him breathing. ‘You never asked if I did it.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Even when you visited…even when you rang…’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Did you believe I was innocent?’

  ‘I hoped that you were.’

  ‘There was too much love for common sense,’ Niklas said.

  She sat there for ages and was glad when he left her alone and headed to the bathroom. She heard his sigh of relief as he slipped into the bath water and thought about his words—because while she had hoped he was innocent, it hadn’t changed her feelings towards him and that scared her. After a little while she wandered in to him.

  ‘I am so sorry.’ He looked at her. ‘For everything I have put you and your family through.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘But still, I have scared you, and nearly cost you your life…’

  And then he looked at her and asked the question the police had asked her earlier.

  ‘Did he do anything to you?’

  ‘Apart from hold a gun at me…’ she knew what he meant ‘…no.’

  She watched him close his eyes in relief and knew then that he had cried.

  ‘He wanted to walk,’ Meg said. ‘That was when I started to worry.’ She gave him a pale smile. ‘Not quite the Niklas I know.’ And then there wasn’t a pale smile. ‘I’m still cross about what you said on the phone.’

  ‘I wanted you to leave,’ he said. ‘I wanted you to be so angry, so upset, that you got on the next plane you could…’

  ‘I nearly did.’

  ‘Do you want me tell you what happened?’

  She wanted to hear it now, and he held his hand out to her. Yes, he assumed she would join him—and for now he was right. Her clothes and her body were filthy, and she wanted to feel clean again, to hear what had happened, and she wanted to hear it as she lay beside him. So she took off her clothes and slid into the water, with her back to his chest, resting on him, and he held her close and washed all her bruises and slowly he told her.

  ‘There was bedlam in court,’ Niklas said as he washed her gently. ‘The place erupted when I asked for a new lawyer, and then Rosa presented the evidence implicating Miguel. He was arrested immediately, but of course I had to go back to prison…I knew they were never going to release me just like that. I told them that you were in danger, but they would not listen, and then, as they were taking me back, he made contact with Carla, asking for money. He said that he had my wife and texted a photo. The police only believed me then that I had a twin.’

  She frowned and looked up to him. ‘You knew you had a twin?’

  ‘I guessed that I did last night, after I spoke to you.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘It made sense. I knew I was innocent.’

  ‘But how did you work it out?’

  ‘I swear in several languages…’ She smiled, because that was what he did. ‘I was angry after speaking to you—worried that you would not leave—and I swore in Portuguese. The guard warned me to be careful, he called me Dos Santos and I heard the derision in his voice, in his tone. I thought he was referring to me having no one, and I swore again, and then he said something about you. I went to curse again, but in Spanish…’

  He was soaping her arms and his mouth was at her neck—not kissing, just breathing.

  ‘The first nun who looked after me, till I was three, she taught me Spanish…’

  Still Meg frowned.

  ‘Dos Santos means something different in Spanish,’ Niklas explained. ‘In Portuguese it means “from the saints”, in Spanish it means…’

  ‘Two.’ She turned and looked to him. ‘“Two saints”.’

  ‘There were two of us… That is why the Spanish nun chose our surname. It made sense. Apparently in the month before I was arrested I was having meals and meetings with very powerful people, persuading them to invest….’

  ‘My God!’

  ‘He and Miguel were rorting every contact I have made. A couple of months before it happened I thought I had lost my phone, but of course they had it and were diverting numbers. Both of them knew that they didn’t have long before I found out, or the banks or the police did, so they were busy getting a lot of money based on my reputation. My lawyer had every reason to want me to be convicted and spend life in jail—every reason not to tell me about the evidence that would convict me. Because as soon as I saw it, I would know the truth. It was not me.’

  She felt him breathe in deeply.

  ‘I can see how people were fooled. When I saw him lying there I felt as if I was looking at me.’ He elaborated on his feelings no more than that, and told her the little he knew. ‘His name was Emilios Dos Santos. The police said he had lived on the streets all his life but had no criminal record—just a few warnings for begging. I guess he was tired of having nothing. When he found out Miguel had been arrested he must have seen you as his last chance to get money from me…’

  ‘How did he know I was here? How did he know what hotel…?’

  ‘The prison guards, maybe.’ He shrugged. ‘Miguel would have been paying someone to keep an eye on me. You would have had to give your address for the prison visitors’ list.’

  She knew then how dangerous it had been not to listen to him, not to leave when he had told her to.

  ‘I should have gone to Hawaii.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘you should have.’ But then he thought for a moment. Because without her here, without his fear that she was in danger, he might not have worked things out.

  ‘It doesn’t matter anyway,’ Meg said. ‘It’s over now.’ He didn’t answer, and she turned and saw the exhaustion and agony still in his face. She could have kicked herself, for at the end of the day he had lost his twin, and Meg knew that despite all that had happened it had to hurt.

  ‘Maybe he did want to talk to you when he found out he had a twin—perhaps Miguel dissuaded him, saw the chance to make some serious money and told him it was the only way.’

  ‘I don’t want to speak about that.’

  So quickly he locked her out.

  And then the phone rang—trust the hotel bathroom to have one.

  Niklas answered it.

  ‘It’s your father.’ He handed it to Meg, and she spoke with her parents. Neither shouted this time, just asked more questions—and, more than that, they told her how much they loved her, and how badly they wanted her to come home as quickly as possible.

  She was glad she was facing away from him, but glad to be leaning on him as they spoke and he held her. Later her father asked to speak with him, and he held out his wet hand for the phone and listened to what her father was saying.

  ‘We have to give some more statements to the police, so Meg needs to be here for a few more days,’ he said, ‘but I will take her somewhere quiet.’ He listened for a moment and then spoke again. ‘She’s tired now, but I will see what she wants to do in the morning, once she h
as spoken to the police.’

  And then he said goodbye, and she frowned because they almost sounded a little bit friendly.

  ‘He’s coming around to me.’

  It was, as Meg knew only too well, terribly easy to do so.

  ‘They want you home, Meg.’

  ‘I know that, but I want to be here with you.’

  ‘Well, they need to see you,’ Niklas said. ‘They need to see for themselves that you are not hurt.’

  ‘I know that…’ She wanted him to say he’d come with her, wanted him to say he would never let her go, but he didn’t. She wanted more from him, wanted to be fully in his life, but still he would not let her in.

  She turned her head and looked at him—looked at this man who’d told her from the start that they’d never last.

  ‘This doesn’t change things, does it?’

  He didn’t answer.

  She surprised herself by not crying.

  ‘You’ll never find another love like this.’ She meant it—and not in an arrogant way—because even if he didn’t accept it, even if he refused to believe it, whether he wanted it or not, this really was love.

  ‘I told you on the first day that it would not be for ever.’

  ‘We didn’t love each other as much then.’

  ‘I have never said that I love you.’

  ‘You did earlier.’

  ‘I said there was too much love for common sense,’ Niklas said. ‘Too much love for you to think straight…’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Believe in fairytales if you want to.’ He said it much more nicely than last time, but the message was the same. ‘Meg, I told you I could never settle in one place, that I could not commit to one person for ever. I told you that.’

  He had.

  ‘And I told you that I don’t do love.’

  He had.

  ‘You said you wanted this for as long as it lasted.’

  His voice was the gentlest and kindest she had heard it.

  ‘In a few days, once all the questioning is over, you need to go home to your family.’

  And even if she’d promised herself not to cry she did a bit, and he caught her tear with his thumb before lowering his head and tasting it. She could hear the clock ticking, knew that every kiss they shared now might be their last, that soon it would be a kiss goodbye.