‘Oh, look who’s talking! Do you think it’s appropriate to leave your wife in hospital while you go to a meeting? Do you think it’s appropriate to say that losing a baby is “for the best”? What the fuck is wrong with you?’ Sam was almost yelling now.
‘Tell me, Samantha, do you reserve the same hostility for someone who deceives her husband and falls pregnant without his knowledge or consent?’
‘It wasn’t like that.’
‘Oh, so you obviously know more about this than I do. Did you advise her, Samantha? Did you tell her how to scheme against her husband?’
‘Get stuffed, Dominic.’
‘I don’t have to listen to this. And I think you can take this officially as the end of our relationship.’
‘Nothing would please me more,’ Sam declared, hanging up. She stood there, trembling. She felt sick in the stomach. God, she shouldn’t have spoken to him like that. She had no right, it was none of her business.
But Vanessa had made it her business. She had asked for her help. If Dominic wasn’t such a prick, none of this would have happened and Sam would never have been involved. But Sheila would be hearing about this now and Sam had definitely lost a client, not that she wanted him any more.
She took some deep breaths to calm herself. She didn’t have to take that crap from Dominic, she wasn’t his wife.
Poor Vanessa was, though. Sam would have to stay around now to explain what had happened, and besides, it was unlikely that Dominic would be here for her. She couldn’t leave her all alone.
She wandered back into Casualty and inquired at the desk as to where she should wait for Vanessa. They directed her to the maternity ward.
‘Oh, they’re not taking her there, surely?’ Sam winced. ‘She’s just lost a baby.’
‘She won’t be placed in a room with new mothers, but she’ll have to go to the ward. There’s nowhere else.’
Sam walked despondently to the lifts and made her way to Maternity. She knew she was in the right place as soon as she stepped out of the elevator. It was filled with the sound of babies, the smell of babies. It was so evocative. Sam was catapulted back to when her own children were born. The fear, the wonderment, the joy like she had never known before. She walked slowly up the corridor, glancing into the rooms where mothers held their babies at the breast or over their shoulders, patting them gently to soothe them. There were flowers and balloons everywhere, drifts of pink and blue. Sam arrived at the nursery. There were barely any babies kept here any more, they all stayed with their mothers. This was more of a time-out room now. There were just two clear plastic cribs on stands pushed to one side. And inside them, two tiny bundles, wrapped like packets of fish and chips, their dear little heads emerging from the blankets. Sam watched them intently. One was sucking on a huge pink dummy as though her life depended on it, which was fair enough, she supposed. The other, a little boy in a blue beanie, was intermittently smiling, then wincing, then smiling again. Wind. Sam smiled too, faintly. What were they thinking? Was it really just wind, or were they dreaming of things no grown person could ever imagine?
Sam leaned her head against the glass. Jeff was going to have another baby. It would be his, but not hers. It would be a sister or a brother for her own children, but it would have no relationship to her at all. She felt tears creep into her eyes and she sniffed them back.
She walked up the corridor to the nurses’ station and asked when Mrs Blair was due back from theatre. After some checking and a phone call, they showed Sam into a private room where she could wait till Vanessa was brought up. She settled herself into an armchair and stared out the window at the other hospital buildings.
She felt so lonely. She didn’t want to go home to the empty house tonight. The kids were going to Jeff’s. He and Jodi were probably planning to announce the news to them, now that he had ‘done the right thing’ and told her first. She wondered how they would take it. She really had no idea. The girls would probably be thrilled, it would be like having a doll to play with. She didn’t know about Joshua. She remembered when he was born, and now look at the size of him. A newborn baby could probably fit inside one of his shoes. He was almost a man himself.
Sam had a sudden thought. God, she’d forgotten about the condom. Not that she would have brought it up today anyway. She didn’t know that she wanted to discuss her son’s safe sex habits with his prodigious father. Her head was swimming. She wanted to stop thinking. She leaned her head against the back of the chair and closed her eyes.
