The Winter Children (42 page)

He shook his head slowly and sadly. ‘I’m not staying tonight. I’m going back to Jimmy’s.’

‘Please,’ she whispered, something sinking inside her, pulling her down towards a dark pit she couldn’t bear to look at.
Let me stay in the light just a little longer.
‘Don’t say it.’

‘I’ve got to.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Cheska, you’ll always be my friend, you’ll always be dear to me but—’

Her eyes were afloat in hot tears. Her breath jerked into her lungs in little painful hops. ‘Stop it,’ she whispered. ‘No.’

‘Don’t cry, Cheska.’ His eyes were full of pity. She didn’t want pity, or favours. She just wanted to be loved, naturally and truthfully, and if she lost Dan, what else
did she have? ‘Please don’t cry.’

She closed her eyes. Her shoulders jumped with a stifled sob.

‘I can’t be with you, Cheska, I’m sorry.’

‘You said you love me.’ It came out as a whisper.

‘I do love you, in my own way. But we can only be friends.’ His hand closed over hers. She couldn’t open her eyes. ‘Can we be friends, please?’ There was a pause
and he said in a lighter tone, ‘Look, I’m not good enough for you. You’ll find someone else, I promise. You’ll be glad in the end. One day you’ll come to me and tell
me I did you a favour.’

She was crying now, not able to bear the humiliation of it. People on the neighbouring tables were nudging and looking over, sympathetic and amused in equal measure. ‘Look at the poor
girl, he’s dumping her.’ She couldn’t see them but she knew. And his pity was too much to take.

She scrambled to her feet, reaching for her bag, and stumbled out of the restaurant onto the hot pavement. All she wanted now was to get away. Behind her, Dan called her name, dropped a fiver on
the table for their drinks and came after her. She ran down the road, and he ran too, reaching her at the corner where she had to stop.

‘Cheska,’ he panted, turning her round to look at him.

‘Go away!’ she screamed, furious with the pain. ‘Go away and leave me alone!’

The lights changed and she ran across the road. He stood and watched her go, then turned and walked off in the other direction.

That summer is acute in her memory because of the pain. It ambushed her all the time: on the Underground; at the desk in her office; at lunch; and, worst of all, alone in her flat at night.
Tears would appear unbidden on her face. Sometimes she sat crying for an hour before she realised it was happening. The grief was a physical burden that bent her under its weight and felt as if
it would crush her. She longed for him but she knew it was over. He was gone. He’d never wanted her the way she did him. Even though she’d offered herself to him without reservation and
even though he’d tried to love her, he couldn’t.

It’s my fault
, she told herself.
I’m not loveable.

When September came and term began, she started at law school and moved to a new flat with some other law students. By then she knew.

Dan had moved to London, sharing Jimmy’s flat, so it was easy enough to write him a letter.

On the appointed day, she waited, walking back and forth in front of the railings outside the clinic, looking for him. Occasionally she put a protective hand on her stomach, as though wanting to
shield the tiny thing within from harm. But he never came, and when it was time, she went inside as she had planned.

She tried to be brave and strong, and manage alone. She tried to forget it and not to care. What more was the baby, after all, than a little bundle of cells, a small pale tadpole built on a tiny
spine, with a miniature pulsing heart and the start of a brain? It was not a person, not really. But it had been hers, and Dan’s, and she had killed it. Where was it now? Sluiced away down
the drain? Tossed in a rubbish bin with all the other unwanted waste?

She tried to cope, but the guilt and pain were too much. She couldn’t tell anyone what she was suffering. Her law work was impossible to complete: words swam in front of her eyes, blurry
in the constant tears she angrily tried to brush away. Facts couldn’t stick in a brain that pounded with thoughts of rage and despair. She started to fail and there was nothing she could do
about it.

The school warned her. She was told to pull her socks up. But she lay on her bed in her shared flat, away from the other girls, night after night in the dark, tormented by her grief. Then she
did them all a favour and left without being formally asked to go. She got a job as a temporary secretary in a big corporation and then, her bosses impressed by her ability to spell words like
‘satellite’ and ‘supersede’, she was made a permanent PA to one of the executives.

A few months later she met Walt, and he began, slowly, to heal her. She put all the pain behind her. She erased the memory. Or so she thought. And when she came back into Dan’s orbit, she
let him pretend nothing had happened. She never mentioned the letter or that awful hour in the clinic, when they’d sucked out the little living symbol of Dan’s fleeting love.

