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‘Callie?’ he called as soon as he let himself into the house, feeling more upbeat than he had in a very long time. ‘Sweetheart? Where are you?’
The silence almost echoed around him with a strangely ominous feeling.
‘Callie?’ He could hear the sharper edge to his voice this time as his feet took him swiftly down the polished hallway along the original floorboards that they’d laboriously refinished. A quick glance in either direction as he passed the open doors told him that she wasn’t in the lounge or the spacious study they shared, or in the formal dining room they only used when they were entertaining.
‘Sweetheart?’ He pushed the kitchen door wide and shuddered when he took in the almost clinical neatness of the whole room. Every surface gleamed and there wasn’t even a teaspoon on the work surface where she always made her last cup of instant coffee before she left the house each day. There certainly wasn’t any evidence of hot buttered toast.
Panic roared through him and in an instant he was racing back down the hall and taking the stairs two and even three at a time in his desperate need to get to their bedroom and the en suite bathroom.
‘She wouldn’t,’ he told himself fiercely, fighting with a sudden nightmare vision of his wife’s lifeless body sprawled across their bed or on the bathroom floor.
It was a heart-stopping body blow to realise that he might have drifted that far away from her. He honestly didn’t know if she’d become so depressed that she might attempt suicide, but he prayed that her deep reverence for life would have prevented her taking that awful step.
‘Oh, thank you, God,’ he whispered as he clung to the door-frame, tears of relief already starting to flow when he realised that she wasn’t there…wasn’t anywhere in the house, in fact.
It took him several minutes to compose himself and a cold facecloth to remove the evidence of his loss of control before he dragged his heavy feet across to slump on the side of the bed.
‘So, where are you, sweetheart? Where have you gone?’ he asked the silent room, with a sudden memory of the laughter that had filled it when they’d been decorating it together, getting more paint on each other than the walls and then having to spend ages under the shower washing each other off…just to be certain there were no spots of paint remaining, of course.
His eyes drifted across to the photograph in the silver frame that graced the dressing-table, searching out the bright, laughing face he loved so much…and found it covered by the envelope propped against it with his own name written across it in her familiar script.
Dread wrapped around his heart as he reached for it, his hand visibly trembling as he pulled the single sheet of paper out and fumbled to unfold it.
There was no heading to the letter. No ‘Dear Con’, ‘Darling’ or ‘My Love’, the way she always began the most mundane of notes. Before he could even focus on what she’d written his heart was breaking to see the marks on the paper where her tears had fallen.
‘I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to admit that I’ll never be able to give you what you want,’ she said in the frighteningly brief missive. ‘It’s best if I go away so you can start the divorce proceedings. Let Martin know what you want to do. I won’t fight it. Be happy.’
‘No!’ he roared in disbelief. ‘Callie, no!’ And he felt his heart shatter in agony.
Callie turned her face to the window as the woman beside her got out of her seat and set off to leave the coach, the bulging photo album detailing every moment of her grandchildren’s lives back safely in her handbag.
She rested her head against the glass, hoping that her next companion on this never-ending journey would take the hint and leave her alone with her thoughts.
She didn’t want to know about anyone else’s problems. She only wanted to know how she was going to cope with her own…how she was going to find the will to draw her next breath when she’d just walked away from everything she’d ever loved.
Not that it had been an easy decision, far from it. In fact, she was ashamed to realise how selfish she’d been for so long, wasting years and an almost obscene amount of money trying to force her body to do something it would never be able to manage—give them the child they’d both wanted.
She tried to stop the image forming inside her head but it was already there, indelibly, for the rest of her life.
The tears began again as she remembered how grey and still her baby had been when he’d finally been born.
He’d been perfect. Absolutely perfect in every way, with ten tiny fingers and toes each with the most minute nail already there and growing. She would never know whether he’d inherited Con’s deep blue eyes or her own grey ones or whether he would have the mischievous dimples that punctuated her husband’s cheeks whenever he smiled.
Not that he’d been smiling much in the last four months and twenty-three days. It seemed as if they’d both forgotten how to do that when they’d seen that precious little image on the screen and realised that the heart had no longer been beating.
The memory was still so painful that she could barely draw breath, her own heart feeling as though some alien force was crushing it inside her chest. What right did it have to beat when her baby’s didn’t? Why was it that even the youngest teenage girl could manage to get pregnant, seemingly with even the most meaningless of sexual encounters, while she…she couldn’t carry a child for the man she’d loved from the first moment their eyes had met, the only man she’d ever loved.
