The only address on her work file, Ruth knew, was her London address, and she planned on being out of the city before the week was finished. No one knew the whereabouts of her parents. She tried to remember if she had mentioned it to Franco at any point, but she was sure that she hadn't.
He knew that she had grown up in a village and that her father was a vicar, but that could apply to millions of villages in the country, so if he tried to look for her he would bump into dead ends, and she doubted that she was an important enough fixture in his life for him to pursue it too assiduously.
"Are you sure there's nothing more we can do to help? I'm sure Franco would..."
"No! Please," Ruth interrupted quickly. "Honestly, Alison, he's done enough for me already, what with this promotion and stuff. I'm only sorry that I won't be able to take advantage of it."
"You will when you return."
"Yes, that's true." She looked down briefly at her hands and her eyes fell onto her flat stomach. In a few months' time she would be feeling the movements of this baby inside her. Her job at the office was over, thanks to one night of stupidity. "It's been brilliant working with you. With all of you." Her voice trem¬bled and the worry returned to Alison's face.
"Why are you talking as though we're losing you for good, Ruth?"
"Well, you can never tell..."
"Don't be so pessimistic. Your mum'll be fine. My mum fell and broke her hip a year ago, and we all thought that she would be out of action for good. But two months later she was back on the golf course, hale and hearty as a horse and chivvying the lot of us around, as per usual."
"Yes, well..." If only it were as simple as that. She hadn't even gone down the road of contemplating how her parents would react to her news. She would have to brace herself for that, but she knew that it would break their hearts. She felt her eyes begin to sting and she blinked rapidly, and shoved the thought to the back of her head.
By the time the day was done Ruth had returned to her flat, drained. At least there would be no Franco to face. He was out of the country for the next week and, although he would call, she could easily cope with his voice down the end of a line. Alternatively, she could always fail to pick up the telephone and let the answer... machine take a message. Cowardly, but so much easier than dealing with him verbally.
Everything moved so quickly after that, that Ruth barely had time to pause for breath.
Two phone calls to the office, to inform them that she would keep in touch, and Franco's calls she stead¬fastly ignored. Though she listened to them as they were recorded on the answer-machine, her stomach clenching into knots as, over the week, his tone of voice became progressively angrier at her absence. If she hadn't known him for the man that he was, allergic to all forms of commitment, she might well have imagined that there was a possessiveness to his voice that she had never noticed before.
A gullible fool might well have read all sorts of things into that, but time had hardened her. Before, she had been able to put up with him because she loved him, and because she had been prepared to face the inevitable hurt when he grew weary of her. The baby changed everything. Several options presented themselves if she stayed to tell him the glad tidings.
The first was that he would be furious. He might even see it as some kind of elaborate trap to force him to settle down, and she would have to watch any fond¬ness he might have had for her curdle into contempt and dislike.
The second possibility was that he might actually force her to marry him, and thereafter she would have to endure a life chained to his side, helplessly in love, while he did his duty as a father and fulfilled his needs as a man elsewhere. Because there could be nothing more conducive to rotting a relationship than a shot¬gun wedding.
The worst scenario involved him fighting her for custody of the baby, and, naive though she was, she was not so naive that she didn't know that money spoke volumes. He had lots and she had none.
Whichever way she looked at it, running back home was the only solution she could see to her dilemma. On the Friday morning she stood at the door of the flat which had once brimmed over with all her hopes and dreams and excitement, and looked at the imper¬sonal space staring at her. She had packed all her clothes into two large suitcases. The rest she had crammed into the small van which she had rented for the trip back home.
It had taken under three hours, but in that time she had felt as though she was packing away her youth. When she arrived at the vicarage it would be gone and she would begin a new life altogether. One where love was only a memory and the past was something to be unlocked at night and treasured.
At least, she thought, as she cautiously began the long drive back home, she had concocted something to tell her parents. It was a lie, and a fairly horrendous one at that, but Ruth steadfastly told herself that it would be a lie in a good cause. There was no way that she would be responsible for breaking her parents' hearts.
It would be bad enough when they discovered that she was pregnant, but they would be devastated if she told them the circumstances behind the pregnancy. Out of wedlock, deeply in love with a man who did not return her love. The unspoken postscript to that would be the tacit admission that he didn't love their daughter but he was willing to use her for sex and, worse, she had allowed him.
Sex, the most beautiful demonstration of love be¬tween a man and a woman, degenerated into an animal act to satiate lust. They would never dream of casti¬gating her, but it would be in their eyes for the rest of their days and Ruth just couldn't face a lifetime of silent reproach.
So as the van neared the vicarage she plastered a joyful smile on her face as her mother ran out to greet her. They were expecting her. There would be an enor¬mous welcoming lunch, probably her favorite of fried fish and homemade chips with lots of bread and butter and mushy peas. They would sit down with anticipa¬tion glowing on their faces to hear this incredible news she had promised them.
Please let me look excited and thrilled, Ruth prayed, as she sat down at the table and looked at her parents across the weathered tabletop. They could barely con¬tain themselves, but they had insisted that she eat first before she told them what she had to say.
With all her possessions in tow, Ruth knew that they expected to hear something about work-probably that she had landed some wonderful job close to home and would be moving back. They had helped her every step of the way in her decision to go to London, but they would be overjoyed were she to tell them that she was returning home.
"I'm not sure where to begin," Ruth said, when she could no longer postpone the dreaded moment.
She looked at her parents, as wildly dissimilar as two people could be. Her mother was slender and fine-¬boned, with short fair hair that lent her the same ga¬mine appearance as her daughter. Her father was plump, bordering, as he often said, on beach-ball¬-shaped. His dark hair was receding faster than he cared to believe and his dark brown eyes were gentle and ironic.
"So I'll just say it in one rush and please don't interrupt till I'm finished." She drew in a deep breath. "I met someone a few weeks ago." She didn't dare look at her parents as she spoke. "And I fell in love. Problem is, he has a nomadic kind of job. Well, ac¬tually, he's a reporter, and he goes away for long per¬iods of time at a stretch." Uri Geller couldn't bend his spoons more convincingly than she had just bent the truth. "We hadn't planned on rushing into anything, but..." Here was where the waters got a little choppy. "But I'm afraid...I was a little bit careless..."