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‘Fancy a small glass of wine? There’s a bit of white left, or I’ve bought some rosé.’
‘Oh. Rosé would be nice. Thanks,’ she said, and let it drop for now.
She was watching him.
He ignored her, handing her the stacked plates with their covers and swiftly twisting the cork out of the wine. By the time he’d poured it and sat down opposite her, she was busy concentrating on her food, and, with the smell of the sticky-toffee pudding drifting from its resting place on the side of the Aga, he thought he might have got away with it.
For now. But the DVD’s were a minefield, making him feel raw, and he wasn’t sure he could watch a film shot in special care. Not see how close they’d come—
‘Wow, that was gorgeous. Thanks, Max.’
He put aside his black thoughts and smiled at her. She looked lovely tonight, her hair loose around her shoulders and her eyes warm and gentle. If only…
No. Not yet. She’d said so, with knobs on, but, if he could only get that close to her, maybe he could convince her to come back to him.
‘It’s a pleasure,’ he said. ‘So—how about letting me thrash you at chess again?’
She hesitated for a second, then gave him a mischievous grin. ‘OK. If you don’t mind being beaten. I’ve remembered how your mind works.’
‘Faster than yours,’ he pointed out, and she stuck her tongue out at him and stood up.
‘Let’s see, shall we?’
‘Indeed. Best of three?’
‘You think it’ll take that many?’
‘No. Two will be more than enough to have you whimpering off with your tail between your legs,’ he retorted, following her with the dog in his wake.
That was a mistake, because he almost had her for the second time when Murphy stood up and walked round the table, and, seizing her chance, Julia called him all excitedly, and his tail thrashed and cleared the board.
‘Oh, dear, what a shame, we’ll have to start again,’ she said with a wicked grin, but he wasn’t having it.
‘I can remember where every piece was,’ he said, and proceeded to reset the chessmen in place.
‘Your knight wasn’t there.’
‘Yes it was.’
‘No. It was there. Your bishop was there.’
‘Rubbish. How could my bishop have got there? Let’s face it, Jules, I’ve thrashed you,’ he said, lounging back on the sofa and crossing his ankle over the other knee. ‘Just admit it.’
‘Never.’
‘I never had you down as a cheat,’ he said softly, and she stopped in her tracks and stared at him.
‘I wasn’t cheating! I was just teasing, Max. Trying to lighten the atmosphere.’
He swallowed. ‘What’s wrong with the atmosphere?’
‘I don’t know, but ever since I mentioned the DVDs you’ve been funny. Why don’t you want to see them?’
‘I do,’ he lied. Well, it wasn’t really a lie, but he was scared and sick inside, and emotions he’d buried too long ago were bubbling to the surface. And he didn’t want to deal with them.
She got up and cleared away the chess pieces, folded the lid of the coffee-table over and straightened it, then dimmed the lights and switched on the television. ‘OK, then,’ she said quietly. ‘This is the next one—the babies in hospital. We were about to watch it the other night when you walked out.’
‘Just put it on, Jules,’ he said gruffly, his left hand wrapped tightly round the stem of the wine glass, and, before he knew what she was going to do, she’d started the disc and had taken hold of his right hand, wrapping it in both of hers and snuggling up against his shoulder.
‘OK, that’s Ava. She was stronger. She was born first, and, although she was smaller, she was better developed and she’s heavier now than Libby. And that’s Libby. She had to have much more help with her breathing, and there were a few days when—when we thought we might lose her,’ she said a little unsteadily, and he realised she was struggling just as much as he was. Her fingers tightened on his, and he squeezed them back, as much for himself as for her.
‘They look tiny.’
‘They were. Twins are always smaller. They’ve only got half as much room, so considering that they do pretty well, but by the time they were delivered my uterus had reached its limit and it was in danger of rupturing. They had to do two operations to free the adhesions, and then finally they couldn’t release any more and they had to deliver them. But I hung on as long as I could.’
‘It sounds awful,’ he said, wincing at the thought. It must have been so painful. Why on earth hadn’t she contacted him? Although God alone knows what use he would have been to her, haunted by his demons.
‘It was. And I was so scared. I nearly called you. If you’d rung before, I would have done, but then my phone was stolen and all I could do was get by, minute by minute, and then the crisis was over.’
