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The Baby Verdict

Page 11

by Cathy Williams


  Not long left to go at the company, then her problems would begin in earnest. She didn’t know if she had the strength to face them, but there was no way out.

  ‘Shall I tell Mr Carr that you won’t be able to see him?’ Millie asked gently, and Jessica’s head shot up.

  ‘Bruno Carr wants to see me?’ Her voice was hoarse and shocked, and her secretary’s face became pinched with consternation. ‘Why?’ she demanded. ‘Why? Why would he want to see me all of a sudden? I’ve had no contact with the man for weeks and weeks and weeks! What did he say?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Millie stammered. ‘I’m sorry, Jess... perhaps he just wants to tell you goodbye personally...’

  ‘How does he know that I’m leaving?’ Every aching muscle in her body had sprung into life, filling her with a dreadful sense of apprehension.

  How could he still do this to her?

  When they had parted company all that time ago, she had cheerfully believed every word she had said to him. She had convinced herself that their very brief fling had been everything and nothing, and all that she had needed. Just what the doctor had ordered, she had told herself, every time his image crept into her head and wreaked havoc with her thoughts.

  She barely knew the man, she had thought, and the fact that he seemed to have stuck in her brain was absolutely nothing to worry about. She was not accustomed to having a weekend lover. Of course, she would find it a little difficult to get out of her mind. She wasn’t made of stone, after all.

  It wasn’t even that they were soul mates, she lectured repeatedly to herself, when the hours became days, and the days turned into weeks, and the thought of him still managed to evoke feelings of loss and misery. Time would cure her of her stupidity.

  But time, she had discovered, had joined hands with fate and both were conspiring to turn her life on its head.

  ‘He owns this company, Jess...’ Millie’s voice was confused and agitated, and Jessica knew just what she was thinking: The boss has finally lost it. She’s been a mess for the past few weeks, and now she’s finally waved goodbye to her sanity.

  Jessica cleared her throat, looked up, and made an attempt to speak with at least a semblance of self-control.

  ‘You’re right. I’ll see him right away.’ She watched as her secretary’s expression of worry changed into one of relief. Of course, she had no intention of going to see Bruno Carr, but Millie wasn’t to know that.

  She stood up, smoothed her hair neatly behind her ears, and plastered a cheerful smile on her face.

  ‘Where is he?’ Polite look, a little quizzical, but definitely composed. Millie, she thought, must think I’m deranged.

  ‘At his office. He said that he expects you within the hour.’

  Fat chance.

  ‘I’ll go immediately.’ She glanced at her desk, with the papers covering most of the available free space, and randomly selected a couple which she handed to her secretary. A couple of months ago, she would have been invigorated at the prospect of the work lying in front of her. Now, she couldn’t care less. She had an insane urge to sweep her hand across the smooth, hard, wooden surface and watch all those little bits of paper swirl helplessly into the waste-paper basket on the ground. ‘Reply to these for me, would you, Mills? And you’d better cancel my appointment to see James Parker this afternoon. I’m not sure what time I’ll be back from seeing Mr Carr. If I get back at all.’

  ‘Of course.’

  There, there, there, Jessica wanted to say. Don’t you feel better now, Mills? Now that I’m acting in character, even if it’s all a charade?

  She fetched her jacket from the back of her chair and stuck it on. The weather had finally broken after an endless winter and a spring that had seemed reluctant to part company with the cold. Now it had shed its indecision and was everywhere. New, little buds bursting out in the sunshine, daffodils sticking yellow heads through the grass, coats returned to wardrobes for their annual hibernation. Jessica barely noticed any of it. The sky could have been bright red for all she knew, and the sun could have been purple. She came to work in a daze, worked in a daze and returned home in a daze.

  ‘I’ll see you in the morning!’ Millie called, and Jessica turned around to look at her.

