The Secret in His Heart

by Caroline Anderson

  ‘So how was the cabin last night?’ he asked as she plonked the salad bowl down on the newly evicted garden table. ‘You haven’t mentioned it so I imagine it wasn’t too dreadful. Unless it was so awful you can’t talk about it?’

  ‘No, not at all, it was fine. Very nice, actually. It’s good to have direct access to the garden for Saffy, although I have to admit she slept on the bed last night. I’m sorry about that.’

  ‘I should think so. Shocking,’ he said, his eyes crinkling with amusement.

  Connie frowned. ‘She’s not supposed to,’ she said sternly. ‘She’s supposed to have manners.’

  The crinkles turned to laughter as he helped himself to the salad. ‘Yeah. I’m sure she is. She’s not supposed to steal, either, but I wouldn’t beat yourself up over it. The family dog slept on my bed his entire life, and then his successor took over.’

  ‘Well, I don’t want Saffy doing that. She’s too big and she hogs the bed.’

  ‘She can’t be worse than Joe. I remember sharing a tent with him in our teens. Nightmare.’ And then he looked at her, rammed a hand through his hair and sighed sharply. ‘Sorry. That was tactless.’

  ‘True, though. He did hog the bed. At least the dog doesn’t snore.’ She twiddled her spaghetti for a moment, then glanced up at him. ‘James, about earlier. I know it wasn’t my fault Steve died. I was just raw. It was just—so wrong.’

  ‘It’s always wrong. Stuff happens, Connie. You know that.’

  She held his gaze for a long time, then turned slowly away. ‘I know. I’m sorry I got all wet on you.’

  ‘Don’t be. You can always talk to me.’

  ‘You can talk to me, too,’ she pointed out, and he looked up from his plate and met her eyes. His smile was rueful.

  ‘I’m not good at talking.’

  ‘I know. You weren’t nine years ago, and you haven’t got better.’

  ‘I have. Just not at the talking.’

  ‘I rest my case.’

  ‘Physician, heal thyself?’

  She held his eyes. ‘Maybe we can heal each other.’

  His gaze remained steady for an age, and then he smiled sadly.

  ‘I wish.’

  ‘Will you tell me about her?’ she asked gently. ‘About how she died?’

  Could he? Could he find the words to tell her? Maybe. And maybe it was time he talked about it. Told someone, at least, what had happened.

  But not yet. He wasn’t ready yet.

  ‘Maybe one day,’ he said gruffly, then he got up and cleared the table, and she watched him go.

  Would he tell her? Could he trust her enough to share something so painful with her?

  It was a nice idea. Something from cloud cuckoo land, probably. There was no way James would have let anyone in in the past, and she wasn’t sure he’d changed that much.

  He stuck his head back out of the kitchen door.

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Lovely. I’ll have a flat white, since you’re offering.’

  She heard the snort as his head disappeared back into the kitchen, and she smiled sadly. She could hear him working, hear the tap of the jug, the sound of the frother, the sound of Saffy’s bowl skidding round the floor as he fed her something. Probably the leftover spaghetti. She’d like that. She’d be his slave for life if she got the chance.

  The light was fading, and he paused on the veranda, mugs in hand. ‘Why don’t you put Saffy on a lead and we’ll take our coffee up on the sea wall? It’s lovely up there at night.’

  It was. The seagulls were silent at last, and all they could hear was the gentle wash of the waves on the shingle. The sea was almost flat calm, and the air was still.

  Saffy lay down beside him, her nose over the edge of the wall, and they sat there side by side in the gathering dusk drinking their coffee and listening to the sound of the sea and just being quiet.

  Inevitably her mind went back over the events of the day, and sadness came to the fore again.

  ‘How are Steve’s parents going to feel, James?’ she asked softly. ‘How will they get over it?’

  ‘They won’t. You don’t ever get over the loss of a child. You just learn to live with it.’

  It was too dark to read his expression but his voice sounded bleak, and she frowned.

