“Oh.” Confused, Jenny couldn’t think of anything in reply as he opened the passenger door and sat in beside her, then turned back again to Holly, cathcing the baby by the hand.
“Can we go somewhere else? Maybe take a walk on the pier – do you have the buggy?”
“I don’t have it with me,” Jenny lied, completely ill-at-ease. This was all so unexpected.
“What’s wrong, Jenny – don’t you trust me?” he asked in a menacing tone. Then his face changed and he laughed. “I’m sorry,” he snorted, “but it’s so obvious from your face what’s going on in that imaginative little head of yours. You thought I was about to run off with her, didn’t you?”
“No, I did not,” she argued, her red cheeks betraying her. “I’m just trying to figure out what you’re doing here, that’s all. You have to admit, it’s a bit strange bumping into you like this.”
“Not strange at all. I arranged it.”
“You what?”
“The estate agent had to cancel. He recognised you from that time he sold me our place, so he rang me instead. So here I am.”
“You came all the way out here to pass on a message? Why didn’t you just phone me?”
“Because I wanted to see you,” he said seriously. “We have things to discuss. I thought this would be a good opportunity.”
Jenny said nothing, still completely unsure as to what he wanted. This was surreal.
“Look, let’s go for a walk somewhere, the three of us. Somewhere quiet,” he urged gently.
She nodded her assent, wondering what was to come. Then drove away from the shabby street and continued on to the coast road, until reaching The People’s Park on Dun Laoghaire waterfront.
With Holly strapped into her buggy and Jenny at the helm, they strolled through the park.
“When you first told me about Roan, I didn’t understand,” Mike began without preamble. “I didn’t get why you lied to me for so long, and then shattered all we had built by admitting the truth. I don’t know how many times I’ve repeated that conversation over and over in my head since.” He paused for a moment. “But there was one thing you said that stuck out in my mind. ‘I love you too much to lie to you any longer.’At the time Jen, that didn’t make any sense. I mean, how could you say you love me in one breath and destroy everything that was precious to me in the next?”
“I had to,” she replied simply. “The guilt had been eating me up inside for so long that I knew I couldn’t go on. I should’ve told you at the beginning I know that, but it just went on and on - to say nothing of the fact that I was never quite sure if he even was the father and – ”
“There was never any question about that,” Mike said, stopping and she frowned.
“What? What are you talking about?”
He sat down wearily on a nearby bench. “I couldhave saved you all that worry, all that guilt and confusion if I’d been honest with you from the beginning.”
“What do you mean?” she asked again, perplexed.
Mike exhaled. “That day, when we found out you were pregnant and I started jumping around like a demented kangaroo … remember you asked why I was so happy when I’d never wanted kids with Rebecca?” He hung his head. “That wasn’t it. It was never that I didn’t want them, Jen. The simple truth is that I couldn’t.”
Her mouth dropped open.
“It was true that I wanted to wait until InTech was up and running and yes, Rebecca agreed that we should wait until I thought the time was right. Eventually, we decided to give it a go. We tried for over a year and when nothing was happening we both went for fertility testing. They told me that for various reasons, the chances of my fathering a child were extremely low, even with IVF. Rebecca was devastated. As you know she’s older and the doctors told us that her age would probably work against us too if we tried IVF. We did anyway, and … nothing.” Mike paused for a moment and then continued, his voice hoarse. “At first she was OK, very supportive and we decided that we’d do whatever we could, try whatever we could. But eventually, the strain of it all got to both of us and she began to blame me for waiting so long. She would have been that bit younger so our chances would have been better. Eventually her resentment and my guilt, drove us apart.”
Jenny listened numbly, her mind all over the place.
“If I’d told you that at the beginning, if I’d beenhonest with you back then, the truth would have been obvious when you learned of your pregnancy. But I was just so overjoyed. I thought that by some miracle or freak of nature even, that I’d managed to do what the doctors said I never could.”
“Oh, Mike ...”
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you. You deserved to know it, as much as I deserved to know about Roan. Becky was adamant from the very beginning that everything needed to be out in the open. You remember how she reacted a bit strangely when she heard about the pregnancy? She knew that something was amiss. But I foolishly believed that some kind of miracle had happened.”
“So Becky suspected all along?”
Jenny felt her insides spin, felt as though the ground was rising up to meet her. Mike had been keeping secrets too.
“She wanted to speak to you then, to ask if there was anything funny going on but I wouldn’t let her. I was furious with her for even thinking such a thing, plus I couldn’t even consider the notion. As far as I was concerned, I was defying all the odds, a medical miracle.” He gave a wry smile and looked out towards the sea.
