‘How long have I been asleep?’ she asked.
‘Hours. I got back here and didn’t want to disturb you, and I’ve been popping in every so often to check and make sure you were all right.’
The overhead light hadn’t been switched on, so she couldn’t properly make out the expression on his face, but at least his voice had no undertones of anger.
‘Tea.’ He nodded in the direction of the bedside table, and Jessica gratefully took the mug and drank. Warm but fortifying.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Much better. Thank you.’
He pulled a chair across to the bed and sat down next to her, so that he was more on her level and she didn’t have to crane her neck upwards to see him. She knew they would have to talk. They had worked out details of the marriage that wasn’t to be, and now they would have to work out arrangements for her and the baby after it was born. And claiming exhaustion was an excuse that wouldn’t hold water for ever.
How could she explain that marrying him and enduring the torment of her love in silence had seemed unbearable, but the alternative was even worse?
She couldn’t. She had made her bed and she would now have to lie on it. Wasn’t that what her mother had once said to her? That she had made her bed and would simply have to accept all that went with it? Ironic that her situation was reversed. Bitterly ironic.
‘So,’ he said casually, not looking at her, ‘there’s a baby inside you.’
‘Could we turn the lights on? I can’t see your face.’
‘In a minute.’ He relaxed back in the chair and stuck his legs out, crossing them at the ankle. ‘I’ve never...had an experience...’
‘I’m relieved to hear it,’ Jessica said. ‘It would be a bit off-putting to discover you’d fathered a herd of children before.’
‘I doubt you’ll be able to get back to work as rapidly as you had anticipated...’
She looked at his hard profile, and then found that the glance had turned into a stare.
‘Possibly not,’ Jessica admitted, taking advantage of his averted face to drink him in. There was an awkward pause, and she said, simply to break the silence, ‘What did you pack? Perhaps I could have a shower...’
Without a word, he stood up, fetched the suitcase from the chair and deposited it on the bed next to her. His silence was beginning to rattle her. He had accepted that there would be no marriage, and now she wondered whether he had decided that he could cease to make all efforts with her. Why bother to build any kind of tenuous relationship when there was now no need? She had been reduced to being no more than the mother of his child. Once this week was over, she would return to her flat and he would visit occasionally, she guessed, to make sure that she hadn’t flung herself in front of another passing car. But meanwhile he would carry on with his life and contact would only be resumed once the baby was born. By then, all legal arrangements would be in place. He would be super-efficient when it came to that.
‘Are you going to be all right to manage yourself?’
‘I’m not ill, Bruno. Had a slight shock, admittedly, but I’m fine.’ She sat up and swung open the suitcase to find that he had packed several dresses, her entire underwear drawer, no pyjamas, one shirt and a pair of trousers which had clearly been the first pair his hands had happened to chance upon hanging in the wardrobe. Jade-green silk, appropriate only for evening wear.
Jessica tipped the suitcase upside down and stared at the contents.
‘You envisage a series of cocktail parties for me over the next week, do you?’
‘A series of cocktail parties?’ He moved to turn on the light, which revealed the inappropriate selection in all their glory.
‘Dresses?’ She looked at him quizzically, momentarily forgetting her personal state of depression. ‘I’m supposed to be relaxing for the next few days. Does this...’ she held up a scarlet number which had not seen the light of day for years ‘...strike you as a relaxing outfit?’
‘It’s a very jolly colour,’ he commented, flushing. ‘Thought it might cheer you up.’
‘Okay. So what was the reasoning behind the two little black affairs?’
‘Those must have found their way in by mistake.’ He cleared his throat and peered at the bundle on the bed. He picked one up and he held it up by one shoestring strap to the light. ‘It’s a very attractive number,’ he said, observing it from several angles. ‘It never ceases to amaze me the clothes that women somehow manage to squeeze their bodies into.’ He dropped it back on the bed and folded his arms.
‘That’s as may be, but...’ she looked at him with an inward sigh of despair ‘...it’s not a useful lot of clothes. I shall have to go myself and fetch some more.’ She prepared to swing her legs over the side of the bed.
‘Not on your life! If you just tell me what to bring over, then I can do it myself.’
‘But I wanted to have a shower now,’ Jessica said a little plaintively.
‘Fine. Stay right there. I’ll be back in a second.’
He vanished, to return literally a minute later with a short-sleeved shirt in one hand.
‘Here. You can put this on.’
‘But it’s yours.’
He looked at it as though seeing it for the first time. ‘Oh, so it is. Well, it won’t bite and it’s been recently laundered. Have a shower and I’ll be back up in half an hour with something for you to eat.’ Before she could protest he was walking out of the door, and as soon as he had vacated the room she made her way to the bathroom, and had a shower.
The memory of the bleeding was already beginning to fade away, and her spirits began to lift a little.
She still couldn’t seem to harness her thoughts, but at least she no longer felt on the verge of cracking up.