  ‘Oh, yes. See you in the morning.’ Then she was gone. Out of the door and the office and walking briskly towards the underground. Several stops, then finally her own. She thought about Bruno, waiting in his office to see her, and shuddered with relief as her house drew closer.

  She had yearned to see him. It was unbelievable how much she had yearned to see him. It was as though their one weekend together had opened her up to emotions she had spent a lifetime suppressing.

  Now, she could envisage nothing worse.

  She slipped her key into the lock, shut the door behind her, and did what she did every evening recently when she returned from work: kicked her shoes off and then collapsed onto the sofa and closed her eyes. There was a lot to do, but the mere thought of doing any of it made her feel faint. The ironing basket seemed to have taken on a life of its own, and was growing daily. If she didn’t do something about it, she knew that she would be forced to contact an ironing service to come and take it all away. There were dishes in the sink, and a few of them had been sitting there for the past two days. She hadn’t even bothered to soak them in water, and the grime would have hardened so that when she finally did get around to washing them they would stubbornly refuse to release their greasy layers.

  None of it seemed to matter. In her head, the problems churned around and around, mutating and changing and shifting positions, but never going away.

  How could they?

  From her prone position on the sofa, she gave a little groan and rolled over onto her side, feeling utterly horrible in her work clothes. Her hair was coming undone, and she irritably released it from its tightly coiled bun, running her fingers through it and then draping it over one shoulder.

  She could feel herself sliding into sleep when the doorbell sounded. It penetrated her fuggy brain like the sudden buzz of a wasp, and as she blinked her way to the surface became shrill and insistent until she could ignore it no longer.

  Shoeless, hair everywhere, she stormed to the front door, yanked it open, and then felt her mouth turn to ash.

  ‘I gave it half an hour,’ Bruno said coldly, ‘and then I phoned your secretary, to be told that you had left some time ago. To come and see me. At my office. As instructed.’ He folded his arms and lounged against the door-frame.

  ‘What have you come here for?’ She could control her words, but not the tenor of her voice, and she heard the faint tremble in it with a mixture of disgust and panic.

  He was everything and more than she remembered. Taller, leaner, more bronzed, and infinitely more disturbing. She felt suffocated by his presence, literally choking from the impact of seeing him here, on her doorstep. How on earth had she ever been able to tell him goodbye, to inform him that she was not open to his offer of casual mistress once they returned to England, to let him know that he had been no more than a wonderful but temporary liaison? How had she ever thought that she could return to her normal life and put him down to experience?

  ‘To see you,’ he informed her, his voice ice. ‘I came here because it was obvious that you had left the office with no intention whatsoever of taking a taxi to the City.’ He reached inside his trouser pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper. ‘Mind telling me what this is all about?’

  It was her letter of resignation. She recognised the paper, and the glimpse of signature at the bottom of the typed page. In the absence of her direct boss, she had made sure to send it to the personnel department, never imagining that it would find its way to Bruno Carr. She should have known better. Hadn’t he always made a point of saying how au fait he was with everything that happened in his various companies? Clearly it had been no idle boast.

  ‘Come in.’ She stepped aside to let him enter. It was strange seeing him like this after all this time
. A wall had developed between them and it hurt to remember how easy they had been with one another. It seemed like a lifetime away. As he brushed past her she could feel her skin crawl, and her pulses began to race.

  She didn’t know what the hell she was going to tell him, but she knew that he wouldn’t leave until she provided him with an answer. Any answer. Any answer but the truth.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she asked politely. ‘Some coffee?’ With a change of clothes she could be a waitress, she thought, so impersonal was her voice, and by way of response he threw her a dark, brooding scowl, before walking towards the sitting room and making himself comfortable on one of the chairs.

  ‘I’ll pass on the drink,’ he told her sarcastically. ‘Sorry. I guess that means a little less time for you to try and fabricate an excuse.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to do any such thing.’ She picked the end of the sofa furthest away from him and sat down. Even at this distance, she could feel him as strongly as if he were touching her.

