a woman can always sell her body?’ he interposed acidly.
She nodded, knowing this time there was no going back. That she needed to tell him the truth. The cruel, unedited version she’d never even been able to admit to herself before, let alone somebody else.
‘She can,’ she said. ‘Until her looks start to go—and that tends to happen sooner rather than later where addicts are concerned. My mother had once been beautiful but her looks deserted her pretty quickly. Her...her hair fell out and then...’
She flushed with shame as she remembered the kids at school taunting her and she remembered that she’d once thought she would never tell him this bit, but she knew she had to. Because why was she trying to protect her mother’s memory, when she had uncaringly gone out and wrecked as many lives as it took to get that hypodermic syringe plunging into her arm?
‘Then her teeth,’ she whispered, staring down at the fingers which were knotted together in her lap. ‘And that was the beginning of the end, because she kept losing her dentures whenever she got stoned. She was still able to get clients—only the standard of client went rapidly downhill, as I’m sure you can imagine, and so did the amount of money she was able to charge.’
And that had been when it had got really scary. When she hadn’t wanted to go home from school at night—even though she was so stressed that learning had become impossible. She’d never know what she’d find when she got there—what kind of lowlife would be leering at her mother, but, worse, leering at her. That had been where her mistrust of men had started and if that kindly social worker hadn’t stepped in, she didn’t know what would have happened. To most people, going back to the children’s home would have seemed like the end of the road—but to her it had felt like salvation.
‘It sounds a nightmare,’ he said flatly.
Sensing a sea change in his mood, Darcy looked up but the hope in her heart withered immediately when she saw that his stony expression was unchanged. ‘It was. I just want you to understand—’
‘No,’ he said suddenly, cutting across her words. ‘I’m not interested in understanding, Darcy. Not any more. I want you to know that something was destroyed when I received this letter.’
‘I realise it was shocking—’
He shook his head. ‘No. You’re missing the point. I’m not talking about shocking. Human behaviour has always been shocking. I’m talking about trust.’
‘T-trust?’
‘Yes. I can see the bewilderment on your face. Is that word such an alien concept to you?’ His mouth twisted. ‘I guess it must be. Because I asked you, didn’t I, Darcy? I asked you not once, but twice, whether you were keeping anything else from me. I thought we were supposed to be embracing a new openness—an honest environment in which to bring up our child, not one which was tainted by lies.’
She licked her lips. ‘But surely you can understand why I didn’t tell you?’
‘No,’ he snapped. ‘I can’t. I knew about your mother’s addiction. Did you expect me to judge you when I found out how she paid for that addiction?’
‘Yes,’ she said helplessly. ‘Of course I did. Because I’ve been judged by every person who ever knew about it. Being the daughter of Manchester’s biggest hooker tends to saddle you with a certain reputation. People used to sneer at me. I could hear them laughing behind my back. And even though my social worker said it was because I was attractive and people would try to bring me down by exploiting my vulnerability, that didn’t stop the hurt. It’s why I left and came to London. It’s why I never was intimate with a man before I met you.’
‘Why you never accepted the gifts I tried to give you,’ he said slowly.
‘Yes!’ she answered, desperately searching for a chink in the dark armour which made him look so impenetrable. Searching for the light of understanding in his eyes which might give her hope.
But there was none.
‘You do realise, Darcy,’ he questioned, ‘that I can’t live with secrets?’
‘But there aren’t any—not any more. Now you know everything about me.’ Her heart was crashing wildly against her ribcage as she pleaded her case like a prisoner in the dock. ‘And I need never lie to you again.’
He shook his head. ‘You just don’t get it, do you?’ he said and his voice sounded tired. ‘You knew that my childhood was tainted with secrets and lies. I told you a long time ago that I had trust issues and I meant it. How the hell can I ever trust you again? The truth is that I can’t.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘And the even bigger truth is that I don’t even want to.’
She was about to accuse him back. To tell him that he’d never trusted her in the first place. Look how he’d reacted when he’d discovered she was pregnant—showering her with suspicious questions when she’d lain in her hospital bed. He’d even thought she’d had wild sex with him just because he’d bought her a house. But her accusations remained unspoken because what was the point? No matter what she did or said, something in him had died—she could tell that from the emptiness in his eyes when he looked at her.
She nodded. ‘So what do you want to do?’
He lifted the glass of beer now and drank it down in a draught, before slowly putting the empty glass back down on the table. ‘I’m going back to London,’ he said and Darcy could hear the bitterness in his tone. ‘Because I can’t bear to be around you right now.’
‘Renzo—’
‘No, please. Let’s keep this dignified, shall we? Don’t let’s either of us say anything we might later regret, because we’re still going to have to co-parent. We’ll obviously need to come to some sort of formal agreement about that but it isn’t something we need to discuss right now. I think you know me well enough to know that I won’t be unreasonable.’
She nearly broke then—and what made it worse was the sudden crack in his voice as he said those words. As if he was hurting as much as she was. But he wasn’t, was he? He couldn’t be. Because nobody could possibly share this terrible pain which was searing through her heart and making it feel as if it had exploded into a million little pieces.
‘You have the services of the midwife I’ve employed,’ he continued. ‘I spoke to her from the car on the way here and explained the circumstances and she has offered to move into the annex if that would make you feel more secure.’
‘No, it would not make me feel more secure!’ Darcy burst out. ‘I don’t want a total stranger living here with me.’
He gave a short, sarcastic laugh. ‘No. I can’t imagine you do. Living with a stranger isn’t something I’d particularly recommend.’
And then he turned his back on her and walked out, closing the door with a click behind him. Darcy struggled to her feet to watch him walking down the garden path, past the washing line. The wind was blowing the sleeves of her shirt so that they flapped towards him, as if they were trying to pull him back, and how she wished they could. She considered rushing down the path after him, cumbersome in her late pregnancy, grabbing the sleeve of his handmade Italian suit and begging him to give her another chance. To stay.
But dignity was the one thing she had—maybe the only thing she had