If she could manage to maintain her good humour, then it would give her time to build up her defences against him. It had worked for her in the past. She could remember, even as a child, learning to bring the shutters down over her eyes, to control her emotions when her father had been in one of his moods and jeering at her school efforts had become a form of fun. Tears had never worked then. They had only fuelled his cruelty. But gradually she had learned to blank out what he’d been saying and to look through him and past him. Out towards a happier future. Somewhere. And in time the self-imposed control had become second nature for her. She had carried it all the way through to her adult life when it had clothed and protected her like a second skin.
This was different, but wasn’t the objective more or less the same?
She slowly dried herself, brushed her hair, leaving it hanging down her back, then she donned the oversized shirt which reached to mid-thigh and suitably disguised every scrap of her body.
This time she would not allow her emotions to ambush all her good intentions. She would smile on the surface and eventually the smiles would become a part of her expression whenever she was in his company.
She stared at the reflection in the mirror and practised a smile.
By the time he returned with a tray, she was back in bed and under the covers.
‘You look better,’ he said, glancing at her and looking away. ‘Food.’
‘You shouldn’t have,’ Jessica said politely as he placed the tray on her lap and, mysteriously, resumed his position on the chair next to the bed.
‘You’re absolutely right. I should have just let you fend for yourself.’
‘Well, I’ve done it all my life,’ she answered absent-mindedly, tucking into a mound of scrambled egg and toast. Her hair slipped over a shoulder and she flicked it back, thinking that she should have tied the lot into a ponytail.
‘Sounds exhausting,’ he said eventually, and she stopped eating momentarily to look across at him.
‘What does?’
‘A lifetime of fending for yourself.’
Jessica flushed and resumed eating. This was normal conversation, she told herself. Getting uptight was only going to drag her back to square one, back to the place where
every word he uttered had the ability to throw her off balance.
Step one in learning how to deal with her situation would be to answer his questions courteously and without flinching.
‘Oh, it becomes a habit after a while,’ she said airily. This tastes delicious, by the way. I’ve always admired a man who’s not afraid of cooking.’
‘Well, I personally wouldn’t call two scrambled eggs the epitome of haute cuisine.’
‘Small beginnings,’ Jessica said, finishing the very last morsel and closing her knife and fork with some regret. Then she rested back against the pillows with her cup of tea and watched in silence as he removed the tray from bed to side table.
‘There’s no need for you to stay here, you know,’ she said eventually, when he showed no signs of moving. ‘I give you my word that I won’t leave the room and hurtle outside in another fit of confusion.’
‘Was that why you did it?’ he asked softly. ‘Because my touching you confused you?’
The sudden intimacy of the question wedged a splinter in her determined effort to keep up a smiling façade. She felt the smile begin to slip a little.
‘I mean,’ she said, disregarding his question, ‘haven’t you got some work to do? The odd fax to send somewhere?’
‘Nothing that can’t wait.’ He paused and continued staring at her. ‘You haven’t answered my question.’
‘There’s nothing to answer.’ She could feel her heart beating very quickly. Doing double time.
‘What if I said that I would never lay another finger on you again?’ A dark flush had spread across his face and he threw her a challenging look from under his lashes.
‘I don’t understand what you’re saying.’
‘We can simply live under the same roof.’
‘It would drive me crazy!’ Jessica blurted out. Tears were beginning to prick the backs of her eyes. How was she supposed to get all her defences in place, if he wasn’t prepared to play the game according to her rules?
‘I get the message.’ He stood up abruptly and looked down at her with his hands in his pockets.
‘You don’t understand!’ Imploring eyes met cold ice.
‘I think I do. Forget I ever asked the question. You were right. I have work to do, so I’ll leave you here to get on with your resting. Tonight, I’ll give my mother a call and she can come up and lend a hand.’
‘Your mother?’
‘Good night, Jessica. Call me if you need anything. I’ll be in the office downstairs.’
‘Wait, Bruno.’ He was already heading to the door. ‘Why don’t we talk about this?’ She could feel herself on the verge of confessing everything to him and hang the consequences.
‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ he said politely. ‘Let’s not go along the road of forcing something that’s just not there. We’re two people who happened to meet in passing, which, as you’ve been at great pains to point out, is precisely where it should have been left.’
With that he left the room, and Jessica crumpled back onto the bed. It was over. There had been a finality in his voice when he had spoken and beyond them now was nothing. He had made one last effort to accommodate her because of the baby, and she had spontaneously uttered the wrong words. Not that there would have been any right ones.
The past and the present tangled together in her head and she switched the overhead light off, waiting, dry-eyed, as the sky outside darkened. There were no noises in the house, and she wouldn’t have been surprised to find that he had gone out. Gone to find himself a real woman, instead of a repressed, inhibited one who couldn’t even say what was in her mind because heartfelt truths were something she had never felt the need to indulge in before.
When she next opened her eyes, it was to find light trying to get through the curtain, and there was a knocking on the bedroom door. She wasn’t entirely sure which had awakened her. The light or the sound of knocking. Her watch, which she was still wearing, showed her that it was a little after eight.
The shirt—crumpled. The hair—a mess. The face—she daredn’t look. If Bruno wasn’t repelled by her enough already, then he was in for a treat.
