with a hatred that still burned just as strongly in her today as it had done on that day all those years ago, when he had stared at her across the kitchen of the pretty house he had bought them close to the university and told her harshly, ‘You’re pregnant? But you can’t be. It’s impossible.’
CHAPTER THREE
‘IMPOSSIBLE…wh-what do you mean?’ Abbie had stammered, her face white with shock and disbelief. She had been so thrilled when the doctor had confirmed what she had secretly already suspected to be true—that she had conceived Sam’s child.
They hadn’t talked about having a family as yet, but of course she had believed that ultimately they would have children.
If her timing was right, she would at least just about be able to get through her finals before the baby’s birth. She had chuckled out loud as she’d left the doctor’s surgery, her face bright with love and joy as she’d hugged the pleasure of her news to herself.
She couldn’t wait to tell Sam. He would be a wonderful father. She could see him now, his large hands cradling their child.
She hoped it would be a boy…at least this first one. They could turn the small fourth bedroom into a nursery. All right, so maybe she wouldn’t take up the career she had originally planned, but Sam earned more than enough to support both of them. All of them, she’d amended, and at least she would have her degree.
Whilst the baby—the babies—were young, she wanted to be at home with them, but later, even though by then she would be positively ancient, close on thirty, she could, if she wanted, embark on a career—just so long as it wasn’t something that conflicted with her family life, her husband, their children. They would always come first.
She’d been so happy she could have burst. She’d wanted to go to Sam right then and tell him their wonderful news, but he would have been right in the middle of a lecture, and besides…she’d wanted to have him to herself when…
Pregnant…a baby…Sam’s baby. She was the luckiest, luckiest girl in the whole wide world.
Suddenly she’d felt ravenously hungry. Sardines…sardines on toast; that was what she wanted—yes, and then an enormous sticky bar of chocolate fudge.
She would, of course, have to start eating very carefully. She had the baby to think of now, she’d warned herself sternly, but for now…for today she could afford to be a little self-indulgent…just as she probably had been when this baby had been conceived. She’d given a small chuckle. When the doctor had asked her if she had any idea when conception had taken place she had furrowed her forehead and frowned.
‘When did you last have sex?’ he had asked her patiently.
‘This morning,’ she had answered promptly, and had then flushed a brilliant shade of pink as she’d realised what he was getting at.
‘Er…I’m not sure. It could have been…I missed my first period three weeks ago…’
She had been taking the pill, but she had been so busy that for two consecutive nights she had forgotten to take it. This baby was obviously meant to be…just like the way she and Sam had met—just like their love. Oh, God, she’d been so happy…so very, very happy…
‘I mean that it’s impossible for you to be pregnant—at least not with my child,’ Sam told her now, harshly.
Abbie looked at him in mute disbelief. Where her face had originally been flushed with excitement and happiness it was now bone-white. Sam’s, on the other hand, bore the tell-tale signs of male anger in the dark colour staining his cheekbones and the clenched tightness of his jaw.
‘What do you mean, not with your child? Is this some kind of joke?’ Abbie whispered in confusion.
She didn’t know what Sam meant; she couldn’t understand what he was saying. How could her baby, their baby, not be his? Of course it was his—theirs. What on earth was he trying to do to her? If this was his idea of some kind of teasing game…
Anxiously she searched his face, but there was no sign of any good humour or amusement in it. Just the opposite.
‘A joke? My God, I wish it was,’ Sam told her harshly. ‘You cannot be carrying my child, Abbie, because I cannot give you a child. I’ve had a vasectomy.’
‘You’ve what? You can’t have done. Not without telling me. Not without…’
‘I had it done several years ago, when I was in India with VSO. I was working in a small village; a young man I met there, a young man of my own age, the son of the head man, who had taken me under his wing, told me that he intended to have a vasectomy. I was shocked at first, wondering how on earth he could contemplate such a thing, but then he took me on a tour of Bombay and pointed out to me the number of children who had been abandoned because their parents could not afford to feed them. He told me the basic economics of what happened in a world when there were too many mouths to feed, when the land itself could not support them.
‘“What is best?” he asked me. “That I prevent conception now or that I wait until my children are one, four…seven, and watch them die slowly of malnutrition?”
‘What he said, what he showed me, shocked me, made me realise that to father a child when there were already so many, many children in the world in need was an act of selfishness which would simply push those children even further down the poverty scale.
‘I decided to have a vasectomy myself.’
Abbie stared at him.
‘You’re lying,’ she told him flatly.
‘No,’ Sam denied. ‘You are the one who is doing that, Abbie, when you claim that you are carrying my child.’
Abbie licked her lips nervously. She couldn’t believe this was happening. How could it be happening? How could she possibly be carrying Sam’s child in her womb when he…? Tears filled her eyes, a mixture of anguish, anger and panic exploding inside her.
‘You must have known I would want children, and yet you married me without telling me that you couldn’t give me any. Why? Why…?’
‘Would you believe me if I told you that I was so much in love with you…wanted you so desperately that the thought of children or anything else other than our love simply never occurred to me? And for your information I did not know you would want children. I thought you possibly shared my feelings about the world not being able to support the children it already has. It hasn’t ever been something we’ve discussed.’
‘Because there hasn’t been any time…any need. But you must have known…must have realised…’
‘Why?’ Sam demanded more harshly. ‘Because it’s what everybody does…what everyone wants?’
‘You lied to me…you deceived me,’ Abbie wept.
The look he gave her was full of bitter contempt.
‘And you haven’t done the same to me? Tell me something, Abbie,’ he demanded savagely. ‘How long exactly was it after I had had you that you went crawling into his bed? A month, a week…less…?’
‘What…what
