by Liz Fielding
‘I won’t lose it again,’ she promised, her voice little more than a whisper. And for a moment it was as if they were back on that beach with a lifetime of possibilities ahead of them. Then, briskly, she turned away from him. You could never go back. ‘Well,’ she asked, ‘what are we waiting for?’
‘Don’t you want these?’ Daisy held out her hands, full of the things she’d picked up.
Belle glanced at them. ‘Just stick it all in your pocket. We’ll sort it all out when we get home.’
Ivo squeezed her hand, then released it. ‘Come on, I’ll take you home.’
‘No…’ Then, more firmly, ‘No.’ His approval meant a lot to her, but she wanted, needed to stand on her own feet. ‘Daisy and I are going to walk home through the market.’
‘Are you sure?’
Her wedding ring warmed against her finger. ‘Quite sure. Thank you, Ivo.’ Then she reached out, touched his arm. ‘Call me.’
CHAPTER NINE
‘WHERE is she today?’
Belle was saved from answering by the appearance of the waiter, bringing them water, taking their order.
‘Daisy,’ Ivo prompted, when he’d gone. Picking up as if they hadn’t been interrupted. As if there was any other ‘she’.
‘I don’t know,’ she finally admitted. ‘Don’t look at me like that, Ivo…’ frustrated, angry ‘…she was gone when I got home from the studio this morning.’
‘Punishing you for putting work before her too?’
‘She knows it’s just until the end of the week.’
‘Not like…’ He stopped himself from saying the words. Not like a marriage. Then, ‘She didn’t leave a note?’
‘She’s an adult. She doesn’t have to account for her time.’ Then, a touch desperately, seeking reassurance. ‘I have to trust her.’
He reached out, covered her hand with his own. ‘I know. It’s the hardest part.’ He sat back, taking his hand with him. ‘I’m not complaining. Having you to myself is more than I’d hoped for.’
Ivo had brought her a package that had been delivered to the Belgravia house, the first time in a week that he’d come to the flat, although, taking advantage of her invitation, he had called her every day just to chat. Ask how things were going. Supportive. Offering advice only when it was requested. There for her, but giving her space too. Giving her…respect.
But the truth was that she’d been going out of her mind with worry when she’d got home and Daisy wasn’t there. Had practically fallen on his neck in gratitude when he’d suggested lunch. When he hadn’t insisted on one of their usual fashionable haunts, the kind of place where everyone would know them, but agreed to her choice of this tiny Italian trattoria on the other side of Camden Market.
‘How is it? Really?’ he asked.
‘Not easy,’ she admitted. ‘Apparently the adoption broke down after a couple of years and Daisy’s been in more foster homes than she can count, then a halfway house. That’s where she met this boy whose baby she’s expecting.’
‘Is he still in the picture?’
Belle shook her head. ‘Daisy just wanted a baby.’
‘He has the right to know.’
She looked up, surprised by the fierceness of Ivo’s response. ‘One step at a time, Ivo,’ she said.
‘Yes, of course. I’m sorry. I wasn’t criticising. You’re doing amazingly well.’
‘Am I? The mood swings are difficult,’ she admitted. ‘She’s up and down. Prickly one minute, loving the next.’
‘Maybe it’s her hormones.’
‘It can’t be helping. The doc’s given her a clean bill of health at least and she’s looking better. There’s nothing wrong with her appetite.’
‘So what’s bothering you?’
She shook her head.
‘There’s something.’
‘Nothing that can be solved with a new coat or a vitamin pill.’ He waited. ‘It’s nothing at all. Stupid. She just hates that it’s all one way. Seems to think she’s a charity case. I can’t get her to understand how much it means to me to be able to do stuff for her.’
‘She thinks you’re going to lose interest. That she daren’t care too much in case you dump her like everyone else in her life.’
