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'Then if she does, why hasn't she rung me?' Olivia asked him despairingly before shaking her head. 'Oh God, Saul, there I go again, feeling sorry for myself... being selfish. She must be frantic with worry about Maddy. Has there been any news about her yet?'
'Not so far as I know. She's still in hospital. Try not to worry,' Saul counselled her. 'Ring Jenny in the morning. She should have some news about Maddy by then and you can explain everything to her.' He glanced at his watch. 'I'd better go. Tullah will be wondering where the hell I am.'
As Olivia looked at the kitchen clock she couldn't believe that they had been talking for over an hour.
'Thanks,' she told him simply as she walked with him to the door.
'For what?' he demanded.
'For being you,' Olivia told him softly. 'And for understanding me.'
She kissed him quickly on the mouth and then stepped back. She was only feeling the way she was because she was lonely and vulnerable she told herself fiercely as she watched him walk to his car...that was all!
'MR CRIGHTON...'
Max tensed as the nurse came into the small room where he had been waiting to see Maddy ever since he had returned to the hospital to be told that the consultant had given strict instructions that she was not permitted to see anyone.
'Mr Lewis would like to have a word with you. If you'll come this way...'
Fighting to control his feelings Max strode after her down the corridor and into the room he had become so familiar with and which he knew would for ever now be for him a place drenched in the darkness of his own fear and pain.
'Please, sit down, Mr Crighton,' the consultant instructed him quietly.
'Why haven't I been allowed to see my wife?' Max demanded sharply.
'Your wife's situation, as you know, is very serious and it's vitally important that she isn't distressed or upset in any way.' The doctor started to frown. 'I have to be honest with you, Mr Crighton, she isn't responding as well as we would have liked.'
'What do you mean?' Max cut across him grimly.
His mouth felt dry, acid with the taste of his own fear.
The consultant had stood up. He walked over to the narrow window of the room and fiddled with the blind, keeping his back to Max as he told him obliquely,
'When we first discussed your wife's condition you raised the question of a termination of her pregnancy....'
Max felt as though a lead weight had been tied to his heart dragging it down, sending it plummeting through his body.
'You said that wasn't an option you felt we needed to consider,' he managed to say.
'It wasn't then...' the other man agreed heavily before turning round to face Max.
'There's no easy way to say any of this. Your wife is very seriously ill, she's also closer to the point at which I would not carry out a termination. Do you understand what I'm trying to say, Mr Crighton? Your wife is nearly twenty weeks pregnant.'
'Of course I understand.' Max's voice was equally harsh. 'What will happen if you do nothing and the pre-eclampsia can't be controlled?'
The consultant looked sympathetic and told Max again about the risk of convulsions with both mother and baby being deprived of oxygen. 'If that happens...'
'Yes. I understand,' Max interrupted him harshly.
'If, in the next few days we can get your wife's blood pressure down to an acceptable level and keep it down, then should it recur in the latter stages of her pregnancy we can always opt to deliver the baby by Caesarean section.'
'...and if you can't get it down?' Max demanded.
The consultant looked away from him.
'If there is to be a termination of her pregnancy then it has to be carried out soon.'
'So what you're saying is that if she's shown no sign of responding to the treatment within a week then...'
The consultant sighed.
'Three days, Mr Crighton...that's all we can allow her. The termination has to be carried out before the twentieth week,' he repeated as though he were trying to explain something to a child.
Three days.
Helplessly Max rubbed his eyes. They felt as though they were rimmed with acid, dry and sharply painful.
'Have you told Maddy any of this?' he asked hoarsely.
The consultant shook his head.
'Not yet.'
For the first time he looked Max in the eyes.
'However, if in three days' time there has not been an improvement... Look, why don't you go home and try to get some rest?' the doctor was suggesting.
'There's no point in staying here. I'm afraid we can't let you see your wife. She might sense...something...
and it's critically important that we keep her calm.'
Max bowed his head.
THE BABY WAS already asleep and Jenny had just finished reading Leo and Emma a story when Max rang.
'I'm coming home,' he told her.
'Maddy? How is she?' Jenny began but Max cut her short.
