Marnie was gone though, the sound of her heels disappearing into the noise of the hospital. Tom sat back in his bed, thoroughly confused and more than a little worried. Why was his mother talking about Ari? Where had she heard of her?
He closed his eyes, taking deep breaths, clearing his mind of all thought. Thinking of Ari was painful. Thinking of Ari’s baby, on the hip of an attractive man who could only have been the father —Ari’s husband, Tom reminded himself painfully — was worse.
He needed to get the hell out of this hospital and get back to his mother’s house, he decided. He needed to get back to Sasha and the scraps of a life that were left to him.
As he stood, calling for a nurse, he stepped onto the sharp needle of his mother’s knitting. In her hurry to leave, she’d abandoned it. Frowning, Tom picked up the skein and needles, a small section of something bright in his hand.
This was no ugly sweater or crooked tea cosy, Tom realised. No, this was pink and soft and small and the perfect size for a child.
Whose child?
Tom swallowed hard.
He needed to get home. He needed to get home right away.
Chapter 6: Choice
If anything, Marnie’s temper got worse on her journey home. As she drove through the winding roads, the sky pitch-black and the trees ominously hanging over the road, she gripped her steering wheel with hands like iron, negotiating turns and banks at a pace that even Doug — who considered speed limits a suggestion and not a hard and fast rule — would have considered reckless.
But Marnie didn’t care. She was tired and angry and generally pissed off, so much so that when a deer darted in front of her car, causing her to slam on the brakes and lose velocity, she wound down her window to shout profanities as it disappeared into the inky darkness of the forest.
Her disappointment in her son was staggering. So staggering that she felt it all the way from her mind to stomach, both of which turned and went into overdrive. Tom had gotten a girl pregnant and abandoned her. He’d met his daughter —my grandchild, Marnie thought indignantly — and walked away from her. Marnie’s fury was as hot as the blood pumping around her body, and she took a deep breath as she started her car’s engine once more, speeding again until the lights of the house appeared on the horizon before her.
She parked her car on the drive for her chauffeur to deal with in the morning, then slumped back in the driver’s seat, abruptly feeling exhausted. The burst of angry energy that had sustained her drive home dissipated into the evening air. Her mind considered a new and awful realisation, a sliver of doubt in herself suddenly arising:Part of this is my fault.
It suddenly occurred to Marnie that if Tom was the kind of man who would abandon a pregnant lover, the kind of man who would walk away from a child of his flesh, well, then she was the mother who’d raised that kind of man. She knew she hadn’t been the best of mothers. She knew she’d worked too much duringTom’s childhood, knew that her distance from his beloved father had hurt him, knew that her dedication to her business and the protégés who had swarmed around her, like drones to a queen bee, had made him feel second best. But she always thought, beyond everything, that she’d instilled in him the values she’d cherished. Those of honesty, hard work and accountability.
With Ari and his daughter, Tom had abandoned all three.
Marnie walked into her house, slipping her heels off in the hallway and taking a small measure of relief from the feel of the cool, marble floor. She considered the sweeping staircase before her, knowing she should probably go upstairs, shower and jump into bed, but the thought did not appeal. What she really wanted, right then, was a hard drink and a cigarette, although she knew there were no smokes in the house. Doug, for all his hard-drinking and hard-living ways, had been surprisingly firm on nicotine.
“Not in my fucking house,” he’d growled at her, and Marnie, young and in love and wanting to please her new lover, had watched as he’d snapped every last cigarette she owned in half.
It was a rule that had stuck over the years, and even now, when Doug was long gone, every member of her staff still followed the same routine. If ever Marnie was tempted to smoke and bought cigarettes, they were duly destroyed. Mrs Hollis was particularly good at it, taking an almost sadistic glee in flushing her tobacco stores away. Right then, desperate for a hit of nicotine, Marnie hated her. She hated them all.
She turned right, walking into the library with its French doors left open to the evening air.That’s odd,Marnie thought. The doors were always closed in the evening when the household went to bed. They were never left open, not even on the hottest of summer nights.
She was about to call for Mrs Hollis, about to make a scene, when she smelt it — smoke, rich and heady, like the peatiest ofopen fires, drifting through the air.Cigarettes.Marnie’s heart sang, drawn to the scent like a sailor to a siren in the open sea. She turned, following its direction.
She stopped when she saw a man sitting in an old armchair, facing the open doors. His legs were crossed languidly, and he was dressed in a robe and slippers. It was the wedding planner, Marnie realised. Sebastian. The one who fawned over Sasha and planned to bleed her coffers of money. Ari’s brother. The one who had spent more time with her granddaughter than she ever had, and more than likely ever would. A flash of anger passed through her, and she was ready to have it out with him, to berate him for his presumption in smoking in her nicotine-free establishment. The fucking nerve of him, she thought viciously.
Fists clenched, red-cheeked, she stormed to his side, mentally working out what to say. He glanced up at her, taking another long drag on his cigarette, seemingly unperturbed by her obvious anger.
“Smoke?” he asked, offering up his pack of cigarettes, and after one small moment of hesitation, Marnie nodded tightly.
“Thank you,” she replied, leaning down to slide one out, allowing Sebastian to light it up.
She slid into the armchair next to his, drawing long and hard on the cigarette and feeling her body sag with relief at the sweet hit of tobacco. She felt Sebastian’s eyes on her, and she looked towards him.
“What?” she snapped.
“You look as though you’ve had a right shit of a day, is all,” he replied easily, his face placid.
Marnie took another drag. “My son fell out of the sky earlier today, in case you’d forgotten.”
Sebastian nodded, taking another drag himself, his face so utterly unconcerned and emotionless that it suddenly occurred to Marnie that he had probably forgotten, or — much more likely— simply didn’t care. They’d signed the contracts. At this point, Marnie paid up whether the wedding went ahead or not.
“How is our groom?” he asked. “No horrible scarring, I hope?”