Sam blinked, squinting at the lights overhead. Her back was sore and her legs were stiff. She stretched out in the chair.
‘Hello,’ said Vanessa quietly.
Sam looked across the room. Vanessa was lying on her side on the hospital bed. She looked small, like a child.
‘Sorry. I must have nodded off.’
‘You’ve been asleep for quite a while.’
Sam stretched again, arching her neck each way. ‘I’m sorry, Vanessa.’
‘Don’t say that. I should be apologising to you.’
‘Nonsense.’ Sam stood up and took a step towards the bed. She leaned on the edge. ‘How are you feeling?’
Vanessa took a deep breath and turned over onto her back. ‘I think I know what people mean when they say they feel like they’ve been hit by a bus.’
Sam frowned down at her.
‘I’ll be okay,’ Vanessa assured her.
Sam breathed out heavily. ‘Vanessa, I have to tell you something.’
‘You spoke to Dominic.’
‘How did you know?’
‘He called the hospital. They put him through.’ Vanessa smiled faintly. ‘He was very cross with you. He wants to fire you.’
‘Don’t worry. I quit.’
‘Sam, you’ve been so good to me.’
‘But I can’t work for you two any more.’
Vanessa looked away. ‘There may not be an “us two” any more.’
Sam sighed. She didn’t know what to say. They sat quietly. Sam could hear the faint cries of a baby somewhere in the ward.
‘You asked me one day how we fell in love,’ Vanessa said after a while. ‘And I told you I couldn’t remember.’
Sam nodded.
‘The thing is, I really don’t remember. I don’t remember falling in love with Dominic. He just walked into my life. We were at uni, and suddenly he had taken over. He’s like that, he needs to be in charge. It’s not his fault. I just went along. It’s what I do.’
‘You deserve better, Vanessa.’
‘Maybe I don’t. Maybe I deserve exactly what I got.’
Vanessa asked to spend the night in the hospital. She was a paying customer, it was okay with them. She would call Dominic in the morning. They had a lot to talk about.
Sam walked out through the corridors, past the rooms of sleeping mothers and their sleeping babies, out into the world again. She had to think for a moment about where she had parked the car. In the dim light of dusk everything looked different. And she was not familiar with this hospital, it was not where her babies had been born. The thought of her children sent a sob surging up through her ribcage and she leaned against a garden wall, catching her breath. Her babies were with their father, their father who was going to be a father again.
Sam wanted to scream. She didn’t want to keep having these thoughts. It was like some interminable loop. Like sentimental Christmas songs playing over and over. Enough! Enough already. Give it a rest, she told herself. There had to be other thoughts to have tonight. Other ways to spend her evening. She would go mad if she didn’t break this miserable cycle.
It started to rain, just lightly. That fine rain that you can hardly feel as it soaks your clothes, wetting you through to the skin.
Sam saw her car ahead and breathed a sigh of relief. She ran for it, climbing in and locking the doors. She turned on the radio. Some upbeat dance music was playing, the kind Jessica liked. Well, that was fine. It was crap, but it was just what she needed to dist
ract her thoughts.
She started up the engine and drove off but she didn’t have a clue where she was going. It started to rain more heavily. Sam drove around slowly, following street signs, stopping at lights, turning corners, but she was aimless. She didn’t want to go home by herself. This was not a night to be alone.
Finally she pulled over and cut the engine, but not the radio. She didn’t think she could stand the silence. She tried Max’s number but the message bank came on. Sam didn’t know what to say, so after the beep, she just said, ‘It’s only me. It’s nothing. I’ll call you later.’
She sat there for a while longer, watching the windscreen wipers thwack back and forward. The noise started to annoy her so she switched them off. The rain dotted, and then slid down the windscreen. She thought about her options. She could phone Liz, but she didn’t want to be with a couple, that would only remind her of how alone she was. She scrolled through the numbers stored in her phone until Rosemary’s came up. She pressed Call and waited for it to connect.
When Rose picked up, Sam could hear a lot of background noise, music, people laughing.
