‘A proper eejit I looked, too, emptying all of those boxes into a field like some sort of Pied Piper.’
And his Irish accent was coming back, she noticed, the accent he had so carefully excised from his voice because he didn’t want to be thought provincial by all the big shots in London.
‘And don’t forget Mrs O’Leary in the flat next door,’ he continued. ‘Always wanting to tell us how much the flats had gone downhill since her husband died, and that bright red wig she wore—’
‘Oh, I’d forgotten all about her wig,’ Brianna declared, starting to laugh, ‘and her hats—do you remember the hats she used to wear—all those feathers, and ribbons, and bows?’
‘Brianna, I swear those hats will remain scarred on my psyche for ever,’ Connor said with a shudder.
And she laughed out loud, and it was so good to hear her laugh, had been so long since he’d heard her laugh, and her cheeks were flushed with the wind, and her eyes were sparkling with a life and a vibrancy he hadn’t seen in them since they’d lost Harry, and, without thinking, he reached out and touched her cheek, only to see her step back and the light in her face instantly disappear.
‘It’s beginning to get dark,’ she said, half turning. ‘We ought to start heading back.’
‘Oh, I’m sure we can risk a few more minutes,’ he said quickly, wanting so much to recapture her laughter, not wanting to return to her cottage where he knew she would shut him out again. ‘What made you think of our flat in Killarney?’
‘I guess…’ She looked out to sea. The breakers were much higher now, the clouds more louring. ‘I guess it’s because even though it wasn’t the greatest flat in the world, it was our home, and I was so happy there.’
‘You never objected when I started applying for jobs in England,’ he said, pointedly, and she sighed.
‘I was so young when we got married, Connor, and my mother said a wife should always follow her husband wherever he wanted to go, and I didn’t question that. I know different now. I know it should have been a joint decision.’
‘But why did you never tell me you were unhappy?’ he demanded. ‘Why did you never say, “Connor, this isn’t the life I want”?’
‘I wasn’t unhappy. Unhappy…’ She shook her head helplessly. ‘Unhappy makes it sound as though I was crying in secret, miserable all the time, and I wasn’t. I just felt. detached. As though my life was on hold while I was in London, but eventually I’d start living again.’
He gazed at her uncomprehendingly.
‘But, every time I went for a promotion, you were always solidly behind me, saying, “Go for it.” Every time I found us a nicer flat, a bigger flat, you seemed so happy, and when I decided to go it alone, to set up my own business, you were thrilled to bits.’
‘Because you were,’ she admitted. ‘I shouldn’t have pretended—I see that now—but you were so determined to make it big in England, and money—status—they always mattered much more to you than they did to me. All I ever wanted was enough money for us to get by, a nice place to live in, and…and a family. I would have been more than happy to stay in Killarney, with you working at the local accountant’s office, and me in the hospital there.’
‘But my career…my own business…’ He dragged his fingers through his hair, his eyes bewildered. ‘Brianna, I did it all for you, so you wouldn’t ever end up like my mother.’
‘Your mother?’ she echoed in confusion. ‘There was nothing wrong with your mother. She was a lovely lady—’
‘Who I watched grow old before her time, trying to put enough food on the table to feed myself and my dad, and my three brothers,’ Connor said bitterly. ‘All her married life she had to scrimp and save, and she never…’ He shook his head. ‘Brianna, she never got anything pretty, or silly, or frivolous, and I vowed when I watched her, sitting up to all hours of the night, trying to find enough money to pay for the food, and rent, and electricity, that my wife would never have to do that.’
‘Connor, it wasn’t your father’s fault that the only work he could get was occasional because he had emphysema—’
‘I know that,’ he said impatiently. ‘I don’t blame him.’
‘And your mother loved your father,’ she insisted. ‘Even though they never had much money, there was always laughter in your house, and your mother wanted your father, not the things he could buy her, just as I only ever wanted you and not the fancy flats, or the posh London address.’
‘That’s easy for you to say when you never had to go without when you were growing up,’ he retorted. ‘Your parents had their own farm, their own animals, and chickens. They weren’t dirt poor like my parents.’