‘But that’s…’ About to say ridiculous, she realised that it wasn’t. That somehow Ivo knew exactly how Daisy was feeling. She realised just how little she knew about his past beyond the privileged lifestyle, the fact that his parents had been killed just after he’d graduated. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’d read Psychology at Uni, instead of Economics. How come you understand her better than I do?’
‘You’re doing fine.’
An evasion.
‘Maybe what she needs is a job. Something to make her feel useful. Give her something of her own so that her entire life isn’t invested in you.’
‘Or make her think I’m getting ready to pitch her back out into the big wide world. Especially if she thinks the idea has come from you.’
‘She thinks I’m some kind of threat to her?’
Ivo sensed rather than heard Belle’s sigh and it provoked mixed feelings. The fact that Belle was still wearing her wedding ring had given him hope. And if Daisy sensed a threat, then it meant that Belle talked about him.
‘She’s fragile, Ivo. Needs to be the sole focus of attention.’
She didn’t have to tell him. He knew how needy, how self-centered, how destructive the damaged psyche could be.
‘Maybe it would be better if I left Manda to suggest it.’
‘Manda!’
He smiled at her horrified response. ‘Trust me. She knows what she’s doing.’
He understood her lack of enthusiasm; Manda had given her a hard time, he knew. ‘Really,’ he assured her. ‘In fact, I suspect you have a new fan.’
‘Now I’m really worried. What exactly have you told her, Ivo?’
‘Just enough, so that when this hits the headlines she’ll be prepared to be door-stepped by the press.’ He glanced at her. ‘Any news from your Aussie friend?’ She shook her head. ‘It’s like waiting for the other shoe to drop, isn’t it?’
‘A bit.’ She regarded him curiously. ‘You’re good at this, aren’t you?’
‘It’s easier for me. My responses aren’t muddied by emotion.’
About to say that was because he didn’t do ‘emotion’ she stopped herself. She was beginning to suspect that it wasn’t a lack of emotion that kept him buttoned up, but a fear of letting it spill out.
‘It’s more than that, Ivo. You seem to know just what Daisy’s feeling.’
‘I have a sister.’
‘That’s it?’ On the point of laughing at the idea of Miranda being an angsty teen, she thought better of it. Ivo had told her a little of what his sister had been through. ‘I’m trying to focus on the early days with Daisy. It’s when we were together,’ she explained. ‘A family.’
‘You don’t blame her, do you? Your mother?’
‘She was trying to protect us,’ she said. ‘And she was my mum. Unconditional love is a parent/child thing.’
Something she’d longed for too. Something a child would have given her. That she’d believed her sister, in her new home, would be able to give, to receive-something precious that would blot out everything else.
‘Daisy’s father was a gambler, Ivo. He ran up debts, mortgaged my mother’s house with three different companies, borrowed money from loan sharks and then disappeared. Mum never saw the letters from the bank or the finance people. I imagine he’d lain in wait for the postman and siphoned them off. The first she knew anything was wrong was when the bailiffs turned up.’
‘That’s fraud. He could have gone to prison.’
‘Yes, well, first you had to catch him. Then you had to prove that he’d done it. All academic, because a couple of loan shark heavies threatened Daisy, held a knife to her throat until my mother handed over her child allowance, issued an instruction to be there every Monday morning for
a repeat performance.’
He swore, something he did so rarely that Belle’s eyes widened in shock. ‘Why didn’t she go to the police?’ he demanded.
‘The graphic description of what would happen to both her children if she did?’
He let slip another expletive, betraying just how deeply affected he was. ‘I’m sorry…’
‘No, that describes him perfectly. Mum got us home, packed what she could carry and ran.’
‘Four years? You lived like that for four years?’
‘Something inside her broke, Ivo. My dad was supposed to be the bad one. He drank, he knocked her about, fell into the canal one night-or was pushed-and drowned. Daisy’s dad looked and acted like a gentleman. She thought the sun shone out of his eyes. He told her he was going away on business for a few days and while she was ironing and packing for him, he was emptying her purse. When her world fell apart, she wasn’t capable of putting her life back together. There were people who could have helped; she was just too broken to see it.’
