The Society Wife (12 page)

Tristan was dimly aware of the ache in his back, but it was only when the screen flickered and went blank that he realised he had half risen to his feet and was leaning forward, gripping the edge of the desk, every muscle taut as wire. He straightened up, blinking fast, balling his hands into fists as the blood returned to his fingers and the drumming in his ears subsided.

He felt dizzy, as if the weight of the responsibility he had been keeping so distant had suddenly come crashing down on him, crushing him. The walls of the small, cluttered office seemed to inch inwards, closing in on him and he looked around wildly at the stacks of boxes and files of paperwork and the whiteboards on the walls filled with scrawled updates about roadside patrols and rebel movements.

None of it made sense.

He had thrown himself into this project, ploughing money, time, energy into it under some ridiculous illusion that he was being completely altruistic. His way of putting back some of
the wealth his family had taken from those who needed it most over the years. His way of making amends, living with himself, sleeping at night. He had taken on despotic dictators, violent warlords, disease and hunger simply to avoid having to confront the real things in his life. The things that
really
scared him.

That he might not be a good father. That if he got close he would pass on the legacy of his father to his child. But as he snatched up the laptop and shrugged into his coat Tristan knew that it wasn't the weight of responsibility he could feel pressing the air from his lungs, or fear that was making his heart pound.

How stupid of him not to have realised earlier that it was love.

 

‘The heartbeat is just a little accelerated, but it's nothing to worry about. Probably the
bambino's
excitement at being on camera. Go home and take it easy. Get an early night, and, above all, don't worry.'

That was easier said than done, Lily thought as she lay down her book with a sigh. She had followed the rest of Dr Alvarez's advice to the letter, and being in bed at just after nine o'clock was a record even for her, but the not worrying had proved impossible. Rearranging the bank of pillows behind her, she sighed and turned out the light.

Dr Alvarez's words seemed to echo a little more loudly, a little more ominously in the darkness of the silent apartment.
The heartbeat is just a little accelerated
… He had looked worried when he'd said that, hadn't he?

She switched the light back on and sat up.

‘I'm being silly,' she said aloud, her voice cracking slightly from not having spoken to anyone since she'd left the surgery all those hours ago. ‘Auntie Scarlet would say I need to get out more.'

She hadn't spoken to anyone
visible
, she amended with a rueful smile as she wearily got out of bed and padded into the kitchen to make a cup of chamomile tea. Talking to the baby was something she did automatically; naturally. Sometimes she
wondered if it was normal. Mostly she didn't care. She had to talk to someone.

Anyway, who was to say what was normal any more?

In the kitchen she poured boiling water onto a teabag to produce something that looked and smelled like pondwater. She felt a tug of pain, deep inside her. Normal would be having a husband here to bring her tea in bed, rub her back, tell her she was worrying about nothing. Normal would be being able to phone him, just to hear his voice, just to share her concerns and have him reassure her…

She got back into bed and looked wistfully at the phone for a second, her fingers tingling with the overwhelming urge to pick it up and dial his number. She wanted to talk to him, to ask him if he'd been able to see the scan pictures. What had he thought? Had he been as blown away by them as she had?

The ache inside her intensified as the unwelcome answer to that question presented itself in her head. Turning out the light, she curled up, pulling her knees up tight against her and feeling the baby press against her thighs.

She sighed.

‘Goodnight, little one,' she said sadly. ‘I love you.'

 

She was woken by a tearing pain that seemed to grip her whole body, making it feel as if huge, cruel hands were grasping at her flesh, twisting it without mercy. For a mute, horror-struck moment she didn't move as doors in her mind seemed to clang shut, trying to close out the terrible, nightmarish truth.

But it was like trying to hold back the sea. It burst in, smashing the light from her world.

‘No, no, no…' She was saying it out loud, her voice rising in a crescendo of screaming panic as she struggled from the bed and tried to stand up.

Her legs buckled beneath her and she fell to the floor, still clutching at the duvet. It slithered off the bed to show sheets that were red with blood.