She watched the door handle being turned, frantically tried to arrange her face into something loosely resembling a human being instead of a zombie recently roused from the local graveyard, and was already wearing a fixed, if jaw-aching, smile on her lips when a tall, dark-haired woman entered the room. She was dressed smartly in a tan-coloured cashmere twin set although, instead of the customary pearls, she wore three long strands of gold around her neck.
If this is the housekeeper, then I’m the Queen of England, Jessica thought, but she kept smiling until the woman approached the bed.
It then occurred to her that the constant smile might look a bit manic and she allowed her mouth to relax a little.
‘You must be wondering who I am,’ the woman said, and as soon as she had spoken Jessica knew precisely who the woman was. Right age, right look, right accent. Her heart sank.
‘You must be Bruno’s mother,’ she said, feeling at a disadvantage in her son’s shirt, in bed. This sort of elegant, well-bred woman was best dealt with on fairly equal terms. The fact of the pregnancy was just another huge, added disadvantage. The woman had the same angular, strong face as her son although time had weathered it into something slightly less daunting.
‘Victoria.’ She stepped into the room, and, if she was horrified at the circumstances that had brought her to London from the sanity of her country mansion, then she showed no sign of it. ‘And you’re Jessica, of course.’
‘I’m very pleased to meet you,’ Jessica lied.
‘Are you?’ The bright, shrewd eyes examined her. ‘I wish I could say the same but I’m very much afraid that it would be a complete lie.’
Okay, Jessica thought. Let’s not beat about the bush here.
‘I came up last night, actually, on Bruno’s request. He’s going to be out of the country for a few days and he thought that, in view of the situation, my presence here might be a help.’
Jessica nodded miserably, at a loss for words.
‘You have no experience of children, as yet, but, speaking as a mother, I needn’t tell you how disappointed I am with this situation.’
‘Well,’ Jessica said, firing on a few cylinders now that the immediate shock had worn off, ‘and I would hate to appear rude, but, speaking as the person in the middle of the situation, I can assure you that it’s not exactly a bed of roses for me either.’
For the first time, a glimmer of humour flitted across the woman’s face, but she remained silent for a while, eventually moving to pull back the curtains, then to sit in still repose on the love chair by the bay window. Jessica followed her warily with her eyes.
‘I had always expected, my dear, that Bruno would indulge his mother with a white wedding, with all the trimmings...’ She smiled a little wistfully. ‘No, perhaps not quite the full affair, but a wedding, at any rate.’
‘I understand,’ Jessica said uncomfortably. Had he told his mother that a wedding had been planned? Planned and then dismantled in the blink of an eye?
‘He tells me that any such thing is out of the question.’ She paused and looked carefully at Jessica. ‘May I ask why?’
‘Because weddings, marriage... I was a fool, Mrs Carr. A mistake and...’ Her voice was beginning to go. She could feel her throat seizing up, but she forced herself to plough on. ‘And here I am. Pregnant. I know that Bruno hadn’t planned for his life to take this awkward course, and I certainly hadn’t.’
‘What had you planned, my dear?’ The voice was soft but insistent, and Jessica sighed and lay back on the bed, with her eyes on the ceiling.
What had she planned? It was a good question.
‘I’d planned a life of independence. A career. A life with no emotional involvement. I always thought that it would just be so much easier. I certainly hadn’t planned on babies and on your son... No, all that had been the last thing on my mind...
’
‘All that?’
Jessica shifted her head so that she was looking at Bruno’s mother. She shrugged. ‘Involvement, I guess. I know there’s a baby, but marriage...well, underneath it all, I guess I was more of a foolish romantic than I’d believed. I guess I’d thought all along that marriage and love needed to go together. Bruno and I won’t be married because he doesn’t love me, and I can’t think of anything more unfair on him than shackling him to my side because of a mistake.’
‘Unfair on you as well, if you don’t love him either.’
Jessica caught the woman’s eyes and opened her mouth o agree but found that she couldn’t. No more lies.
‘If only it was as easy as that,’ she murmured, half to herself. ‘If only.’
CHAPTER TEN
IT WAS after midnight when banging on the front door dragged Jessica out of her sleep. For the first time since returning to her own place two days ago, she cursed the fact that she was no longer under Bruno Carr’s roof, because if she had been there would have been no chance of hearing anyone knock or bang or possibly even break down his front door.
As it was, she yawned and staggered into her dressing gown and then headed to the door, which she opened by a couple of inches, making sure to keep the chain simply in place. She lived in a relatively safe part of town, but it still didn’t make sense to take chances, especially at this hour, notorious for drunken revellers heading home, only stopping off en route to cause a bit of random harassment
The minute she saw who was standing outside her front door, all signs of sleep vanished.
‘Open this door,’ Bruno commanded, looking as though he might risk pushing it with his shoulder, despite the obstacle of the chain. He was dressed, mysteriously at this hour, in his work suit, although his tie was askew as though he had been tugging it down.
‘What are you doing here at this hour? I thought you weren’t going to be back in the country for another three days.’
‘Plans changed.’
‘In that case you can find your way back to your own house. Do you realise what time it is? I was asleep!’ She didn’t add that it had taken her long enough to get to sleep in the first place without having what little she had enjoyed ruined halfway through.
The Baby Verdict Page 15