‘And still Daisy wants to find this man? Acknowledge him as her father?’
‘Unconditional love,’ she repeated. ‘It’s given to bad parents as well as good ones.’
‘Not always,’ he said. ‘Not if you don’t know what love is. Not if you’ve never known it.’
Ivo knew that to compare the misery of his childhood with what she’d been through was beyond pathetic. But she’d bared her soul to him. Had told him things that she hadn’t told anyone. She deserved as much from him. The truth; the whole truth. Because, like her, he’d lived a lie, had hidden behind a façade of the perfect life. The man who had everything, including the country’s sweetheart, Belle Davenport. Except that had all been a lie too.
Well, he was done with lies. Belle had been brave enough to confront her past; he could do no less. And if anyone was capable of understanding, it was Belle.
‘My parents didn’t love each other and they sure as hell didn’t love us.’
Belle was frowning, clearly confused. ‘But I thought…you had everything. The wonderful holidays in France, Italy. I’ve heard you and Miranda talk about them.’
‘Did you ever hear either of us mention our parents?’
She thought about it. ‘Well, no.’ She sat back. ‘No, I suppose not.’
‘We barely knew them. Neither of them wanted to be bothered with us, even with a nanny to do the dirty work. We were shunted off to boarding school at the earliest possible age. Learned behaviour. Our grandparents were no different. Forget seen but not heard. We weren’t even wanted for decoration.’
‘I had no idea.’
‘No, well, maybe we both had stuff we didn’t want to talk about, Belle. Didn’t want to remember.’
‘Only the holidays. Who did you spend them with?’
‘Every year we were dumped with some family who took in kids for the summer while they went off on their own affairs. And I do mean affairs. We were just getting to the age when we might have been interesting enough for them to notice when they were drowned. What they were doing on the same yacht has always been something of a mystery to me.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Don’t be. And some of the families were wonderful. Some summers. Those are the ones we remember, talk about.’
‘And the rest?’
‘We survived until a universal aunt arrived to take us back to school.’
‘And you hated that too?’
‘Hate would be too strong a word. It was just all a bit unrelenting. There was never any warmth. No one to give you a hug.’
He realised he was gripping her hand, clinging on to it as if to stop himself from drowning. He forced himself to release it but, before he could lift it away, she caught it, held it, then pushed her chair back.
He rose automatically as she got to her feet, held his breath as she came round the table. ‘No…’ The word, wrenched from him as she put her arms around him, pulled him close, was scarcely audible.
She was soft, warm, against him. He’d tried so hard not to admit to feelings that he knew would break him. Had built a barrier to protect himself. Had not allowed himself to get too close because he knew that one day she would give up waiting for what he could not give her.
Himself. A child…
And with one hug she had brought the whole edifice tumbling down so that he clung to her, held her, felt something that could only be tears stinging his eyes.
Belle leaned back, looked at him, then reached up, wiped her fingers over his cheek. ‘Let’s go home, Ivo,’ she said softly.
Her scent filled him like a warm balm to the spirit and the temptation to accept the comfort that she was offering was almost beyond enduring. The only thing that would be worse would be the aftermath.
‘I can’t.’
He was scarcely able to believe he’d said the words. This was what he’d wanted. Her back in his arms, warming the ice. But he couldn’t do it to her. Not again. He thought he’d loved her too much to let her go. Now he understand the difference between need and love. He’d seen real love in action. It wasn’t about need, about self; it was about giving, about sacrifice, about doing what was best for the person you cared for.
‘I can’t,’ he repeated.
He lowered her into her chair, carefully placed himself on the far side of the table, tried to blot out that confused look of rejection confronting him, a look that he knew from the inside.
