He was right. It wasn’t the place, but it was certainly time.
‘Later, then,’ she suggested, dreading it and yet feeling in a way a sense of relief that at last it was out. ‘When the boys have gone to bed.’
‘Not while they’re in the house.’
‘Why?’ she asked with gentle cynicism. ‘Because you can’t yell at me then?’
‘I don’t want to yell at you,’ he said tightly. ‘I just want answers—nine years’ worth. And I intend to have them, but not when my son might overhear. I’m not that crazy—quite.’
She nodded and looked away, unable to take the anger and resentment in his eyes. He might not want to yell at her, but he looked as if he could quite easily knock down the nearest tree just by glaring at it.
He screwed up his sandwich wrapper and jackknifed up off the ground in one fluid movement, the coiled energy radiating off him in waves. Alex broke off in the middle of his sentence and scrambled to his feet. ‘Are we going?’
Jack’s face softened, and he smiled at Alex and shook his head. ‘Not yet. I’m just going to have a chat to Tom. You stay here with Katie and your brother.’
‘But can I walk with you when we go?’
Something flickered across Jack’s face that could have been pain, and he nodded. ‘Sure,’ he said softly, and with a twisted smile he walked away. Alex dropped back down onto the rug and picked up an apple, crunching on it while he watched Jack with one eye.
She closed her eyes to hold back the tears. She’d have to talk to David—tell him that Jack knew. And between them they’d have to work out how to tell Alex, because there was no way Jack was going away quietly. Not now.
And having seen him with Alex, seen the look of pride and wonder on his face, she wouldn’t contemplate asking him to. He had the right to get to know his son, and Alex had a right to know his father.
‘Are you OK?’
She opened her eyes and looked at Annie. She’d shifted closer, so she was sitting right beside her now, arms wrapped round her slender knees, her face worried. Sally found a smile from somewhere.
‘Yes,’ she said a little unevenly. ‘I’m fine.’
‘You’re a lousy liar.’
Her smile wobbled and she shook her head. ‘Don’t—not here. Annie, he wants to talk. Tonight.’
‘Do you want me to have the boys?’
She shook her head. ‘No. I’ll ask David—invent some excuse about a changed shift or something to tell them.’
‘Unless we take the boys straight away after the walk to give you time to talk this afternoon? I could give them supper.’
‘But you’re feeling rough.’
‘I’ll be fine. Patrick can cook.’
‘Are you sure?’
Annie slipped her arm round Sally’s shoulders and hugged her hard. ‘Of course I’m sure. It’ll be fun for them and, let’s face it, they won’t be any trouble, not after such a long walk. Anyway, you and Jack need to talk.’
She felt her throat close with dread. ‘You’re right. Thanks, Annie. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but—’
‘That’s OK. I understand.’ Annie stood up and started clearing away the debris of the picnic, and Sally looked at her boys and wondered how they’d take this latest bit of news to rock their boat. Oh, lord, how much more?
She stood up and brushed off her knees, then looked up to see Jack still talking to Tom. Talking to him, but watching her.
And they still had about three more miles to walk.
‘Tea?’
Jack made a rude sound and followed her into the kitchen. ‘No, I don’t want tea, dammit. I don’t want to be civilised and polite. You’re lucky I’m not a violent man, because right now I could strangle you with my bare hands.’
She swallowed and turned away from him, fiddling with the kettle for something to do. She got mugs out, teabags, milk…
‘Are you going to talk to me or are you going to do that anyway?’ he growled.
‘Of course I’m going to talk to you, but I need tea.’
‘And I need to know why it’s taken over nine years to find out I’ve got a child!’
He slammed his fist down on the worktop next to her, making the mugs rattle, and she froze.
He was so angry, and what did she really know about him? He was a good doctor, an amazing lover, he had an outrageous sense of humour and his diet was appalling, but apart from that and the wanderlust, she knew nothing. What if he was violent? OK, he’d said he wasn’t and he’d never been anything but gentle with her physically, but what if he really was…?
