Cold washed down Adam. The world he’d thought he’d left behind finally caught up with him.
He blew out a breath. “All right, where?”
“Take it in there, it’s more private.” She indicated the office where Pierre normally worked.
He went in, leaving the doors open so he could see Laura if she came up the stairs. The office phone was on the table with the receiver lying beside it.
“Hello?”
“Adam?” The familiar voice that had always been kind now grated with anger.
Resigned, he said, “Yes.”
“Yes? That’s all you have to say?” Gerald’s voice shook with rage. “My wife and I have been trying to call you for weeks.”
“I’m sorry, I’ve been away with a patient.”
“A patient? Is that what you call a jolly with your new girlfriend?”
He kept an eye on the stairs and the gallery, more than anything he didn’t want to miss Laura. “I haven’t been on any jolly with any girlfriend.”
“You thought hiding on some obscure little island we wouldn’t find out? You shouldn’t have posed for pictures on Facebook that my family could see.”
“I’m sorry, what Facebook?” What was he talking about? And since when did Gerald even know about Facebook?
“And it seems you’re trying to withdraw a hundred thousand pounds from the account. Didn’t you think the bank would inform me, since you added my name?”
Adam sighed inwardly. This was not going to be a quick call. He reached over and shut the study door, then composed himself to listen while the older man shouted at him.
It all came out in a torrent. The pictures on Facebook were the least of it. When Sharon’s mother tried and failed to reach him, she’d tried the clinic in Harley Street and discovered he’d sold his share of the practice. All that remained was a box of personal effects, which the helpful receptionist had offered to send to them. In it was Sharon’s diary, the one he had started to read. The one that had finally pushed him to leave.
“Tell me, is this a new affair or were you in love while my daughter was still alive? While you were busy pretending to be the faithful husband? Were you cheating on her all along?”
“Gerald, I know you are angry and still grieving, but there was no affair, never, not while Sharon was –”
“Then why was she so sure that you didn’t love her?”
“Because…” It wasn’t an answer he could give to his father-in-law.
“Let me read you what she says,” Gerald said bitterly.
There was a rustle of papers and then he came back on the line. “‘Adam came to say goodbye this morning. He’s going away again. He’s always going away. Conferences, he says. Medical conferences. But I used to be a nurse and I know what these conferences are like. Late night drinks and sex on tap. I never see him. I asked him to kiss me and he gave me a quick peck on the top of my head, as if I were his sister.’”
Adam closed his eyes as Gerald went on reading more and more entries from a diary full of accusations.
“Whenever I accuse him of lying, these days, he just closes his eyes and I can tell he’s counting to ten. Why won’t he take me on one of his so-called conferences? His answer is always the same: Business venues have no appropriate facilities for me, for my equipment and chair. Blah blah.
“‘Why won’t he take me on holiday? I’ve been asking every day for two months. I can see him losing his patience with me and trying to hide it. He always says he has to work. Of course, he has to work because my healthcare is expensive and he can’t afford time off. Then he pays for me to go on holidays with my sister, with a friend. Never with him.
“‘That new nurse was flirting with Adam. He came in like every morning to check on me, and just as he we were about to talk, she sidled up to him, twittering on about my dialysis. I lost it, just lost it. I shouted at her called her a cheap slut and a bitch and ordered to get out. He tried to keep the peace, pretended he hadn’t noticed any flirting. But I made him sack her on the spot. Afterwards, he sat by my side and held my hand and assured me there was nothing going on but that we were running out of private nurses willing to work for us because I keep sacking them. That’s how he puts it. Working for ‘us.’ I know what they do for me but what do they do for him? After hours. So I asked him if he’s ever slept with anyone since we got married. No, he promised, and swore on the name of everything that was precious that he has been celibate all this time.
“‘I don’t want him to be celibate. Why won’t he sleep with me? Even if I can’t feel anything, he still could. He didn’t answer, just looked very sad then kissed the top of my head and went to work.’”
Gerald went on reading, but he didn’t need to. Adam remembered all too clearly. The tears, the accusations, the hurt look in her eyes. Because he couldn’t love her, had never loved her, and she had known it. Nothing else mattered. He could have worked himself into an early grave to take care of her, but the one thing she wanted from him he had never given her. No matter how he tried. How could he blame Gerald for his anger? The man was her father, for God’s sake.
Adam looked out of the window at the sun shining on the sea beyond the marina. For the last two months, this had been his life and he’d been happy, for a time.
But Sharon’s words took him back to that other life, the one he thought would be his only reality. Since the day nearly six years ago when she came to show him the pregnancy test.