  He’d never had a child. She knew that. And yet—he sounded as if he understood—really understood, in the way you only could if you’d been through it. Or perhaps he knew someone who had.

  And maybe he was just empathetic and she was being ridiculous.

  She was about to change the subject and tell him she’d seen David and Molly when he started to speak again.

  ‘It’s probably time I told you about Cathy.’

  She sucked in a quiet breath. ‘Only if you want to.’

  He made a sound that could have been a laugh if it hadn’t been so close to despair, but he didn’t speak again, just sat there for so long that she really thought he’d changed his mind, but then he started to talk, his voice low, hesitant as he dug out the words from deep inside.

  ‘She wasn’t well. She felt sick, tired, her breasts were tender—classic symptoms of early pregnancy, so she did a test and it was positive.’

  ‘She was pregnant?’ she whispered, and felt sick with horror. ‘Joe never told me that—!’

  ‘He didn’t know. He was away at the time and I didn’t tell anyone. Anyway, there wasn’t really time. She was nearly twelve weeks by the time she realised she was pregnant, and she was delighted, we both were, but she felt dreadful. By sixteen weeks I thought she ought to be feeling better. She’d been to see the doctor, seen the midwife, been checked for all the normal pregnancy things, but she was getting worse, if anything. So she went back to the doctor, and he referred her to the hospital for tests, and they discovered she’d got cancer. They never found the primary, but she was riddled with it, and over the next six weeks I watched her fade away. She was twenty-two weeks pregnant when she died.’

  Too soon for the baby to be viable. She closed her eyes, unable to look at him, but she could hear the pain in his voice, in every word he spoke, as raw as the day it had happened, and the tears cascaded down her cheeks.

  His voice was so bleak, and she could have kicked herself. He’d lost a child, albeit an unborn one, and she felt sure he still grieved for it. No wonder he hadn’t wanted to help her have a baby. How must he have felt when she’d blundered in and asked him to help her?

  Awful.

  He must have been plunged straight back there into that dreadful time. Not that it was ever far away, she knew from experience, but even so.

  She shook her head, fresh tears scalding her eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said softly, ‘so, so sorry. I should never have asked you about the baby thing. If I’d known about Cathy, if I’d had the slightest idea that she was pregnant, I would never have asked you—never—’

  His hand reached out in the darkness, wiping the tears from her cheeks, and he pulled her into his arms and held her.

  ‘It’s OK. You weren’t to know, and I’m used to it, Connie. I live in a world filled with children. I can’t avoid the subject, try as I might.’

  ‘No. I guess not, but I’m still sorry I hurt you so much by bringing it up.’

  ‘But you did bring it up, and because of that you’re here, and maybe you’re right, even if I can’t make that dream come true for you, maybe we can help each other heal.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ she asked sadly, wondering if anything could take away a pain that great.

  ‘Well, I’m talking to you now. That’s a first. I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t want their pity. I didn’t want anything. I lost everything on that day. My wife, my child, my future—all at once, everything was gone and I wanted to die, too. There was no way I could talk a
bout it, no way I could stay there. I had nothing to live for, but I was alive, and so I packed up the house, sold it, gave everything away and went travelling, but it didn’t really help. It just passed the time, gave me a bit of distance from it geographically and emotionally, and I worked and partied my way around the world. And all the time I felt nothing. A bit of me’s still numb, I think. I guess you can understand that.’

  She nodded. ‘Oh, yes. Yes, I can understand that. It’s how I felt after Joe died—just—nothing. Empty. Just a huge void. But at least you had the chance to say goodbye. That must have been a comfort.’

  ‘No. Not really,’ he said softly, surprising her. ‘I didn’t even have the chance to say hello to our baby, never mind goodbye, and with Cathy—well, you can’t ever really say goodbye I don’t think, not in any meaningful way, because even though you know it’s happening, you still hope they might be wrong, that there’s been a mistake, that there’ll be a miracle cure. You just have to say the things you need to say over and over, until they can’t understand any more because the drugs have stolen them from you, and then you wait until someone comes and tells you they’ve gone, and even then you don’t believe it, even though you were sitting there watching it happen and you knew it was coming.’

