Shadows clouded Lacey’s eyes. It could never be easy, simple, pain-free, and Jessica would carry the burden of knowing that when she fell in love…when she wanted to make a commitment to a man…when she wanted to build a life with him, to have his children, she would have to tell him about her medical history.
If that man loved her as her daughter deserved to be loved, as Lacey wanted her to be loved, unequivocally, without restraint, or hesitation, without doubts or reservations, then there would be no problem; but life wasn’t always so easy…or so kind.
She wished now that she had more time to prepare Jessica, that her daughter had grown up with the knowledge she now had to enforce upon her.
She frowned again, bitterness touching her heart. Why hadn’t Lewis told her…warned her? Why was she such a fool that she still found it so hard to equate the man she had loved, the man she had so foolishly created out of that love, with the actual reality?
Did she still really not understand that it was possible for a man, a certain kind of shallow, selfish man to claim that he loved a woman and to appear entirely sincere, when in reality all he meant was that he desired her and that the life of that desire would be cruelly brief.
When Lewis had said he loved her she had believed him. She had thought he meant that he would love her forever. She had been wrong. She was now, supposedly at least, a mature woman; old enough to have accepted long, long ago that the image she had created of him was just that—an illusion, an image without substance and reality. So why did she cling so stupidly to it…why did she allow it to stand between her and the opportunities she had had to form other more realistic relationships? Why couldn’t she even now see Lewis as he really was?
If she couldn’t hate him for her own sake, then she should at least hate him for Jessica’s—for the inheritance he had given her beloved child.
But he had also given that child life, and so many, many times over the years she had looked at her daughter and seen in her feminine images of her father.
She tried to clear her mind, to think logically and calmly. Her heart was beating far too fast, she felt sick and nervous, the shock still driving the adrenalin through her bloodstream, sending her nervous system into panicky overdrive.
What would have happened if Lewis hadn’t seen them and realised that Jessica was his child? What would have happened if Jessica had remained in ignorance?
She gave a deep shudder. She ought to be thankful that fate had intervened, instead of wishing in such a cowardly fashion that they had remained in ignorance.
She would have to ring Tony and explain that she needed to have a few more days off. She had plenty of holiday allocation owing to her, and they weren’t particularly busy at the moment. Then she would have to make arrangements to stay in Oxford; book herself into a small hotel there. She wouldn’t ring ahead and warn Jessica to expect her. That would only alarm her unnecessarily.
While her mind raced ahead, dealing with the small practicalities of the arrangements she needed to make, her heart was still beating too fast, her pulse-rate accelerating dangerously.
She wondered if Lewis had now left town. She hoped so. She didn’t think she could endure the thought of many more contacts with him, of even seeing him. And not just because of what he had told her.
She hated the weakness she had shown when he’d left, when she had thought she had seen the betraying glint of emotion in his eyes, and contrarily blamed him for it…blamed him for still having this pull on her emotions…blamed him for still being able to make her feel compassion for him…for wanting to…to what? Protect him; spare him pain?
What a ludicrous thought—her wanting to spare him pain. She closed her eyes in mute despair. What was wrong with her? Why couldn’t she feel what any normal, sensible, sane woman would feel in her shoes? Why couldn’t she hate and abhor him? If not for her own sake, then surely for Jessica’s.
It was only after all her arrangements had been made, after there was no possible reason for her to delay setting out for Oxford any longer, that she actually brought herself to acknowledge that she was deliberately looking for reasons to put off the moment when she had to sit down with Jessica and tell her what she had learned.
And even worse, when Lacey finally made herself climb into her car and start the engine, was the knowledge buried deep inside her that she would have given almost anything to have someone at her side during that interview, someone she could turn to…someone who could support not just her but Jessica as well. No, not just someone, she admitted achingly as she set off down the drive; there was only one person she wanted beside her now, only one person who could lessen the pain both for Jessica and for herself: Lewis. She wanted Lewis. Her lover. Jessica’s father…
He had offered to be with her when she told Jessica, but she had rejected that offer, too proud to admit that
she might need his support.
Too proud? Or too frightened to admit that she might want or need anything from him, that she might be in danger of repeating the mistakes she had made in the past of…of what? Of loving him.
She grimaced self-tauntingly. Had she ever actually stopped loving him? She was beginning to doubt it.
CHAPTER FIVE
LACEY arrived just after lunch, and booked into her hotel.
To her surprise, the receptionist on duty recognised her from previous brief stays when she had visited Jessica, and welcomed her with a warm smile.
It was a small family-run hotel outside the city in what had once been a large private house. The Victorian building was solid, its basic ugliness cloaked by the climbers that softened its walls.
Her room overlooked the gardens, where azaleas and rhododendrons were just beginning to be past their best.
She felt drained and slightly disorientated. In her bathroom she ran cold water over her wrists, hoping to shock her system back to its normal stability, but it only made her shiver.
She had no idea where Jessica would be—if she would be in a lecture or at home, studying in the house she shared with two other girls and two boys.
She gnawed on her bottom lip, wincing as she realised how often she must have been doing so when her sore flesh stung a little.