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‘Come on, Ma, you know you’d love another child…and I certainly wouldn’t object to a little sister.’
The knowledge which all three of them shared was mirrored in those words, and, despite the grim look in Lewis’s eyes, Lacey felt the familiar pang inside her, the familiar ache in her womb, reinforcing the knowledge that Jessica was right: that she would like another child, just as long as that child was Lewis’s.
‘If my tests prove positive I shan’t let it stop me from having children,’ Jessica told them both quietly. ‘Not boys—I couldn’t take that risk—but girls.’
Lacey tensed as she saw Lewis walk over to the french windows and step through them into the garden, his back rigid with tension.
‘What is it…what did I say?’ Jessica asked her bewilderedly.
‘He’s worried about you,’ Lacey told her gently. ‘Give him time, Jess. He feels guilty…responsible…for the fact that you will probably never be able to choose to have sons, at least not without the risk of passing on to them his defective gene—’
‘But at least I can choose,’ Jessica interrupted her. ‘What would you have done, Ma, if he’d told you about…about the risk after you knew you were carrying me?’
‘I don’t know,’ Lacey told her honestly. ‘I think I would probably have continued with the pregnancy.’
‘But Dad wouldn’t have wanted you to, would he? He’d have tried to persuade you to have an abortion.’
Lacey bit her lip. ‘Jessica, you’ve seen what’s happening to little Michael. You know what his family has gone through. I’m not trying to say that I agree with Lewis’s attitude, but I do understand it.’
‘Yes. Yes, I know. I just suddenly realised that if you hadn’t…if he hadn’t divorced you when he did, I might never have been born.’
‘But you were born,’Lacey told her, ‘and, thanks to modern technology, you will have the choice of knowing that you can opt to have only girls.’
Jessica went to stand by the window. ‘Dad looks so alone. I think he’s missed you dreadfully. It’s obvious how he feels about you, and I know that you love him…that you’ve always loved him. I’m so glad that you’ve come together again.’
‘Jess, it isn’t as clear-cut as that. Things may not work out,’ Lacey began, but Jessica wasn’t listening to her.
‘I’m looking forward to seeing his house, aren’t you? I wonder what it’s like.’
Lewis was staring towards the house. Jessica opened the french window and ran up to him, hugging him with a love that made Lacey’s eyes sting with tears.
Soon she would have to tell her daughter the truth. Soon, but not yet; not while her relationship with Lewis was still so new and vulnerable.
DRIVING through the once familiar environs of the town where she had once lived with Lewis made Lacey feel increasingly tense and on edge.
The town had changed over the years, had grown and spread out, but its centre was the same.
Lewis now had a much larger office in the town square. He pointed it out to them as they drove through it, responding to Jessica’s excited questions by admitting that he now owned the handsome three-storey Georgian building in which his offices were housed.
He had, he explained to them, bought out his original partner some years previously, and had expanded the business so that he now had several fully qualified staff working for him, as well as an office manager and several clerks.
‘Hear that, Ma? You’re marrying a wealthy man, so hang on to him,’ Jessica teased, but Lacey suspected that it was probably true and that Lewis was indeed very well off.
His car, his clothes and now his offices certainly seemed to bear out that impression. She moved nervously in her seat. Jessica had insisted that her mother sit in the front passenger-seat of the car, next to Lewis, although Lacey would much rather have sat in the back.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw the way he flinched a little as he had to brake unexpectedly for someone crossing the road. The removal of the bone marrow he had given for research in addition to temporarily weakening his limb had left a small scar on his upper thigh. Her skin suddenly coloured hotly as she remembered how she had smoothed it, kissed it, tenderly caressing the small wound. She started to tremble inside and hated herself for her weakness. Every ti
me she thought about the way they had made love it affected her like this, making her body start to ache and her senses swim.
Lewis was saying something about its not being far now. She looked at him, focusing briefly on his mouth, her heart turning over inside her as she remembered its delicate friction against her body.
They were clear of the town now, driving through the suburbs and out into the open country, and they were, she recognised with relief—on the opposite side of the town from the area where they had originally set up home.
They turned off the main road into a quiet country lane. Lacey could see a drive ahead of them. Lewis turned into it and she caught her breath in shock as she saw the house.
It was a low white-painted farmhouse with red tiled roofs and lead-paned windows, surrounded by large mature gardens and protected by an encircling ring of trees.
‘Is this it? It’s brilliant!’ Jessica announced. ‘What do you think, Ma?’