His parents had been poor, she remembered. The tenement flat they’d lived in, in Dublin, had seemed so dark to her when she’d first visited, but it wasn’t the darkness she remembered. It was Connor’s mother beaming at her, clearly delighted with her son’s choice, and his father enveloping her in a hug even though he could barely walk by then.
‘I know my parents were more comfortably off than yours,’ she said awkwardly, wishing she could somehow make him understand, ‘but there was never any shortage of love in your home.’
‘You can’t live on love, Brianna,’ he said, annoyance tingeing his voice, ‘not in the real world.’
She opened her mouth, then closed it again.
‘Maybe the truth is I’m just a country girl at heart,’ she said with an effort, ‘and London was just too big, too impersonal for me. Maybe…maybe if we’d had children it would have made a difference. I don’t know, I honestly don’t.’
For a long moment he said nothing, and when he did speak his voice was low, bleak.
‘We both took the decision to turn off Harry’s life-support system, Brianna.’
‘I know,’ she said unevenly. ‘I know we did. I’m not. I don’t blame you for that.’ She took a deep breath. There was something she had to say to him. Something that had revolved round and round in her mind like a canker for the past two years, and, even if his answer broke her, she still had to ask. ‘You never really wanted children, did you?’
He swung round to her, his hair streaming back in the wind, appalled horror plain on his face.
‘How can you say that?’ he exclaimed. ‘How can you even think it? Harry was my son, my baby, too. We tried for so many years to have him, and when we lost him. How can you say I didn’t want him?’
‘Then why, when I was pregnant, did you never seemed as excited as I was?’ she pressed. ‘I couldn’t wait for Harry to be born, and yet you…You never went shopping with me for baby clothes, or helped me choose a cot, or—’
‘God dammit, Brianna, I was working flat out, twenty-four seven,’ he protested. ‘I didn’t know whether you would want to go back to work after the baby was born so I wanted to make sure we were financially secure. Just because I didn’t go shopping with you, or race around our flat doing high fives all the time, doesn’t mean I didn’t want him.’
And he was holding something back, she knew he was from the way he wasn’t quite meeting her eyes.
‘Connor—’
‘You seem better now than when I last saw you,’ he said.
Better. Was she better? She certainly no longer cried herself to sleep every night, no longer woke up in the dark thinking Harry was somewhere in the house, lost, distressed, needing her, but better now…?
‘I don’t think you ever get over the death of a child,’ she said with difficulty. ‘You just somehow get through it, one day at a time. At the beginning, after Harry died, there were days when I wondered if I would even make it to the next day, and days when I honestly didn’t care if I didn’t. I felt so alone, you see, so very much alone, but now…The pain’s still there, the ache and the longing for him is still there, but it’s…duller.’
‘Why do you keep saying you were alone?’ he exclaimed. ‘You weren’t alone. I was there, I was with you.’
‘But I couldn’t talk to you, and you…’ She pulled her coat closer to her
. It was getting colder, so much colder, but he’d asked her a question, and he deserved an answer. ‘You didn’t seem to…to care the way I did. When we got home from the hospital, you’d taken everything away. His cot, his clothes, his toys—’
‘I was trying to make things easier for you,’ he protested. ‘I thought…if you saw them…it would only make you more upset.’
‘And you thought, if they weren’t there, I’d forget?’ she said incredulously, and he flinched.
‘I was trying to help, Brianna, to protect you—’
‘What you did was take all the decisions away from me,’ she declared. ‘I might have wanted Harry’s room to stay exactly as it was. I might have wanted to burn every single thing in his room, or pack it all away, or give it to charity, but you didn’t give me that choice.’
‘I’m sorry, but when we lost Harry—’
‘Will you stop saying that? ‘ She flared. ‘We didn’t lose Harry. He wasn’t a…a parcel we inadvertently left behind on a train and never got back. He died, Connor.’
His face twisted. ‘I know.’
