Pregnant with His Baby!
‘Eighteenth … I probably, yes … no … I’m not sure.’
Angelo’s scrutiny sharpened as he stared at his friend. In the twenty-five years he had known him, Gianfranco had never to his knowledge been not sure about anything.
‘Well, when you are just get Dervla to give Kate a ring. And how is Dervla?’ Angelo asked casually.
Gianfranco met his friend’s eyes and lied unblinkingly. ‘She’s fine.’
Well, it wasn’t actually a lie. She might well be fine. She might be totally fine after walking out on her husband. Gianfranco’s sense of outrage and the throbbing in his temple swelled in unison as an image of her standing at the front door of their home flashed into his head.
‘You’re being ridiculous, Dervla.’
She stuck out her chin and glared at him through tear-misted eyes, emerald eyes, so intensely green when they’d first met he had assumed she was wearing contact lenses, shimmering.
‘There’s no need to work yourself up, Gianfranco. After all, it doesn’t really matter what I do.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Well, I’m not important. I’m just a temporary someone who’s passing through, someone who isn’t good enough to take responsibility for your son … and don’t give me that guff about our ready-made family because you shut me out totally. Bottom line is I’m good enough to have sex with but not good enough to be the mother of your child!’
‘That’s totally ludicrous. There’s nothing temporary about our marriage.’
Eyes narrowed, she lifted her chin in challenge. ‘So you want a baby?’
He ground his teeth and reminded her, ‘You were the one that said that you didn’t need children to have a fulfilling life.’
She glared at him with withering scorn. ‘That, you stupid man, was when I thought I couldn’t have any!’
‘You knew when we married that I did not want children. I haven’t changed.’
‘That’s the problem!’
‘Don’t play cryptic word games with me, Dervla.’
‘I’m not playing anything any more. I’m leaving.’
He could see her slim back shaking as she fumbled opening the big oak-banded door. He focused on his anger to stop himself taking her in his arms to wipe away the tears he knew were pouring down her cheeks. He walked up behind her and put his hand on her shoulder.
‘I admit you have a flare for drama, but this is enough, Dervla.’
She didn’t turn around, just whispered, ‘Goodbye, Gianfranco.’ And walked through the door.
And he stood there watching, never quite believing that she would go … expecting her to run back through the door at any moment admitting that she had been totally in the wrong.
But there had been no running and no Dervla.
She had left him and their home. The home she had put her indelible mark on. Gianfranco pushed aside the disturbing thought that the mark she had put on him was much more indelible.
Having learnt the hard way that romantic love was a sham, a form of self-hypnosis, Gianfranco had never expected to marry again.
The fact was he had married because the woman he’d wanted would not accept less.
And you tried so hard to persuade her otherwise …?
Gianfranco’s eyebrows twitched into an irritated frown at the mental interruption. His decision to marry had not been based on anything as unreliable as emotions. Like all the decisions he made, he had weighed the pros and cons and come to the conclusion that marriage was something he could live with.
And Dervla was something he did not wish to live without—at least for the moment—though he did not doubt that the overwhelming compulsion he had to bind her to him would fade.
The intensity of it had shaken him, but he did not read any magical significance into it. Feelings of that sort of intensity were not durable; they did not signify a meeting of soul mates. The problems began when you started to believe they did.
He had not changed his opinion of marriage. He still pitied the fools entering into it with a lot of unrealistic phoney, sentimental expectations.
The trouble was people forgot that basically marriage was a legal contract. He had every intention of fulfilling his end of that contract, a contract that could be dissolved if the balance of those pros and cons shifted.
Marriage was like Christmas—people expected too much and were inevitably disappointed.
His expectation had been more realistic the second time around—but he didn’t think it was realistic to expect your wife to change the rules a year in. It wasn’t as if they had not discussed the subject—he had never even imagined she felt that way.
Not strictly true, said the voice in his head as an incident he had mentally filed as insignificant popped unbidden into his head. He had been giving her the grand tour of her new home at this time.
‘This was my nursery … I thought you could use it as a study. The view is really magnificent.’
He pretended not to see the pain and hopeless longing in her face as she touched the carved wood of the antique crib in the corner. Guilt gnawed at him, he hadn’t wanted to see it.