  She nodded. ‘I did that with Joe,’ she told him softly. ‘I didn’t watch him die, but from the moment I met him I waited for it, knowing it was coming, unable to say goodbye because I kept hoping it wouldn’t be necessary, that it wouldn’t happen, and in the end it took almost seven years. I always knew I’d lose him, just not when, so I never did say goodbye.’

  He sighed and took her hands with his free one, folding them in his, warming them as they lay in her lap. ‘I should never have introduced you. You could have been happily married to someone else, have half a dozen kids by now, not be here like this trying to convince me to give you the child you wanted with Joe.’

  ‘I won’t ask you again. I feel dreadful—’

  ‘Shh.’ He pressed a finger to her lips, then took it away and kissed her, just lightly, the slightest brush of his lips on hers. ‘It’s OK, Connie. Truly. I’d rather you’d come to me like that than call me one day and tell me you’d been to a clinic and you were pregnant. At least this way I’m forewarned that it’s on the cards.’

  ‘I’m sorry you don’t approve.’

  ‘It’s not that I don’t approve, Connie. I just don’t want you to make a mistake, to rush into it.’

  ‘It’s hardly a rush. We started trying four years ago. That’s a lot of time to think about it.’

  ‘I wish I’d known.’

  ‘I wish you’d known. I wish we’d known about Cathy. Maybe we could have helped you.’

  ‘We’ll have to look after each other, then, won’t we?’

  Could they? Maybe. She sucked in a breath and let it go, letting it take some of the pain away.

  ‘Sounds like a plan. I saw Molly’s husband today, by the way, out on a run,’ she went on, after a long and pensive silence. ‘I didn’t know he’d lost his leg. Is he ex-army?’

  ‘No. He got in a muddle with a propeller in Australia.’

  ‘Ouch. Some muddle.’

  ‘Evidently. He doesn’t let it hold him up much, though. I run with him sometimes and believe me, he’s pretty fit. Oh, and incidentally, Molly’s having a private view on Friday. She wants us to go.’

  ‘Yes, she mentioned it. She said she’d told you to tell me.’

  ‘Sorry. Slipped my mind,’ he said, but she had a feeling he was lying.

  ‘So, how’s the rota looking for Friday?’ she asked lightly.

  He turned his head, the moon coming out from behind the clouds just long enough for her to see the wry grin. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be there and so will you. And Molly said wear something pretty, by the way.’

  She grinned back at him, feeling the sombre mood slip gently from her shoulders, taking the shadows of the past with it. ‘Is that you or me?’ she teased.

  He chuckled, his laugh warm, wrapping round her in the darkness of the night just like the arm that was still draped round her shoulders, holding her close. ‘Oh, I think you do pretty rather better than me,’ he said softly, and she joined in the laughter, but something in his voice made her laugh slightly breathless.

  She looked up at him, their eyes meeting in the pale light of the moon, and for an endless moment she thought he was going to kiss her again, but then he turned away and she forced herself to breathe again.

  Of course he hadn’t been going to kiss her! Not like that. Why on earth would he do that? He didn’t have anything to do with women, he’d told her that, and certainly not her.

  ‘I’ll try not to let you down,’ she said, her voice unsteady, and his wry chuckle teased her senses.

  ‘Oh, you won’t let me down, Connie,’ he said softly, and she swallowed hard.

  Was he flirting with her? Was she with him? Surely not. Or were they? Both of them?

  She gave up talking after that in case it got her into any more trouble, just closed her eyes and listened to the sea, her fingers still linked with his, his other arm still round her, taking the moment at face value.

  One day at a time. One hour at a time.

  Or even just a stolen ten minutes on a dark, romantic night with an old friend. Maybe more than an old friend.

  Right now, tonight, she’d settle for that.

  CHAPTER SIX

  HE FELT SLIGHTLY shell-shocked.

