The Riccioni Pregnancy

by Daphne Clair

  The doctor’s words came to her mind.

  No. If she aborted her child she would live with regret for the rest of her life.

  Had she needed any confirmation of that, it came with the terror that clutched at her the day she had persistent pains in her abdomen, and went rushing back to her doctor.

  ‘Bed rest,’ she was told, after being examined and then given an injection. ‘Nature’s cure. But if you do lose it, it’s a signal that the foetus wasn’t viable. It could be for the best.’

  For the best in more ways than one, she told herself. Why didn’t that bring her any comfort? Rather panic and depression. Even grief. It made no sense, but now she knew there really was a baby, her initial dismay had given way to strange new emotions, an instinct to nurture it at all costs.

  She went home, took her cell phone to bed with her, and endured hours of misery and angst before she called her mother in Australia.

  ‘You have to tell Zito,’ her mother said, several days later. Despite Roxane’s admittedly unconvincing protestations, Doreen Fabian had taken the first flight she could get, arriving on the cottage doorstep the morning after the phone call.

  ‘I know.’ Roxane was up now, the crisis over, though the doctor and her mother had both warned that she ought to take things easy. Doreen had been nursing before Roxane’s birth, then worked part-time in a doctor’s surgery near her home, and now had a full-time hospital position.

  ‘He hasn’t been in touch since…?’ Doreen poured coffee and set a cup on the kitchen table in front of Roxane.

  ‘No.’ Zito’s continuing silence made it all the more difficult to take the necessary step and contact him. She had no idea how he would receive the news.

  ‘Don’t you think that for the baby’s sake you should try again?’ Doreen asked tentatively. ‘Zito was shattered when you left. He pleaded with me and your father to tell him where you were.’

  ‘Thank you for standing firm.’

  ‘You’re our daughter. I have to admit though, sometimes I wondered if we were wrong.’

  ‘You didn’t think marrying Zito was right in the first place.’

  ‘I wasn’t sure you were ready for marriage with anyone.’ Doreen put another cup on the table for herself and sat down, stirring her coffee thoughtfully. ‘But you seemed so sure, and you’d always been a sensible child, though sensitive with it. I can’t help wondering if we should have pushed you out of the nest to spread your wings a bit, gain some life experience, but I thought there was plenty of time.’

  Roxane supposed it hadn’t occurred to her parents that she’d want to get married so soon. ‘If I’d said I wanted to leave, you wouldn’t have stopped me,’ she said.

  ‘No. But I was relieved you seemed happy to stay at home until you’d completed your degree.’

  ‘I’m glad you made me do that.’ Not that having a commerce degree had helped her much when she’d needed to find work after leaving Zito. She’d had no experience to back it up.

  ‘Made you?’

  ‘Urged,’ Roxane amended. ‘I should have listened to you when you said it might not be a good thing to go straight from living with my parents to living with a husband.’

  Doreen gave her a sad smile. ‘Zito was so obviously what used to be called a good catch, it seemed any mother’s duty to encourage her daughter to marry a man like him. Maybe I should have voiced my reservations more vigorously.’

  ‘I’d have married Zito no matter what you said.’

  Doreen smiled. ‘Your stubborn streak doesn’t show often—I learned when you were quite small that tackling it head-on was a mistake. And mostly you were a biddable child, easily reasoned with.’

  Maybe that was why Roxane had found it difficult to stand up to Zito. Confrontation and argument had been rare in her childhood; her parents had explained rather than decreed their decisions, and even as a teenager she’d had little cause for rebellion. They trusted her judgment and she never hesitated to ask their opinion. Until she met Zito, and knew that no one’s opinion would have any influence on her. She’d thought it a sign of maturity.

  ‘Zito may not be perfect,’ her mother said, ‘but he’s a decent man. And he loves you.’

  Roxane’s lips trembled, and she looked down. Maybe she’d killed that love, after all. Maybe Zito would repudiate her, and her baby.

  Instinctively she put her hand over the slight swell that had begun to distend her abdomen. And felt a tiny, fairy-wing flutter under her fingers.