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, moving away from her, ramming his hands through his hair and turning towards her with anguished eyes. ‘It’s just—to know that I have a child, that for nine years Alex has been growing up without me—why didn’t you tell me, Sal? How could you have kept that from me for nearly ten years? You should have told me!’
The injustice of that stung her, and she stood her ground. ‘What was I supposed to do, Jack? You were married to Clare! She was having your child. Did you really expect me to come after you and say, “Oh, by the way, Clare’s not the only woman having your child but, hey, that’s cool, you can have access whenever you want”? And anyway, by the time I realised it was morning sickness and not just stress, you’d gone.’
‘So you did the next best thing and married the first sucker to come along. Poor bastard. Does he think Alex is his child?’
She wrapped her arms round her waist and hugged herself. ‘No. Of course he doesn’t. He knew I was pregnant when he married me. It was only a few weeks before Alex was born. It was never a secret.’
‘And does he know that Alex is mine and not just some random stranger’s?’
She nodded. ‘He does now. He realised at the wedding—when we were dancing. But he didn’t know your name. I never told him.’ Mostly because even to think it, never mind speak it, had simply reopened the wound.
‘He must be some kind of a saint, marrying a woman pregnant with another man’s child.’
She bit her lip and turned back to the kettle. ‘I’m making tea. You can join me if you want.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, give me tea, then, if it makes you happy.’
‘I don’t care one way or the other. And David isn’t a saint. He’s just a good, decent man, and he was lonely, and so was I, and his wife had died and—well, it just seemed to be the sensible thing to do. And he’s been a good father—an excellent father—and I won’t hear a word against him. He’s been wonderful with Alex, and he couldn’t have loved him any more if he’d been his own. He’s brought him up really well.’
‘I can see that, and when I’m feeling rational, no doubt I’ll be grateful, but Alex is mine, and I should have been doing it.’
‘Except you were bringing up Chloe.’
He snorted and turned away, resting against the door-frame and staring down the garden, his face shielded from her so she couldn’t see his expression when he said, ‘So why didn’t you tell me? I mean then, OK, I can see it was difficult. I still think you were wrong not to tell me, but now? What about now? Surely you could have found some time in the past two and a half weeks to tell me. I mean, for heaven’s sake, we’ve seen enough of each other—or were you never going to tell me?’
She fished the teabags out and plopped them in the sink, then added milk. ‘I don’t know.’
He jerked away from the wall and spun round to face her. ‘What do you mean, you don’t know? How can you not know? He’s my son, dammit! I have a right to know—and so does he!’
‘Why?’ she asked flatly. ‘So you can go back to your wife and child and leave his life in even more chaos? I can’t let you do that to him. He’s gone through enough.’
But his eyes were puzzled, his brows drawn together in a frown. ‘I’m not going anywhere. I’m not with Clare anymore.’
She snorted. ‘I’ve heard that one before. Forgive me if I don’t believe it.’
‘Oh, you can believe it.
Clare and I are well and truly over—I thought you realised that.’
‘You’ve left her?’
‘No—she left me, about seven years ago. For Chloe’s father. They’ve been married for almost seven years.’
It took a moment for that to sink in, and then her tea slopped and splashed down her jeans, dribbling onto her feet. She put it down.
‘So—Chloe’s not yours? After all that?’ she whispered, and he shook his head.
He didn’t have a child. All those years she’d pictured him with Clare and their children, and Chloe hadn’t even been his. He need never have left, need never have married her and gone, could have been with Alex all this time.
‘Ironic, isn’t it?’ he said with a bitter little laugh. ‘She wasn’t pregnant with my child, and I married her, and yet all along you were.’
She shook her head. ‘Not all along. It must have been that last night. That was the other reason I couldn’t come after you and tell you, because I begged you to make love to me. It wasn’t as if it was your fault, and I didn’t feel I could ruin your chance of happiness with Clare because of something stupid I’d done. I knew you wouldn’t refuse me. Knew you couldn’t, and I had to touch you one last time, even though I knew you belonged to Clare. So I didn’t really give you a choice, and that took away my own.’