‘I thought I could,’ he said. ‘I thought I had it all worked out. You were restless. You’d been thrown out of the groove by your Himalayan trip and you were tired of what you were doing. I thought all I had to do was stick around, point you in the direction of something that would grab your attention, distract you from the emptiness in our lives-’
‘Ivo…’
‘No. Don’t stop me, Belle. I have to say this. Have to tell you the truth.’
She made as if to say something, swallowed, waited, her face set and white.
The waiter arrived with a platter of antipasto. Did something fancy with a pepper mill. Finally left them alone.
They shouldn’t be here, he thought. They should be somewhere quiet. Somewhere private. And yet maybe this was best. A public place where emotion had to be kept on a tight rein.
‘I thought-believed,’ he said, carrying on as if they had not been interrupted, ‘that if you found something new to fill your life, then you’d be able to forget, that a moment would come when you’d slip back into your place in my life and then everything would be as it should be. Ordered. Tidy.’
‘Forget what, Ivo?’
‘That you’d made a bad deal. That security without love, without a family, without…without children, was never going to be enough for someone like you. I wanted you so much…’ He closed his ears to her gasp of something very like pain, forced himself to continue. ‘Needed you. Beyond reason. Maybe, if I’d known, understood that you wanted more, needed more, I would have found the strength to walk away.’ He would have been abandoning all that was vital, alive in him, but he’d have been in control. ‘I believed you when you said you only wanted the security of marriage. None of the emotional trappings. Or maybe I was grasping at straws, desperate to believe you because that way I didn’t have to address my conscience. Tell you the truth.’
‘What truth?’ A tiny crease furrowed the space between her eyes. ‘Tell me, Ivo.’
‘In those few precious days we spent together after the wedding, you began talking about the future as if it was real. About having children.’ He looked up, faced her. ‘I can’t go home with you, Belle. I can’t be the husband you need-you deserve. I know, I’ve always known, that I can never give you children.’
He saw the confusion, the frown deepen as she struggled to comprehend the magnitude of what he had told her.
‘Is that…’ She stopped. ‘Is that why we came home from our honeymoon early?’ She struggled to say more. ‘Is that why you chose to sleep separately? Because you thought I wouldn’t
stay. If I knew.’
He nodded, just once. ‘I should have told you.’
‘Yes, you should. But then we should have told one another a lot of things, Ivo, but if I’d married you simply for children, I wouldn’t have stayed after I saw…’ She was struggling with the words. Paused to gather herself. ‘I couldn’t have stayed when you left me alone on the pretext of flying off to deal with some business crisis.’
‘How did you know?’
‘That it was a lie? You didn’t have to say anything, Ivo. You’re good at hiding your feelings, but that day I could read you like a book. I knew that you didn’t love me, that I was always going to be a temporary wife, but when we were alone, after the wedding, I glimpsed a sight of some fairy tale happy ever after. Made the mistake of sharing it. One look at your face told me I was on my own…’
‘So why didn’t you leave then?’ He dragged a hand over his face, struggling to understand what she was telling him.
Belle swallowed. She’d got it so wrong. Right from the beginning she should have fought for her marriage. Fought to hold on to something precious. She’d been so afraid to show him how she felt. Overwhelmed by that horrible house. Intimidated by his sister…
‘I was afraid,’ she said. ‘Afraid I’d lose you.’
‘Then, why now?’
She looked at him. She’d been so afraid, but she wasn’t now. She was struggling, but she was winning-a new life, a sister. Maybe, if she was brave enough, she could even have the marriage she’d always wanted.
‘I left because I hated myself for compromising. For hoping and hoping that one day you’d wake up and…’ she made a helpless gesture as if the words were too difficult ‘…see me. Be the man I’d glimpsed on our honeymoon. Relaxed, happy…’
‘They were the happiest days I’ve ever spent.’
‘Then why? Why couldn’t you talk to me?’
‘You were not the only one who was afraid. You were the most beautiful woman I’d ever met. No!’ he said, when her dismissive gesture suggested that she’d made her point.
