Lucy Gordon - The Pregnancy Bond

‘I was-the best thing-you loved me?’

‘I’ve never loved anyone in my life as much as I’ve loved you. And I never will. All I wanted was for you to love me, and somehow I could never quite believe that you did.’

‘Love you?’ she echoed, astonished. ‘But Jake, I adored you. You must have known that. I positively hero-worshipped you.’

‘Oh, yes,’ he said quietly. ‘I knew you hero-worshipped me, but that’s not quite the same as love. It was quite scary. I kept waiting for you to discover that I had feet of clay. I reckoned you’d dump me when that happened. In the end you did, but I can’t complain. We had eight years, and that was more than I hoped for.’

At first she was too shocked to speak.

‘But-but it wasn’t like that,’ she stammered at last. ‘It was always me scurrying around in your shadow, afraid I was boring you. You achieved so much-’

‘Only because you told me I could. I was a bum. I had a big mouth and I could talk my way into jobs, but I usually talked my way out again because I annoyed people by being too clever by half. Then I met you, and you actually admired me, which nobody had ever done before. If my name was mentioned people used to say, “Oh, him!”’

‘Jake, that’s not true-’

‘It is true, but you never knew. You made me see myself through your eyes, believe that I could be what you thought me. And then when-when we broke up, you made me see myself through your eyes again, someone who’d taken everything and given back nothing. That’s really why I agreed to the divorce. I reckoned you deserved to be free of me.’ He gave a snort of self-condemning laughter. ‘Even so, I convinced myself that you’d back off at the last minute. I never thought of your flying straight into the arms of another man.’

‘I didn’t, Jake, honestly I didn’t.’

‘What about Carl?’

‘What about him? He’s not my baby’s father.’

He grew still, searching her face. ‘Is that true?’

‘It’s true. Jake, you know who this child’s father is. You do. You’ve always known, really.’

He shook his head helplessly. ‘I don’t know anything any more. It’s no use asking me to work things out. It’s all gone. Everything I used to have or be, it’s all gone.’

‘No, it hasn’t. You’ve still got me, you’ve still got our baby, and you’ve still got your talents.’

He barely seemed to hear her. He laid his hand over her swelling stomach, only just touching it.

‘Our baby,’ he whispered. ‘Ours?’

‘Yours,’ she said softly.

She wished she could see his face, but his head was bent. Gradually he slipped to the floor, resting his head against the swell, and beneath her hands she could feel the violent shaking of his shoulders. She tried to speak, but the effort died. No words would be adequate. No words were needed. She put her arms as far around him as she could and held him quietly while he sobbed.

This might have been despair at an added burden, but her instincts told her that he was weeping for joy. Once she would have found that hard to believe, but they’d travelled far together in the last few months. He was clinging on desperately to anything that would keep him sane in the middle of chaos, and now he had new hope.

‘Tell me again,’ he said huskily. ‘Say this is my child.’

‘Darling, of course it’s yours. Who else’s could it be?’

‘But I thought-’

‘There was never anyone but you. How could there be? I divorced you because I thought I’d lost you already. When you turned up at the party I wanted you to see me as the belle of the ball, for the sake of my pride. But the truth was I still loved you, even though I wouldn’t admit it to either of us. Afterwards, how could I tell you what that night meant to me?’

‘Can you tell me now?’ he whispered.

‘I love you, Jake. I always have and I always will. This baby is yours, and I want you to be there, always, to be his father.’

‘I’m not much of a bargain in my present state.’

‘Stop talking about yourself like that,’ she said fiercely. ‘You’re mine, and I’m never letting you go again. Clear everything out of this place. You’re not coming back here. I’m taking you home for good.’

His answer was to lean his head against her breast, spreading his arms to encompass her and their child.

‘I am home,’ he said.

FOR a while practical matters held their attention. Jake put his flat on the market, finding a buyer at once.

‘But I’d like to keep that money aside for a deposit on a proper home,’ he said. ‘This’ll be a bit small when there’s three of us.’

She agreed, but didn’t say more, leaving Jake wondering how their future life was to be organised. For the moment it was enough that they were back together. When he looked into the future he saw several paths, all with turnings that he couldn’t follow. Yet, strangely, the uncertainty didn’t trouble him. Everything was in Kelly’s hands, and there were no hands that he trusted more.