No more crying, she told herself, suddenly remembering that she mustn’t do anything to draw too much attention to herself. Concentrate on something else—except there wasn’t much else to look at in the barren wasteland of a bus and coach depot other than the people in the queue waiting to get on.
She hastily dragged her eyes away from the young woman struggling to fold up her baby’s pushchair single-handed with the child cradled in the other arm. She wouldn’t allow herself so much as a glimpse of the perfect little face so she would have no idea if it was a girl or a boy, if it was about the same age that her…
No! Concentrate on the two girls chattering brightly together. Were they friends setting off for a day’s shopping in the next big town or was this just the most convenient way for them to get to and from work each day?
The two older women in front of them were talking equally animatedly. Were they friends taking the trip together or were each of them like her previous garrulous companion, lucky to have found someone equally inclined to chat?
And the cadaverous young man with the tattoo sprawling up one side of his grubby neck? It was all too easy after spending time as an A and E doctor to spot the fact that he was a drug addict, but whether he was using illegal Class A drugs or had gone onto a methadone programme was more difficult to tell at first glance. The ravages of what he’d been doing to his body weren’t.
Then, in front of him, there was the white-faced young woman obviously trying hard not to cry as the stern-faced man spoke to her through a mouth thinned by a mixture of anger and exasperation. It must be hard for him to keep his voice down so the rest of the queue couldn’t hear what he was saying. He looked like the sort of man used to having his orders obeyed without question.
Apparently unaware that the passengers already on the bus had a bird’s-eye view of those waiting to join them, the man took out his wallet and grabbed several high-denomination bills, folding them twice, neatly, before he tried to press them into the girl’s hand.
Initially, she refused to take them, shaking her head fiercely, and the revulsion on her face was a far clearer indication of what was happening than any words she was saying. But, of course, the older man had made up his mind and with a few terse words denied her objections and thrust the money into her hand before he abruptly turned on his heel and strode away.
And then it was time for them to board and Callie watched out of the corner of her eye to see where each of them ended up.
Thankfully, the young woman with the baby decided to sit somewhere near the front. Callie didn’t know if she could have borne it if she’d chosen to sit beside her for the next hour or two. She wouldn’t have been able to resist the temptation of looking and longing and…
The two young women chattered their way towards the back of the coach, leaving a trail of perfume in their wake, unlike the cadaverous young man. She was uncomfortably aware of holding her breath as he stood for several seconds beside the empty seat next to her, but he, too, passed on down the coach.
It was the white-faced young woman who finally slid herself into place beside her and it was only then that Callie saw what hadn’t been visible while the youngster had been part of the queue. She was pregnant.
Callie drew in a sharp breath as the shock hit her, and closed her eyes while she battled against the jealous tears with the realisation that she seemed to be showing about the same as she had, just before…
‘It’s not catching, you know,’ the young woman snapped with an attempt at bravado that was completely destroyed by the wobble in her voice.
‘Unfortunately,’ Callie muttered, even as she felt guilt that her reaction had made the young woman feel uncomfortable.
‘You…what?’ Her garishly painted mouth fell open and eyes heavily outlined with kohl grew wide. ‘Did you say…unfortunately?’
‘Yes,’ Callie admitted uncomfortably, wishing she’d either kept her mouth shut or stuck to a simple apology for her apparent disapproval. Now she was going to have to make some sort of explanation even though she knew it was going to hurt more than ripping a scab off a wound that had barely started healing. ‘I lost my baby nearly five months ago. I was just over halfway through the pregnancy.’
‘Oh…! I’m sorry if it makes you…Look, would you rather I asked someone else to swap seats with me?’ she asked earnestly, revealing a far more considerate side than the initial belligerent attitude would have suggested.
There was a sudden rumble of sound as the driver started the engine and an explosive hiss of air as he released the brakes to start the next stage of the journey.
‘It’s too late now,’ Callie said, resigned to a companion who was managing, in her early teens, to do what she, a mature professional, couldn’t do with all the expertise of her health service colleagues behind her. ‘You can’t go changing seats while the coach is moving. If the driver had to brake suddenly you might injure the baby if you hit something.’
The youngster stared at her in surprise then she pressed trembling lips together and Callie was startled to see that her eyes were swimming with tears.
‘I’m sorry. Did I say something to upset you?’ Callie was suddenly concerned that she must have inadvertently hit a sensitive nerve.
‘No. It’s just…You said that as if you actually care what happens to it…to the baby,’ she said in a choked voice.
‘Of course I do. Anybody would,’ Callie said, knowing that this wasn’t the time to talk about her own desperate longing for a child.
