it? He wasn’t sure. He was suddenly filled with a cold, nameless fear for the future—a future without Kate, and without the boy, this last, unacknowledged and yet still infinitely precious child who, it seemed, he’d managed to love in spite of everything.
He sat beside her, the chairs so close he could feel the warmth radiating from her body, feel the air move with every shallow breath as her chest rose and fell.
‘I thought you wanted me to be in his life?’
‘I do—but not like this, giving him fragments of yourself from time to time. He deserves more from you.’ Her eyes suddenly filled with tears. ‘I can’t do this any more, Nick. I’m leaving, and that’s an end to it. Please. Just let me go.’
Let me go…
He held her eyes, watched the threatening tears well, watched in despair as one slipped down her cheek and fell to the floor. She never cried. Before today, the last time he’d seen her cry had been the night he’d taken her into his arms and held her. The night Jeremiah had been conceived.
Swallowing the bitter taste of regret, he stood up and turned away.
How could he let her go?
He couldn’t—but how could he make her stay?
Chapter Three
HE SAT down again a while later, but not for long, pacing restlessly, ramming his hand through his hair again and again until she thought he’d tear it out.
And then the doors swung open and Lucy and Jack came down the short corridor towards them.
‘How is he?’ Lucy asked, looking at Kate, avoiding Nick’s eyes as if she wasn’t sure how to do this.
None of them, in truth, knew how to do this. They’d just have to feel their way through.
‘Still in there. They stopped the bleeding, they’re just plating his pelvis. He’s been lucky, apparently—’
She broke off, wondering how on earth what had happened to her son could in any way be considered lucky, but then she felt Nick move closer, his hand on her shoulder, warm and reassuring despite their earlier words. Unable to resist the pull of that warmth, she dropped her head against his side, listening to the steady thud of his heart, and above it, the tension coming off them in waves, she could hear their quiet, fraught conversation.
‘I’m glad you came,’ Nick said, and she saw Lucy tense.
‘I had to, Ben asked me to give you back your car keys. It’s in the staff car park.’ She dropped them in his hand, then shook her head. ‘I’m not here for you, anyway, I’m here for a little boy who’s apparently my brother. I don’t know what to say to you. All that fuss when Mum died, but all the time you’d been carrying on behind her back—’
‘Lucy, it wasn’t like that. It was just once, right after the storm. Kate was distraught, I was distraught. It just—’
‘Happened?’ she said, her voice a little hard, unlike her usual self, but then she would be, Kate thought. None of them were themselves.
Nick let Kate go and moved away a fraction, and she lifted her head and looked up at Jack and Lucy.
‘It wasn’t just his fault. It takes two, remember. I was as much to blame. And just as married, really. James had only just died. There was no decent interval, believe me. It was inexcusable, but it never happened again.’
‘Not with you, maybe, but were there others?’
Jack’s question made Nick suck in a sharp breath.
‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘There were no others. Apart from that one occasion when we were both beside ourselves with grief and I didn’t really know what I was doing, I was never unfaithful to your mother. I loved her.’
Jack snorted. ‘Strange way of showing it.’
‘Jack, leave it,’ Lucy said. ‘It’s irrelevant to this. But what I can’t understand,’ she went on after a slight pause, ‘is why you’ve never told us he’s our brother—why you’ve kept it a secret for, what, eleven years or more?’
‘Two. I didn’t know about Jem until two years ago,’ Nick said, and their eyes swivelled to Kate.
‘So, did you know?’ Lucy asked incredulously. ‘Before then, did you know? I mean, you are sure about this? That James wasn’t his father? Have you had a DNA test?’
‘James isn’t his father. You’ve only got to look at him, Lucy. Look at his eyes. Look at his mouth. He was just like Jack’s little Freddie when he was three or four, just like Jack and Edward at his age now. And, anyway, James and I had been having fertility investigations. We were talking about adoption. Why would I need a DNA test? Besides,’ she added, ‘if I needed any other proof, I have it now. James was A-positive.’
Lucy sat down hard, her eyes accusing and filled with tears. ‘So—for eleven and a half years you’ve been convinced he was Dad’s child, and you didn’t tell him until two years ago?’
Kate reached out a hand, but Lucy snatched hers away, and she gave a fractured sigh and dropped her hand back in her lap. ‘How could I? He was happily married, he had three other children—who was I to throw all that into chaos?’
Jack gave a short, hard laugh. ‘The mother of his child?’
She met his accusing eyes. ‘Exactly. I wasn’t Nick’s lover, I wasn’t his wife—I was the mother of a child. And I did what I could to protect my child, and you, his other children, and his marriage. There was no point in upsetting all of that. Two wrongs don’t make a right. And we’ve been fine. Jem’s had a good life, settled, and I’ve given him all the love he could ever need.’ Her voice cracked. ‘And now he could be dying…’
She felt Nick sit down beside her again and slide his arm around her, there for her, giving her his strength and support—at least for now. ‘It’s OK,’ he said softly, turning her head into his shoulder and cradling it gently. ‘Don’t cry, Kate. He’ll be all right. It’s going to be OK.’
Was it? She hoped so, but she couldn’t for the life of her think how she’d cope if it wasn’t.
She felt Lucy sit beside her, felt the gentle touch of her hand. ‘Kate, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you, I’m just—It’s a bit of a shock, that’s all. And I’m so worried about him.’
‘I know,’ she whispered, patting Lucy’s hand reassuringly. She loved Nick’s daughter, she’d delivered her babies—she hated it that Lucy thought less of her now because of this, but it was only what she deserved. She’d given Lucy’s father the means to commit adultery, and it was every bit as much her fault as his.
But for now her guilt was directed towards her son, lying there on the operating table, his life hanging in the balance, hoping that when they opened him up they didn’t find anything unexpected.
She concentrated her mind on him, focused all her thoughts, willing him to pull through, to make it, to be all right. And then the door opened, and her
