Then, Christa had been too young to recognise the very warm heart her great-aunt kept hidden beneath her slightly stern exterior, and certainly too young to understand how very, very hard it had been for a woman of her great-aunt’s age and upbringing to take over the family business and make her way in what was, then, very much a man’s world.
She had thought her great-aunt was telling her that the business was far more important than she was, not understanding that the older woman was concerned about how she was going to manage to bring up her orphaned great-niece and continue to earn enough money to support them both as well.
She had, in those days, seen the business as her rival, Christa acknowledged. Of course, later she had come to understand and see the true position and to appreciate just how difficult things must have been for her great-aunt when she had first come into her life.
And that initial jealousy had become a dim memory over the years. Something to smile at a little when she looked back on her younger self.
But, like the death of her parents and her subsequent subconscious belief that they had somehow deserted her, and that consequently anyone she came to love might do the same thing, perhaps that jealousy had left a far deeper mark on her psyche than she had realised.
Daniel was very much involved in his work. He believed very deeply in its benefits and it was an area of his life that, through her choice, she could not share.
Did she, then, perhaps subconsciously see it as a rival, a threat to her own relationship with him, something which might ultimately take him away from her…be more important to him than she was? And was it perhaps her jealousy which had been motivating her in her rejection of his way of life?
Was she, perhaps at some subconscious and yet childish level, attempting to dispose of her ‘rival’ by making him choose between them and then telling herself that, unless he could put her first, his love wasn’t worth having?
Deep in thought, she started to frown. It wasn’t either pleasant or easy facing up to such a facet of her personality. In fact, her instinctive reaction was one of shocked rejection.
She would never do anything so manipulative. It simply wasn’t in her nature…Not in her mature, adult nature, perhaps, she acknowledged, and certainly never in any premeditated way, but, subconsciously, might not the child within her…? Oh, Daniel—if only he were with her now. If only she could explain, talk to him.
Suddenly she was filled with an imperative urge, not only to correct his misinterpretation of what he had overheard, but also to discuss with him what she felt she had discovered about herself.
The relief of discovering why she had been so afraid of trust and commitment, and the pain of not having Daniel there to share it with her, brought the soft sting of hot tears to her eyes.
If only she could just close her eyes and, by some magical means, transport herself back to Wales, to the farmhouse, to Daniel’s arms.
* * *
She tried to ring him one more time before she went to bed, but once again there was no answer.
During the night the heaviness of the monsoon rains caused minor flooding on the outskirts of the city and damage to the telephone system, which meant that, when Christa woke up in the morning, not only could she not telephone Daniel, she couldn’t get in touch with any of her suppliers either.
A day spent dashing from one appointment to another, and trying to keep her thoughts clear enough of Daniel to try to concentrate, not only on examining the samples of fabric she was being shown, but also on keeping firmly in control of her negotiations with Karachi’s astute cotton traders, left her feeling as exhausted mentally as the heat and damp of the monsoon was doing physically.
When she returned to her hotel at the end of the day, her hair and her clothes were clinging stickily to her skin. But, much as she longed for the cool refreshment of a long shower, the first thing she did was to rush to the phone.
The disappointment that flooded her as she realised that it still wasn’t working was sickeningly acute.
Today, studying the fabric samples she was being shown, she had known that her mind was not on what she was doing. The fierce exhilaration she normally felt on first seeing the new designs simply hadn’t been there. She might as well have been looking at a piece of sacking, she recognised hollowly.
Oh, Daniel…Where was he? What was he doing? Was he thinking about her, missing her…wanting her…?
The way he had stormed off like that had been so out of character; he was not an irritable, easily angered man. Far from it. Of the two of them, she was the one who was the most impulsive…the more volatile.
Oh, Daniel!
She sat down on her bed, her eyes blurring with tears.
* * *
The days dragged by, long-drawn-out hours of misery and anguish, despite all the work she had to do. The telephone systems were repaired, but the telephone at the farmhouse still continued to ring emptily into the silence.
She was taken round factories, shown a vast array of fabric samples, taken out to dinner, wined and dined and flirted with, but the real essence of her simply wasn’t there, she acknowledged tiredly when the morning of her departure finally arrived.
The longing to be back at home which had coloured her first few days in Pakistan had now gone. Instead, she was almost dreading her return home. While she was here it was still possible—just—for her to play ‘let’s pretend’ and kid herself that everything was all right. That Daniel had not walked off and left her; that everything was still as it had been before they left Wales. That she was going home to him…to his love…to their future together.
But, now that she was about to go home, that comforting fiction could no longer be maintained. She was dreading her arrival in Britain, she acknowledged, dreading having to face up to the reality of having lost Daniel’s love.
And she must have lost it, otherwise…surely he would have been in touch with her?
* * *
At Karachi airport she discovered that there had been a mix-up with the tickets and that her flight was overbooked. An apologetic official promised her that they would put her on standby and give her the first vacant seat available.
Eighteen hours later, when she finally climbed on board the flight for Manchester, Christa wasn’t sure whether the nausea and cramps that were making her feel so ill were caused by a bug she had picked up or by the nervous tension of her delayed return. As she shook her pale face in rejection of the meal the stewardess was offering, fighting down the queasy nausea which had persisted all through the flight, the woman seated next to her grimaced sympathetically and confided, ‘I know what it’s like; I was sick the whole of the first six months with my first. Morning sickness! That’s a joke…I was throwing up morning, noon and night, twenty-four hours a day, every day…Still it was worth it—in the end,’ she added with a smile.
Stunned, Christa stared at her. Pregnant…Her…Oh, no…Impossible—she couldn’t be…Could she?
‘If there are any consequences it will mean marriage,’ Daniel had told her. But that had been then, and this was now.
The woman could be wrong, of course. She might not be pregnant.
But what if she was, what would Daniel say…? Do…?
By the time the plane landed at Manchester airport, Christa was both physically and mentally exhausted.
She had, she reflected tiredly, been through every permutation of what her possible pregnancy could mean during the long flight home, and the stark truth stalked her like a silent enemy as she made her way through Customs.
If Daniel insisted on marrying her because she was pregnant, she would never truly know if he had done so out of duty rather than out of love, and he would never know if she had lied to him when she told him that he now had her complete trust. The baby, their baby, their child would be burdened by their mutual inability to be completely open and honest with one another, when it should have been born into a world of love and joy.
By the time she was through Customs she h
ad made up her mind. She was not going to tell Daniel that she was pregnant, not just for his sake but for their child’s as well.
Lost in the slow pain of her own thoughts, she would have walked straight past the solitary figure standing watching the weary travellers trudging towards the exits if he hadn’t suddenly called out her name.
‘Daniel!’ She stared at him in open disbelief.
He looked tired and grim, his eyes slightly bloodshot, his jaw rough with shadowy stubble.
‘Thank God you’re all right,’ Daniel told her hoarsely as he relieved her of her luggage and took hold of her arm. ‘I’ve been trying to ring you but the hotel had no record of you booking in, and then when you weren’t on your flight…’
He was holding her, Christa recognised, as though he was determined never—ever—to let her go.
‘There was a problem with the hotel room,’ Christa told him dizzily, suddenly beginning to feel oddly lightheaded.
Daniel was here. He had come to meet her. He had tried to contact her…
‘I tried to ring you,’ she told him, ‘but you were never there…’
‘No, I’ve been up at Dai’s farm. He collapsed with alcohol poisoning the night you left and I’ve been staying up there trying to keep things going.
‘Christa…’
‘Daniel…’