‘Then why do you never say it?’ she demanded. ‘Why do you always say we lost him? ‘
‘Lost…died…’ A muscle in his jaw clenched. ‘What difference does it make? It means the same thing.’
‘No, it doesn’t. Connor—’
‘Has it all gone, Brianna?’ he said, holding out his hand to her hesitantly. ‘The love we once shared. Has it all gone?’
She stared back at him silently. She didn’t want to hurt him. He looked so suddenly vulnerable, so completely unlike the utterly self-confident Connor she had always known, but he had told her he wanted no lies, no half-truths, only honesty.
‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘I honestly and truly don’t know.’
And she turned and walked away from him, leaving him gazing bleakly after her.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘HAVE you seen this?’ Connor exclaimed, tossing a copy of the Penhally Gazette down onto the coffee table in the staffroom.
Brianna glanced dismissively at the front page, and shook her head.
‘I don’t read the Gazette—haven’t ever since they printed that disgusting article about Jess. If Vermin has included some snotty comment about the poor quality of my photograph—’
‘Read the article.’
Something about Connor’s tone had Brianna putting down her mug of coffee, and picking up the newspaper.
‘“Abandoned baby found in St Piran Hospital car park”,’ she read out loud. ‘“Sister Flannigan of the neonatal intensive care unit…” blah, blah, blah “…baby has been named Harry…”’ She frowned up at Connor. ‘OK, so it’s not the greatest prose style in the world, but I don’t see—’
‘Read the last paragraph.’
Obediently, she continued reading.
‘“The mother has as yet not come forward,”’ she murmured, ‘“but this newspaper can also exclusively reveal that Sister Flannigan is currently…’” Her eyes flew to Connor’s then back to the newspaper, ‘“is currently living with Connor Monahan, an external auditor brought in by the St Piran Hospital board to determine cost-saving measures which could include ward closures.”’ Slowly she lowered the newspaper. ‘How the hell did he find that out, Connor? How, on God’s green earth, was Vermin able to find that out?’
‘I was going to ask you the same thing.’
‘You think I want people to know you’re my husband?’ she said without thinking, then flushed scarlet when she saw the pain in Connor’s eyes. ‘I didn’t mean that—it came out all wrong—’
‘I don’t give a damn about him knowing I’m staying at your cottage,’ he interrupted angrily. ‘To be honest, he wouldn’t be much of a reporter if he hadn’t done some snooping, and he was bound to notice my car sitting outside your home all night. What I want to know is how he discovered why I’m here, in the hospital?’
‘Oh, come on, Connor, it’s hardly a state secret,’ she protested. ‘Rumours about why you were coming to St Piran’s started filtering out of Admin over a month ago. The only things we didn’t know were who you were, and the actual day of your arrival.’
‘Brilliant.’ He groaned. ‘Just brilliant. My assessment is supposed to be hush-hush. Nobody was supposed to know anything about it until I’d made my report—the board were quite specific about that.’
‘But it’s hardly your fault if St Piran’s is a hotbed of gossip,’ she replied. ‘It’s a hospital, Connor. Gossip and rumour go with the territory.’
He sighed, and rubbed his fingers wearily over his face. ‘I can only hope the board see it that way.’
‘You mean, they could fire you?’ She gasped, and he grimaced.
‘Breach of confidentiality, going public with something they wanted to keep private. Let’s just say they’re not going to be very happy with me.’
‘But you didn’t tell anyone,’ she protested. ‘It was the gossiping staff in Admin. They’re the ones who should be torn to shreds, not you.’
‘And you’d care if I was?’ he said, unable to hide his surprise, and she rolled her eyes in exasperation.
‘Of course I’d care,’ she replied. ‘I know how much your work means to you.’
He’d far rather she knew just how much she meant to him. Far rather he could somehow find the right words, instead of always saying the wrong ones. She’d hardly spoken at all this morning over breakfast, and he hadn’t dared to. All he’d been able to think, as he’d stared at her lowered head, was how had they come to this, how had they grown so far apart, that they couldn’t even make any kind of conversation any more?
‘Connor…?’
