Chapter Seventeen #2
‘I got conned into it. Dad had a health scare. I said I’d stay to cover for him for a few weeks and suddenly he’s talking about needing more time to recuperate. Which is bollocks. I know what he’s doing.’
His vehemence drew a startled frown from Ella.
‘I’m a thirty-two-year-old man. I don’t need my parents rescuing me.’
‘I . . . ’ She lifted her hands in mute surrender but it was like a cork had been popped and it all came spilling out.
‘I don’t want anyone rescuing me. I’m quite capable of sorting myself out.
It drives me crazy that everyone wants some kind of input.
Bets trying to rehabilitate me, like I’m some drug dependent crackhead who needs to be weaned off his addiction, because she thinks I’m hung up on my ex and that I’ll find redemption by becoming the vet with a heart of gold.
Dad’s protracted recuperation. He’s training for a marathon; how does that make him too ill to work?
And Mum trying to save me from boredom by finding me things to do all the time.
I don’t need any of them. I just want to draw a line and get on with my life. ’
‘Me too.’ Her quiet words silenced his rant.
The anger and resentment simmering inside him whistled out like a slow puncture as he paused and looked around him, sneaking extra glances at her profile as they marched in tandem up the steep gradient.
His irate words seemed a bit silly now in comparison to her quiet, calm acceptance, but he didn’t need or want any help.
Any further conversation died as they focused on reaching the triangulation point topping the Beacon.
They had the hilltop to themselves and both of them naturally gravitated to the stone-built platform with its map of the ancient Ridgeway on top.
Leaning against it they contemplated the view spread out before them, stretching away to the distant horizon.
‘On a clear day, you can see the spires of Oxford from here.’ Despite this fact, he’d never actually seen them himself. Perhaps you also needed binoculars.
She didn’t say anything but conversation seemed superfluous. It was quiet, apart from the buzz of two gliders circling and vying for the wind in the sky above them.
His eyes scanned the view, picking out local landmarks: the Pitstone Windmill, Grim’s Dyke, the Whipsnade Lion.
Despite being away for so long, it all seemed so familiar, as if he’d never been away.
Taking a deep breath, he sighed. Maybe he had missed this.
Maybe it was good to be home. He glanced over to Ella and spotted a single tear running down her face.
Her throat convulsed but she remained ram-rod straight, as if refusing to acknowledge it.
Not wanting to intrude, he diplomatically turned away to study the contours of the Dunstable Downs where more gliders swung and dipped with the thermals.
‘Actually, I lied earlier – the crunch point wasn’t with Britta at all.
’ Her sudden words, almost lost on the wind that battered the hill, were laden with sorrow.
‘It . . . came when I was in London. That’s when everything broke.
’ She lifted her chin higher. ‘I came out here to try and work things through. Find a way to go back. A way to go back to my life with Patrick and all that it is, but I can’t go back.
’ Another tear slipped down her face. ‘There’s nowhere to go back to. ’
She remained still, not turning towards him.
Remembering the brief touch of comfort she offered him in the pub, he wove his fingers between hers and gave them a squeeze.
Somehow he knew she didn’t want him to talk.
He recognised that point where the dam burst. It didn’t matter who he was, he just happened to be there when the water came flooding out.
‘I found out I was pregnant. Not planned.’ Her voice held cynical heaviness.
He stilled; that wasn’t what he was expecting at all. What the hell did you say to that?
‘Definitely not planned. Patrick was even more shocked than I was.’ Ella turned her head, giving him a bleak twisted smile, before turning back to the vista before them.
‘I figured that at our age it was probably the next step. I hadn’t given the children thing a lot of thought, I just assumed that it would happen one day.
‘One day turned up out of the blue. Completely out of the blue, but the minute I thought I might be, God, I was so excited. Funny – I was on my way to work, grabbed my usual mochaccino, took one sip and thought I’d throw up, which was really weird.
I’ve been drinking them every morning for the last five years.
You don’t suddenly go off something without a very good reason. ’
A wistful expression lit her face. ‘I couldn’t quite believe it, because it wasn’t planned. I didn’t tell anyone, just in case I was wrong. In case it tempted providence. I remember going to buy the testing kit.’ She held up a hand. ‘I was shaking like a leaf when I opened the packaging.’