‘Hi Sam! How are you?’ Rosemary was shouting.
‘Fine, um, okay.’
‘What’s up?’
‘Oh, nothing. I was just seeing what you were doing. Thought I might catch up with you.’
‘Sorry? I can’t hear you, Sam. It’s pretty noisy here. I’m at a club, you’ll have to speak up.’
The last place Sam wanted to be tonight was at a noisy club. ‘Don’t worry,’ Sam said loudly, ‘I’ll call you tomorrow.’
‘I can’t hear you, Sam! I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?’
‘Bye.’
Sam breathed out heavily. She started the engine and pulled out from the kerb. After a while she realised she had followed the stream of traffic right into the city. Well that was stupid. She’d have to make her way across town now to get home.
She stopped at lights and looked up. She was at the end of the street where Hal lived. How had she ended up here? She wondered if he was home. Well, she could get that thought out of her head. She wasn’t about to go and see him. He’d think she was crazy. She couldn’t just show up out of the blue, pouring all her woes onto him. It wasn’t appropriate. Although it wouldn’t be the first time. And he had said, if she was ever passing . . .
The lights went green, Sam flicked on her blinker and turned into the street.
Twenty minutes later she found a parking spot, which was at least another ten minutes walk back to Hal’s building. This was ridiculous, she’d been telling herself repeatedly, and still she had driven around and around looking for a spot. She got out of the car. The rain had eased slightly, but she’d only walked a block when it began bucketing down again. She ducked and weaved between buildings and under awnings, but after a few minutes she was drenched through. Okay. Give it up, Sam. This is now bordering on insanity. Go back to your car, go back to your house, get dry, go to bed. But no matter what she told herself in her head, her legs would not obey. They just kept carrying her onwards to Hal’s place. It seemed quite beyond her control.
When she arrived at his building, she stood for a while looking up, wondering if she could count the floors to his apartment and see if there were lights on. But she didn’t even know what side of the building he was on. And besides, she could only see raindrops falling. It was funny that, the way you could distinguish the individual raindrops falling out of the sky when light was cast across them.
She was going crazy. She was quite definitely going crazy.
She walked out of the rain to the intercom panel and pressed the button for Hal’s apartment. It buzzed then stopped. Sam heard his voice. ‘Hello?’
She froze.
‘Hello? Is anyone there?’
‘Hal? It’s Samantha Ho –’
‘Sam? Are you okay?’
She felt choked. ‘Um, I was just passing. You know . . .’
The door released instantly. Sam pushed it open and walked dripping into the foyer. She tiptoed across to the bank of elevators as one opened. He must have sent it down for her. She hurried over and stepped inside. The doors closed behind her. No going back now.
The lift ascended in the time it took Sam to take one deep breath, trying to collect herself. The doors opened and Hal stood waiting on the other side. Her barely gained composure evaporated. His hair was a little ruffled and there was light stubble on his chin. He was wearing loose trousers and a crumpled T-shirt, obviously not expecting company. But he was still drop-dead gorgeous. She had lied through her teeth pretending to Max all this time that she hadn’t noticed how handsome he was. How could she fail to notice those eyes, that jaw.
‘Sam, look at you, you’re soaked. What happened?’
‘I . . .’ she swallowed.
He reached for her arm and drew her out of the elevator. ‘Are you okay? You’re not hurt?’
She thought she was going to cry when she saw the concern in his eyes. She shook her head. ‘No, it’s nothing like that.’
‘What about the kids, are they alright?’
A lump rose in Sam’s throat. ‘The kids are fine,’ she managed to say. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come . . . I’m probably interrupting –’
‘The only thing you’re interrupting is a bad movie,’ he said gently, smiling down at her. ‘I’m glad you’re here. Come on inside.’
He led her across the hall into an open door, closing it behind them. Sam stood dripping on the carpet.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said again in a weak voice.
‘I’ll get you a towel, come on through.’
