was no answer. ‘Katie?’ He looked through the doorway into the kitchen. It was deserted.
Thinking that she might be in bed asleep, he put the kettle on and looked out of the window. The storm had been fierce; it had delayed him landing in Athens, and he’d been forced to wait a while before being able to drive back along the coast. The road had been completely impassable in parts due to flooding, forcing him to make a long detour.
At least the storm had been late at night and not earlier, otherwise he’d have worried about Katie driving back in it. He hoped the car she’d bought was OK. Come to think about it, where was the car? He hadn’t seen a vehicle when he’d driven up.
Alexi glanced further along the driveway but he couldn’t see another car. He headed out of the kitchen and up the stairs. The lights in the bedroom were on, and it looked as if Katie had been in bed, because the bedclothes were thrown back and there was a full cup of tea on the bedside table. He put his hand against the side of it but it was cold.
‘Katie?’ He wandered through to the en suite bathroom, but no sign of her there either. ‘Katie?’ He went back to the doorway into the corridor and called her. Then he noticed her nightshirt on the floor.
He frowned, quickly took out his mobile phone and dialled her. There was no reply and no sound of a phone ringing in the house.
He’d just hung up when his phone rang, and hurriedly he answered it, hoping it was Katie. But it was his mother.
‘Alexi, we’ve just got in and there is a message on our answer machine from Katie telling us she is not feeling well. Is she OK? We’ve been trying to ring her but there is no reply.’
Fear wasn’t an emotion Alexi was familiar with but he felt it now—twisting through him like a serpent. ‘I’ve just got in and she’s not here.’
There was silence as they both thought about the storm that had raged a short while ago and the conditions of the roads.
If she’d driven somewhere in that weather she could be at the bottom of a gully somewhere. The thought pounded through Alexi’s consciousness, and he raked his hand through his hair, trying desperately to rid himself of it.
‘What sort of car did she buy, do you know?’ he grated suddenly.
‘No, she didn’t say, and I didn’t see it. I think she said it was red—yes, she definitely said it was red, I remember now.’
‘I’ll go find her.’
‘Ring me as soon as you know anything.’
Alexi headed out of the house at a sprint. The rain had stopped now, but the thunder was still growling, and lightning was still flicking through the darkness of the night.
If she hadn’t been feeling well she probably would have headed back to Athens towards a hospital. With grim determination Alexi turned his car along the road in that direction.
If anything had happened to her he didn’t know what he would do! He’d never forgive himself. He shouldn’t have left her.
His hands gripped the steering wheel as memories flicked through him of how she’d looked when they’d said goodbye four days ago. She’d been almost radiantly beautiful, the sun shimmering over the chestnut lights in her hair, her skin glowing with health.
They’d laughed about her sudden craving for ice cream. ‘At least I’m not eating it with pickled onions,’ she’d said with a smile.
He remembered taking her into his arms and kissing her. He remembered the way she had looked up at him.
Something twisted and knotted in his gut.
There was an emergency-services truck ahead towing a vehicle out of a ditch. He slowed the car and scanned the small group of people standing by the roadside, but Katie wasn’t amongst them.
A police officer waved him over and he stopped and wound down his window to speak to him.
‘The road is pretty bad ahead, sir, I wouldn’t advise going any further.’
‘I’m going to have to, officer,’ Alexi told him bluntly. ‘My wife could be along there somewhere—she’s pregnant and alone—I need to get to her.’
He didn’t wait for a reply, just put up the window and continued.
There had been a landslide a little further along, and he had to transverse around it. That was when he saw the red car wedged in between the landfall on the road. The car itself looked undamaged. It still had its headlights on and a light on inside.
He left his car with the engine still running and darted across towards it, wrenching the door open.
‘Katie? Katie, honey, are you OK?’ She was sitting sideways in the passenger seat—her feet up on the seat, hugging her knees against her chest, her head buried down onto them, so that all he could see was the glossy fall of her hair.
She looked up and he could see that she had been crying, and his heart turned over.
‘Katie. Are you OK?’ he asked again. His voice sounded raw even to his own ears.
Her face crumpled. ‘I think I’m losing the baby, Alexi,’ she whispered.
‘Come on, honey, don’t cry.’ He kneeled in on the driver’s seat. ‘Can you move?’
She shook her head and then watched as he tried to use his phone to call an ambulance. ‘There’s no signal,’ she told him roughly. ‘None! It’s no good …’
She was right. He snapped the phone closed and then reached for her. Putting one hand under her knees and one around her back he gently slid her towards him and then lifted her out.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered as she curled her arms up and around his neck. ‘I’m so sorry, Alexi. I didn’t know what to do … and I know how much you want this baby. I do, too.’
‘It’ll be OK.’ He smoothed her hair back from her face and kissed her cheek. He didn’t know what to say to her; he had never felt more inadequate in all of his life. ‘I’m here now—I’ll take care of you.’ His voice grated unevenly on a hard lump of emotion in his throat.
‘I’ve been having pains like contractions for the last couple of hours,’ she told him. ‘I don’t think it will be OK.’
She sounded exhausted. ‘Try and relax—are you still in pain?’ He carried her over towards his car.
‘No, not now, but it keeps coming in waves.’ She put her arms more tightly around his neck, breathing him in. It was so good to be held by him, to feel his strength. She wanted never to let him go.
Alexi tried to think practically—and not to dwell on the emotions raging inside him. He managed to open the passenger door and bent down to put her into the seat.
For a moment she didn’t let go of him.
‘Katie.’ He crouched down beside her and gently untwisted her arms from round his neck.
‘We’ll