‘Not everybody,’ she snapped bitterly, then suddenly seemed to remember that they were surrounded on all sides and lowered her voice so that her words would be masked by the sound of the other voices around them and the rumble of the coach itself. ‘My stepfather gave me money for an abortion even though he knows it’s too far along. He said if you pay enough money any doctor would do it.’
‘Most doctors wouldn’t touch it with a bargepole even if you offered them the moon on a silver platter,’ Callie said quietly. In her days on Obs and Gyn she’d seen botched abortions go horribly wrong. ‘And why would you want to abort the baby when there are so many people desperate to adopt?’
‘I don’t want to give it away,’ she said fiercely, a protective hand curving over her noticeably swollen belly even as she lost her battle with the tears. ‘But I’ve got no way of keeping it, have I? Not at my age. I’m still at school and a Saturday job won’t pay enough to find somewhere to live.’
‘What about your mum? Won’t she help you?’
‘Not her!’ she said, bitterness and devastation combining corrosively in those two words. ‘She kicked me out when she found out. She would have killed me if she knew it was his…my stepfather’s.’
Callie thought it would have been more to the point if the mother had killed the stepfather who’d been having sex with her underage daughter, but now wasn’t the time to voice those sentiments. She fished a packet of paper hankies out of her pocket and offered them to her companion.
‘Listen, we’re going to be sitting together for at least an hour. Shall we introduce ourselves? I’m Callie,’ she said, holding out her hand.
‘Steph…Stephanie,’ she said, and blew her nose furiously. ‘I didn’t want to cry, not over them.’
‘Hey, don’t knock crying. Sometimes it’s good to let some of the emotions out.’
‘It doesn’t solve anything, though—like, what am I going to do when the coach arrives at the depot? I’ve got nowhere to go and no one to ask.’
‘That makes two of us,’ Callie said, surprising herself.
‘You…what?’ Steph blinked. ‘You’re kidding! You’re a grown-up and grown-ups always know where they’re going and what they’re going to do.’
‘Newsflash, Steph. Grown-ups are just as mixed up as anybody else. They’ve just had a bit more practice at hiding it.’
CHAPTER TWO
‘SO, WHERE do we go?’ Steph said when the two of them had been reunited with their luggage.
Callie almost smiled when she realised that they had both opted for almost identical rucksacks in which to carry their worldly belongings.
‘First, we need to find somewhere to stay the night,’ Callie said, looking out at the rapidly darkening sky beyond the enormous doorway to the coach terminus. They’d managed to outrun the threatened bad weather so far, but it didn’t look as if it would be long before they’d get soaked if they hadn’t found somewhere. ‘That might be a good place to start,’ she suggested, pointing to the internet café on the other side of the road.
‘Uh, I don’t think the café will stay open all night,’ Steph said uneasily. ‘I’ve got a bit of money to find a cheap hotel or something. I told you my stepfather gave it to me for the abortion but I reckon it was a bribe, too, so I wouldn’t tell Mum it’s his.’
Callie chuckled. ‘I’m far too old to want to spend the night sitting in a café,’ she said. ‘I was actually going to go on the internet and see what I can find around here without having to march up and down in the dark.’
‘You can do that?’ Steph marvelled with all the arrogance of the very young for those they consider too ‘past it’ to cope with modern technology, and Callie suddenly felt as old as Methuselah’s grandmother.
‘Let’s find out,’ she suggested, and they set off into the chilly evening.
They reached the other said of the road and Callie was just stretching out a hand to open the door when there was the sound of running feet approaching. Before she could even shout a warning their malodorous fellow passenger had barged into Steph, sending her slamming into the pavement as he made off with her rucksack.
‘Steph! Are you all right?’ Callie demanded, as she dropped to her knees beside the dazed youngster.
‘Callie…?’ she quavered, clearly shocked. ‘What…? My bag!’ she gasped, and started to struggle against Callie’s hold. ‘It’s got all my money in it.’
‘Steph, stay still!’ she warned. ‘You hit your head pretty hard when you went down. Let me check you over before—’
‘But he’s stolen my bag,’ she insisted. ‘He’s getting away.’
‘Sweetheart, he’s gone. We’ll never find him,’ Callie said gently, while she held both of Steph’s shoulders to try to stop her from moving. ‘Now, please, let me check your head to see if there’s any damage.’
Perhaps it was the calm insistence in her voice that finally got through the young girl’s distress, but with tears already leaking out of the corner of her eyes and running into the too-black hair she stared up at Callie with a beaten expression in her eyes.
