The Fatherhood Affair

by Emma Darcy

  ‘No damned way!’

  She nodded towards Natalie. ‘What if she won’t have you? I’d give you more than one baby. I’m ready to give you the family you want, Damien.’

  A muscle in his jaw contracted. ‘Go and get dressed, Lyn. I want you out of my life. Now. And don’t ever come back to me again. Not for anything.’

  ‘You’re a fool, Damien. If you’ll...’

  ‘Move now,’ he commanded tersely. ‘Either that or I’ll gather your belongings and you can dress in the lobby outside.’

  She shot Natalie a venomous look as she flounced away from Damien and headed off to the hallway leading to the rest of the apartment. She left a silence bristling with tension. Not until a door slammed shut behind her did Damien turn to Natalie. His eyes were hard and glittering with challenge.

  ‘Lyn came here on Saturday night,’ he stated flatly. ‘She’d had a violent fight with her lover. There were bruises on her upper arms. She asked if she could stay until she found an apartment for herself. She slept in the study if you want to check.’

  ‘I believe you, Damien,’ Natalie said quietly.

  His mouth thinned. He shook his head. ‘Lyn set this up so you would come and catch me with her. And you came.’

  ‘No. It didn’t enter my mind she’d be here with you. I came this morning because...’ She didn’t want to tell him she was pregnant while Lyn was still here. Her eyes pleaded for his understanding. ‘I had a bad night. I realised, after the meeting with Lyn yesterday, how blind and foolish I’d been in misjudging you. And how very much I wanted to keep you in my life.’

  He searched her eyes for several nerve-racking moments. ‘I didn’t know why you’d come. You said a month. And Lyn was here. I thought you’d think the worst...’

  ‘As I did just now.’ She made an apologetic gesture.

  He shook his head. ‘It was stupid of me to open my mouth to Lyn about you. It was a way of letting her know she couldn’t use me for consolation. I had no idea...’

  ‘I know,’ Natalie broke in gently. ‘There’s no need to explain. If I’d stayed with you, none of this would have happened.’

  ‘Why did you come here tonight, Natalie? After what we shared this morning, did you still feel driven to check up on me?’

  His eyes burned with a need so intense it shamed Natalie for all she had put him through.

  ‘Please forgive me for doubting you, Damien.’ Her feet moved of their own accord, impelled to go to him. ‘I swear I didn’t come to check on you. It never occurred to me that Lyn would be here. She wasn’t on my mind at all.’ She lifted her hands to his chest, her eyes begging his belief. ‘And I don’t link you with Brett. Not any more.’

  Damien caught her hands and held them still, his eyes deeply pained as he said, ‘There has to be trust, Natalie.’

  ‘On both sides,’ she reminded him. ‘If you’d told me Lyn was staying with you...’

  ‘Yes, I realise that. I...’ He heaved a deep sigh. ‘When does it end...this feeling that I have to keep fighting what Brett did to you?’

  A door slammed again, fracturing the false sense of being alone together. Lyn reappeared, shooting them a look of haughty scorn. ‘How touching!’

  ‘Goodbye, Lyn,’ Damien said curtly.

  She paused on her way to the front door, a malicious little smile curving her lips. ‘I had Brett, too. He was a more exciting lover than you, Damien.’ Her green eyes stabbed briefly at Natalie. ‘You just can’t get it right, can you?’ she said pityingly.

  ‘Witch!’ Natalie retaliated in anger.

  ‘Bitch!’ Damien flung at his ex-wife.

  Lyn didn’t wait for any more. Having put them both down as best she could, she made her exit with another slam.

  Natalie felt acutely discomfited by this further revelation of infidelity, and the crude comparison between Brett and Damien. ‘It’s not true, Damien,’ she said, flushing at the need to say it.

  ‘Typical of Lyn, wanting to twist the knife. Another lie,’ he said with a snort of disgust. ‘Brett never touched her.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He told me so after Lyn and I had parted. He said she’d made a play for him and he swore he hadn’t taken her up on it. He told me because he didn’t want her making any trouble between us out of spite.’

  ‘And you believed him?’

  ‘Yes. Brett wouldn’t have risked our relationship. Not for an idle screw. And that’s all it would have been to him.’

