The Midwife's Longed-For Baby

Probably with another woman. She didn’t add that, because he was trying to pour oil on troubled waters and it wouldn’t help at all if she threw petrol on the fire instead. And besides, it was none of her business any more who he chose to sleep with.

He glanced down, stirring his coffee on autopilot even though she knew it wouldn’t have sugar in it.

‘I didn’t want to tie myself down,’ he said, finally putting the spoon back in the saucer and meeting her eyes again. ‘After I left here, I just wanted to get away, let the dust settle, work out where I wanted to go. I thought maybe New Zealand, but my parents are still alive and they’re getting older, so I took a two-month locum post covering maternity leave fairly close to them while I worked out what I wanted to do, and then when that was coming to an end they asked me to cover the fertility clinic until it shut because the services were being centralised and the consultant had left, so I did. I saw my last patients two days ago, on the day Ben rang, and I had nothing else lined up, so I’m here.’

‘Why on earth did you say yes?’

‘To Ben? Because I need a job, so I can eat and keep a roof over both our heads.’

She felt another pang of guilt. ‘I didn’t mean that, Nick, but if the mortgage is an issue—’

‘It’s not an issue, Liv, it’s a fact, and I’m not going to make you homeless under any circumstances so let’s just ignore that. So what did you mean?’

‘I was talking about the fertility clinic job. I couldn’t believe it when Ben told me that’s what you’d been doing. It seems such an odd choice to make, under the circumstances, and I couldn’t understand why on earth you’d do it.’

His eyes flicked away, then back to hers, curiously intent. ‘Because I needed a job, as I said, and I was already in the hospital, I’d made a few friends, it meant I wouldn’t have to relocate—and maybe, also, because I thought it might help me understand what had happened to us.’

Her heart thumped. ‘And did it?’

He smiled sadly. ‘Well, let’s just say it made it blindingly obvious that we weren’t the only couple struggling.’

His expression wasn’t guarded now, just full of regret, and she lowered her head, unable to hold those clear grey eyes that seemed to see to the bottom of her insecurities.

‘How about you?’ he asked softly. ‘What have you been up to since I went?’

She picked up her spoon and chased the froth on her cappuccino, stalling just as he had. ‘What I’m doing now, pretty much. What did you expect?’

‘I didn’t. I had no idea what you’d want to do.’

Cry? She’d done so much of that after he’d gone, but she wasn’t telling him that, although he could probably work it out. Fix it? Impossible, because the thing that had been wrong was the thing they hadn’t been able to fix, so she’d just got on with her life, putting one foot in front of the other, not even trying to make sense of it because there wasn’t any sense to be made.

‘I didn’t want to do anything,’ she said sadly, watching the froth slide off the spoon. ‘I just wanted peace, that was all. Peace, contentment, and the satisfaction of a job well done instead of the endless spectre of failure—’

‘You didn’t fail, Liv!’

She dropped the spoon with a clatter. ‘Really? So what would you call it? Month after month, all our hopes and dreams flushed away—and then, just to rub my nose in it, you go off and sleep with your ex. That doesn’t exactly make it a success in my book—’

She pushed back her chair, grabbed her bag and walked swiftly away from him, out of the café into the park, hauling in the cold air as if she’d just come up from the bottom of the ocean.

Don’t cry! Whatever you do, don’t cry—

‘Liv! Liv, wait!’

She turned and looked up at him, right behind her, his grey eyes troubled, and she had the crazy urge to throw herself into his arms and sob her heart out.

Don’t cry!

‘Leave it, Nick,’ she said, hoping her voice didn’t show her desperation. ‘Just leave it. I don’t mind working with you, I said that to Ben, and I’m sure we can keep it professional, but I don’t need any cosy chats or in-depth analysis of where it all went wrong for us. We both know exactly where it all went wrong, and if I’d gone to the conference with you that weekend then you would never have slept with Suzanne—’

‘I didn’t sleep with her.’

She stared at him, stunned. ‘What?’

‘I said, I didn’t sleep with her.’

Shock robbed her of breath.

‘I don’t believe you. You’re lying!’

‘No, I’m not, Liv. I didn’t touch her. Honestly.’

She took a step back, struggling for air, for sense, for understanding, but they all eluded her.

‘That’s not true. It can’t be true. Why would you suddenly come out with this now?’

‘Because it is true, and I should have told you at the time.’

How did he do that with his eyes? Make them appear utterly unguarded and shining with sincerity?

‘But—you admitted it!’

‘No. No, I didn’t Liv, I just confirmed that she’d spent the night with me in my room,’ he told her. ‘That was what you asked me, and I said yes because it was the truth. She did spend the night in there with me. You didn’t ask why, though, or what for, because by the time I came home you’d spoken to Beth, you’d found the note Suze had left in my luggage and you had me hung, drawn and quartered and hung out to dry before I even stepped over the threshold, so you wouldn’t have believed me anyway.

‘You just assumed I’d slept with her,’ he went on, his voice heavy and tinged with sadness, ‘and I let you, because in that split second I felt that you’d thrown me a lifeline, a way out of a marriage that was tearing us both apart, so I just grabbed it and ran. And I’m sorry. I should never have done that to you. I should have told you the truth there and then, and made you listen.’

His words stunned her, the shockwaves rolling through her, bringing a sob to her throat.

‘How could you do that?’ she asked, her voice a strangled whisper. ‘How could you let me believe that for all this time? I’ve spent a whole, agonising year believing that you slept with her, that I wasn’t enough for you, that you didn’t truly love me any more—you’re right, you should have told me the truth then, Nick, instead of letting me think that you’d spent the night making love to—’

She broke off, unable to say her name. ‘You let me end our marriage, on the grounds that you’d slept with that whore—’

His eyes hardened. ‘She’s not a whore, she’s a friend, a damn good friend, who told me to pull myself together and go home and sort out my marriage.’

A sob rose in her throat, threatening to choke her, but she crushed it down and pulled herself together. ‘Well, you did a great job of that—’

Her voice cracked and she pushed past him, shaking his hand off as he tried to stop her. She went back inside, cutting through the café to the main hospital corridor, then out on the other side bordering the car park, deliberately going the wrong way to throw him off the scent and lose him because if she had to spend another moment in his company she was going to cry, and she wasn’t prepared to give him the satisfaction.

So she kept on going, and she didn’t stop until she was back on the ward.

* * *

She’d gone.

The corridor was empty and he stood there, kicking himself for letting the conversation stray into such dangerous territory—especially in a public place and right in the middle of the working day.

Idiot!

He had to talk to her, to explain why he’d let her believe what she had, how he’d felt, why he hadn’t stood his ground and told her the truth at the time. The real reason.