delicate oval face before him, with its perfectly neat dark brows, looked faintly horrified. ‘But we did give him a name, Jake … a name and a gravestone, remember? Before the snow got really bad yesterday I took a bouquet of lilac asters and white anemones to the graveyard where he’s buried. I do it every year at this time.’
The graveyard that housed the tiny remains of his son was situated in the grounds of a picturesque Norman church tucked away behind a narrow street not far from the Westminster offices of Larsen and Son. But Jake hadn’t visited it since the day of the funeral. That had been a bitter winter’s day, when icy winds had cleaved into his wounded face like hot knives, and it was a day that he wished he could blot from his memory for ever.
Pressing his fingers into his temples, he drove them irritably back into his hair. ‘And that helps, does it?’
‘Yes, it does, as a matter of fact. I know I was only seven months pregnant when he died, but he deserves to be remembered, don’t you think? Why do you seem so angry that I’ve brought the subject up? Did you really expect to stay here the night and not have me talk about it?’
Feeling utterly drained all of a sudden, as well as a million miles away from any remedy that could soothe the pain and distress he was experiencing at the memory of the longed-for son they’d lost so cruelly, Jake moved across to the dining room door that stood ajar.
‘I’m sorry … but I really don’t think there’s any point in discussing it. What can it possibly achieve? You have to let it go, Ailsa. The past is finished—over. We’re divorced, remember? We’ve made new lives for ourselves. Who would have thought the shy young girl I married would end up running her own business? That’s quite an achievement after all that’s happened. Not everything ended in disaster between us. We’ve still got our beautiful daughter to be thankful for. Let’s leave it at that, shall we?’
‘Yes, we have Saskia—and I count my blessings every day that we have. And, yes, I run my own business and I’m proud of it. But do you really believe that if we don’t discuss it the shadow of that dreadful time we endured will magically go away? If it was so easy to just let it go don’t you think I would have done it by now? I thought that the divorce would help bring some closure after our baby’s death—help us both put it behind us and eventually heal. But somehow it doesn’t feel like it has. How can it when I’ve lost half of my family and can’t even hope for more children in the future? The accident robbed me of the chance. Perhaps because we’re not together any more it helps you to pretend that it never happened at all, Jake? “Out of sight, out of mind”, as they say?’
Ailsa was so near the truth that Jake stared at her. He hadn’t really wanted a divorce at all, but he had finally instigated it when the agony and the blame he’d imagined he saw in his wife’s eyes every day began to seriously disturb him. He just hadn’t been able to deal with it.
‘How can I pretend it never happened, hmm? I only have to look in the mirror every time I go to the bathroom and see this damned scar on my face to know that it did! Anyway …’
He swallowed down a gulp of air and his thundering heartbeat gradually slowed. It gave him a chance to think what to do next … to try to blot out the torturous memory of Ailsa being so badly injured in the accident that she’d slipped into unconsciousness long before the surgeons had performed a ceasarean to try and save the baby. The head surgeon had told Jake afterwards that her womb had been irreparably damaged and their infant hadn’t survived. It was unlikely she’d ever be able to bear a child again.
‘I’ve brought some work with me that I need to take a look at before I turn in. My father’s death has meant that I’ve become CEO, and inevitably there’s a raft of problems to sort out. Thanks for dinner and the bed for the night. The food was great. I’ll see you in the morning.’
Even though his excuse was perfectly legitimate, there was no escaping the fact that it made him feel like a despicable coward.
‘If you need an extra blanket, you’ll find a pile of them in the oak chest at the end of the bed.’
Ailsa’s tone made her sound as if she was determined to rise above her disappointment at his reluctance to yet again deal with the past. He silently admired this new strength she’d acquired, and was moved to hear the compassion in her voice … compassion that he probably didn’t deserve.
‘Sleep well,’ she added with a little half-smile. ‘Don’t sit up too late working, will you? You’ve had a long day’s travelling and you must be tired.’
Obviously not expecting an answer to her remarks, she gracefully moved back to the table, then methodically started to clear away the detritus of their meal. Knowing already that his unexpected appearance had disturbed and upset her, Jake fleetingly reflected again that he should never have come here. Then he would have avoided this agonising scene. His throat locked tight with the guilt and regret that made him feel, and he swept from the room. In the prettily furnished bedroom he’d been allocated, he glanced despairingly over at the neat stack of paperwork he’d left on the hand-stitched patchwork quilt that covered the bed and angrily thumped his chest with a heartfelt groan …
Knitting at the fireside, as was her usual habit before retiring to bed—she was always working on something beautiful and handmade for a customer—Ailsa took comfort from the rhythmic click of her needles along with the crackle of fresh ash logs she’d added to the wood-burner. After that altercation with Jake earlier she was feeling distinctly raw inside—as though her very organs had been scraped with a blade. Already she’d resigned herself to another sleepless night. Sometimes she didn’t vacate the high-backed Victorian armchair until the early hours of the morning. What was the point when all she did most nights if she went to bed early was toss and turn? Sleep was still the most elusive of visitors. It wasn’t usually until around five a.m. that she’d fall into an exhausted slumber, then a couple of hours later she’d wake up again feeling drugged.
She often wondered how on earth she survived on such a relentlessly punishing lack of sleep and was able to take care of Saskia and work too. The human capacity to endure never ceased to amaze her.
But she was even more unsettled tonight by the fact that Jake was occupying the spare room upstairs. Seeing him again had been wonderful and dreadful all at the same time. But the sight of him had always made her react strongly. The deeply grooved scar on one side of his chiselled visage made him no less charismatic or handsome, she reflected. She was grief-stricken at the idea he believed that it did. And. yes … she privately admitted it did make him look rather piratical—although she hadn’t wanted to hear that other women thought so too. It nearly killed her that he seemed to have forgotten the passionate love they’d shared and moved on. There was no such ‘normal’ pattern of existence for her. How could she even look at another man with the prospect of a relationship at the back of her mind after someone like Jake Larsen?
She’d been a trainee receptionist in the Larsen offices when they’d first met. Only nineteen, yet brimming with determination to better herself after her difficult start in life, she’d been so grateful for the chance of such a ‘glamorous’ job when she’d barely had any qualifications under her belt. But she’d been studying hard at her local adult education facility to remedy that. When Jake had walked through the revolving glass doors one day, wearing a single-breasted black cashmere coat over his suit, his lightly tanned skin and blond hair making him look like some kind of mythical hero from one of those magical folk tales that had at their roots the trials and travails of life and the story of how the handsome hero and beautiful heroine overcame them together, Ailsa almost forgot to breathe.
As he’d walked up to her and her colleague,
