not by choice, though, and actually it’s not true, I am still using my degree. I’m working for my old boss in Cambridge. I’d started my PhD and I was working there in research when I met David.’
‘And then you had it all,’ he said, his voice curiously bitter. ‘Everything you’d always wanted. The career, the marriage, the baby—’
‘No.’ She stopped him with one word. ‘No, I didn’t have it all, Sebastian. I didn’t have you. But you’d made it clear that you were going to take over the world, and I just hated everything about that lifestyle and what it had turned you into. You were never there, and when you were, we were hardly ever alone. I was just so unhappy. So lonely and isolated. I hated it.’
‘Well, you made that pretty clear,’ he said gruffly, and turned back to the pristine worktops, scrubbing them ferociously.
‘It wasn’t you, though. You weren’t like that. You’d changed, turned into someone I’d never met, someone I didn’t like. The people you mixed with, the parties you went to—’
‘Networking, Georgia. Building bridges, making contacts. That’s how it works.’
‘But the people were horrible. They were so unfriendly to me. They made me feel really unwelcome, and I was like a fish out of water. And so much of the time you weren’t even there. You were travelling all over the world, wheeling and dealing and counting your money—’
‘It wasn’t about money! It’s never been about money.’
‘Well what, then? Because it strikes me you aren’t doing badly for someone who says it’s not about money.’
She swept an arm around the room, pointing out the no-expense-spared, hand-built kitchen in the house that had cost him ridiculous amounts of money to restore on a foolish whim, and he sighed. ‘That’s just coincidence. I’m good at it. I can see how to turn companies around, how to make things work.’
‘You couldn’t make our relationship work.’
Her words fell like stones into the black pool of his emotions, and he felt the ripples reaching out into the depths of his lonely, aching soul, lapping against the wounds that just wouldn’t heal.
‘No. Apparently not.’ He threw the cloth into the sink and braced his hands on the edge of the worktop, his head lowered. ‘But then nor could you. It wasn’t just me. It needs give and take.’
‘And all you did was take.’
He turned then and met her eyes, and she saw raw pain and something that could have been regret in his face. ‘I would have given you the world—’
‘I didn’t want the world! I wanted you, and you were never there. You were too busy looking over the horizon to even see what was right under your nose.’
‘So you left me. Did it make you happy?’
She closed her eyes. ‘No! Of course it didn’t, not then, but gradually it stopped hurting quite so much, and then I moved to Cambridge and met David. I was looking for somewhere to live and I went into his office, and we got talking and he asked me out for a drink. He was kind and funny, and he thought that what I was doing was worthwhile, and we got on well, and it just grew from there. And he really cared about me, Sebastian. He made me feel that I mattered, that my opinion was valid.’
‘That was all it took? Kind and funny?’
She gave him a steely glare. ‘It was more than I got from you by the end.’
A muscle in his jaw flickered, but otherwise his face didn’t move and he ignored her comment and moved on. ‘So what happened to your PhD?’
‘I found out I was pregnant, but he’d been moved to the Huntingdon office by then and I was commuting, which wasn’t really satisfactory, and then the housing market collapsed. So I contacted my professor and he offered me this job, which kept us going, and then just after I had Josh, David died.’
‘And do you miss him?’ he asked. His voice was casual, but there was something strange going on in his eyes. Something curiously intense and disturbing. Jealousy? Of a dead man? ‘Yes, of course I miss him,’ she said softly. ‘It’s lonely in the house by myself, but life goes on, and I’ve got Josh, and I’m OK. He was a nice man, and I did love him, and he deserved more from me than I was ever able to give him, but I never felt the way I did with you, as if I couldn’t breathe if he wasn’t there. As if there was no colour, no music, no poetry. No sense to my life.’
His eyes burned into hers. ‘And yet you walked away from me. From us.’
‘Because it was killing me, Sebastian. You were killing me, the person you’d become. You never had any time for me, we never went anywhere or did anything that didn’t serve another purpose. It was all about business, about making contacts that would make more money. I felt like an ornament, or a mistress, someone who should just be grateful for the crumbs that fell from your table. But I didn’t want crumbs, I wanted you, I wanted what we’d had, but you shut me out, and you broke my heart, and I never want to let anyone that close to me ever again.
‘So, no, I didn’t feel for David the way I did for you. I didn’t want to. He didn’t give me what I’d thought I wanted when I was little more than a kid and everything was starry-eyed and rose-tinted, but he loved me, and he took care of me, and he made me happy.’
‘And he cancelled the life insurance.’
Damn him! ‘He had no choice! We were really struggling—’
‘Did he tell you he was doing it? Did you discuss it? Or did he just do it and hope for the best? Because I would never have done that to you, Georgia,’ he said passionately. ‘I would never have left you so unprovided for. Would never have compromised your safety or security like that.’
‘You have no idea what you would have done in those circumstances—’
‘I know I’d starve before I did that—’
‘You have no right to criticise him!’
‘You were mine!’ he said harshly. ‘And you gave him all the things you’d promised me. Marriage. A child. Hearth and home and all of that—hell, George, we had so many dreams! How could you walk away? I loved you. You knew I loved you—’
His voice cracked on the last word, and her eyes flooded with tears; she closed them, unable to look at him any longer, unable to watch his face as he bared his soul to her. Because she had left him, and he had loved her, but she hadn’t been mature enough or brave enough to cope with what he’d asked of her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, her heart aching with so many hurts and wrongs and losses she’d lost count. ‘If it helps, I loved you, too, and it broke my heart to leave you.’
She heard him swear softly, then heard the sound of his footsteps as he walked up to her, his voice a soft sigh.
‘Ahh, George, don’t cry. No more tears. I’m sorry.’
She felt his hands on her shoulders, felt him ease her close against his chest, and with a ragged sigh she rested her cheek against his shirt and listened to the steady thudding of his heart. His arms closed around her, cradling her against