‘A study would be nice,’ she agreed quietly.
‘Of course, you can redecorate just as you please. I’ve got the names of some very good interior designers.’
‘What would I want with an interior designer?’ she asked, shaking back her tawny curls.
Gianfranco was relieved to see no trace of the previous sadness in her eyes as she looked up at him with that half-quizzical teasing look of hers.
‘An interior designer isn’t going to live here, silly, we are. A home should evolve …’ she explained earnestly. ‘Be filled with memories.’
Gianfranco was pretty sure that by memories she had meant some of the curious and totally valueless objects she took pleasure in discovering and producing for his admiration, and not the memories that were causing him torture of an unbearable kind.
At the time making love to his wife in every room of their large and many-roomed home had seemed an excellent idea, but now that good idea had come back to haunt him. Quite literally! He couldn’t walk into a room without being assaulted by sweet erotic recollections.
‘We thought she seemed a little … quiet …?’
Gianfranco shook his head to free himself from the images playing in it. He dragged his eyes up from the floor, where presumably he had been staring like some catatonic moron, until his friend’s face came into frame.
He gave a careless shrug and ignored the question in his friend’s eyes.
If he had been going to confide in anyone it would have been Angelo, but it was not his way to offload his problems on others.
‘She was a little tired.’
Angelo grinned. ‘Nine months ago Kate had some similar symptoms.’
Gianfranco’s jaw clenched. ‘Dervla is not pregnant.’
Angelo stepped into the lift, his expression openly speculative. ‘Sorry, my mind is a bit one-track at the moment.’
Gianfranco unclenched his fists and struggled to respond appropriately to the social cue. ‘How is Kate?’
‘Fine. Give Dervla our love, Gianfranco, and I hope she’s feeling less … tired soon.’
Gianfranco nodded absently, thinking that this message would take lower priority than many things he needed to say to his wife when he saw her.
He was mentally polishing the more personal messages as he walked into the office and dialled his son’s number. As he was not fully concentrating on what Alberto said he assumed initially he had misheard him.
‘What did you say, Alberto?’
‘I said I’m running away.’
CHAPTER SIX
OF COURSE you are.
Gianfranco dragged a hand through his hair and glanced at his reflection in the mirrored surface of a wall cabinet. Despite the concerted efforts of his nearest and dearest there were no white streaks in the hair of the man who looked back at him.
But it could only be a matter of time.
‘I’m assuming this is some kind of joke?’
It seemed a safe assumption. Having broken family tradition, he had sent his son to a day school in Florence. Alberto was on a school field trip to Brussels to see the European Parliament in action, safely supervised by teachers.
‘I’m in Calais at the moment, but the ferry leaves in a few minutes.’
Staring out of the window at the traffic below, he shook his head, still feeling slightly more irritation than concern. ‘You’re in Brussels.’
‘No, Calais.’
Gianfranco felt the concern versus irritation dip towards concern.
‘Calais?’
‘I told you—I’ve run away.’
Gianfranco’s stomach muscles clenched in icy dread as he realised this was no warped teenage sense of humour he was dealing with, but a genuine situation.
‘You are actually in Calais …?’ Gianfranco struggled to get his head around it.
How could a thirteen-year-old schoolboy meant to be in Brussels in the care of teachers be in Calais?
Thoughts of abduction and kidnap flashed into his head to be almost immediately dismissed. Alberto’s voice was not that of a scared victim. Like someone coming out of a trance, he dragged a hand down his jaw and exhaled.
‘You’ve run away? From me?’ Why not? It was becoming quite a fashionable thing to do. If this was true Alberto wouldn’t be sounding so chirpy once he got his hands on him, Gianfranco decided grimly.
‘Yes, I just said so, didn’t I? So if the school contacts you tell them I’m fine. They might have noticed I’m missing by now.’
‘Might have noticed!’ Gianfranco choked. He pushed aside the thought of what he would say to the teachers who had failed so miserably in their duty. There were more important things to think about. ‘How did you get to Calais? Are you alone?’
‘I hitched.’
His teenage son’s explanation made Gianfranco’s blood run cold. ‘You hitched a lift?’
