Hate to Love You(104)

I breathed through the pressure in my chest. Francesca was the one dying but it felt as though my coffin was being nailed shut.

Francesca smiled. “James is socialising more, going out at the weekends and meeting new people.”

Meeting other women was what she meant. Sophisticated, rich and educated women. Women who were the opposite of Paisley Benton. If I’d thought that imminent death would transform Francesca from snob into saint I’d have been disappointed. As it was I drank my hot chocolate, the taste bitter on my tongue.

When Bonaparte came to take them home I high-fived Ryan and gave him his birthday present: a calligraphy set. We share a passion for embellishing letters and he seemed delighted at his gift. The gift was two weeks premature, but I hadn’t been invited to his birthday party and the following weekend he was going away with James and Francesca. Ryan let me kiss and hug him, briefly, and our cuddle kept me warm on the bus back to Marcia’s.

In her minuscule kitchen I ate spoon after spoon of Heavenly Delight ice cream while she worked out the mechanics of Ryan’s paternity.

“When you did the nasty with James you were smack in the middle of your fertile phase,” she said. “That one, light spot you had two weeks earlier was actually a period. The drugs messed with your menstrual cycle, just like I said. That’s why you thought you’d missed it.”

“But the test I took—”

“Was a cheap piece of crap. The outline was faint, remember? It probably picked up your hormonal fluctuations and not HCG. Didn’t I tell you to buy a different brand?”

She grabbed the ice cream and looked at me as though I was an idiot. Hell, I had been an idiot so I couldn’t even call her on it.

“I didn’t have the money and I didn’t think it would make a difference,” I said.

She let out a long, low whistle. “Well, hon, it made all the difference in the world. James is Ryan’s biological father, conceived on the day you met him. Don’t look so devastated. You should be happy.”#p#分页标题#e#

Happy?

Sure, as soon as I was done rearranging my insides. Nearly eight years of guilty baggage to unpack and nowhere to put it. Eight years of fretting about the lie I’d told and months of misery that I’d lost James because of it. My sour laugh bordered on hysterical. If I’d followed my own advice about telling the so-called truth, I would at this very moment be lying in James’s arms. But no, instead I had confessed. I had put honesty before my selfishness and taken the moral high ground.

Truth and lies.

And irony.

“I always knew God had a fucked-up sense of humour.”

Marcia sighed. “Don’t forget sadistic. He’s related to the devil, remember?”

She pushed the tub of Heavenly Delight across the table.

“Eat up.”



I took a swig of alcohol-free mojito sin straight from the bottle and then another, right after that. I followed it with Ambar Green: non-gluten, non-alcohol and non-flavour lager. I wished I had some real lager to chase down a real mojito. Or a bottle of Absolut. Something I could get drunk on.

It was Saturday night and another two weeks had passed with no sign of James. No pounding on my door and sweeping me into his arms, ecstatically happy at being Ryan’s father and ready to give me another chance. Oh no, James was busy “socializing,” making Francesca happy by wining and dining simpering Caroline clones.

Marcia had accepted an invite to dinner with Tarzan later on, after her shift at the Royal Free. When she asked my opinion on dating him I’d been positive, but in reality men sucked. Women too. Hell, everybody on the planet was a slimy chasm of pain just waiting to drown you in despair.

I slammed the mojito sin on the coffee table, trying to focus on the positives in my life—like Ryan. Was I a natural mother? Not really, but I remembered how I used to play with Marcia’s little brother, Kai, when he was small. I kept myself from hugging and kissing Ryan because I didn’t want to freak him out.

I glugged down the rest of my bottle.

“Happy birthday, Ryan Christopher.”

I took another swig of alcoholically challenged lager. The flat was eerily silent, dark and cold in the December freeze but I hadn’t turned on the heating. It wouldn’t warm me up or ease my emptiness. I didn’t want to picture James on a date after Ryan’s party so I imagined him at home, drinking champagne and dining on caviar or kangaroo or whatever it was that supercilious toffs eat.

Dining on self-righteousness.

Who the hell did he think he was to ignore me and act so superior? It wasn’t as if he’d never lied before, as if he’d never lied to me. Not in so many words but he’d made me feel things, made me believe that I was important. Worthy. Not just an addict who couldn’t take care of her own kid; not just somebody damaged and twisted before she’d even left childhood.