He laughed, a sad, abrupt sound that ended on what could have been a sob. ‘Oh, Sal, there’s always a choice. You didn’t need to beg me. I thought it was the last chance I had to touch you, and I ended up giving you a child that I didn’t even know about.’
He turned away, his shoulders heaving as he struggled for control, and then he drew in a steadying breath and turned back to her. ‘Can I see his bedroom?’
She searched his face and found anguish and desperation and a terrible need for knowledge. She could understand that. She would have felt exactly the same.
‘Of course,’ she said softly, and led him upstairs, pushing open the door of Alex’s room and standing back to let him go in. ‘This is it.’
His son’s bedroom.
He looked around, finding the typical clutter of a nine-year-old’s bedroom—books, toys, puzzles, clothes kicked under the edge of the bed, but nothing electronic, he was glad to see. There was a football poster on the wall, a dog-eared teddy on the bed. He picked it up and lay down on the bed, staring at the ceiling and seeing the room from Alex’s viewpoint.
His son.
He swallowed hard. All these years, since he’d discovered in the cruellest way that Chloe wasn’t his daughter, he’d been coming to terms with the realisation that he would never have a child. He’d known Sal was married, because he’d tried to contact her through a friend of a friend, and he’d been told she was married with a child and a baby on the way.
So any chance of happiness with her had withered and died at that point, and from then on he’d concentrated on living life to the full, going to dangerous places and doing crazy things, because after all who was there to care if he died—and all the time, he’d had a son.
Alex.
He said the name out loud, but his voice cracked and he turned his head towards the wall, staring at the poster above his head, trying to clear his vision. He felt a tear slide down his cheek and run into his hair, and then another, but he wouldn’t give way.
Not in front of Sal.
And then she touched him, her hand gentle on his arm. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Her voice was ragged with regret, and he turned his head and saw tears coursing down her cheeks, and somehow it didn’t matter any more if he cried because, after all, if his son wasn’t worth crying over, what was?
Still holding the tattered bear in his hand, he reached for her, drew her down into his arms and wept.
‘Tell me about him.’
His voice was still clogged with tears, but the first storm had passed, and she lay there in his arms and told him about her pregnancy, about Alex’s birth, about his childhood, pausing to answer his questions along the way.
‘Was David there?’
‘Yes,’ she told him, and his arms tightened.
‘Good,’ he said gruffly. ‘You shouldn’t have been alone.’
And then, ‘When did he get his first tooth? Say his first word? Take his first step?’
Later, he wanted to know other things, Alex’s favourites—colour, food, school subject, sport…
‘Football. I thought you would have worked that one out.’
He gave a rusty chuckle. ‘Yeah, I pretty much had, but I wondered if there was anything else.’
‘Anything fast-moving,’ she said with a smile. ‘He takes after you in that.’
‘I’d noticed he isn’t like Ben. It’s not just the looks—though how I didn’t see it the moment I set eyes on him I don’t know, because it’s just like looking in a mirror and seeing myself at the same age.’
He fell silent, then after an age he said, ‘You would have told me, wouldn’t you? Eventually?’
She sighed. ‘I don’t know. If I’d known about Clare, then, yes, of course, but I really didn’t. I thought you were still married.’
‘And you really thought I would have made love to you?’
‘Well, you did before—and I’m still married,’ she pointed out, but he shook his head.
‘Not really. Have you filed for divorce yet?’
‘Not yet. We’re doing the paperwork tomorrow night, and we’re going to the court to file the papers on Tuesday morning. It’s pretty straightforward, David says. We aren’t fighting about anything.’
He was silent for a moment, then said carefully, ‘Alex’s birth certificate…’
‘Is blank. I didn’t put David down as the father, if that’s what you’re asking, even though we were married by then.’