T
HE
light filtering through the slats of the blind was thin and grey, but to Lily it felt as if someone were shining a spotlight on the inside of her skull. Squeezing her eyes tightly shut, she tried to turn over to face the other way, to shut it out for ever.

Ten thousand red-hot razor blades of pain bit into her, brutally dragging her back into consciousness, and jagged terror snagged in her brain.

Blood.

Blood everywhere. She remembered sticky warmth running down her legs…remembered putting her hand down to touch it, and the terrible jewel-bright redness on her fingers. Clumsily now she tried to lift her hand to see if she had dreamed it, but the movement sent a guillotine of pain slicing through her arm.

‘Shh… Lie still.'

Tristan's face swam in front of her, grave and perfectly still, as if it had been carved in granite. Lily felt the pain recede a little as he brushed the hair back from her forehead and stroked his fingers down her cheek. He was here, and the sheer strength of his presence soothed her. Whatever had happened, Tristan could make it all right again.

With his hand still warm against her cheek, Lily let herself be pulled back down into blissful oblivion.

 

So this was his punishment.

Tristan felt the ache of exhaustion bite into his bones and
scream along the muscles and nerves of his arm. Lily was asleep again now, her exquisite face as pale as milk from all the blood she had lost, but still he forced himself to go on stroking her hair, her cheek. As a gesture of comfort it was so pitifully small, so very inadequate, but it was all he could do.

All he could bloody well do.

He had promised to protect her, to keep her safe and he'd failed. Spectacularly. He had offered her
security
, and thought that that was nothing more than a luxurious home. A
name.

And in the end that name had counted for nothing. A title and a bloodline and all the Romero riches hadn't kept their baby safe, because the only thing that could have done that was Tristan himself.

And he wasn't there
.

A baby girl, the doctor had told him. His jaw set like steel and he kept his eyes fixed unblinkingly ahead, refusing to look down at the fragile figure in the bed. Her peacefulness was like a deliberate reproach, because he knew that soon he would have to shatter it when he tried to explain to her just what she had lost. Outside a watery winter dawn was breaking over Barcelona, filtering into the room through the slats of the blind. They seemed to Tristan like bars of a prison.

A prison of guilt, in which he would serve a life sentence.

 

‘You're here.'

Her voice was a whisper—barely more than a breath—but it made Tristan jump just as if she'd shouted. He forced himself to look down at her, but suddenly found that his throat had closed around and he couldn't speak.
Yes, I'm here. Where I should have been all along.

He nodded.

‘I thought I'd dreamed it earlier,' she said softly.

‘No. You didn't dream it. I'm here.'

‘That's good, but…' Her eyelashes fluttered down over her cheeks for a moment and her brows drew together in a frown. When she looked back up at him her eyes were clouded
with anxiety. ‘But that means I didn't dream the rest either, doesn't it?'

‘Yes. I'm afraid so.'

Her face was ashen and she spoke through bloodless lips. ‘What happened?'

Tristan stood up abruptly, turning his back on her and going over to the window. It was early afternoon, and a pale winter sun had broken through the leaden clouds and was now making the wet city streets gleam like polished silver. Finding the words, speaking them without breaking down, was going to be the hardest thing he had ever done, but he had to be strong for her.

He had done so little else, after all.

‘It was something called a…' He stopped, ruthlessly slashing back the emotion that threatened to crack his voice. ‘…a placental abruption. That's what caused the bleeding. By the time I found you, you had lost a lot of blood, and the baby…'

He squeezed his eyes very tightly shut for a second, as if that could dispel the image of what he had found when he'd finally let himself into the apartment late last night. But there was a part of him that knew already that it would always be there in his head, a lifelong reminder of his culpability. Savagely he thrust his clenched fists into his pockets and turned around.
Dios
, he had to at least look at her when he said this.

‘The baby had died already.'

The only movement she made was to close her eyes. Apart from two small lines between her fine brows her paper-white face was completely composed, so that for a moment he thought she might have slipped back into her morphine-induced slumber. And then he saw that tears were running down her cheeks and into her hair in a steady, glistening river.

