‘I had offers.’
‘I’m sure,’ he paused. ‘And you never married?’
‘No.’
They remained in silence for the rest of the way.
He slowed down as they approached the ancient walls of Mdina and suggested that before they visit Addison, they stop at his apartment for a drink. She felt hesitant. Was it a good idea? Probably not and yet she heard herself agreeing, and they climbed the stairs to the place she had spent so many happy hours with him.
‘Whisky?’ he asked, raising the bottle.
‘A small one.’
They carried their drinks out onto the little terracewhere she sipped her whisky and neither of them spoke. She heard dogs barking in the nearby town and smelt woodsmoke in the air, saw the winding white lanes and the sloping fields where the old donkeys spent their days.
He sat opposite her staring at the tiled floor. Then he swallowed visibly and said, ‘I feel I should explain.’
‘No need,’ she said, holding herself tight, because if she were to allow the feelings inside her to release, she would be finished.
‘That isn’t true. I behaved—’
‘Appallingly,’ she interjected. ‘You behaved appallingly.’
‘I …’
She shrugged. ‘Look, it doesn’t matter. It was years ago. We’re different people now.’
‘Are we? I never stopped loving you.’
At this she rose to her feet in anger. ‘Well I stopped loving you.’ She spat out the words, headed inside and made straight for the door.
‘Please don’t go.’
She turned, watched him stand, reach out a hand and take a limping step towards her.
‘No.’ She shook her head, raced down the stairs and only when she had hidden herself away in one of the narrow cobbled streets, did she lean against a wall and cry, great gulping sobs, her body wracked with pain as she bent double. How dare he come here and say that? How stupid was she to have come with him? She wasn’t a child, for God’s sake.
Moments later she heard uneven footsteps, tried to wipeher face with her sleeve, began to walk away. Then he was there pulling at her elbow. She fought him off then pounded his chest again and again as if she might pound out the pain that had been buried inside her for so long. The pain that she’d never given herself permission to fully feel.
‘Riva.’ His voice broke.
‘No.’
‘Please.’
‘You broke my fucking heart, you bastard.’
‘I …’
She swayed, overcome by the ferocious anger coursing through her body, making her heart pound, her blood boil … she gasped for air but then she went limp suddenly, crumpled against the wall like a rag doll.
‘You … broke … my heart,’ she repeated. ‘And I lost our baby.’
‘Baby?’
The silence of Mdina seemed to deepen even further as he helped her to straighten up. He wrapped his arms around her and then they both wept – she with the relief of telling him, he … well she didn’t know for sure, but sorrow, she thought.
When the tears were over, he whispered. ‘I am so sorry. I didn’t know you were pregnant.’
