She shook her head—she could not tell him, she could not find her voice. But he could taste the grief in the room.
‘The baby?’ James asked.
Leila shook her head again and tried to remember how her voice worked. ‘I spoke with my mother...’ and that was all she could say.
‘When?’
Leila didn’t answer but James had already worked it out. At first he had thought he might have caused offence when she didn’t respond to his flirt. And after eight hours being lectured by Manu as to just how offensive he could be at times, James had been certain that was why she hadn’t responded to his text. Now though he knew the truth.
She had been like this for hours, James realised, just lying on the bed with her pain.
‘Go,’ Leila said.
‘I can’t.’
‘Please.’
He made it to the kitchen and found some green tea bags, which were the only remotely herbal thing James had, and added some honey, no doubt from the wrong bees, and brought it in to her.
‘It’s nice,’ Leila said, and sipped the hot tea.
‘I didn’t have orange blossom honey though,’ James said. ‘We’ll have to do a Leila shop tomorrow.’
It was the saddest thing he had ever seen—watching her trying and failing to smile for him.
He got undressed and got into bed; no sex was going to fix this and so he held her instead.
Don’t disown me, she wanted to say.
Please don’t hurt me.
Please don’t come home stinking of perfume.
Even pretend to love me, just never let me know that you don’t.
Her mother’s words had more than stung, they had crushed, and she didn’t know what to believe anymore.
His hand was on her stomach, the reason he was here perhaps.
‘She called the baby a dirty street bastard,’ Leila finally spoke.
‘Excuse me!’ James said, perhaps a little too loudly for her fragile state, but as the baby kicked and she realised he was talking on behalf of the baby, now Leila managed a pale smile. ‘I think someone’s rather offended,’ James said as the baby kicked again, and he rubbed her stomach. ‘Tell your mother,’ he said to their child, ‘that we can fix that and I’ll marry her any day that she wants.’
‘You can’t fix this, James.’
No, but he could make contact with Zayn, James thought, especially when later she cried in the night, for so wretched were her tears.
* * *
He was up and dressed and certainly he would not be late for Manu this morning.
‘I’ve got meetings till six,’ James said, knowing that Manu flew back tonight. ‘Will you be okay?’
‘We have the ultrasound at two.’
‘Of course we do.’ James eyes briefly shuttered. ‘I’ll meet you there at ten to two.’