  Startled, she raised her eyes, her breath catching. ‘I think…I think it moved! Isn’t it too soon?’

  ‘It’s early, but it isn’t that the baby doesn’t move before four months or so, it’s just that it’s so small most women can’t feel it. With your slim figure you don’t have much to mask it. You could do with a bit more weight.’ Her glance held the same critical assessment as Zito’s had.

  ‘Oh.’ Roxane scarcely dared breathe, staring down at her stomach as though she’d be able to see the miracle under her clothes, inside her. ‘Oh, it’s…I don’t know. I feel so strange.’ A fearful thought hit her. ‘Supposing I lose it after all? I don’t think I could bear it—not now.’

  Her mother leaned across the table and took her free hand. ‘Darling,’ she said, ‘phone your husband.’

  When she told him, the line seemed dead for several seconds. Made nervous by his continued silence, Roxane blurted out, ‘It needn’t affect you. I can do this on my own, but you have a right to know. And my mother said I should tell you.’

  ‘You’ve told your mother?’

  ‘She’s been staying with me for a while.’

  ‘Why?’ Zito demanded. ‘Is something wrong?’

  He was too quick. ‘There was a slight problem but it’s over now.’

  ‘Put your mother on the line,’ he said peremptorily.

  ‘Zito—there’s really nothing to worry about—’

  ‘Put her on! At least she’ll have the sense to tell me the truth.’

  ‘She’ll tell you just what I did.’

  ‘Then let me speak to her!’ And when she didn’t answer, ‘Roxane!’

  Roxane contemplated slamming down the phone. But then he said, ‘For God’s sake, Roxane—’ and finally, as if the word were unwillingly ground out, ‘—please!’

  Beneath his rising temper she sensed a desperate anxiety, whether for her or for the baby, and in the end she called her mother and handed over the receiver.

  She was in the sitting room pretending to watch television when Doreen joined her, saying, ‘Zito’s flying over tomorrow.’

  Roxane leapt to her feet, instinct urging her to flee. ‘What for?’

  ‘To see you, I suppose, and talk about your plans for the baby.’

  ‘I have no plans.’ She’d had to tell Leon the reason for her frequent hurried trips to the nearest rest room, and assured him that once the inconvenient nausea receded she’d carry on as usual. But he’d looked doubtful, and pointed out that hers was a difficult job to do with a baby in tow. A family man himself, she supposed he would know.

  ‘Then perhaps you and Zito can make plans together,’ her mother said hopefully. ‘Sort something out between you.’

  Like what? Roxane wondered. Maybe he’d help pay for child-care if she asked him. Her heart sank at the idea of someone else caring for her baby while she worked the long stints she had become accustomed to. But what else could she do?

  Her doctor had suggested already that she cut her work hours and get as much rest as possible, adding frankly that this baby seemed not to have a firm grip and there was still a risk of losing it.

  In fairness to her boss, Roxane had cast an eye over Leon’s staff and singled out a promising young man, giving him more responsibility and making sure he could carry on if she wasn’t there. Keeping in touch with her by phone, he’d managed very well this week.

  But she couldn’t give up her job. If she wasn’t working she wouldn’t be able to afford the mortgage, so she’d have no hom
e for the baby. And one thing she did know about babies was that they were expensive…

  Her mother said, ‘I’m sure Zito will want to help out financially, at least.’

  ‘I don’t want to rely on him.’ Yet it was his baby too. Really she had no choice.

  She had even less after Zito arrived, kissing her mother’s cheek at the door, then striding into the sitting room where Roxane sat in one of the armchairs, trying to look calm and composed.

  His gaze raked her, but the loose white T-shirt she wore with blue cotton pants effectively disguised her slightly rounded abdomen.

  ‘I’ll make coffee,’ Doreen said from the doorway, and left them alone before Roxane could protest.

  Zito sat rather suddenly on the sofa. ‘Three months, your mother said. Why didn’t you tell me earlier?’

  ‘There might not have been any point.’

  His eyes narrowed, hard as obsidian. ‘Meaning?’

  ‘The doctor said it’s not unusual to lose a first pregnancy.’