‘I would have come,’ he said gruffly.
‘Would you?’
She turned and looked at him, and he met her gentle, searching eyes briefly before he turned away. ‘Yes,’ he said with conviction. ‘I would.’ Even though it would have killed him.
‘Max, can I ask you something?’
He looked back at her, and his heart started to pound. ‘Sure.’
‘Who’s Debbie?’
The wine sloshed over the rim of the glass, soaking his hand and running over the arm of the sofa. He leapt to his feet and got a cloth, dabbing and blotting and rubbing with it until she took it out of his hand and pulled him back down gently onto the sofa beside her.
‘Max, forget that, talk to me. Who is she? Why was your mother so surprised that I’d never heard of her? And what did she do to you that’s made you so shut down inside?’
He stared at her, his breath rasping, then he closed his mouth and swallowed. He could do this. He owed it to her—and he should have told her years ago.
‘She was my girlfriend,’ he said, his voice sounding strange to his ears. Rough and unused. Like his feelings. ‘She was pregnant, and she got pre-eclampsia. They did a C-section, but she was fitting when they took her into Theatre, and she died. So did the baby. My son. He lived for fifteen hours and seven minutes. He was twenty-six weeks. That’s why the DVD—’
He clenched his jaw, holding back the tears, keeping it all under control. For an age she said nothing, but then she dragged in a shaky breath and said, ‘Did he have a name? Your baby?’
‘Ye—’ He swallowed and tried again. ‘Yes. I called him Michael. It was my father’s name.’
‘Oh, Max.’
The tears welled in her eyes and splashed down over her cheeks, and she covered her mouth with her hand and tried to hold in the sob.
He couldn’t look at her. Couldn’t watch her crying for Debbie and their tiny son, or for him, so locked in grief that he couldn’t even watch a film of his own daughters without replaying his baby’s short, desperate hours. He couldn’t watch it, or her, because, if he did, if he let the feelings up to the surface, they’d tear him apart like they had before, and he couldn’t take it all over again.
‘Oh, Max,’ she murmured, and he felt her fingers stroke away the tears that he could feel running soundlessly down his cheeks.
‘It’s OK, Max, I’ve got you,’ she said gently, and he realised that, far from tearing him apart, it felt good to let it go, because Jules was with him, and he wasn’t alone any more.
And so with a quiet sigh he turned into her arms, and for the first time in fifteen years he let the tears flow unchecked.
CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_f71bd798-91e6-5bd8-8df5-38fcfb1cb421)
HE SLEPT until nine the following morning, the only time she’d ever known him to sleep late.
Even jet-lagged, he’d never slept for so long, so she crept into his room at eight to check that he was still breathing and found him lying spreadeagled on his front across the bed, snoring softly. The covers had slipped off one side, but the room was warm, so even though he was naked he wouldn’t be cold.
The urge to pull the covers up over him and creep in beside him and take him in her arms almost overwhelmed her, but instead she tiptoed out and went back downstairs and put the washing on, then let Murphy out into the garden for a romp. He brought her his ball on a rope, and she threw it for him a few times, but it was chilly out, and she didn’t like to leave the girls. They were getting so adventurous, and even in the playpen she didn’t trust them not to get up to mischief.
So she went back inside, and she put the radio on quietly and folded the washing that had aired overnight on the front of the Aga and made herself a coffee. Then, just when she was convincing herself he hadn’t been breathing at all and she’d imagined it, she heard the boards creak and the water running in the bathroom, and she gave a sigh of relief and relaxed.
They’d talked for hours last night. He’d told her all about it; about how he’d met Debbie, and how excited they’d been when they’d found out she was pregnant. And he talked about little Michael, and how he’d held him as he died, and how he’d vowed then never to put another woman at such risk.
‘So it wasn’t that you didn’t want children?’ she’d asked, pushing him, and he’d shaken his head emphatically.
‘Oh, no. I would have loved children, and the girls—Well, they’re just amazing. The most precious gift imaginable. I just can’t believe we’ve got them. But I don’t know if I could have coped with the pregnancy.’
‘So what would you have done if I’d told you?’ she’d asked, and he’d shrugged.
