‘This is Giles, by the way,’ Archie said as they made their way over. ‘Say hello, Giles.’
The little boy obliged but only gave her a cursory glance because he was far more interested in technology than in some random woman he’d just met. Nadia got the impression Giles had no idea that they were related.
With Giles at one end of the bench, Archie slid closer to Nadia. It felt odd to sit in such close proximity after all this time.
Her shock gave way to fury. ‘Why are you even here?’
He checked Giles was engrossed and turned his body slightly, leaned a little more in Nadia’s direction. ‘Monica is missing.’
‘What do you mean she’s missing?’
‘She came here to the UK; she came to Dorset – to find you.’
‘But you just said she’s missing.’
‘I know she’s in England but I’ve no idea exactly where.’ He added some context – he’d noticed her passport missing, found an email from Eurostar, put two and two together and come up with five, it seemed.
‘I haven’t seen or heard from her.’
‘But she’ll be looking for you, Nadia. And she’ll be doing it pretty blindly. She wouldn’t have much to go on – you broke off all contact and made it impossible, so she came here without direction, with no firm plans of a place to go.’
‘So this is my fault?’
‘I didn’t say that. Please, lower your voice.’ He checked Giles was still engrossed and he was. ‘Giles knows his mum is here; so far, I’ve told him we’re having a bit of a holiday before we see her.’
‘You still haven’t said how you knew where I was.’
‘I saw you on the television: the appeal. I went to the airbase, was told you were at a fundraiser. It wasn’t hard to work out from there; the posters are all over town.’
She looked over at Giles again. ‘Does he know who I am?’
‘He thinks you’re an old friend.’ His brow furrowed. ‘You were once upon a time. You were more than that.’
‘Well, things got ruined, didn’t they?’
He didn’t respond but instead said quietly, ‘I can’t lie to my son forever, but I was hoping we’d find her before I had to. I was hoping we’d find her before?—’
‘Don’t you have an app or something on your phone to track her? That’s what I’d do.’ She couldn’t listen to any more. ‘I have to get back to this event; this is work, this is important.’
‘So is this. Monica is pregnant again.’
‘Congratulations,’ she said flatly.
‘Nadia, it wasn’t only that I saw you on the television that prompted me to come to see you; it was the fact that a baby had been abandoned at the airbase.’
Her pulse quickened and it felt like all the oxygen around them had suddenly dropped. It was a moment before she managed to ask him, ‘How pregnant?’
‘Thirty-five weeks when she came here, she’d be thirty-eight weeks almost by now.’
Nadia’s emotions whirled up inside of her, she felt nauseous, she wanted to run away and yet she knew she couldn’t. The timing… it could fit, couldn’t it?
‘Can I get you something – a glass of water?’ Archie asked.
She looked at him. She felt like he’d asked her the most stupid question in the world.
Lena might well be Monica’s baby, that was what he was saying, and nothing, certainly not a glass of water, was going to do anything to help her get her head around that.
‘Monica should’ve been back in Switzerland by now. It was a risk travelling so close to her due date. She’s not in a good place, mentally. It’s not a rational thing to do, come over to look for someone when you’ve no idea where they are, not really, leaving her child behind, her husband, her life.’ He was rambling and his voice shook. ‘I don’t know what to do, where she is, whether this baby you found…’