Impervious to the horror in his father’s voice, the teenager added tetchily, ‘You’re not usually this slow, Dad. I know what you’re thinking but the lorry driver was a really nice guy, not a pervert or anything. I told him I was seventeen and he believed me.’
Gianfranco bit back a curse and rolled his eyes heavenwards. He was having a nightmare, that was the only explanation, he decided.
Every parent knew it was a delicate line—the one between wrapping your children up in cotton wool and letting them run around oblivious to the dangers that lurked for the unsuspecting.
Like every other parent he wanted to keep his child safe. He had always been conscious that there was also a danger that an overprotective parent could stifle any sense of adventure in a child. In his efforts not to quash the spirit of adventure in his son he might, Gianfranco acknowledged grimly, have gone a little too far the other way.
‘Listen to me very carefully,’ Gianfranco said slowly.
‘I can’t. My battery’s low and, don’t worry, I can look after myself, you know, Dad.’
‘Would it be pushy of me to ask why you’re running away?’
‘You might be divorcing Dervla, but I’m not.’
‘Divorce!’ Gianfranco yelled down the line. ‘There will be no divorce.’
‘That was my eardrum you just perforated. And if anyone asks I’ll tell them I’d prefer to live with her.’
‘Thank you very much,’ Gianfranco inserted drily in response to this warning. ‘Let me remind you again, nobody has mentioned divorce.’ And nobody will.
‘Not yet,’ his son said darkly. ‘But it doesn’t take a genius to see where things were heading left to you two. So I decided you needed some help.’
‘This form of help involves you running away?’ Gianfranco tried to control his temper as he made a rapid mental calculation of how soon he could get to England before his son got into any more trouble.
‘But where, or rather who, am I running to? I mean as a responsible parent you have to come get me, it’s totally legit and there’s no question of you chasing after her. I reckon you’ll be all over each other about twenty seconds after you see each other.’
Not many things shocked Gianfranco to silence, but this nonchalant prediction did.
I’m being manipulated by a thirteen-year-old. A reluctant laugh was torn from his throat. If he’s like this now, what will he be like by the time he’s eighteen?
Hearing the laugh, the boy gave a sigh of relief. ‘I knew you’d like my plan. Cool or what? Which reminds me, Dad, would you ring Dervla and ask her to pick me up at the ferry terminal? I think the boat gets in around six. Look, my battery really is low. I’ll be in touch later …’
The line went dead and after a short pause Gianfranco keyed in a number.
Dervla took another doughnut from the bag that Sue had dumped on the tea tray. ‘I don’t usually like these,’ she said, taking a large bite.
‘You need a sugar hit. Trust me, I’m a nurse,’ Sue said, helping herself. ‘Look, Dervla, I think things have just got out of proportion. You two are meant to be together. Give him time and I guarantee he’ll come around about the baby thing. He loves you.’
‘You’re totally wrong. Gianfranco doesn’t love me. He never pretended to be in love with me, not even when he proposed,’ she admitted in a voice that cracked with emotion.
In fact he had made it pretty clear that romantic love was an encumbrance that had no place in his life.
Sue looked sympathetic but unsurprised. ‘Some men find it hard to articulate their feelings.’
Dervla’s eyelashes swept upwards. Her green eyes were bleak as she gave an odd little laugh. ‘Not Gianfranco,’ she promised.
Gianfranco could be very articulate, especially when it came to exposing romantic love for the sham he believed it was. His feelings on the subject were clear and Gianfranco had no problem when it came to clarity.
Clarity was his thing, she reflected bitterly. Her husband was not a man for whom grey areas existed.
‘He just doesn’t have the feelings to express … not for me, at least,’ she added bleakly.
Dervla had suspected early on that it wasn’t love that Gianfranco didn’t believe in, it was the possibility of him ever finding the love he had shared with his first wife, the love of his life, with anyone else.
Being a woman in love, she had ignored the deafening warning bells and decided she would be the one to teach him he could love again.
Feeling the frustrated resentment building inside her, she defiantly reached for another doughnut. It would serve Gianfranco—who had likened her to a sleek and supple little cat—right if she gained twenty pounds! She was definitely beginning to see the attraction of comfort eating.
‘He told me when he proposed that he wasn’t in love with me.’