‘I don’t know. I don’t know if I could have gone through all those weeks of waiting, knowing it wasn’t going to be straightforward, watching you suffer, waiting for something awful to happen. I think it would have torn me apart.’
‘And if we were to have another?’
His eyes had been tortured. ‘I don’t know if I could take it. I’d rather not find out. We’ve been so lucky to have the girls. Let’s not push it.’
Not that it was really an issue. She didn’t really want to get pregnant again after the last time, and the doctors hadn’t seemed to think it would be a good idea, but in any case, until their relationship was a great deal more secure, there was no way she was going to risk it.
Even assuming she let him get that close.
But one thing she knew. She wasn’t going to let him sweep it all back under the carpet again. She was going to make him talk about it—about Debbie, and the baby, and how he felt about it—if it killed him. He owed it to them not to let them be forgotten, and so their memory would be treasured, and kept alive, and their girls would know one day that, a long time ago, they’d had a brother.
Oh, hell.
She scrubbed the tears from her eyes and looked up as he walked in, and he took one look at her and sighed gently.
‘Oh, Jules. Are you OK?’
‘Sorry. I was just thinking about when we tell the girls, when they’re older.’
He gave a strangled laugh. ‘Talk about crossing bridges before you get to them. Anyway, never mind that. What does a man have to do round here to get a cup of tea?’
‘Put the kettle on?’ she suggested, and he put it on the hob and crouched down and said hello to the babies, who sat happily in the playpen chewing on blocks.
‘I think they’re teething,’ he said in wonder, and she laughed and got up.
‘Of course they’re teething. They’ll do little else for the next umpteen weeks. Apart from try and escape from whatever means of restraint we put them in.’
‘We’ll have to try handcuffs,’ he said, and she put her hand over his mouth.
‘Shh,’ she said. ‘Not in front of the children.’
And he laughed, the first real, proper laugh she’d heard from him in years, and then the laughter faded and their eyes locked, and he stopped breathing.
She knew that, because she could see his chest freeze, and his heart was pounding, the pulse visible in the hollow of his throat, beating in time with hers. And then he seemed to come out of the trance and dragged in a breath and looked away. Somehow that freed her, too, so she made tea and put bread in the mesh toast-holder that went under the cover of the hotplate, and when the water was boiling she made a pot of tea and put the wire holder under the cover to toast the bread—and all the time all she could think about was the sound of his laugh, and how the tears last night seemed to have freed his emotions.
Did that mean he’d be able to play?
She hoped so. She’d always known there was another side of him, one he kept shut down, and she couldn’t wait to meet the other Max.
‘So what are we going to do today?’ she asked.
‘What’s it like outside?’
‘Cold. Bright and sunny, but cold. The wind’s chilly.’
‘So—something indoors? How about going to find a better stairgate?’
‘That’s a good idea. And they could do with some more clothes, if we’re going to one of the big shops. They’re growing like weeds.’
‘That’ll be chewing the loo brush,’ he said drily, and she stared at him in horror.
‘What?’
‘Ava,’ he told her, and she looked down at her elder daughter in the playpen, happily gumming away on a plastic toy, and felt sick.
‘When?’
‘The other day in the bathroom. Don’t worry, she didn’t actually get it in her mouth,’ he said, and she realised he’d been joking and felt her shoulders sag.
‘Is that how it ended up on the window sill?’
‘Yup.’
‘Oh, the little horror. She’s never done that before.’
‘Probably because you’re more efficient with them than I am. She was at a loose end for rather too long while I prevaricated about the temperature of the water. So—shopping?’
She stared at him. He sounded—good grief—almost enthusiastic. He’d never sounded enthusiastic about shopping before. He’d hardly ever gone shopping before. Except for clothes, and that was more a case of visiting his tailor for suits and shirts. She’d always bought anything less critical for him, and always in a stolen moment from the office during a meeting that he was attending without her.
Quite simply, there had never been time for shopping in their old life, and, if he was looking forward to it now, well, she wasn’t going to waste the experience.
‘Let’s go to Lakeside,’ she suggested. ‘There are all sorts of shops there, and it’s all under cover, so we don’t have to worry about the babies getting cold. We can make a day of it.’
She hadn’t been joking.