  ‘Yet he risked his relationship with me. Over and over again,’ she said with a pang of hurt. ‘You meant more to him than I did.’

  ‘Natalie...’ He winced. ‘Brett needed me. He needed you. Despite the way he used sex as a cover for his inadequacies and feelings of worthlessness, you were his woman, the only one who really counted.’

  She had come to realise that, although it hadn’t given her any satisfaction. But for Ryan, she would have walked away from Brett and nothing in the world could have talked her back into being his wife.

  ‘Yet I came to despise him for the way he kept playing around behind your back,’ Damien continued. ‘I wanted to take you away from him, Natalie. I wanted you so damned much...’

  His lips suddenly clamped shut over the words that had been spilling from them. He made a visible effort to relax his face into a lighter expression. His mouth tilted into a rueful smile.

  ‘Why am I talking about the past when it’s the last thing I want to do? That’s all over.’

  ‘Not quite, Damien.’

  She hesitated, wondering if she should simply let sleeping dogs lie. Was the compulsion to know what had happened a destructive one? Yet didn’t trust only come with truth? If Damien had told her Lyn was with him...if she had told Damien she’d seen Lyn yesterday... It was what was left unsaid that preyed on the mind, providing fertile ground for doubts and misunderstandings.

  ‘I saw Anne Smith today,’ she blurted out, wanting it over quickly. ‘I asked her what happened on top of the cliff. Before Ryan fell. I never believed the story about the ball, Damien.’

  He closed his eyes as though wanting to block out the memory of it. ‘What did she say?’ His voice was completely toneless.

  ‘She said to ask you. That only you could tell me the truth.’

  He dropped her hands and walked over to the windows overlooking the ocean. He stared out to sea, his shoulders slumping for several moments, as though the secret burden he carried was too heavy to bear. Then his back stiffened and he turned around. The bleak look of desperation on his face squeezed her heart with fear.

  ‘I lied to you about that day, Natalie. I did cover up for Brett. And for you. To save you from unnecessary pain. But it was not so much Brett’s fault that Ryan died. It was mine.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ‘NO.’ THE word welled up from deeply instinctive knowledge and burst from Natalie’s lips. She shook her head in absolute denial of Damien’s claim of guilt. ‘You wouldn’t have done anything to hurt a little boy. You wouldn’t have done anything to hurt Ryan. I don’t believe it.’

  There was an agony of desperate desire in his eyes. ‘I was thinking of you. I never once considered the effect on Ryan. I wanted the whole unbearable charade to come to an end.’

  ‘You...me...Brett...my marriage to him. You wanted it to end?’

  ‘Yes.’ It was an explosive hiss of emotion. ‘Apart from your wedding night, and I couldn’t believe it of him then, I never covered up for Brett’s infidelities, Natalie. I wanted you to find him out. I wanted you to leave him. I wanted you to turn to me.’

  ‘But...you were Brett’s only friend.’

  ‘He didn’t love you. He didn’t deserve you.’ Damien smashed his fist into his other palm. ‘I felt like killing him every time he talked of having had some other woman. It killed me that you seemed oblivious to it all. That if you knew of it, you tolerated it, while my own love for you had to remain secluded, hidden and unfulfilled.’

  ‘I would never have
told you, Damien. What happens within a marriage is private.’

  ‘Private!’ He made the word sound like torture. ‘It was a public humiliation, a public joke. It ended up feeling like an albatross around my neck. I couldn’t come to you. Without breaching trust... honour...loyalty...call it what you will...I couldn’t do it. The only chance for us, Natalie, was for you to turn to me.’ His eyes glittered his determination. ‘So I set out to make that happen.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have meant any harm,’ she defended him.

  ‘Yes, I did. Not to Ryan. To Brett.’

  ‘It would never have turned out that way. I couldn’t turn to you. Not then.’

  Natalie knew it would never have happened. To her way of thinking then, Damien had been no better than Brett. She’d despised the effect Damien had on her. She would have told herself that turning to Damien would have been akin to leaping out of the frying-pan into the fire. But Damien hadn’t known that.

  ‘I knew Brett wanted Anne Smith,’ he went on remorselessly. ‘All the more so because she had refused him. That didn’t happen very often with Brett.’

