studious intent.
‘Darling, you were twenty-two,’ her mother said, ‘hardly a babe in the woods.’
Mikki brought her head up from the wine list and sent her mother a wry look. ‘I thought you and Dad said I was too young to know what I was doing and I was just about to throw my life away on my first real love affair.’
Heloise pursed her mouth before she spoke. ‘He’s done very well for himself, hasn’t he?’
‘What are you saying, Mum?’ Mikki said as she began perusing the wine list again. ‘That I made the biggest mistake of my life in leaving him when I did?’
There was a tense little silence.
Heloise let out a frustrated breath. ‘Michaela, you’re always so defensive. Of course you did the right thing in leaving him. You had nothing in common with him.’
Mikki put the wine list down and met her mother’s gaze. ‘I loved him, Mum. I thought that was all the common ground one needed.’
‘But, darling, did he love you?’ Heloise asked. ‘There’s a very big difference between lust and love, you know.’ She took one of Mikki’s hands across the table and stroked it gently. ‘I know losing the baby was hard but in the end it worked out for the best, didn’t it?’
‘Yes, yes, it did.’ Mikki pulled her hand away and tried to ignore the sharp pain she always felt when the subject of the baby she had lost came up. She had felt so ashamed of letting her parents down. Her first trip abroad on her own and look what had happened. Her well-to-do parents’ hopes for their only daughter to one day have a society wedding with all the trimmings had been pushed aside for plans for a shotgun affair in a London register office, sandwiched between procedures in one of Lewis’s theatre lists.
‘Do you know if he’s married?’ Heloise asked, leaning back in her chair. ‘I didn’t notice a ring, did you?
Mikki had looked but was not going to admit to it. ‘I have no idea.’
‘Do you think that’s his mistress?’ Heloise asked. ‘Rich and powerful men nearly always have mistresses, don’t they? It seems to all be the rage these days.’
Mikki put the wine list down again with a heavy sigh. ‘Look, Mum, I don’t care who it is. Lewis has a perfect right to see who he likes. It’s none of my business.’
Heloise shifted in her seat like a hen ruffling its feathers. ‘I don’t want to argue with you, darling. I’m just trying to make conversation. You seem so stressed lately. And your father told me the last time he had lunch with you, you barely ate a thing. Is something wrong?’
‘Of course there’s nothing wrong,’ Mikki said. ‘I’ve just been putting in some long hours.’
‘You work too hard, darling,’ Heloise said. ‘Why do you drive yourself into the ground? Don’t you think you need a bit of a balance? You’re not getting any younger.’
‘Twenty-nine is the new nineteen, Mum, didn’t you know?’ Mikki said dryly.
Her mother pursed her mouth again and reached for her wineglass. ‘You can joke about it all you like, but when was the last time you went on a date?’
‘I went out to dinner with a colleague the other day,’ Mikki said.
Heloise narrowed her eyes. ‘That was a work thing, wasn’t it? And didn’t you tell me there were four other people there? Hardly what I would call a date, darling. When was the last time you were kissed?’
‘Mum!’ Mikki kept her voice low but her colour was high. ‘Will you please butt out of my love life?’
Heloise gave her an affronted look. ‘Only trying to help, dear. No need to bite my head off.’
‘Sorry,’ Mikki said, feeling her shoulders slump. For years she had worked incredibly hard at her career but she had come to a point just lately when her high-stress, high-responsibility job was not enough any more. She wanted more from life than long hours and a six-figure income. But it was so hard to put a toe in the dating pond when she had almost drowned all those years ago.
‘You’re not on call, are you?’ Heloise asked as Mikki took a sip of the wine the waiter had just poured to refill their glasses.
‘No, not tonight,’ Mikki said. ‘I was on last weekend.’
Mikki wanted to look across at Lewis’s table. She ached to have one more look at his face, to see if he was smiling at his date, to see if his eyes were crinkling up at the corners the way they used to do. Not that he had smiled a lot in the past, but when he had, it had been in a way that had made his rare smiles all the more valuable and meaningful. When he smiled his eyes lost that hard ice look and took on a summer-sky tone instead.
She wanted to reacquaint herself with the look of his hands, with those long, tanned fingers with their dusting of masculine hair, those clever, amazing hands that had saved so many lives, the hands that had touched her and caressed her and held her. She wanted to look again at his mouth, the mouth that had kissed hers so passionately, the lips that had touched her in places she had not been touched since.
Heloise’s glass clinked against the side plate as she placed it back on the table. ‘Don’t frown, Michaela. You’ll get wrinkles.’
Mikki forced her expression to relax. ‘Sorry, I was just thinking about work.’
‘Have you heard from your father since he arrived in Paris?’
‘Yes, he called me last night.’
Heloise reached for her glass again and took a sip of wine. ‘Did he tell you he is thinking of marrying Rebecca?’
Mikki put her glass down. ‘He did, actually. How do you feel about it?’ she asked, studying her mother’s features. Her parents’ divorce a couple of years ago had not really come as much of a surprise. They had grumbled along for years, not really happy together but neither of them unhappy enough to leave, until her father had met someone working for his international investment company.
Heloise gave a relaxed smile. ‘I’m happy for him.’
Mikki frowned. ‘But Rebecca is so much younger than him. What if they decide to have children? She’ll want them surely?’
‘Darling, your father always wanted more children but I was unable to have any more after you,’ Heloise said. ‘I think it’s lovely that he’s got another chance. Rebecca is a sweetheart. She’ll make a lovely mother. Maybe I’ll get the chance to babysit. I would love that.’
Mikki was still frowning so hard her forehead ached. ‘I can’t believe you’re so accepting of all this. I would want to move to another side of the world instead of…’ She stopped, suddenly realising what she was saying.
‘How will you feel if Lewis suddenly introduces a wife and family to you?’ Heloise asked with a pointed look.
Mikki had to drop her gaze in case her mother witnessed the pain she felt at the prospect of seeing Lewis with a little brood of his own. No one at the hospital had said much about him other than mentioning that his appointment in the neurosurgical department at St Benedict’s
