‘The doctor gave me an anti-inflammatory. The pain relief was pretty well immediate.’
He frowned. ‘Don’t those things have harmful side-effects?’
‘I’m sure the doctor wouldn’t have prescribed it if it was dangerous,’ Kate told him tartly. ‘But if you were so worried about it perhaps you should have asked me about it at the time instead of running off like that. But then, that’s fairly typical behaviour for you, isn’t it?’
She hadn’t meant to let that slip out, but when she saw the skin tauten over his cheekbones she was glad. There was no reason now to hold back, no secret baby to protect. She was on her own.
‘Oh, yes, that’s a pretty one, isn’t it, darling?’ she said as the little girl poked a small paua shell with its pearlised blue and green interior under her nose.
‘Here, Kristin, put it in your bucket,’ said Drake, handing it over with the spade tucked inside, startling Kate with his use of the girl’s name.
‘You know who she is?’
‘Of course I do, they’re locals. Look, Kristin—your mother’s getting ready to take you back up for your tea.’
The woman whom Kate had briefly spoken to earlier had repacked her beach bag and was shaking out her towel. Seeing them looking towards her, she waved, yelled out a greeting to Drake and her thanks to Kate, and called to her daughter, who skipped off without a second glance at the result of all their hard work when she heard the words ‘spaghetti’ and ‘ice cream’ floating on the breeze.
‘There’s gratitude for you,’ murmured Drake as she got stiffly to her feet. ‘Never mind, the tide’s still on its way out and the local school kids should be getting off the bus about now. Your monument will get plenty of admiration before the sea comes back to demolish it. Here…’ He sought and found a stick from amongst the heaps of seaweed strewn along the high watermark and wrote ‘Kate and Kristin did this’ in large capitals alongside the crenellated towers.
Kate found it interesting that he had added the little girl’s name without prompting, but not his own.
‘For someone who doesn’t want any children, I’m surprised you’re so good at handling them,’ she said, unable to curb her resentment. ‘Most people who haven’t had much contact with children find it hard to relate to them.’
Herself included. She had never been interested in babies or young children until she had thought she was pregnant, then they had turned out to be the subject of a profound, and hitherto inadmissible fascination. Again she felt that deep, wrenching sorrow, the sense of loss that she had no right to feel. She began to walk quickly back along the beach towards the house.
Drake had tensed at her words. ‘In the kind of group homes I was in there are always plenty of kids coming and going.’ He shrugged, turning to follow her, easily keeping up with her swinging strides. ‘It’s supposed to be part of the “family experience” to get the teenagers to help look after the younger ones.’
His voice petered out, as if he expected her to interrupt with a question, but Kate merely quickened her pace, the breeze against her face making her eyes sting as she pulled ahead.
‘I came back, didn’t I?’ he said roughly, digging his feet into the sand to regain her shoulder. ‘That must count for something.’
‘You think?’ she said sarcastically.
‘I was only gone a couple of days.’
Eternity times two. He was very efficient at his disappearing act, though, for he had even arranged for a man in a pick-up to come and collect Prince and lock up the house. When Kate had seen that happening she had wished that falling in hate was as easy as falling in love. At least she had still had Koshka to stroke and to hold, and to lick away her tears. The little cat had slept on her bed, curled up on the turndown of the sheet, her soft motoring purr a comforting reassurance that Kate had not been left entirely alone in the world.
‘Yes, that’s quite a record turn-around for you. I thought you’d be away much longer,’ she said truthfully. ‘But I forgot that you have a work in progress. You had to come back for that—you have a lot of writing to do. And of course that always takes precedence over everything else!’ She could hear herself getting shrill and was relieved to see her front lawn. She almost broke into a run.
‘Kate—That’s not why I came back.’ He leapt up on the grass and shadowed her to the scene of her fall. ‘I only went as far as Craemar—the Marlows’ holiday place—Steve put me up there—’
‘Oh, I see, and I suppose you told him all about me,’ she said with one foot on the step. ‘Cried into your beer and gave chapter and verse on how I almost tricked you into having to behave like an ordinary human being—’
‘God, Kate, no,’ he said, snagging the sleeve of her top to hold her back, ‘it wasn’t like that—his whole family were there—’
She had thought her humiliation was complete; now she discovered there was fresh reason to cringe. ‘You mean they all know about it, now, too?’ she cried in horror.
‘I haven’t told anyone, Kate. I didn’t go there to get drunk and rave; I just needed to get away to think.’
She pulled her sleeve out of his grasp. She didn’t know what to believe any more. She didn’t trust him—or herself—to know what was really true. ‘Excuse me, I think I’m going to go inside and be sick,’ she flung at him, and rushed up the stairs, hoping that would be enough to make him think twice about harassing her with his unwanted attention.
Unfortunately her words had the opposite effect and after scarcely a moment of hesitation he charged into the house behind her, following her trail of sandy footprints right into the sanctuary of her bedroom where she had fled to shed bitter tears.
‘What are you doing in here?’ she said thickly, backing away from him, glad that she hadn’t yet succumbed to the building pressure behind her eyes.
‘You said you were going to be sick.’
Just as the doctor had predicted they would, the physical symptoms of her pregnancy had vanished, so she couldn’t blame her savage burst of fury on a hormonal mood swing.