'Not now, Ma,' he responded tiredly. 'I'll tell you everything once I get back. I'm leaving now so I shouldn't be very long.'
'I'll start supper,' Jenny suggested but on the other end of the line Max fought against the nauseous rejection filling his stomach at the thought of food. Eating, doing anything to sustain his own life seemed almost a form of blasphemy in the light of what he had just been told.
JACK WAS JUST cooking himself something to eat when the telephone started to ring. The house had felt oddly cold and unfamiliar without the welcoming presence of his aunt. He assumed that she must be at one of her committee meetings and that his uncle Jon was still at work.
With one eye on his stir-fry he reached for the receiver and spoke into it. On the other end of the line Jenny frowned as she recognised her nephew's voice.
What on earth was Jack doing at home? He was supposed to be at university.
'Jack?' she questioned in concern.
'Aunt Jenny.' Guilt filled Jack's voice.
'Are you all right?' Jenny asked him anxiously.
'Er, yes...I'm fine,' Jack responded but he sounded so unconvincing that Jenny immediately felt sharply anxious. If he was fine then what was he doing at home?
'Is your uncle Jon there?' she asked him.
'No,' Jack replied. 'Do you want me to give him a message if he comes home before you?'
'Mmm, yes...yes, please,' Jenny confirmed. 'Just tell him please that Maddy's still in hospital but that Max is on his way home and once he gets here I'll be coming back.'
She didn't say anything to Jack about her plans to go and see Olivia, primarily because she couldn't now decide what was worrying her more, Olivia's uncharacteristic behaviour that morning or the disturbing discovery that Jack was not at university where he should be but at home.
A sudden thought struck her.
'Jack, this unauthorised "exeat" you've given yourself,' she asked, keeping her voice as light as possible,
'wouldn't have anything to do with Annalise would it?'
His sharp intake of breath gave him away even before Jenny heard his carefully casual but wholly unbelievable, 'No...no why should it? I just had some spare time in my schedules and I thought I might as well spend it at home. Look, I've got to go, my stir-fry is about to burst into flames.'
As she replaced her own receiver Jenny closed her eyes. It had been obvious to her that Jack was lying to her and that Annalise was the reason he had come home.
They were both far too young for the intensity of the relationship that had developed between them. Jon and Jenny had already agreed that, but they knew all too well themselves the trauma of teenage heartaches to want to see Jack suffering from them.
Although he had tried manfully to keep it from her, Jenny had heard the note of despondency, of desperation almost, in Jack's voice and she ached with love and pity for them both. The last thing she wanted to see him do was to ruin the whole of his life by giving up his studies so that he could be with Annalise. Not that she didn't like Annalise. She did. But
she and Jack were so young. Too young. And Jack had to understand and accept that he simply could not come rushing home every time he and Annalise had a falling-out.
What was happening to them all, Jenny wondered unhappily as she waited for Max to arrive. Suddenly it seemed as though their lives had plunged from happiness into danger and darkness.
Since David's return... Since David's return...
Jenny stiffened. She knew that what she was thinking was illogical and more than a tad influenced by her own very ambivalent feelings towards the man who was now her brother-in-law but who had once been her lover. She felt no desire whatsoever for David now. Jon was the man she loved but David's return had marked a sharp change in the previously gentle happiness of all their lives—and not for the better—
and illogical or not, for that she could not help blaming him and wishing that he had stayed away.
'YOU'RE LATER than I expected,' Tullah commented absently as Saul uncorked the bottle of red wine they were having with dinner.
'Mmm...' he agreed non-committally. He would tell her about his visit to Olivia later when they were on their own and when he could do so without compro-mising the confidence Livvy had given him about the situation with Jenny. As a woman Tullah would probably have a more insightful view on how Livvy might deal with the situation than he did himself.
'Am I going to be allowed a glass of wine tonight?'
Jemima asked Tullah hopefully.
She was the eldest of his three children from his first marriage and Saul was ruefully aware of how fast she was growing up. During the summer she and Tullah had made a 'secret' female shopping trip which had resulted in a certain bashful mixture of self-consciousness and smugness as she started to wear her first bra.
'No. Not tonight,' Tullah answered her. 'It's a school night. Perhaps at the weekend...'