  ‘Apparently you nearly did. That’s why you called Doreen.’

  She wished she could gauge his mood. He seemed tense and wary, and he didn’t lean back against the sofa, but sat with his knees apart, his hands clasped firmly between them.

  ‘Would you have told me,’ he asked, ‘if your mother hadn’t pushed you into it?’

  ‘She didn’t push. I was going to anyway.’

  His cocked eyebrow doubted her. ‘And now that you have, what do you want me to do?’

  Swallowing her pride, she said huskily, ‘I thought you might like to make some…financial contribution.’

  ‘That goes without saying. I was thinking of more basic things.’

  ‘Nothing is more basic than money.’

  He shot her an enigmatic look. ‘I think we got down to something much more basic the night we conceived this child of ours.’

  ‘So basic,’ Roxane acknowledged with a flash of bitterness, ‘that we didn’t even think of the possible consequences.’

  A strange flicker of expression altered the inflexible planes of his face. ‘Didn’t you?’

  ‘Did you?’ Had it crossed his mind during that wildly erotic interlude? ‘Why didn’t you…’ He could at least have asked if she was on the pill or anything, Roxane thought angrily.

  ‘As you kept telling me,’ Zito said, ‘you’re responsible for yourself. I paid you the compliment of taking you at your word.’

  Hoist with her own petard, and with a vengeance. She couldn’t pretend she hadn’t been a willing partner. And if she’d been too swept away by passion to worry about pregnancy, she could hardly throw stones at him for not stopping at the crucial moment to ask pragmatic questions.

  She choked down her unreasoning anger. ‘I’m still responsible for myself,’ she informed him. ‘And I’ll take responsibility for this.’

  ‘We both will.’

  ‘All I need from you is some financial contribution to…to the child’s upkeep.’

  He looked briefly dangerous. ‘If you think that I’m going to hand you money and leave you to it,’ he said, ‘think again. You must know this changes everything.’

  Her small laugh was slightly hysterical. ‘You don’t need to tell me that!’ Already her life was in the process of turning upside down. Hardly used yet to taking responsibility for herself, she’d been thrust into being responsible for a helpless, as yet unborn child.

  ‘You won’t be able to keep on working,’ he pressed.

  ‘I’ll take maternity leave, but there’s no reason I can’t return to work afterwards.’

  ‘You’d desert your baby?’

  Roxane took a moment to dampen down a defensive fury. ‘I wouldn’t be deserting it. There are very good licensed child-care facilities—’ Not for anything would she admit that she hated the thought of having to use them.

  Zito made a disgusted sound. ‘I’m not paying for my child to be cared for by some facility. You can forget that.’

  Roxane felt sick. ‘Are you saying if I don’t do it your way, you won’t help?’

  She could force Zito legally to support them, she vaguely supposed, but the prospect of fighting him in court made her quail.

  ‘I’m saying our baby has a father as well as a mother, and both of us have to think of its welfare, now. Doreen can’t stay with you forever.’

  Roxane felt guilty already about her mother taking emergency leave from the job she loved, and her father, with his own modest hardware business to run, would be missing his wife. ‘I don’t need her any more.’

  ‘You can’t be left on your own.’

  ‘I’ve been on my own for over a year! I won’t be the first single mother—’

  ‘You’re not a single mother! This child has a father.’

  ‘Every child has a father…not all of them are married to the mother.’

  ‘Are you still talking of divorce?’ he demanded. ‘I’m not having my child born a bastard! It was conceived within marriage and it deserves to be born in that marriage. We owe it at least that much.’

  The trouble was, to Roxane it was a compelling argument. Her deepest beliefs about marriage and bringing children into the world actually meshed with his. ‘It doesn’t mean we have to live together.’

  With deceptive quiet, he said, ‘I won’t leave you to fend for yourself while you carry my child. So don’t even think it’s going to happen.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  SHE might have known Zito would get his way, Roxane reflected with acid resignation, watching the tarmac of Auckland’s international airport recede as their plane lifted over the Manukau Harbour a few days later.

