son.
Jamie. It had been losing him that had taken the backbone out of their marriage and, like other loving parents before them, tragedy hadn’t brought them closer, it had driven them apart.
She knew that Nicholas hated the situation he found himself in with the two people he cared for most in the world, yet he wasn’t a go-between. Georgina had made him promise that he would never divulge her whereabouts to Ben without her permission. Even though she knew Ben was the last person who would come looking for her after all they had been through.
As she made a meal of sorts, Georgina was remembering how Nicholas had taken her to Willowmere’s Mistletoe Ball in the marquee on the school sports ground, and he’d gone with her to the gathering at James’s house on Christmas Eve when Anna and Glenn had announced their engagement. So she supposed the senior partner at the practice could be forgiven if he had Nicholas down as the father of her baby.
It had been August when something she’d not been prepared for had happened. She’d been at Jamie’s graveside, taking the wrapping off the white roses that she always brought with her, when a voice had said from behind, ‘Hello, Georgina.’
She’d turned slowly and he’d been there, Ben Allardyce, her ex-husband, the father of the cherished child they’d lost.
He’d looked older, greying at the temples, and the emptiness that had never left his eyes after Jamie had been taken from them had still been there in the gaze meeting hers. As she’d faced him, like a criminal caught in the act, she’d known that no other man would ever hold her heart as Ben had.
Nicholas had told her that Ben knew she visited the grave, but during all the time they’d been apart she’d never come across him until that day which had also been Jamie’s birthday.
She’d turned back to the labour of love that had brought her there and was arranging the flowers with careful hands on the white marble of their memorial to their son.
When it was done and she’d straightened up and faced him again, he’d said, ‘Nicholas tells me he’s coming to the U.K. in October and is going to be here three months. It will be good to see something of him.’
‘Yes, it will,’ she answered awkwardly, like a schoolgirl in front of the head teacher.
‘Do you want to come back to the house for a drink before you drive back to wherever you’ve come from?’ he asked in the same flat tone as when he’d greeted her. She observed him warily. ‘It was just a thought,’ he explained, and she wanted to weep because of the great divide that separated them.
‘Yes, all right,’ she heard a voice say, and couldn’t believe it was hers. She turned back to the grave once more and dropped a kiss on the headstone, as she always did when leaving, and when she lifted her head, he was striding towards his car.
‘You know the way, of course,’ he said as she approached her own vehicle. She nodded, and without further comment from either of them they drove to the house that had once been their family home.
As she stepped inside, the sadness of what it had become hit her like a sledgehammer. The room began to spin and he caught her in his arms as she slumped towards him.
She rallied almost as soon as he’d reached out for her, but Ben didn’t relax his hold. They were so close she felt his breath on her face as he said, ‘You need to rest a while.’ Picking her up in his arms, he carried her to the sofa in the sitting room and laid her on it.
When she tried to raise herself into a sitting position he told her, ‘Stay where you are. I’ll make some tea. A brandy would be the ideal thing but as you’re driving…’
After he’d gone into the kitchen she looked around her and saw that nothing had changed in the place that had once been her home. Furniture, carpets, ornaments were all the same as she’d left them, and she thought numbly that it was them who had changed, Ben and herself, heartbreakingly and irrevocably.
Jamie had been taken from them in a tragic accident, and with his going their ways of grieving had not been the same. Hers had taken the form of a great sadness that she’d borne in silence, while Ben had been filled with anger at what he saw as the injustice of it, and it had turned him into someone she didn’t recognise.
Instead of comforting each other, they had become suffering strangers and in the end, unable to bear it any longer, she’d asked for a divorce. Still fighting his despair, he’d agreed.
He’d offered her the house but she’d said no as it wasn’t a home to her any more. She’d packed her bags and gone to take up a position as a GP in a pretty Cheshire village that was far away from the horror of those months after Jamie had drowned.
When Ben came back with the tea he put the cup and saucer down and, with his arm around her shoulders, bent to raise her upright. ‘I never expected to see you actually here in the house again when I set off for the cemetery.’
‘Neither did I,’ she murmured, and as she looked up at him their gazes met and held, mirroring sadness, pain, confusion…and something else.
There was no sense or reason in what happened next. He bent and kissed her and after the first amazed moment she kissed him back, and then it became urgent, a tidal wave of emotion sweeping them along, and they made love on the sofa on a surreal August afternoon.
When it was over, he watched without speaking as she flung on her clothes, and when she rushed out of the house and into her car, he made no attempt to follow her.
It wasn’t until after Nicholas had come to stay that Georgina had realised she was pregnant. She’d been feeling off colour for a while, nauseous and light-headed, but busy as ever at the practice hadn’t thought much of missing her monthly cycle as she had always been irregular, initially putting it down to stress.
All the signs had been there—tender breasts, tiredness, morning sickness—and she’d faced up to it with a mixture of dawning wonder and dismay while carefully concealing it from her house guest. It hadn’t been too difficult as, although she’d been five months along by the time he’d returned to America in the New Year, she’d barely shown at the time. Even James hadn’t realised until she’d told him. Now, however, at eight months, her bump was there for all to see.
Knowing Nicholas, he would have felt he had to tell Ben if he’d found out about the baby, she’d thought, and she’d needed time to adjust to the situation that had come upon her so suddenly. Every time she thought about the wild, senseless passion that they’d given in to on that August afternoon, she wanted to weep. They’d lost a child born in love and gentleness. Under what circumstances had this one been conceived— loneliness, opportunism?
As the weeks had passed, the knowledge that she wasn’t being fair to Ben had pressed down on her like a leaden weight until the night she’d written the letter. After that she’d felt better, and had begun the ritual of watching out for the postman every morning, but there’d been no reply.
She could have called him. It might have been easier. But she was afraid that she might give herself away on the phone, and she just had to tell him face to face. No matter how they’d parted after losing Jamie.
It had been Jamie’s attachment to his football that had sent him careering over the edge of the riverbank. The ball had started to roll down the slope where she’d parked the car for the two of them to have a picnic.
She’d
