Oh, his love, and for his eyes only.
CHAPTER SIX
Quick learner had never been a description applied to Ruth. At school, she had got there in the end, but she had never been one of those bright young things whose hands had always been raised to tell the answer, who had achieved B grades without benefit of revi¬sion, who had been able to spend their time giggling with the boys at the back and yet, mysteriously, had still known the answers to the maths questions when asked.
Ruth had plodded. Tries hard had always been somewhere in her end of term report cards.
Now, in the space of four weeks, she had proved a very quick learner indeed. She had returned to her nor¬mal duties at the office and had known, without having to be told, that what was going on between her and Franco was not for public consumption.
She had caught on in double-quick time that, al¬though she had lost her footing and was falling inex¬orably in love with him, the feeling was not mutual. Love was a word that had not once crossed his lips, and she took great pains to hide the way she felt be¬cause she knew that if he discovered the truth he would politely turn away, and she preferred the agony of her pointless love to the certainty of his absence.
So at work she smiled, and was as obligingly in the background as usual, happy to run her errands and pleased that she was being given more responsibility.
There was some mention of her going on a short writing course, so that she could help out on some of the more straightforward feature articles, which would be exciting, and when that happened she would be released from some of her more mundane duties.
She had never been one for talking about her private life, which she had always considered deeply boring anyway. People had become accustomed to her shy reticence on the subject. No one suspected that now, beneath that quiet, smiling reserve, was a new and thrilling love-life. No one would have guessed in a million years that three or four times a week now, when she left the office, it was to rendezvous with Franco, whose company, against her better judgement, became more addictive by the day.
He never failed to delight her. She could listen to him chat for hours, although that never happened because he always insisted on hearing what she had to say. He always seemed to find her anecdotes amusing.
He could be so tender and yet so hungry, taking her with a passion that left her breathless.
The only thorn in her paradise was the fact that their relationship had been doomed from its inception. One day, sooner rather than later, the hot desire that simmered in his eyes every time he looked at her would fade away into bored uninterest. His amusement at her gauche little ways, which she could no more help than she could prevent the sun from rising in the sky, would turn to indifference. He would cease to complain at the times they could not spend together and instead begin to find ways of lengthening the absences between them.
She found herself swaying on the underground train one morning, lost in her reverie of doom and gloom.
It couldn't get any worse, could it?
The thought, which had been creeping under her skin, burrowed deep in her subconscious like a malignant germ waiting for the right moment to emerge, began to gently flower amongst the rich soil of her depressing thoughts.
A wash of hot blood flowed upwards to her face and she could feel a fine perspiration break out over her body.
By the time she arrived at her stop, five minutes later, her limbs were numb. Of course she was worrying needlessly. Hadn't that always been one of her traits? Hadn't her parents always fondly told her that she was a little worry-wart?
But where was her period? She didn't keep a rigid check on them, although she usually more or less knew when they were due, but she was uneasily aware that she was late. How late she couldn't say for sure, and she clung to this thought as her feet swerved away from her normal route to work to detour into the chemist's on the comer.
I can't be pregnant, she thought, sick with panic.
We've been so careful.
But there had been that one time, hadn't there? The first time they had slept together had been unprotected, hadn't it?
Her mind continued to conduct a two-way debate on the subject even while her hands reached for the pregnancy testing kit and her eyes read the brief directions on the outside. She weakly struggled to convince the treacherous inner voice in her head that she was being silly while she paid for the kit, and her feet somehow found their way out and began walking to work.
One minute. It took one minute for her world to fall to pieces. In the small confines of the office toilet, ears attuned to the slightest sound of anyone coming in, the give-away box and its wrappings scrunched up into a small bundle and shoved into the disposal unit next to the toilet, Ruth watched in horror as one thin blue line was joined by another above it.
"Oh, no!" She realised that she had groaned aloud, and she clasped her hand to her mouth, biting back the cry that wanted to come out. "I can't be." She picked up the plastic gadget and stared at the message it was flamboyantly telling her. Her hands were shaking violently and she sat down on the lid of the toilet and tried to order her thoughts
Eventually she shoved the tube into the disposal unit, washed her face with ice-cold water and looked at her reflection.
A baby. You're going to have a baby. You're pregnant! Who would ever have convinced her that the one event which she had spent her life looking forward to would induce feelings of horror, shock and sick despair?
She was hanging onto either side of the sink, fighting down the nausea clambering up her gullet like acid, when the door was flung open and Alison strode in, bursting with vitality and in the middle of some particularly pleasing thought that had brought a smile to her lips. She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw Ruth, now hurriedly trying to look normal, inclined over the sink.
"What the heck...? What's the matter, Ruthie?"
Ruth gave her a watery smile and desperately racked her brains for something to say. "Nothing. I just...it's not a good morning for me," she finished lamely, and truthfully.
"What's wrong? What's the matter?"
The door was pushed open and Alison flew to it and snapped at the hapless intruder to leave, then she turned to Ruth.
"Has something happened? What? You'd better sit down. You look as though you'll fall down otherwise."
She guided Ruth to the chair in the comer and sat her down, invalid-style, then she squatted next to her and held her hands. "Has something happened to one of your parents?" she asked anxiously. "Is someone ill?"
An idea stirred in Ruth's head and she took a deep breath. "It's my mum. She's not very well at the moment."
It wasn't, technically speaking, a lie. When she had last spoken to her mother two days previously her mother had been complaining of a cold, some nasty little virus that was flying round the village and taking its toll.
"Oh, Ruth." Alison's eyes brimmed over with sympathy and Ruth felt a twinge of unpleasant guilt, but what else could she do?
In the space of three seconds, as soon as she had discovered that she was pregnant, she had known two things very clearly. The first was that she was not going to get rid of the baby and the second was that she would have to leave her job, leave London, and leave Franco for good. The baby would be her responsibility and hers alone.
Now Alison, unwittingly, had provided her with a way out. At least a way out of the job, and, much as it sickened her to play on her boss's softer nature, she could see no way around it.
Shall we go into my office and discuss it?" Coffees were brought in, and the force of curiosity pressing against the closed office door was almost enough to break it down.
Ruth hatched her plan, through necessity and des¬peration. She would take a few weeks off, at her in¬sistence unpaid, keeping in contact with the office by phone.
"We've got your address on file, so we can contact you if needs be, can't we?"