  ‘How did you get hold of my resignation?’ she asked eventually. It was hard to maintain her composure and she found herself leaning forward, her elbows resting on her knees.

  Oh, God. She had never envisaged laying eyes on him again. This was her worst nightmare.

  ‘I keep tabs on everything that goes on in my company,’ he informed her icily. ‘It’s my business.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Correct me if I’m wrong,’ he said, sitting back and tossing her letter of resignation dismissively on the table between them, ‘but the last time I saw you, you were perfectly happy with your job.’

  ‘Things change.’ She shrugged and threw him an apologetic smile, which did nothing to alter his thunderous expression. The steady, polite smile on her face slipped a little. ‘I decided that the job just wasn’t challenging enough for me,’ she told him, thinking on her feet, and steering far away from any possible excuse which might encourage him to smell a rat. ‘I suppose it was the anticlimax of your court case. I realised that I no longer had anything to get my teeth into.’ She could feel herself building up some very convenient momentum with this line of reasoning. It was beginning to sound more and more plausible.

  She still couldn’t quite meet his eyes though. So, instead, she addressed the space slightly to the left of his ear. Craven but necessary if her heart wasn’t to start doing unmanageable things behind her ribcage. She could already feel most of her confident assertions, which she had made repeatedly to herself over the past few weeks—that he was insignificant in her life, a ship that had passed in the night—ebbing away at a furious rate.

  ‘What a period of revelations for you,’ he commented acidly.

  ‘Yes. Yes, it was! And what’s the problem here anyway?’ she snapped, going onto the attack. ‘I assume your employees aren’t chained to your companies for life! I assume they’re at liberty to move on! Tell me, do you subject each and every employee who has the temerity to try and resign to this kind of third degree?’ Her heart was pounding and her face was bright red. She could feel it burning as though her whole body were on fire.

  She desperately wanted to be angry with him. If need be, she would generate her own spurious argument, because the anger was her only point of protection. She knew that any other reaction would allow memories to seep through, and she couldn’t allow that to happen.

  ‘So you were suddenly disillusioned with your job. And I take it that you’ve already found something else? Or were you so disillusioned that you decided to throw it all in and to heck with the possibility of earning nothing? No,’ he said slowly to himself, while she listened to his line of reasoning with helpless frustration. ‘Surely not. You’ve always made such a point of being in control of your life, of needing to be in control of your life, that you’d hardly pack in a hefty pay cheque on wild impulse. Which leaves us with your new job. What is it? I’m all ears.’

  He sat back and allowed himself the satisfied smile of the cat that had successfully cornered the mouse.

  ‘I haven’t found anything yet,’ Jessica muttered under her breath.

  ‘Dear, oh, dear. Now, that makes no sense at all. Does it?’

  She said nothing, feeling trapped.

  ‘Which is probably why I don’t buy the I’m suddenly disillusioned excuse.’ He stared at her coolly and with a degree of calculation that made her nervous system go into overdrive. Her mind raced ahead, attempting to pre-empt all possible arguments he could throw at her, but nothing in her head appeared to be working efficiently.

  ‘I really don’t care what you buy or don’t buy.’ Brave words, she thought miserably, if it weren’t for the fact they were sabotaged by the shakiness of her voice.

  ‘Sure about that?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  He folded his arms and surveyed her unhurriedly and dispassionately.

  ‘I find it a bit coincidental that we shared a weekend together, and then suddenly you decide to quit.’

  A chill was beginning to crawl up her spine.

  ‘I’ve always enjoyed crosswords,’ he mused pensively. ‘I like the challenge posed to the intellect. The knowledge that, however convoluted the clue is, there’s an answer and the answer is clear provided your brain’s working in the right direction.’

  That chill was now spreading outwards, numbing her. She felt as though she were being pulled along behind something very fast and quite unstoppable. She could barely breathe, never mind open her mouth and try to change the course of this remorseless reasoning.