  Her mother had tried to remain neutral, but when Roxane doubled over, gasping, on the stairs to her room, bringing a white-faced Zito bounding up to scoop her into his arms and carry her to her bed, Doreen had been too obviously sick with worry.

  ‘It looks like this is not going to be an easy pregnancy,’ she told Roxane gently. ‘If you insist on staying here, then so will I, at least until I’m sure you’re all right.’

  ‘Your job…’

  ‘I’ll give it up if I have to. You’re more important. You and my grandchild.’

  At that point Roxane had humiliated herself by bursting into tears—of chagrin, and gratitude and a myriad other emotions.

  The combined pressure of her mother’s good intentions and Zito’s implacable logic finally forced her to give in. ‘I’ll stay with my parents,’ she told him, willing him to accept the compromise.

  ‘Your mother can’t be with you twenty-four hours a day,’ he pointed out, ‘unless she leaves her job.’

  ‘I don’t need twenty-four-hour care!’

  ‘I won’t accept anything less…for the safety of our child.’ He paused and then said rather grittily, ‘If you really want to be with your parents I could hire a nurse for you.’

  The prospect of having a stranger, however professional, watching over her in her parents’ modest three-bedroom home was disconcerting, to say the least. In the end she reluctantly agreed that returning to the house she’d shared with Zito was the most practical solution. There would always be someone around to call on, and the house was big enough to accommodate a full-time nurse if necessary without making Roxane feel crowded.

  The look of relief on her mother’s face when Roxane said she’d think about it was the deciding factor. Needlessly disrupting her parents’ lives was surely selfish. ‘All right,’ she’d agreed at last, tired of arguing and of trying to think of reasonable alternatives. ‘Until the baby’s born.’

  She saw the tightening of Zito’s jaw, but he merely nodded and said, ‘If your doctor says it’s safe, I’ll arrange a flight.’

  When Zito ushered her to their old room, Roxane stiffened against his light hold on her arm, balking in the doorway.

  Then she saw that the king-size bed they’d shared had been replaced by two queens.

  Zito shifted his hand to her waist and urged her forward. ‘I thought you’
d prefer your own bed,’ he said quietly.

  He must have arranged to have them changed in a hurry.

  ‘I’d prefer my own room!’ Roxane stepped away, facing him.

  He quickly doused a flash of anger, but not before she’d seen it in his eyes. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea. If you need anything in the night, I’ll be right here. Otherwise, I won’t bother you.’

  ‘If I need anything in the night it’ll probably be the bathroom. I’ll disturb your sleep.’

  A faint grin replaced the anger. ‘You always disturbed my sleep, one way or another. I’ll sleep better here knowing you can easily wake me, than in another room. And I won’t disturb you, I promise.’

  The bedroom was big enough, boasting its own bathroom and two dressing rooms—his and hers. Even with the beds there was still room in the bay window for the two-seater sofa, and a tiny rosewood table Roxane had always liked, on which the housekeeper had arranged a posy bowl of fresh flowers.

  Once they’d knocked over a vase standing there. They’d been making love on the sofa, Roxane sitting in Zito’s lap as he thrust into her, his mouth on her breast, her head flung back in abandon. She was flying straight into some dazzling, dizzying light, another dimension, her legs and toes taut behind her, and was only dimly aware of her foot touching something smooth and cold.

  Afterwards they’d found the flowers scattered over the carpet and water soaking into it. Mopping up with a towel, Roxane had said, ‘What’ll we tell Mrs. Robinson?’

  ‘Tell her?’ Zito, pausing in the act of zipping his pants, had looked blank. It wouldn’t have occurred to him to explain or excuse anything to the housekeeper.

  Why should it? Roxane queried herself now, dragging her gaze from the sofa and the flowers. He’d never seen the need to explain or excuse, even to his wife.

  Zito had followed her gaze and now looked at her piercingly, making her colour. He couldn’t read her mind, could he? Returning to the subject in haste, she said, ‘I’m sure you’re being unnecessarily cautious.’

  ‘Maybe.’ But he wasn’t going to change his mind. ‘You should probably lie down for a while after all that travelling. I’ll go and give Harry a hand with your luggage.’