AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Race… Race, what are you doing?’ she asked him as he lifted the label off the pram and picked up the phone, angrily punching in the numbers.
‘Sending this back,’ he grated at her. ‘I’m not having him buying things for my child, cousin or no cousin!’
Heather was stunned. Why was he so angry? Neil had bought her the pram as a gift, and although she had thought he had been too extravagant she had not wanted to hurt his feelings by returning it.
‘Race, I wish you hadn’t done that,’ she protested tremulously when he had instructed the shop to collect the pram. ‘Neil will be so hurt….’
‘Damn Neil!’ he swore forcefully, slamming down the receiver. ‘What about me, Heather?’ he demanded bitterly. ‘Don’t my feelings count?’ His mouth compressed. ‘But we both know the answer to that, don’t we? Dear God, I wish I’d never…’
His eyes went to the bulge of her stomach and Heather felt as though she were going to faint. She wanted to hate him for making his resentment so plain, but somehow she couldn’t.
‘I do understand how you feel, Race,’ she said huskily, ‘and I promise you I’ll do my best to make it as easy as possible for you.’
‘Do you?’ he asked thickly as he strode towards the stairs. ‘That’s bloody generous of you, Heather… but save it, will you? It isn’t generosity I want from you.’
No, it was his freedom, Heather thought unhappily as she watched him walk lithely up the stairs. He opened the door to their room and she paused, not knowing whether to go after him or leave him. In the end she opted for the latter.
Race stayed for ten days, during which they treated one another like polite strangers. The pram disappeared to be replaced by one which was even more magnificent and obviously expensive, and Heather eyed it with increasing revulsion. If she had thought that sharing the intimacy of the fourposter bed would improve matters between them she had been wrong. Race normally worked in the evenings, coming to bed long after she was asleep. Her pregnancy made her feel more tired than usual and she slept more deeply. Had more bedrooms been ready, Heather suspected Race would have suggested that they slept separately. But it had been on his instructions that she had prepared this room. Had he decided after all that the duty he felt he owed his unborn child was not as strong as he had first imagined? Heather had no way of knowing.
On the eleventh day after his arrival the phone rang, and she heard him answer it in the sitting-room-cum-library which she had decorated with such care to make it both comfortable and practical from a working point of view. Yew bookcases lined one wall, and the desk she had chosen was large enough to house Race’s typewriter and telephone. Hidden away in the cupboards below the bookshelves were the video and stereo equipment, and the Colefax and Fowler chintzes, with their soft yellow background and misty blue and grey flowers, filled the room with sunshine and warmth.
She heard his footsteps crossing the hall as he called her name. She had been in the kitchen preparing lunch, and when he found her he said curtly, ‘I have to go to London on business. I’ll only be away the one night. I should be back in time for dinner tomorrow.’
‘I could go and stay with my aunt,’ Heather suggested. She wasn’t normally timid, but she didn’t like the thought of being so completely alone.
‘No… no, I want you to stay here,’ Race said coldly. ‘It’s just not going to work, is it?’ he added with bitter savagery. ‘You won’t let it, will you, Heather? How can it work when every time my back’s turned you’re running back to your precious cousin?’
Heather didn’t try to defend herself. She couldn’t understand what had prompted the attack although she knew that he resented Neil. Half an hour later she heard the sound of his car engine firing. She was standing in the kitchen, by the sink, her hands automatically going through the motions of washing her coffee mug as the tears coursed relentlessly down her face.
How long could they go on like this? Race obviously loathed and resented her. They had none of the closeness she had hoped they might find when they returned from the Caymans; the Race who had touched her so comfortingly and tenderly then might never have been, and she was finding it increasingly hard to believe that this cold, bitter man was the same one who had brought her body to such a pitch of pleasure that all she had desired was his possession of her.
She was in the kitchen trying to remove the net curtain from the window two days later, when she heard a car in the drive. She had woken up that morning consumed by an urge to spring-clean, and when Neil’s face appeared in her line of vision she grinned down at him, calling out that the back door was open.