She felt the tension go out of him, as if that had been a hugely important fact he’d had to establish. For a while he said nothing, then he went on, ‘What was it like? Being married to him?’
She thought about it for a moment, then said softly, ‘Sad, at first. I missed you endlessly, but David was very gentle and understanding, and he’s been a good husband. Even if we never lit up the night sky, we loved each other. And in spite of what you said, it wasn’t a loveless marriage. We had a lot of good times.’
‘You were lucky,’ he said. ‘Right from the beginning I knew marrying Clare was a mistake.’
She shifted, turning so she could see his face, and she lifted her hand and touched his cheek, tracing the line of the tears. ‘Tell me about Chloe,’ she said gently, and he closed his eyes and swallowed.
‘She’s lovely—a lot like Katie. I adore her. I couldn’t love her any more if she was my own, but I don’t see her. Her father doesn’t like it, so Clare used to wangle a meeting between us once a year or so, but it upset her so much she stopped doing it. She sends me the odd DVD, though, and emails me photos occasionally, and it tears me apart.’
‘Hence all the running away.’
‘Hence all the running away,’ he echoed softly.
She felt her eyes fill again and, leaning closer, she brushed her lips against his cheek. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ he said, his voice uneven, his arms tightening around her and hugging her tenderly. ‘None of it’s your fault, or mine. It’s just one of those things that happens, and now we have to move on.’
She nodded, and then he echoed her thoughts.
‘So where do we go from here?’
‘Where do you want to go?’
‘Ultimately? I want him to know I’m his father. I take it he thinks David is?’
‘Yes. Well, it’s never come up. Why would he think anything else? He’s just a child. He doesn’t know about sex, about reproduction, not to the point of passing on genes. He knows people live together and have babies, but I don’t know if he knows much more than that. And his world’s already been shaken on its foundations.’
Jack nodded, his sigh soft with regret. ‘Do you think we’ll
ever be able to tell him?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said with complete honesty. ‘You need to get to know him first, and he needs to get to know you.’
‘And us?’ he said.
She looked up at him. ‘Us?’ she said. ‘What about us? As far as the children are concerned, there is no us.’
‘Yet,’ he said, and his eyes were serious. ‘But there will be.’
‘Not necessarily.’
‘Necessarily,’ he said, his voice uncompromising now, ‘because I’ve missed the first nine years of my son’s life, and I don’t intend to miss any more. So you’d better get used to having me around, Sal. I’m here for the long haul, and you might as well get used to it.’
The next few days were emotionally draining.
She gave Jack all the video footage of Alex’s childhood, and on Monday evening when David came round to sort out the divorce papers she put the boys to bed, took him into the study, shut the door and told him that Jack knew.
‘Oh, sweetheart,’ he said, his face creasing with concern, and he drew her into his arms and hugged her gently. ‘Are you OK?’
She shook her head and sniffed, and then found herself crying all over him. When she finally ground to a halt he mopped her up, held her at arm’s length and studied her face, and sighed softly. ‘We’ll have to tell Alex some time,’ he said, and she nodded.
‘Not yet, though. I want to know that Jack’s serious. He says he’s here to stay, and he and Clare aren’t married any more, which I didn’t know, so maybe he means it, but before we do anything to upset Alex I want time.’
‘Good. I agree. And if you want time alone together, just ask and we’ll have the boys.’
‘Why should we want time…?’ she began, but he just smiled wryly and shook his head.
‘I’ve known you a long time, and I’ve never seen you look the way you do now. You love him, don’t you? It hasn’t gone away.’
‘No, it hasn’t,’ she admitted, ‘but this is much more serious now than it ever was, because of Alex, and he’s the only one I can really afford to be concerned about.’
‘I agree—but the offer still stands. And if Jack feels the same way you do, then you really need to explore this relationship, because to have the two of you together would be the best thing for Alex in the long run, so give it a chance. For you, as well as for the boy. You’re a wonderful woman, and I’d love to see you happy.’
His Very Own Wife and Child Page 12