  ‘I looked at your letter of resignation and none of it made any sense,’ he continued, relentless and implacable. ‘Believe it or not, I did consider your original line of argument, that you had become turned off the nature of the work, but I dismissed that almost immediately for the reasons I gave you.’ He smiled, but there was nothing remotely warm about it. Her hands, resting on her knees, felt clammy.

  ‘Which made me wonder whether you had had a falling out with someone you work with, but I was certain that that wasn’t the case... Of course, there was the slight chance that you found yourself unable to manage Robert’s job, but that wasn’t it, was it? I’ve been keeping tabs on you and I would have been the first to have heard. Which in turn led me to think that perhaps our weekend together meant more to you than you had said at the time.’

  She felt her body still. Her brain had turned over that horrifying thought so often in the past few weeks that it had physically hurt, and still the answer to the question eluded her.

  ‘Maybe you’d nurtured cosy little thoughts of togetherness... Maybe that was why you wouldn’t contemplate seeing me on a casual basis once we got back...maybe you wanted more than that...much more...’ He let the insinuation hang in the air between them, until mortification at the prolonged silence forced her into speech.

  ‘Hardly. But of course you’d find that hard to believe because your ego wouldn’t allow it.’ She could feel herself on the brink of anger once again, but somehow she couldn’t quite sustain the feeling. It slithered through her fingers like sand, until she was left clutching her fear and trepidation once more.

  He shrugged, as though her observation was neither here nor there. Mere words.

  His eyes were watchful now, though. She could sense him focusing every ounce of his attention on her, and it was debilitating.

  ‘Perhaps, I thought, you’d been hit harder than you had anticipated, and you felt that your only move would be to get out of the company, to escape from my orbit. But that made no sense either. Because we could go for the next few years and not see one another, couldn’t we? It’s hardly as though we work under the same roof, in the same building.’ He was leaning forward now, and his energy was so intense that she could feel it wrap itself around her like a vice.

  ‘I don’t know where this is taking us!’ she said, springing to her feet. Panic had swept through her, turning her words into staccato bursts. ‘Whatever my reasons for leaving, they’re none of y
our business!’

  ‘Sit back down,’ he said with deadly quietness. ‘Now!’ His command cracked through the air like a whiplash, and she sank back into the chair, heart racing.

  ‘I’m about to say something and if I’m wrong, then I’ll walk out of that door and that will be the last you ever see of me again. But I’ve considered all the options, and I think the reason you’ve handed in your notice affects me quite a bit.’

  Jessica swallowed painfully, aware that her mouth was dry.

  ‘I have no idea what you’re getting at,’ she said bravely. ‘And I think that it’s time you left. I’ve quit and that’s all there is to it. You can’t force an explanation out of me, and you can’t force me to go back to work for you.’

  ‘You’re pregnant, aren’t you?’

  It was a question, but posed as a statement, and the blood rushed to her head like a tidal wave, suddenly freed from all constraints. She found that she couldn’t speak, couldn’t think. The drumbeat in her ears was too loud, and even as she maintained her horrified silence she knew that it pronounced the truth of what he had just said.

  She should have rushed in to defend herself, cried out in amused denial, anything but sit there in silence.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Her voice was barely above a whisper, and unsteady. Her hands, clasped on her lap, were shaking, and she quickly stuck them under her thighs, sitting on them.

  ‘Why don’t you save us forty minutes of pointless discussion on the subject, and just admit it? You’re leaving because you’re carrying my baby.’ He raked his fingers through his hair and stood up, as though the words had generated a level of energy in him that had to be worked off.

  He began pacing the room and she followed him with her eyes.

  ‘And did you have any intention of telling me?’ he asked grimly, walking over to her and leaning over her, his hands on either side of her arm rests, so that she was compelled to push herself into the chair.

  ‘Please go.’

  ‘I’m not leaving this house until you tell me the truth!’ The words sliced through the air like a knife.

 

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