‘O-K.’
‘I’m not sure I really want to be honest now but… I feel I owe it you.’ He smiled. ‘Do you want to get a coffee?’ He looked down at her feet. ‘And maybe your shoes?’
54
THE ROCKEFELLER CENTER ICE RINK, NEW YORK
Hayley ditched the jumper sleeves and let the cardboard cup warm her hands as she watched Michel with Angel on the ice. Holding hands, laughing, getting faster with every circuit, her daughter was having the time of her life.
‘He seems to be taking to it,’ Oliver remarked. ‘Fatherhood.’
She looked at him. ‘It’s like a first date. Neither of them really know what to say or do. I’m hoping there’ll be a second but it’s a difficult situation.’ She sighed. ‘And it takes a lot more than skating and hot dogs to make a parent.’ She smiled, her eyes on him. ‘What is it you need to tell me?’
She watched him put his coffee cup to his mouth and take a sip of the liquid. He turned to her, adopting a serious expression then clearing his throat. ‘It’s about my Wish Women really,’ he stated. ‘And, the reason I meet women that way.’
She could see he was struggling to get the words out and she clamped her lips shut before something inappropriate spilled out.
‘The truth is, Hayley… I can’t give anyone a future with me,’ he stated.
Hayley nodded her head up and down. ‘I understand. We’renot dissimilar. I’ve not introduced any man to Angel for the very same reason. There are no guarantees and if you’re going to put a lot of time and effort into something, there has to be some sort of assurance, or at least definite intentions. Dates and one nights are OK as long as everyone is on the same page.’
‘It isn’t that.’
‘Oh.’
‘This is so hard.’ He put his cup down on the wooden railing.
‘Just tell me, Clark,’ she begged. She was nervous. Whatever he had to say sounded serious. ‘Just take a deep breath and get it out there.’
‘OK,’ he agreed, filling his lungs with the chilly air. ‘OK.’
She waited, letting the steam from her cup caress her cheeks as she watched him.
‘The reason Ben died was because he had a defective gene.’ He sighed. ‘Ready for the science bit? Well, there’s something called a calmodulin protein, which is a kind of sensor that measures calcium in the heart cells and regulates heart rhythm. Ben’s didn’t work properly and it caused a sudden cardiac arrest.’ He took a shaky breath. ‘And he died.’
‘I know all about that now,’ she said softly. ‘I read his story on the McArthur Foundation website.’
He nodded. ‘Of course you did.’ He put a hand to his hair, raking his fingers through it. ‘Hayley… I have the same defective gene.’ He swallowed. ‘And because of that… I don’t know how long I have to live.’
His heart was kicking him right this second. Drumming hard and irregular beats as he watched for her reaction. Right now, she was looking confused, gripping the cardboard cup a little too hard, hereyes small, as if she was trying to understand exactly what he’d said. He needed to hammer home his point. She needed to be clear. If anything it would make her see how much better an option Michel was.
‘My brother had it; he died before he was thirty. My grandfather too, dropped dead at the same age, he had it. And my father only made it to sixty-five. It’s what the Drummonds do. We work ourselves into the ground and then we die.’
Hayley was shaking her head, tears bubbling up in her eyes. This was what he’d wanted to avoid. Her pain. This reaction right now. He could feel the tearing of her insides, the kick to her gut and the punch to her heart.
‘Listen,’ he said, reaching out for her hands. ‘It’s OK.’
‘This is what happened, wasn’t it? In your apartment, after our date, when I had to call the ambulance…’
He nodded. ‘I should have told you then. But all I could think about was how much faith you’d put in me just going on that one date and that I’d somehow duped you into being there. Because, despite the crap I came out with at St Patrick’s, that date meant something to me, Hayley.’ He paused. ‘And the more it meant, the worse the situation was. So I did what I always do when faced with anything remotely emotional: I switched off, I pulled back and…’ He looked to the ice rink. ‘I found you a replacement.’
Her tears were falling now, dripping down her face, her reddened cheeks bitten by the harsh New York weather. He wanted to kiss her tears away, make her pain stop but he held off.
‘Don’t cry,’ he whispered, moving a strand of her hair away from her face.
‘Iwantto cry.’
‘Idon’t want you to cry.’