‘Heather, what the hell do you think you’re doing?’ he called out anxiously behind her as he stepped into the kitchen. She was just reaching for the curtain, stretching out to grasp it when suddenly she started to overbalance. Neil caught her, his face contorted with anxiety as he helped her into a chair. ‘Heather, for God’s sake,’ he protested hotly, ‘you shouldn’t be doing things like that! Where’s Williams? Doesn’t he care? He should be with you, here.’
‘Race is in London on business, and I’m not an invalid, Neil,’ Heather placated. ‘Sit down and I’ll make us both a cup of coffee.’
‘No, you sit down! God, Heather, you nearly gave me a heart attack! What on earth were you doing?’
‘Trying to get the curtain down to wash it,’ Heather said mildly. ‘Now you’re here you can get it down for me. What brings you here, by the way?’
‘Can’t I even call and see you now?’ His mouth compressed. ‘I had a phone call this morning—about the pram.’
‘Race wouldn’t let me keep it,’ Heather told him huskily, biting her lip as she remembered the scene the pram had occasioned. She winced suddenly, rubbing the base of her spine. Her back had been aching on and off all morning, the pain gradually increasing until it was now quite uncomfortable.
Neil made their coffee and handed Heather’s to her, studying her gravely. ‘Heather, are you happy?’ he asked bluntly. ‘I’m worried about you.’
‘Yes, I am,’ she lied, gasping suddenly at the pain that caught her off guard. Instantly Neil was at her side, his face grey and anxious. ‘Heather….’
‘It’s perfectly all right,’ she told him, managing a small smile. ‘Probably a false alarm, but if you could telephone your mother.’ Strange that the first person she wanted was her aunt; well, not the first. Race was the first, but it was pointless trying to phone him, she didn’t even know where he was.
An hour later her aunt was saying briskly, ‘Well, if you want my opinion it’s no false alarm. Hospital for you, my girl. Neil, you can drive us. I’ll sit in the back with Heather.’
Of the three of them Neil was the most distressed, Heather thought lazily, trying to remember everything she had learned during her relaxation classes, monitoring her breathing and trying not to let anxiety feather down her spine when she realised how much closer together the pains were coming.
‘You’re all right,’ her aunt assured her comfortably. ‘Plenty of time yet. Neil, try to concentrate on the road,’ she adjured her son, drawing an exchanged smile between Heather and the latter as their eyes met in the driving mirror.
It was all wrong, though, Heather thought unhappily half an hour later as she walked into the hospital, Neil supporting her on one side, her aunt on the other. Race was the one who should be with her. Race was the one she wanted, she thought, wincing beneath the onslaught of another pain.
‘Come along, Mrs Williams,’ the Sister said encouragingly. ‘Everything’s going to be fine.’
‘Race,’ she protested huskily as the nurse came to lead her away. ‘Race….’
‘Don’t worry, we’ll get him here,’ her aunt assured her. ‘Neil’s gone to ring Jenny now, and we’ll leave a message at the flat. ‘He’ll be here, Heather, don’t worry. You just concentrate on having this baby….’
It was surprising that she still had the space to worry about Race, Heather thought tiredly, after what seemed li
ke hours of pain and instruction.
‘Everything’s going fine, Mrs Williams,’ the Sister assured her, wiping the perspiration from her forehead. ‘You’re going to have to start working hard quite soon. Are you quite comfortable?’
Heather managed to nod her head. ‘My husband….’
‘Yes… yes. He’ll be here,’ she soothed. After that everything was a blur; Sister hadn’t been exaggerating when she said she was going to have to work.
‘Don’t push yet, Mrs Williams,’ she heard someone saying to her, and then an aside, her hearing was suddenly acute enough to hear as she added, ‘She’s getting overtired… I wish her husband would arrive. It would give her the encouragement she needs.’