She gripped his hand tighter. ‘When the line turned blue, I thought my heart would burst. The enormity of it seemed so huge. Me, having a baby. I couldn’t wait to tell Patrick.’
She swallowed hard. ‘It never occurred to me that he wouldn’t feel the same.
Even though it was a bit of a surprise, I thought Patrick would think like me, that it was the next step.
Logical.’ Her eyebrows creased, meeting in a dark frown.
‘He didn’t. Said it was bourgeois. Not us.
People like us didn’t have children. It would limit us.
’ Her mouth twisted with terrible weariness.
‘Spouted a whole load of stuff. I presumed it was just the shock at first. That he’d come around. He didn’t.’
Ella turned to Devon, her face haunted with sadness, and then she looked up, watching the gliders for a minute, as if trying to contain her emotion before she went on.
‘He wanted me to have an abortion.’ Her lips quivered.
‘Get rid of it. That’s what he called our baby – “it”.
As if the baby were nothing to do with him.
’ She shook her head, still in disbelief.
‘When I tried to talk to him about it, when I said I wasn’t sure I could go through with an abortion, he,’ her breath hitched, ‘he told me I was “being far too emotional about it”.’
With his thumb, Devon rubbed her hand. She held herself so still, he was worried that if he put his arm around her or even tried to offer any other comfort, she might shatter like ice.
‘I thought maybe he was right. It was the hormones. So I went for the first appointment.’ Her face creased as if in pain. ‘Except I couldn’t get through the door. I couldn’t do it. I froze. I knew then I wanted to keep the baby.
‘Luckily for him, I miscarried.’ The words, spoken without emotion, cold and blank, dropped like stones.
The grip of her fingers on his tightened but she faced away into the headwind. He could see her swallowing but the words had dried up for a moment. He didn’t know what to say, didn’t want to offer platitudes. Then, she spoke again.
‘It was only the size of a bean. Who’d have thought there’d be so much blood?’ She laughed mirthlessly, dry and heart-wrenching. ‘No wonder Lady Macbeth got into such a tizz. I had to throw away my favourite pair of jeans.’
He could tell by the tightening of her jawline that she was working hard to hang onto her control. ‘I r-really miss those jeans.’ She winced, her other hand going to her stomach. ‘When you have something, it’s only when it’s gone you realise how much you wanted to keep it. God, I miss those jeans.’
Tears stung his eyes at the heartbreak in her voice, at the way she worked so hard to keep her emotions in check, pretend that she was unharmed by it all.
He resisted the urge to pull her into his arms and offer comfort.
It took a lot of effort putting on a face that brave.
He knew how damn hard it was and how easily the facade could shatter if someone was kind to you.
Staunchly he hung onto her hand as the two of them stood motionless gazing out over the view.
Standing straight and tall she leaned into the headwind, imagining herself like the prow of a ship cutting through the waves.
His hand in hers anchored her, when she felt as if her emotions might take flight and leave her rudderless.
The fingers interweaved between hers gave her strength.
She could weather this, make it through.
Patrick’s casual dismissal, so cold, emotionless.
Uncaring. How could he not care? For her that loss had slammed into her, leaving her adrift.
With the strong breeze whistling around them on the summit of the Beacon, picking and tossing at her hair, awareness shimmered through her.
There was land ahead. The ever-present lump of misery lodged just beneath her heart was still there but it had lost its malignant presence and the threatening sensation that it might overpower her one day.
With a grim twist to her mouth, she tossed her head back, welcoming the fierce slap of the wind.
When Patrick had suggested they had a break, she’d clung to that idea as if it might save her.
It gave her enough distance to not have to think how much she hated him for not caring.
It made her believe that in a few months’ time she could go back and everything would be normal again.
She’d have grieved. Her hormones, which Patrick had patiently explained were all over the place, would be righted.
She’d see things differently. She’d realise that they were all right as they were. The two of them.
With heartsick sorrow, the knowledge came to rest like a feather gently but surely coming into land: there was no going back. She could never forgive Patrick for not wanting their child. Or forgive him for being able to forget so easily about it once she’d miscarried.
And she would never forget.