The older girl shook her head in disbelief. ‘And I thought Italian men were meant to be romantic,’ she exclaimed, looking disillusioned.
‘He still loves Alberto’s mother. She was beautiful and perfect and—’
‘I hate to point out the obvious, but this paragon is also no longer with us, Dervla.’
Dervla’s mouth twisted into a bitter smile. ‘Have you ever tried competing with a ghost?’
Sue’s expression softened with sympathy. ‘Is that how you felt?’
‘She was beautiful.’
‘So are you!’ Sue protested.
Dervla gave an exasperated shake of her head. ‘Not pretty—beautiful.’
‘Does he mention her a lot?’
Dervla gave a sniff and shook her head. ‘Never. See,’ she said when she saw Sue’s expression. ‘You think that’s a bad sign too.’
‘Not necessarily.’
‘Carla says he finds it too painful. She says Sara was his soul mate, they never argued and she—’
‘I get the picture,’ Sue intervened quickly. ‘The man has baggage and a son.’ She chewed worriedly on her lower lip as she studied her friend’s unhappy, downcast features. ‘God, Dervla, did you have to marry him? Couldn’t you have just had sex?’
‘That’s what he said.’
Sue’s eyes went saucer-wide. ‘And you said …?’
‘Obviously we’d already—’ Dervla broke off, blushing, and Sue repressed a grin. ‘He made this ridiculously big thing of me being a virgin at twenty-six.’
‘You were a virgin!’
Sue’s astonished exclamation brought Dervla’s head up with a jerk.
‘Gianfranco was your first lover?’
Dervla bit her lip and nodded.
‘Wow!’
They both reached in unison for another doughnut as the phone began to ring.
Sue moved towards it and Dervla cried out urgently, ‘No, leave it!’
Her friend shrugged and settled back in her seat.
Teeth clenched, Dervla stood ten more seconds before she broke and picked it up.
‘Hello.’
‘Dervla.’
His deep honey-timbred drawl was more frayed around the edges than normal but Dervla would have been able to distinguish it in the middle of a male voice choir.
Her mind went blank.
‘Is that you or a heavy breather?’
She expelled the air trapped in her lungs in one gusty sigh and wiped her wet palm against her thigh.
‘Hello, Gianfranco, how are you?’ How are you? Why stop there, Dervla? Why not sound like a complete moron and ask him how the weather is there?
‘How do you think I am, cara?’
She winced at the acid in his biting response and felt her anger and resentment stir. As if he were the only one suffering here; as if she hadn’t spent two days of hell.
‘How would I know? Silence is kind of hard to interpret. I couldn’t even read between the lines, because there weren’t any. I’m actually feeling fairly honoured that you spared a moment to pick up the phone.’
There was a protracted silence that was more than adequate for Dervla to regret her hasty comments.
‘So you missed me, then.’
He sounded so smug that if there hadn’t been several hundred miles separating them she’d have hit him. Acknowledgement of the distance between them drew a desolate little sigh from her. How could you feel lonely in a place that until recently you had called home? But she did, her home was not here any longer, it was wherever Gianfranco was.
‘Actually I’ve been too busy to miss you. There’s been no time. I’ve been shopping and to lunch, catching up on old friends. We’re on out way our now, actually. You only just caught me.’
At the other end of the phone Gianfranco snapped the pencil he was threading between his long fingers in two. ‘So should I expect to see photos of you staggering out of nightclubs to appear in the tabloids?’ he wondered in a sub-zero tone.
‘Don’t be absurd!’ she snapped, conscious that nothing he said could be as absurd as her trying to convince anyone she didn’t miss him.
God, the ache for him went bone deep.
‘Well, if you could spare a moment out of your busy social diary …?’
Dervla nibbled on the sensitive flesh of her full lower lip. If he’d rung to say come back what was she going to do? Of course, he might have rung to say let’s call it a day. The second possibility almost tipped her over the edge into total panic.
‘If you’ve got something to say, Gianfranco, just say it.’ Whatever he said, she told herself she could deal with it.
‘We have a problem, Dervla.’
She closed her eyes, sure she knew what was coming: it was the second possibility. He was going to say let’s call it a day—this relationship is more trouble than it’s worth.