She let him go on lying and pretending, and treating her as though she had never really mattered.

Francesca looks at Dan across the table. ‘Why didn’t you come to the clinic that day, when I had the abortion?’ she asks.

That’s the pain. I understand now.
She thinks of the little skeleton with its tokens of love, and the careful burial, even if it was under a swimming pool.
What happened to my
baby? No funeral, no acknowledgement. Thrown away, ignored and forgotten.

Dan says nothing. He frowns, as though wracking his brain to remember.

‘You got my letter, didn’t you?’ A flame of hope sparks to life – that he never got the letter, and it was a misunderstanding. Then, perhaps, she could forgive him.

‘Yes.’ He says it slowly, his voice heavy with regret as he stares at the tabletop. ‘I got it. I was a coward. I didn’t come to you.’ He looks up at her again.
‘I let you go through with it, and I let you allow me to forget it. Because you never once reproached me for it. You never said a word. You stayed true and loved me just the same.’

‘I loved you,’ she says, her voice wobbly again. ‘But I couldn’t forget it, even though I tried.’

Dan stands up. ‘It was wrong to let you donate your eggs. I see that now. In a weird way, when you made your offer, I felt as though I was making it up to you somehow. Letting you have the
chance to meet the baby we never had. But as soon as Olivia was pregnant, I knew it was a mistake. I hadn’t thought it through. I should have let her choose an anonymous donor like she
wanted. I suppose you let me get away with things, Cheska. I thought I could get away with this too.’

He looks at her, his gaze candid. For a moment, he is her Dan again – the one from the garden, the one who made love to her for a few heady weeks one summer, and then broke her heart. He
says, ‘I’m sorry. For all the pain I caused you. I never wanted to hurt you but somehow I did. I’m sorry about the baby and how callous I was. I never spoke about it to you and I
should have. I let you marry Walt without ever telling you that I was sad about the baby too.’

‘Really?’ She is amazed. It never occurred to her that he might have mourned the child as well.

Dan nods his head. ‘Yes. I mean it.’ He smiles weakly. ‘I did care about you, Cheska. I just couldn’t love you in the way you wanted.’

She gives a little half-laugh. ‘What a mess.’ She shakes her head. ‘And now we have two actual children together. What are we going to do about that?’

Dan walks over to her, pulls her up from her seat and takes her in his arms. She sighs as he wraps her in his embrace, and rests her head against him. Not so long ago, she yearned for this kind
of contact with Dan. Now it feels like a resolution. The truth is out. He has acknowledged everything. She feels validated.

Dan presses his mouth down towards her ear and says softly, ‘You won’t tell Olivia, will you? It will stay our secret. Won’t it?’

She pulls away from him, looking up into his face, and sees the look there that she knows so well. It’s complacency. Complete belief in his power over her.

He thinks I’ll do what he wants. Nothing has changed.

‘Oh no,’ she says. ‘You have to tell Olivia. She has to know.’

His expression changes. First it’s incredulous, then panic sets into his eyes. ‘What? I can’t tell her, you know that.’

‘You have to tell her everything. She needs to know what happened between us, and about the baby. And about the eggs. You can’t let her go on believing a lie.’

This is his test, she knows that. It’s all very well to say the right things, to acknowledge the past and apologise, but it’s worth nothing if it’s merely a ruse to keep everything just the way it was.

Dan pulls away from her, outrage on his face. ‘What are you talking about, Cheska? You know I can’t do that! Are you fucking crazy? You know very well she’ll never forgive me.
I did a terrible thing, I know that, and I should never have done it. It was idiotic. It was stupid. In all sorts of ways. But I can’t tell her. It’s bad enough that I never told her we
were lovers. But it’s a thousand times worse than that. You know it would destroy her.’

‘Not knowing the truth could destroy her too. Don’t you know how easy it is to ruin a life when someone loves you? Look what you did to me. And it nearly happened to me all over
again with the twins.’ She shakes her head. She’s sorry for him, but it’s clear what the right thing is. ‘You can’t let lies poison your life. If you tell her, explain
why you did it, she might forgive you. It will be much worse if she finds out from someone else.’