She was gazing up at him with concern, and he managed to smile. She’d said things hadn’t been right between them even before Harry, and maybe she was right. Maybe he’d somehow lost sight of what she wanted in his determination to achieve what he’d believed they both did, but there had to be a way back for them, a way of reaching her.
‘What’s done is done,’ he said. ‘All I can do now is try to achieve some damage limitation.’
And not just in this job, he thought as he followed Brianna back to the ward, and the minute she appeared the entire staff fell awkwardly, and all too guiltily, silent.
‘I take it you’ve all seen this morning’s edition of the Penhally Gazette?’ Brianna said, her back ramrod-stiff, but her cheeks, Connor noticed, were pink. ‘So, to satisfy your curiosity, I am not conducting an illicit affair with Mr Monahan. He’s my husband.’
Megan threw her an ‘I’m so sorry about this’ look, Chris’s mouth fell open, as did the mouths of the other nurses, but Rita was clearly not going to be quite so easily satisfied.
‘But I don’t understand,’ she said, all innocent confusion, as the nurses around her scattered, clearly not wanting to get involved. ‘How can Mr Monahan be your husband when you never said you were married, far less to the man who’s auditing this hospital?’
‘I fail to see why Sister Flannigan needed to tell anyone anything about her private life,’ Connor replied before Brianna could reply. ‘And she, of course, understands the need for complete confidentiality regarding the nature of my job.’
‘Even so,’ Rita said, ‘I still think—’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t,’ Connor interjected, his voice soft, and velvet, and deadly. ‘I really would seriously recommend you don’t. But in the meantime,’ he added with a smile that would have had Brianna backing off fast, ‘why don’t you run away and make sure the rest of the hospital staff knows the latest, stop-press new? I’m sure you must be just itching to spread the word, and it will save Sister Flannigan the trouble of having to post a bulletin on the notice board.’
The ward clerk needed no second bidding, and, when she’d gone, Brianna sucked in a shaky breath.
‘Remind me never, ever to cross swords with you,’ she murmured, ‘but thanks. Again.’
‘Any time,’ he replied, then caught her gaze. ‘And I mean
that.’
He did, too, she thought. Connor would have thrown himself in front of a runaway horse to protect her, would have gone fearlessly into battle on her behalf at the merest hint of a threat, but sharing his feelings with her…That was something else entirely.
‘Yikes, but that was impressive, Connor.’ Megan grinned as she joined them. ‘But how in the world did Vermin ever find out you were staying at Brianna’s cottage?’
‘I’m afraid my car’s not exactly forgettable,’ Connor replied ruefully, ‘plus leaving it outside Brianna’s house all night. I guess that was just asking for trouble.’
‘I suppose so.’ Megan sighed. ‘But maybe it’s better if everyone knows the two of you are married. Some things. it’s not always wise to keep them under wraps. When the truth comes out, as it always does, the repercussions can be worse.’
And she was talking about herself, Brianna realised from the dark shadows she could see in Megan’s eyes. Not about Connor and her, but about herself, and Connor knew it, too, judging by his slight frown, and she glanced helplessly across at him and, to her relief, he came to her rescue.
‘How are all your little patients this morning?’ he asked, and Megan grabbed his question with clear relief.
‘Our jaundiced baby seems to be making good progress, as is our congenital hypothyroidism little boy,’ she replied. ‘Amy Renwick’s beautifully stable, and all the other babies are doing very well, though I have to say little Harry’s a bit too quiet for my peace of mind.’
‘How can a baby be too quiet?’ Connor asked, clearly puzzled, as Megan walked over to the little boy’s incubator and he and Brianna followed her. ‘I would have thought quiet meant content, happy?’
‘It can,’ Megan agreed. ‘And he certainly seems to be responding to the surfactant, but…’ She shook her head. ‘He just seems a bit lethargic, to me.’
‘Just because he isn’t constantly moving around in his incubator, as some of our babies do, doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with him,’ Brianna said swiftly. ‘As Connor said, he’s probably just a very contented baby.’
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