  No, Natalie thought with bitter cynicism. Brett had had the looks and the body to turn most women on. If all they’d wanted was to know what it was like with him, Brett wouldn’t have left them in doubt.

  ‘I thought a weekend in close proximity would present an irresistible challenge to him. He’d try again, and I’d make damned sure you saw it. I imagined taking you into my arms...comforting you... making you realise...’ His hands lifted and fell in a contorted gesture of anguished appeal.

  ‘But I didn’t go,’ Natalie said flatly, all too heart-chillingly aware of why she hadn’t gone.

  He shook his head as though his thoughts were too painful to dwell on. ‘I was counting on it so much...so much...’

  He walked over to a sofa, paused, picked up a cushion, looked down at it, plucked at its roulade edging. ‘When Brett turned up at the camping site, there was only Ryan with him. You weren’t the only one who was sick, Natalie. I was so sick with disappointment, I wasn’t fair to Anne.’

  He raised eyes that had emptied of all expression. ‘I liked her as a person. She was bright, easy company. I’d dated her a few times. But that weekend I didn’t give her the attention she had every right to expect. Nor could I give her what she wanted from me.’

  ‘You didn’t try to make love to her,’ Natalie supplied quietly.

  He tossed the cushion aside, commenced walking towards her. ‘I offered only company.’ His mouth twisted savagely. ‘Not very good company. I paid more attention to Ryan. At least he was part of you.’

  Yes, very much part of me, Natalie thought on a wave of desolation for how much she had lost when Ryan’s life had been cut so short.

  ‘I think it stung Anne’s pride,’ Damien went on in a weary, relentless tone. ‘And there was Brett, only too ready to take up the slack. I didn’t exactly throw her into Brett’s arms, but I might as well have done for all the difference it made.’

  ‘She had a choice, Damien. She knew Brett was married,’ Natalie reminded him.

  Damien reached out, his hands resting on her shoulders. ‘Cause and effect, Natalie.’

  ‘He had our child with him,’ she said fiercely. ‘Didn’t she care about what my son would see and feel if she played Brett against you?’

  She saw the blood drain completely from his face, leaving his skin sallow. ‘It was my fault. If I’d had sex with her...if I’d invited her company...or even had Ryan with me while I adjusted a new harness...’

  ‘What happened, Damien?’

  He took a deep breath. ‘It was agreed I’d make the first descent down the cliff. That suited me fine. I didn’t want to be alone with Anne, just alone by myself.’

  He paused, forcing himself to recall the exact sequence of events. ‘Brett and Anne were chatting by the tent when I left them. Ryan was bouncing and catching his ball. I went to my four-wheel drive. I had ropes and harnesses in the back. I fossicked around to find what I needed, taking more time than was necessary because of the bitterness in my heart.’

  His fingers dug into her flesh. ‘The ball did go over the cliff, Natalie. I heard Ryan calling out for Daddy to get his ball for him. I picked up my gear, slouched out from behind the Range Rover, and saw Brett and Anne. They were embracing inside the tent. Ryan saw them. He started flailing at them with his fists and crying, “She’s not my Mummy!”’

  ‘Oh God!’ Tears spurted into Natalie’s eyes.

  ‘Then Ryan hurtled out of the tent. Brett broke away from Anne to follow him. He stumbled over a tent peg. I saw that Ryan was running blindly, straight towards the cliff edge. I yelled out to him. He took no notice. He was too upset by what he’d witnessed.

  ‘I started running, shouting. Brett picked himself up. He was closer to Ryan than I was. He ran as fast as he could, yelling and screaming at Ryan to stop. It was a mad, frantic dash. Ryan just kept going...without looking...over the edge...and Brett... Brett dived after him as though he could catch him in mid-air and somehow bring him safely back from the fall.’

  Natalie flinched away, felt her path to an armchair and collapsed into it, weeping uncontrollably. Damien crouched beside her. A pile of tissues were pressed into her hand. He hugged her shoulders tightly and drew her other hand gently against his chest.

  ‘Please...go on,’ she begged, trying ineffectually to mop up the flow of tears. ‘Tell me...the rest. I want to know.’

  With a heavy sigh Damien withdrew his embrace and moved away. He sat on the sofa opposite her, leaning forward, forearms resting on his knees, his eyes full of sympathy and concern as he told her what she wanted to know.