She had always wondered what she’d feel like when this happened. Now she knew—she wasn’t going to feel anything at all.
She was numb.
‘Well, it could be worse—you could have sent me an email.’ Perhaps one day you’d be able to legally end a marriage that way, neat and clinically without any need for even looking at your partner.
Anger swelled inside her. She wanted to see Gianfranco. She wanted to tell him to his face what he was throwing away. She wanted to tell him that he was damned lucky she loved him and it was his loss.
Her chest tightened … Oh God, and mine, she thought, thinking of her life stretching ahead, a life of days when she would not hear Gianfranco’s voice or see his face.
‘Email? What are you talking about? No, don’t tell me, there’s no time. It’s Alberto.’
‘Alberto?’ she echoed. ‘Not a divorce?’
‘Divorce?’ A volley of Italian words they didn’t teach in the polite surroundings of her language class came down the line. ‘Have you been talking to Alberto?’
‘No,’ she said, turning her back on a wildly gesticulating Sue so that she could concentrate on what he was saying.
‘Alberto has run away.’
It took several moments for the blunt statement to penetrate. When it did the blood drained from Dervla’s face. She swayed.
‘Oh, my God, no, is he …? How long? The police …’ She sank into the chair that Sue placed behind her knees and whispered, ‘I feel sick.’
Sue took the phone from her limp grasp and with a marshal light in her eyes waded right in.
‘What the hell have you said to her? No, she damned well isn’t all right!’
‘I’m fine, Sue, will you give me—?’
‘You’re not fine,’ Sue contradicted. ‘She nearly passed out, you blithering idiot.’
Dervla, struggling to contain her nausea, groaned; with the best intentions in the world Sue was making matters worse. She could just imagine how Gianfranco would react under normal circumstances to being called a blithering idiot, but these were not normal circumstances—his son was missing.
If anything happened to Alberto she could not bear to think of how Gianfranco would react. He adored the boy. So did she.
I should be there with him.
Consumed with guilt that she wasn’t there when he needed her most, Dervla got unsteadily to her feet. This was not a moment for wimpy fainting.
The next blistering instalment of Sue’s indictment came to an abrupt halt as she said, ‘Oh, God, I’m sorry. When … how …?’ And began to listen.
‘He’s all right, Dervla. He rang his dad from Calais.’
With a gasp of relief Dervla snatched the phone from her friend’s hand. ‘Is it true? Alberto is safe?’
‘He’s fine, cara, though he won’t be when I get my hands on him.’ This grim observation drew a weak laugh from Dervla. ‘He took a slight detour from the school excursion and ended up in Calais. You’ve got to admit the boy has ingenuity. He rang from the ferry. Apparently he’s on the way to England.’
‘Here! Well, at least you know he’s safe. I wonder what on earth made him do something like that?’ she puzzled. Alberto was about the most unmixed-up adolescent she had ever met. He was a total stranger to teenage angst. ‘It’s just so unlike him.’
‘Who knows why a teenager does anything?’
Something in Gianfranco’s voice made her wonder if he knew something that he wasn’t telling her. It hurt that he was excluding her again.
‘Can I do anything?’
‘Yes, that’s why I rang.’
Not because you needed to hear my voice. For a moment she longed with every fibre of her being for Gianfranco to want and need her as much as she did him. She wanted him to feel the same aching emptiness she did at this moment. She wanted him to love her.
Then on the heels of the thought came guilt. What a selfish, self-centred cow I am, she thought in disgust. Gianfranco was already feeling as bad as he could. His son was out there alone and, no matter how mature he seemed, Alberto was still a child and he was the only part Gianfranco had left of the woman he had loved—so Gianfranco already knew about the aching emptiness.
‘Anything.’ The word emerged with far more force than she had intended.
‘That’s a rash offer.’
‘It’s a genuine offer, Gianfranco. I love Alberto too, you know.’
‘I know. He speaks very highly of you too.’ This time she was sure the edge in Gianfranco’s voice was unmistakable.
‘Try not to worry,’ she said, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say that wasn’t ‘I love you’.
‘I’m sending Eduardo over with the car. He’ll be there in about half an hour. If you could meet Alberto off the ferry and take him back to the house?’
‘Yes, of course.’