Dan’s expression changes again. Now it’s hard, the blue eyes icy, the mouth twisted. He stares at her with menace. ‘And who might tell her? Who else knows?’ He takes a step towards her. ‘Only you, Cheska. You’re the only one. Would you tell her?’

She sees that he has clenched his fists. ‘Are you threatening me, Dan?’ she asks, wonder in her voice. She has always suspected he is capable of more than she ever wanted to
acknowledge. Is he about to show her exactly what? ‘You can’t get away with it, you must know that. I’m not your underling, to be ordered about or punished.’

‘Just tell me.’ His knuckles are white, his teeth clenched. ‘Because if that’s what you intend to do, I’m going to fucking stop you, understand?’

A rush of courage goes through her. So it’s come to this. He’s tried every other form of manipulation and now he is going to resort to threats or worse. She stares at him with scorn.
‘What did I ever see in you? Why did I waste my life dreaming about you? I must have been a fool. I’m sorry, Dan, but you can’t change facts, even by force. Olivia needs to know
that I donated those eggs. She needs to know that those children are ours – yours and mine – and if you don’t tell her, I will.’

The back door swings open suddenly and standing there is Olivia, her face a picture of pain and fury.

‘Oh my God,’ she whispers in a broken voice. ‘Oh my God.’

Francesca and Dan stare at her, guilt all over their faces. Olivia can tell that they are trying to work out how much she has heard.

I’ve heard enough.

Sick horror courses through her. On the train home, she was anxious and worried, unable to understand why. Well, now she knows. There was nobody to meet her at the station, and she was afraid
that something was seriously wrong. The taxi driver brought her back, evidently aware of her agitation and desire to be home as soon as possible. But as she came through the gate, she heard the
voices floating through the open window, and caught the sharp exclamation, ‘Are you fucking crazy?’

She stopped short as though an invisible wall had appeared in her path, her breath frozen in her chest. As she stood there on the path, she heard them talking: Dan saying that he and Cheska had
been lovers. Cheska saying she, Olivia, needed to know; Dan resisting. She walked silently towards the door, hardly realising she was moving. Then came words that made the bottom drop out of her world.

Olivia needs to know that I donated those eggs. She needs to know that those children are ours – yours and mine – and if you don’t tell her, I will.

A sick feeling in her stomach makes her want to throw up, and for a moment she thinks she’s going to fall to her knees and puke by the back door, but outrage and fury are stronger. She
throws open the door. ‘Oh my God.’ Her voice is full of a treacherous wobble. ‘Oh my God.’

She stares at them, the guilty two with their dirty, monstrous secret. She is shaking now as the implications start to sink in. Are they really saying that Bea and Stan, her darlings, are .
. . Francesca’s children?

She looks at Dan. She doesn’t care about Francesca now – she is dead to her. That is over, she knows that for certain. All she wants is to be out of her poisonous, evil presence.
Claire was right all along.
But Dan. Her Dan.

The lies.

The evil fucking plot he cooked up.

She shakes her head and says in a voice of almost preternatural calm, ‘Why? Why did you do it?’

His face is full of horror and she can read the despair in his eyes. ‘Please, Olivia, I’m sorry.’

‘Sorry?’ It comes out in a wondering tone, as though she’s never heard this strange word ‘sorry’ before and has no idea what it means. ‘Sorry?’ she
repeats through gritted teeth, her voice rising. By the way he flinches when she looks at him, she knows her anger must be awful to behold. ‘You’re fucking sorry?’ She picks up
the bag she is carrying that contains the socks she bought and throws it at him. It’s not heavy enough to travel far and drops at his feet. ‘What the hell have you done, Dan? What have you done?’ She points in the
direction of the television room from where the sound of cartoon mania floats. ‘Are you honestly telling me that our babies are from eggs donated by Francesca?’ Her gaze flicks on
Francesca, who hasn’t moved but stands frozen by the table. A horrible realisation comes over her. She remembers again the Dark Night of the Donor and then Dan’s volteface, and it all
makes sense. ‘Oh, I see. You went crying to Cheska, and she offered you her eggs so you’d know what to expect when I pushed your fucking children out of my body!’ She shudders.
‘How did you swing it? No, wait, let me guess. She went out to the clinic first, to donate her eggs, and then you took me out to receive them. Or was she there the whole time we were? Was she
in the next room, having them harvested while I waited next door with my legs apart?’ She laughs brutally. ‘Oh, that’s a good one! That’s really good.’