  He’d come home that evening uncertain of what he’d find after the rough start she’d had, and he’d walked into a warm welcome, food ready for the table, and company.

  Good company. Utterly gorgeous company, if he was honest. She’d been for a run, she said, and she’d obviously showered because she smelled amazing. Her hair had drifted against him at one point, and he’d caught the scent of apples. Such a simple thing, but it made his gut tighten inexplicably.

  It had been so long since anyone other than his mother or the wife of a friend had cooked for him—except, of course, that Connie was the wife of a friend.

  Only this evening it hadn’t felt like it, not really. It had felt more like two old friends who were oddly drawn to each other, sharing a companionable evening that had touched in turn on trivia and tragedy and somehow, at points, on—romance? Innuendo? A little light flirtation?

  The food had been simple but really tasty, and they’d sat there over it and talked about all sorts of things. Friendship, and Joe’s sleeping habits and the dog’s, and how he ought to talk more. How they could help each other heal.

  He still wasn’t sure about the possibility of that. Some wounds, surely, never truly healed. Acceptance, he’d discovered after a while, was the new happy, and that had seemed enough—until now. And suddenly, because of Connie, he was wondering if there might be more out there for him than just this endless void.

  With her?

  No. That was just fantasy. Wasn’t it? He didn’t know, but he’d felt comfortable with her in a way he hadn’t felt comfortable with anyone for years, possibly ever, and it wasn’t because the subjects were comfortable, because they weren’t.

  They’d talked about Steve and how his parents would be feeling, and then somehow he’d found himself able to tell her about Cathy and the baby. He still couldn’t quite believe that, couldn’t believe he’d let her in, shared it so easily.

  And it had been easy, in a way. Easier than he’d thought, although it had made her feel guilty. Still, at least now perhaps she’d understand his reluctance to discuss the baby thing, the emotional minefield that it meant for him, and it would help her understand his refusal.

  Then they’d talked about Molly’s private view, and her looking pretty, and he’d flirted with her. What had he been thinking about? He must have been mad, and he’d come so close to kissing her. N
ot the light brush of his lips on hers. That didn’t count, although it had nearly killed him to pull away. But properly.

  He let his breath out on a short sigh and closed his eyes. Too close. Thankfully it had been dark, just a sliver of moonlight, so maybe he’d got away with it, but Friday was going to be a trial, with her all dressed up.

  He was actually looking forward to it—not to the art, he’d meant what he’d said about not needing pictures, but to seeing Connie wearing whatever she’d decided was ‘pretty’.

  Hell, she’d look pretty in a bin bag. She couldn’t help it. The anticipation kept him on edge all night, humming away in the background like a tune stuck in his head, and when he slept, she haunted his dreams, floating through them in some gauzy confection that left nothing to the imagination.

  He got up at six, had a cold shower to dowse his raging hormones and met her in the kitchen. In her pyjamas, if you could call them that, which totally negated the effects of the shower.

  ‘You’re up early,’ he said, noticing the kettle was already on.

  ‘I’ve been up for ages. I couldn’t sleep.’

  ‘Worrying about work?’

  ‘No. Saffy snoring on the bed. I take back what I said about Joe, she’s much worse. She really has no manners.’

  He laughed then, glancing down at Saffy who was lying on the floor and watching him hopefully. Better than studying Connie in her pyjamas. It was going to kill him, having this encounter every morning.

  ‘I haven’t done anything about getting you a kettle and toaster,’ he said, changing the subject abruptly. ‘I’ll order them today.’

  ‘Don’t do that, I’ve got both of them in storage. I’ve got all sorts of things in storage, I just haven’t dealt with them. They don’t give you long to move out of married quarters, and I just packed everything up and got it out of the way.’

  He eyed her thoughtfully. ‘Maybe you need to deal with it.’

  She nodded. ‘Probably. I would, if I had anywhere to put the stuff.’

  ‘You could bring it here. Put it in a spare room. I have three, after all. You’re welcome to at least two.’