One day Kelly said, ‘You’re feeling a lot better, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, how did you know?’

‘You’ve stopped talking like a robot. When you were at your worst the words came out sounding harsh and mechanical. Those pills the doctor gave you were good.’

‘It wasn’t the pills, it was you.’ But it was true that the clouds were shifting. Now he found he could organise his work into some kind of order, and at last he had a synopsis of his book.

‘We’ll give it to a literary agency,’ Kelly declared. ‘Carl says his own is excellent, unless you’d rather-not Carl?’

‘It’s all right. I’m feeling kindly towards Carl these days.’

The result was an advance large enough to ease Jake’s gloom some more, and enable him to work with an easy mind. Even so he knew that there was a question mark over his television future. His major commissions had come from Olympia, and that source must have dried up. She’d overlooked the first time he’d let her down, that night in Paris, but he supposed she’d wanted to add his scalp to her belt, and wouldn’t easily admit defeat.

But what had happened in her apartment was another matter. He’d rejected her and exposed her to humiliation. He hadn’t meant to. Every one of his actions had been driven by illness, but Olympia wasn’t the woman to understand that.

Yet even this didn’t trouble him. His career seemed to live on the fringe of his consciousness, taking any crumbs of attention he could spare it. The centre was here, where Kelly was growing larger every day.

‘Are you keeping up to schedule on that book?’ Kelly asked once. ‘I know they wanted it fast.’

‘I’m doing my best.’

‘If you need some secretarial help I could-’

‘No!’ His yell was so loud that she almost dropped her cup. ‘Don’t even think of that. You’ve got your own work to do. Give it all your attention.’

‘But I only-’

‘I said no!’

‘All right, all right,’ she said hurriedly.

There was a silence. His mind had gone dark again, brooding over how close history had come to repeating itself. Once before he’d snatched away her chance of making her own success. Now she’d calmly offered him the opportunity to do it again. Sweat stood out on his brow.

‘Hey, it’s all right,’ she said, giving him a little shake. ‘Don’t take everything so seriously.’

He took her hand. ‘I’ll try.’

‘But get finished soon, because Olympia will be calling you.’

‘Not her! She’s not a forgiving lady.’

‘No, but she’s an ambitious one. Without you her ratings have fallen.’

He stared. ‘How do you know that?’

‘One of the lecturers on the media studies course does freelance work for her company, and he hears things. They’ve tried to find someone to be as popular as you, but they’ve failed. People have been asking her when they can expect you back. You can virtually write your own ticket.’

Kelly’s tone gave no clue to her feelings. She was heavy now, calm and content with her child and her man. Nothing outside seemed to touch her very much.

He only half believed her about Olympia, but a week later the phone rang, and it was her. She was gracious, as always. The evening in her apartment might never have been.

‘And you’re well enough to start work again?’ she enquired.

‘Perfectly well.’

‘I have a job that might interest you. It would mean-’

It was peach of a job, a major assignment that would put him right back at the top. Jake Lindley, the voice of truth, the man who brought you the facts: he could have it all back. Kelly had been right.

‘Sounds interesting,’ he mused in a non-committal voice that should have warned Olympia.

‘Fine. I’ll need you to leave next week-’

‘Wait, I haven’t said I’ll do it yet. There’s some unfinished business between us.’

‘It surprises me that you want to mention it.’

‘It doesn’t surprise me that you want to avoid it, but I thought you might have some explanation for the Forest Glades stunt. It makes me sick that you actually tried to have me locked up to stop me going back to Kelly, but it’s just possible that you thought you were acting for my benefit-’

‘Just possible?’ she yelped. ‘You were out of your mind that night, on the verge of insanity. You needed help and I got it for you.’

‘Well, you got me the wrong kind of help.’

‘And what about me?’ Olympia screeched. ‘Talking about your wife and baby in front of those men! Do you know how you made me look?’

‘If you hadn’t sent for them it wouldn’t have happened. It was pure spite.’

‘Look, if I got it wrong that night I’m sorry-’ Olympia spoke nervously. Without Jake the ratings had slumped badly.

‘Skip it. Too late. And even if it hadn’t been, there’s no way I’d go away next week, or for several weeks. The baby’s due soon and I’ve got to be here.’