He stood, stony and utterly helpless in the face of her silent, dignified suffering. Slowly he approached the bed and sat down beside her again, picking up her hand from the sheet. It felt cold, and his chest contracted painfully as he looked down and saw how very pale and fragile her fingers looked against his.

‘I'm sorry.' His voice was a low, hoarse rasp.

Almost imperceptibly she nodded, but her eyes stayed closed, shutting him out of her private grief. It was hardly surprising, he thought bitterly. It was his fault. How on earth could he expect her to forgive him when he would never be able to forgive himself?

Especially when she eventually found out the rest, and understood the devastating extent of her loss: that by the time he had found her she had lost too much blood, and they hadn't been able to stop it coming and had had to operate to remove her womb…

That she had not only lost this baby, but any chance she might have had of having any more.

Because he hadn't been there
.

After a few more minutes he got up and very quietly left the room. She didn't open her eyes, so she never saw the tears that were running down his face.

 

Steadily the room filled up with flowers, exotic fleshy blooms sent by Scarlet and Tom and Maggie and the cosmetics company and all the crew from the perfume advertisement shoot, which made the air turn heavy with their intoxicating hot-house scent. Nurses came and went, some silent and compassionate, some brisk and matter-of-fact. Lily was indifferent to them all.

She felt hollowed out and as insubstantial as air. All the feelings that had nagged at her before that fateful night at Stowell—of emptiness and futility—came back now; swollen to huge and grotesque proportions, ballooning inside her until there was no space for anything else.

Which was good, she thought distantly, watching a nurse change the bag of fluid that had been dripping into her arm, because at least it stopped her from thinking about Tristan. Longing for him.

She wondered where he was; if he had gone back to wherever he had been once he had broken the news about the baby. The image of his set, emotionless face as he told her what had
happened kept coming back to her, and the carefully controlled way he'd said, ‘I'm sorry.'

It must have been hard for him, she recognised that. So hard for him to keep his relief from showing, but typical of him to try so dutifully.

The nurse smiled kindly, folding back the heavy hospital blankets to check the dressing covering Lily's scar. ‘Your husband rang,
señora
,' she said in her cheerful, sing-song Catalan. ‘To ask how you are and to see if he might come back to see you this afternoon?'

Lily turned her head away, biting her lip as several explanations for Tristan's desire to see her flashed into her brain; none of them good.

‘I… I'm not sure…I…'

She looked down. The nurse had peeled back the gauze dressing to show the livid scar that cut across her pitifully flat stomach. Lily felt her insides turn cold with horror, everything in her recoiling from the square of torn and deflated flesh and what it meant.

The nurse seemed pleased.

‘Healing nicely,' she said with a complacent smile, dabbing iodine onto Lily's skin as if she were glazing pastry. ‘You will be able to go home in no time.'

Lily moistened her cracked lips with her tongue. ‘But will it happen again? Next time?'

The nurse seemed to freeze for a moment, and then several different expressions crossed her face in quick succession: shock, pity, fear—and finally, as the doctor appeared in the doorway, relief.

‘The doctor will explain everything.' She patted Lily's hand, hastily gathered up her tray of equipment and bustled towards the door.

When she went back later, she found Lily curled up into a foetal position, her face turned to the wall. Thinking she was asleep, the nurse was just about to tiptoe out again when Lily
said, ‘I'd like you to telephone Señor Romero and tell him not to come. Today, or any day.' ‘Ah,
bambino
…' The nurse crossed to the bed in a rustle of starch and compassion and touched Lily's shoulder. ‘Do not say that… A husband and wife must stick together in such terrible times. That is what marriage is for; for love and support…'

Slowly Lily turned over, and the expression on her face shocked the cheerful nurse into silence. Later she described it to her colleague on the ward as like an animal who knew it was dying and wanted to be left alone to do it.

‘Not my marriage,' she said dully. ‘My marriage is over now. There is nothing between us any more. Please tell him.'

There was a primal, ferocious glitter in her eyes as she spoke. Nodding mutely, the nurse bolted from the room.