‘Oh, Callie…What am I going to do now?’ she whispered.
Behind them Callie heard the shop door open and looked back over her shoulder to see a gangling young man looking down at them.
‘I saw what happened and phoned for an ambulance. The police are on their way, too,’ he said. ‘Should I make her a cup of tea? That’s supposed to be good for shock, isn’t it?’
‘Thanks for making the call to the emergency services, but it’s better not to give her anything to eat or drink until she’s been checked out, just in case anything’s broken,’ Callie explained, as she performed a swift primary survey.
It was light enough, there on the pavement where the lights from the shop shone brightly, to see that Steph’s pupils were equal and reactive to light and she didn’t seem to have broken anything. There was a painful place where the back of her head had met the ground and the start of a goose egg, but she didn’t even seem to have broken the skin, let alone be losing any untoward fluids.
‘Can you remember what happened to you?’ she asked gently, and Steph threw her an old-fashioned look.
‘Callie, I haven’t got concussion or amnesia. I’ve been mugged and had all my stuff nicked and I’m all alone in a city I’ve never visited before with nowhere to stay for the night. Oh, and I can remember the date and who’s the prime minister.’
Callie chuckled when she saw the face Steph pulled. ‘Not your type?’ she teased. ‘Well, I don’t think you’ve done yourself any major damage, but for the baby’s sake I think you ought to be checked over in the hospital.’
‘Hospital!’ she wailed over the sound of an approaching ambulance. ‘I don’t need to go there, do I? You said you couldn’t find anything wrong.’
‘Hey, Steph, look on the bright side. In the hospital it’ll be warm and dry and they’ll give you a bed to lie on.’
‘Hey, classic!’ she scoffed wearily. ‘I get mugged and lose all my money so I can’t afford even a cheap hotel but, gee, guess what? The mugger injures me so I get a bed for the night.’
Callie hoped her smile was reassuring but when she went to step aside to allow the paramedic to do his job Steph grabbed for her hand and held on tightly.
‘You won’t leave me, will you? Not until…’ Her face fell as she suddenly realised that she had no idea what was going to happen to her.
Callie’s heart went out to her, especially when she heard the tremor in her voice when she was answering the handsome young paramedic’s questions.
‘I’ll stay with you if you want me to,’ she offered, giving her hand a squeeze. ‘I haven’t got anywhere else I need to be in a hurry.’ Nowhere she needed to be for the rest of her life, if the truth be told.
‘Are you sure?’ Steph asked, seeming painfully young in her insecurity; definitely not old enough to be thrown out to fend for herself in a strange city.
‘I’m sure these nice young men won’t mind if I come for a ride with you,’ she said firmly, meeting the eyes of Mike, the good-looking young paramedic, with an authority learned the hard way during many hours of duty in a busy hospital A and E department. ‘Especially given the fact that you’re pregnant. They like pregnant mums to be calm and happy.’
‘We certainly do, Stephanie,’ he said with a broad smile, generously taking the hint without an argument. ‘So you just settle yourself back and enjoy the ride in our luxury limousine.’
‘Limousine!’ she scoffed with a dismissing glance around the functional interior. ‘Where’s the plush carpeting and the mini-bar?’
‘Hey, don’t knock it,’ Mike protested. ‘I cleaned that floor myself, just before we came out to get you, and we’ve got lots of things in here that you don’t get in a mini-bar—such as oxygen on tap.’ He gently adjusted the mask over her face as he teased her and Callie could already see some of Steph’s tension easing.
Her own anxiety had reduced the moment she’d seen how competent the ambulance crew was. Now she just needed to be certain that neither her young travelling companion nor her unborn baby had suffered any hidden injuries and she could go on her way.
Except she couldn’t really do that with a clear conscience, knowing that Steph was now without any funds whatever. Yes, she would have a free bed for the night, tonight, but after that? What resources were there for underage pregnant girls in this city? Were there any hostels or refuges? The ideal situation would be a purpose-built home where she could stay while she waited out the rest of her pregnancy, preferably with counsellors available to tell her about the options available to help her to decide whether to keep her baby or give it up for adoption.
Perhaps she would be able to find out that sort of information while she waited for the A and E staff to check Steph over. She spared a longing thought for St Mark’s, where such local gems had been collated onto the hospital database so that it would be readily to hand. Unfortunately, neither she nor Stephanie would be going back to that area again, at least not for the foreseeable future.
‘Right, ladies, hold tight and we’ll be on our way,’ the driver called as he started the powerful engine.