She followed him down a short hall into what must have been his bedroom. He walked ahead of her into the bathroom and reappeared with a towel, handing it to her. She started to mop her face as he slid the door of the wardrobe open and pulled a shirt off a hanger.
‘Here you are. Get dry, you can change into this, or take anything you want.’
Sam nodded, unable to say anything.
‘Take your time.’ Hal walked back out to the main room, closing the door quietly behind him. Sam let out a sob, burying her face into the towel. What was she doing here? She shouldn’t have shown up like this, not after the way she’d treated him.
But he was the only person she could imagine who’s company she wanted to share tonight. Sam didn’t want to dwell on why that was. She had to pull herself together. She went into the bathroom and peeled off her soaking jeans and her blouse, hanging them carefully over the rail. After towelling herself off, she examined her reflection in the mirror. Damn. Her mascara was smudged and the rain had flattened her hair to her head. She rubbed it dry, but it only looked worse. She crept back into the bedroom and found her hairbrush in her handbag. She picked up Hal’s shirt and pulled it on as she walked back into the bathroom.
Sam buttoned up the shirt. It was pale blue, made of soft, well-worn fabric. It almost went to her knees and she had to roll back the sleeves about four times. She brushed her hair smooth, but it didn’t really look much better. She frowned at herself in the mirror. She was having one of those moments, imagining what it would have been like if she’d had a glimpse of the future a few years ago, when she was still with Jeff, living in Cherrybrook, still believing they were going to grow old together. She would have been mystified as to what she was doing, dressed in another man’s shirt, standing in his bathroom, wondering how she had got here.
Well, she had run ten minutes in the rain and shown up on his doorstep, unannounced and uninvited, that’s how she had got here. What was she doing? The last time she had seen Hal he had told her he liked her, a lot, but he’d left it to her to make the next move.
And here she was. Sam bit nervously on the edge of her thumb. What kind of message was she sending him? She considered her reflection sceptically. She decided she was pretty safe. Hal was hardly going to make a pass at her tonight – she looked like a drowned rat.
Whatever, she couldn’t stay hiding in hi
s bathroom forever. She walked back out through the bedroom, grasped the handle of the door and opened it determinedly. Hal looked up from where he was sitting at the end of a long sofa, one leg hooked up underneath the other. He stood up. They looked at each other for a moment, not saying anything.
‘Hey,’ he was the first to speak. ‘How’re you doing, Sam?’
She thought she was going to melt all over the carpet, but instead she cleared her throat. ‘Nice place,’ she said, looking around.
It was a simple, open-plan apartment. The kitchen was separated from the rest of the living room by a dark timber bench and large picture windows ran along the length of the outer wall, looking out to the city.
‘It all belongs to IGB. I just moved in with my suitcase.’
It was pretty minimalist. There was a distinct absence of personal effects. It gave the place a sort of temporary look, like a hotel room. Sam wished she hadn’t noticed that.
‘I suppose you’re wondering what I’m doing here?’ she said eventually.
‘It doesn’t matter. I’m just glad you are.’
Sam breathed out. She didn’t have a witty reply. Hal picked up a glass of wine from the coffee table. ‘I thought you could do with a drink.’
She walked towards him. ‘Thanks.’ She took the glass out of his hand and he picked up his beer.
‘To old friends,’ he nodded, clinking her glass with his bottle. ‘Take a seat.’
Sam sat down on the sofa, but he hesitated. ‘Are you hungry? Can I get you anything?’
She smiled. ‘Do you have any chocolate?’
‘Fraid not.’
‘Never mind then.’
He sat, curling his leg up like before, turning side on to face her. ‘This is a surprise, Sam, a good one.’
‘I’m sorry for showing up like this.’ She took a deep breath. ‘After the way I treated you last time –’
‘Don’t worry about it.’
She shifted to face him. ‘No, let me say it. I want to apologise for the way I behaved.’
‘Sam, I said don’t worry about it.’
‘But I do worry about it. You were only trying to help, and . . .’ She hesitated. ‘I said things I had no right to say.’
Wife for Hire Page 38
