‘But …’ my head spins ‘… she told her friend she was being followed. The blue classic car?’
‘Yes. Her ex got a bit obsessive and started following her in his mate’s car so she didn’t recognize it. A midnight-blue Mercedes SL. Not a Jag. She’s safe, Lena.’ I can hear the relief in his voice. ‘She’s finally home.’
Part Two
30
HENRY
April 1988 London
The wedding was planned for June: an extravagant, lavish affair that was costing more than he made in a year, but Lawrence Bishop-Smith was insistent on paying for everything, indulgently promising Marielle the earth.
‘This wedding is helping to take my mind off poor Violet,’ he’d said at dinner, one evening, in the type of restaurant where the waiters looked even more dapper than their customers. Henry was still wary of Marielle’s father. He was too rich, too showy. He had people hanging off his every word, especially women, hopeful they might become the new Mrs Bishop-Smith. Secretly Henry felt Lawrence was a weak-willed man who, by all accounts, had allowed Violet to make financial decisions regarding his own daughters. Savannah, who had just turned eighteen, was off travelling the world, flying out the day after Violet’s funeral with a fistful of travellers’ cheques from her grieving father. Henry wondered if Marielle,too, had jumped at the chance to fleece her father while he was vulnerable by organizing a wedding before the funds started to dry up again.
Marielle now lectured four days a week at a university for the classics department. He liked that she was still ambitious despite her family money, even if he suspected the safety blanket meant she could do a job that wasn’t particularly well paid. Henry had been lucky that he was an all-rounder at school, gifted in most subjects, and he’d funded himself through medical school with student loans and extra jobs. If money had been no object, he’d have been an academic, like Marielle, specializing in English literature, Victorian Gothic, not that he’d allowed himself to think about it too deeply because it was only ever a pipedream.
Marielle was already home when he got in, leaping up from the sofa and her latest bridal magazine to give him a hug. He’d practically moved in with her because her apartment was so much nicer than his shoebox in Marble Arch, but it didn’t sit right with him. She’d persuaded him to take on more private work, which helped pay the bills, but although he earned a very good salary it was nothing to the money the Bishop-Smiths had.
‘I’ve just had a lovely early dinner with Daddy,’ she said, pulling him down so that he had no choice but to sit beside her. He hadn’t even had time to put his briefcase down or take off his shoes. ‘And he said we could have this apartment when we get married. He’d sign over the deeds to us.’ The apartment was currently in her father’s name.
The skin at the back of his neck prickled. ‘I couldn’t do that. It’s my job to provide for us, not your father’s.’
She scoffed. ‘You’re joking, right? You don’t strike me as the kind of man to let his ego get in the way of good sense.’ She shook her head in disbelief and narrowed her eyes. ‘Unless I’m wrong about you, Henry Morgan?’
He fidgeted and pulled at his shirt collar. ‘Maybe I can take on more private work …’
Disappointment was written all over her beautiful face. ‘Don’t be run-of-the-mill, Henry. That’s not the man I fell in love with.’
‘It’s not run-of-the-mill to want to earn a good salary, to want to look after your wife,’ he replied, offended.
‘That’s all very admirable, but that’s not why I love you. I love you because you understand me.’ Her eyes moved over his face as though she was taking in every inch of him. As though she was trying to work out if she’d been wrong to love him. This brilliant, confident, amazing woman. This woman who wanted to marry him. He couldn’t bear to disappoint her. ‘Don’t let pride get in the way of our love. That’s not what we’re about. We’re about defying conventions. We’re about being true to ourselves and each other. I have told you things, Henry, I could never tell anyone else. And you’ve told me things. I thought we had an understanding.’
‘We do,’ he said, white-hot panic rising that she might start to see him in a different light.
She squeezed his hand. ‘Good.’ She smiled. ‘Daddy did wonder if we’d need a bigger place. I know we’ve never discussed it, but he mentioned …’ she took her hand from his ‘… children.’
He didn’t want to share Marielle with anyone else. She had never talked about babies, never cooed over them ifthey walked past a pushchair. In fact, she’d once said, in passing, that she’d hate to be pregnant: it ‘looked uncomfortable’ and she’d feel as though she had an ‘alien growing inside her’. ‘Right,’ he said, in alarm. ‘I thought – assumed – you didn’t want them.’
She sat rigid, her hands in her lap. ‘I don’t know how I feel, if I’m honest, Henry. I never thought I was destined to be a mother. Until … well, recently. I suppose it was falling in love with you.’
‘I’d make an awful father,’ he spluttered, thinking of his own dad. ‘God, Marielle. Some people are meant to be parents, but we aren’t those people.’
She’d treated him to a little smile, as though she had a secret he knew nothing about. ‘Oh, I don’t know, Henry. I think perhaps we could be those people after all.’
‘You’re … you’re not pregnant, are you?’
She laughed. ‘No. Of course not.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Because I really don’t want them, Mari.’ His heart thudded and the air between them stilled. ‘And I don’t believe you really want them either.’
She patted his hand. ‘Maybe you’re right, Henry Morgan. But it’s too soon to tell.’ She got up and kissed him hard on the lips, but he continued to sit there, his stomach in knots. He loved Marielle with all his heart. He already knew he wanted never to be without her.
But he also knew, without a shadow of doubt, that he should never be a father.
31
LENA
