The Unexpected Baby(53)

She knew how it must look. But she wasn’t going to stand by and see their lives ruined, their future together blown out of the water. ‘Jed,’ she said firmly as he walked past her into the bedroom, careful not to touch her, ‘will you please listen to me?’

‘No, thanks, I’ve done more than my fair share of that.’ He was dressing. A pale grey suit in a lightweight fabric, pale grey silk shirt and a dark tie. ‘Trouble is, you’re too good with make-believe. I suddenly find I don’t know what’s truth and what’s fantasy.’ He settled his jacket on his shoulders and glanced at his watch. ‘I may get back from Seville tonight. And, there again, I may not.’

Elena sat on the edge of the bed and watched him walk out, her eyes defeated, brimming with a sudden rush of unstoppable tears.

This couldn’t be happening all over again. Surely it couldn’t? Hadn’t he learned from his earlier refusal to listen to what she had to say?

Yet he had worked it out in his own good time, weighing what seemed bad, very bad indeed, against what he knew of her, the love they shared, and had reached the truth.

On the other hand, perhaps seeing her with Liam again had completely turned his opinion of her around. That first meeting had been explained away, and he’d come to accept it. But the second—the wad of money that could only have come from her. The indisputable fact that she had arranged to sneak out and meet her ex-husband. Would he now see everything she’d said as a tissue of deceitful lies? Even the way Sam’s baby had been conceived?

She spent the day alternating between faint hope and bleak despair. He didn’t come that night, nor in the morning. But Pilar did.





CHAPTER TWELVE

ELENA knew she had to make herself eat something for her baby’s sake. She was uninterestedly slicing fruit when she heard the unmistakable sound of a noisy two-stroke engine pull into the courtyard.

Pilar on her moped, come to check on the practically invisible irrigation system that kept the pot plants alive. It saved having to drag the hose or watering cans up to the terrace that overlooked the garden and the courtyard at the front.

Pilar always came to check the system was working properly at least once a week when Elena was away. Now the Spanish woman would know she was back in residence, and would expect to take up her normal household duties.

But Elena didn’t want to see anyone. Only Jed. And Jed, it seemed, was in no hurry to come back.

Sighing, she resigned herself to the inevitable as the heavy slap of Pilar’s sandalled feet heralded her arrival in the kitchen. A huge woman, she was full of good humour and energy. Elena liked her very much, and vowed not to let her know how desperately she wanted to be left alone.

‘So you are having the baby—that is good! The little one will bring you much joy! I speak as I know from the five of my own!’ Pilar said in her exuberant, heavily accented English.

Her eyes widening, Elena glanced down at the front of her sundress. Another five months to go—was her pregnancy so obvious?

Pilar, taking a gaudy spotted pinafore from a plastic bag, tied it round her huge middle and disabused her. ‘Señor Nolan called to tell me the good news and say you are back here now and I am needed.’

‘When did he call? This morning?’ Had he been in the village below, that close to her, and not bothered to come up here? Was he coldly and unemotionally cutting her out of his life again?

‘No, no.’ Pilar gave her a look that suggested she doubted her sanity. ‘While I was making lunch yesterday. He asked in the village for the house of Pilar Casals. Now you see I was right to make you talk to me in English all these years! Señor Nolan has no Spanish, but we were able to understand each other.’

Which was more than Elena did at this moment. Jed should have been in Seville by yesterday lunchtime. But Pilar gave her no time to ponder why he hadn’t been, telling her, ‘And Tomás is to come and water the garden and do other heavy work. That is good for all of us. He is on his way now, on his bicycle. I tell him my old motorbike won’t take my weight and his. Are you going to eat that fruit, or shall I make the good tortilla?’

‘Fruit,’ Elena said weakly, resuming her slicing before Pilar could make good her threat.

She could understand Pilar’s elation very well. Her husband, Tomás, only worked when Pilar forced him to, and would happily sit around all day at one of the pavement cafés down in the village, drinking strong coffee and smoking his evil-smelling cigarillos under the shade of an orange tree, reading the papers and talking to his friends, perfectly content to let his wife work to put food on the table for the family. She would be delighted to know he would be bringing in extra income.