  ‘I had my mobile phone in the Range Rover. I ran back to it and called for help. I slapped Anne out of her hysteria. My mind was working in overdrive. My thoughts only for you. I told Anne what she was to say when help came. She understood. She would be the only witness. She would only have had a fragmentary glimpse of what happened. Neither she nor Brett would be implicated in Ryan’s death. There would be no scandal.

  ‘I went down the cliff on the ropes. When I reached the bottom, I worked my way around to where their bodies lay. They were together, Natalie. Brett’s arm was flung across Ryan. There was nothing anyone could do...for either of them.’

  Natalie closed her eyes. Had Brett caught their son? Had he held him...held him tight? ‘He did love Ryan,’ she choked out, wanting it to have been that way...having the comfort of each other before the end came. ‘He was...mostly...a good father, Damien.’

  ‘If he hadn’t done what he did to you...he would have been...a good man.’

  Natalie tried to stem a fresh flood of tears.

  ‘I hadn’t realised,’ Damien continued, ‘until that moment, how much Brett loved his son. I knew he was proud of him...as he was proud of you. I didn’t know he couldn’t bear losing Ryan.’

  Natalie shook her head. It was more than that. In many ways she had known Brett better than Damien had. She swallowed hard several times, took a deep breath. This was the time for truth. For absolute truth. No holding back. Damien was shouldering blame and guilt that had to be shared by all of them. Herself included. She would come to that.

  ‘There was more than his love for Ryan involved in his headlong leap over the cliff, Damien. I’m sure of it. Brett couldn’t have borne knowing Ryan died because of what he’d done. He had to answer to me. It would have been the end of everything he cared about. It was the end. I think he knew that. Maybe not in any decisive way, but intuitively.’

  Damien gave her words heavy consideration, then slowly nodded. ‘Perhaps, you’re right. If I hadn’t taken Anne, though—’

  ‘If I had gone, or kept Ryan at home with me...’ Natalie cut in purposefully.

  ‘You were sick.’

  ‘I wasn’t sick.’

  Damien frowned, his eyes uncomprehending as though he couldn’t accept what she was saying.

  ‘I pretended to be sick. Because
I didn’t want to go. Because I couldn’t stand going...’

  ‘Why not? You liked camping. You liked the mountains, the outdoor life.’

  She flushed. ‘You were going to be with us, Damien. For the whole weekend. You, living in the tent next to ours with whatever woman you took along. Because of that, Brett would want me. It always happened. The thought of you making love to another woman in the next tent. It had got to the point that I fantasised about you when he had sex with me. I hated myself for it. I couldn’t bear to go. I made myself sick thinking about it. I actually threw up.’

  ‘Why did you punish yourself like that? You had a right to say no.’

  ‘I’m telling you what happened, Damien. Please listen.’

  His mouth tightened, holding his feelings in as he concentrated on her words.

  ‘Because I was physically sick, Brett wouldn’t leave Ryan with me. He said I should rest and not be worried about looking after him. Besides, Ryan might catch whatever bug I had. It was better for him to go away for the weekend with his father and Uncle Damien. Because I couldn’t face admitting the truth, that you were the cause of my problem, I let Ryan go...and I stayed at home.’

  ‘It was a reasonable decision, Natalie,’ Damien said in a reassuring tone.

  ‘It was a lie. Don’t you see? We all contributed to what happened. None of us foresaw the consequences of our actions, and we all have guilt to bear. But to say that you were more at fault over Ryan’s death...that simply isn’t true, Damien.’

  He searched her eyes with urgent intensity, wanting to believe. ‘After all I’ve told you...you don’t blame me, Natalie?’ he asked in a tensely strained voice.

  ‘Wasn’t it you who put the ball back in Ryan’s bag?’

  ‘It took me hours to find it.’ He made a helpless little gesture with his hands. ‘Ryan loved playing with balls. It was all that was left. It was something I could do. It seemed...important at the time. It was the last thing Ryan had...’

  His eyes blurred with tears. ‘I’m sorry, Natalie. I wanted...I didn’t know how to make it up to you. All I could do was...find a ball...and concoct a story...to lessen the blow.’