she tired of their pretend marriage?
Was she leaving him completely?
Did she want a divorce?
Nonsense! he told himself. She’d mentioned bodies. It was something from work she wanted to discuss.
But the tension she’d aroused remained with him as he ordered their pizza, half with anchovies and half without, took extra paper napkins as they’d be eating in the park, and waited while Ellie chatted with the young girl behind the counter, blithely unaware of the torment her words had caused him.
Their marriage as a marriage might be virtually over, but could he live without the woman he loved?
The woman, he was fairly certain, who still loved him?
And could their marriage really be over?
He thought of the times when they’d tried to talk about it, as two intelligent people working out their differences. But the problem with loving someone was that you knew their sore and vulnerable spots—knew the words that would stab them in those places…
Worse still, you used those words as weapons.
So not talking had seemed easier, although Ellie deciding to make the move downstairs had left him feeling hollowed out inside. He was aware it could be a prelude to her leaving altogether for all she’d said they both needed their own space for a while.
Andy carried the pizza up to the park, which was deserted at this time of night, and set it down on a table, aware as he always was of Ellie’s warmth by his side.
But worry about this ‘talk’ now nibbled at his mind so, as he placed a piece of pizza—from the anchovies’ side—on a napkin, and passed it to his wife, he said, ‘Okay, talk. What’s up?’
Ellie turned, questions in her night-dark eyes, and he realised he’d spoken too abruptly.
‘Right!’ she began, apparently reading his anxiety in his face. ‘Chelsea arrived this morning—your cousin Chelsea—and she’s pregnant and wanted to get away from home and people who know her until after the baby’s born. Apparently both her parents are off somewhere and Harry’s been looking after her—’
‘Not very well, if she’s pregnant!’ Andy muttered. ‘Does he know she’s here?’
‘Apparently so,’ Ellie said, ‘although I will phone him when we get home to tell him she’s arrived safely. I tried earlier but his phone was switched off.’
‘But where’s her mother, for heaven’s sake? I know her father’s probably off saving whales somewhere, but her mum? And Harry’s what? All of nineteen, I imagine, and far more involved in his own life at university than caring for his sister. Of all the irresponsible—’
He realised he was yelling now and it really wasn’t Ellie he should be yelling at, but she simply smiled at him and said, ‘She’s off finding herself, apparently.’
‘Mad, they’re both mad, they always have been. How Dad and Ken can possibly be brothers beats me. And as for Jill, why isn’t she at home, looking after a kid who’s barely out of childhood? I would have thought teenage years were when young girls, in particular, needed their mothers around.’
‘She’s sixteen,’ Ellie told him, ‘and twelve to sixteen weeks gestation. A bit hard to be precise at that stage and she has a very slight build.’
She paused, and Andy wondered what worried her about the situation. Apart from it being Chelsea. Teenage pregnancy was far from uncommon these days.
Was she thinking of their arrival here in town—of the coincidence of her being sixteen weeks pregnant when they’d first begun their move to Maytown?
Andy watched as Ellie ate her slice of pizza, chewing and swallowing it before she smiled at him, then shrugged as if uncertain where to begin.
‘I can understand her turning to a boyfriend for comfort, with her parents gone, and that the pregnancy was an accident, but I didn’t want to push her to talk too much about the future.’
He saw the worry in the little crease between her eyebrows, and read it in her voice.
‘The thing is, Andy, we’ll take her in, I was sure you’d agree with that, but I wondered if she—if we…’
It was so unlike Ellie to be this hesitant over something that he reached out and took her hand, feeling her fingers curl into his, warm and sticky from the pizza but accepting his support.
‘I wouldn’t like your mum to find out about our marriage right now and be upset, which she will if I’m downstairs and you’re upstairs while Chelsea’s with us. I mean, it’s a bit like shouting it to the world.’
Her head lifted so she could watch his face as he considered it.
‘Easily fixed,’ Andy said, barely suppressing his delight because the top part of the house was desperately empty without Ellie in it. A cool, contained and even frosty Ellie was better than no Ellie at all.
If only he’d realised that before she’d made the move downstairs. He should have talked to her about feeling shut out; about his own pain, and how much it had frightened him; about feeling cast adrift after she left —
‘You’ll move back up? I’m still sleeping in Dad’s old room, so you can go back into Mum’s.’
She half smiled and he guessed that life in the downstairs flat hadn’t been entirely joyous either.
‘I didn’t take all that much,’ she said, ‘but, yes, I think that would be best.’
‘And Chelsea? Has she planned anything beyond escaping to Maytown for the period of her pregnancy?’
Ellie shrugged.
‘We barely talked, and right now she’s confused, and lost, and really needs to know she’s safe and loved and cared for. I do wonder about Jill going off like that when Chelsea is still so young. Do you think because her husband is always off somewhere, she felt it was her turn?’
Andy grinned at her.
‘Who knows what goes on in other people’s relationships?’ he said, and she responded with a small smile, turning her fingers so she could squeeze his hand.
‘Too true. Look at ours!’ she said with a smile.
The smile and something in her tone of voice suggested there was more hope than defeat in the words but before he could pursue it, Ellie was talking again.
‘Well, all we can do is be there for her. I can only help her with her pregnancy at the moment, and perhaps you and I can both talk with her about the future. About the baby, maybe—’
‘No!’
The word seemed to echo around the park, far too loud, far too strong, far too emotionally charged…
Andy breathed deeply, counted to ten then another five, and regained a semblance of control over the dark fear that had seized him.
‘I
