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And she would never come back.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
TAK EYED HIS MOTHER, feeling an odd, unexpected kind of fury building inside him. He ignored her question and the fact that he didn’t—couldn’t—answer her. He was only glad that Effie had left long enough ago that she wouldn’t have heard that. It would have hurt her more than he could have borne.
‘You will not repeat that to Effie. Ever,’ he said with deliberate calm. ‘Do you hear me? I don’t know what you think you’re doing here, but the time for me to pretend that you are any kind of mother is long gone. I made excuses for you because of Saaj, but you were never a mother in the truest sense of the word. Not to me, and not to the others. The only reason you mourned Saaj was because you had some twisted idea in your head that he was the key to winning my father back.’
Instead of paling and slumping in her seat, as he might have feared, his mother narrowed her eyes, drawing her face into an ugly, cruel expression. ‘Is this her influence? Damaged, toxic, and now she causes you to speak to your mama that way?’
In one terrible instant the scales fell from Tak’s eyes. He would never be able to reason with this person and he would never be able to save her. She’d thrown her lot in with his father a long time ago and the man was like a wild, savage sea, with no respect for life or safety. Uma would drown because his father fed off her struggles. He sucked her under time and again, and she refused to right herself or grab hold of anything that could rescue her.
There was nothing Tak could do. Nothing anybody could do. She was anchored to him and she loved it.
But he wasn’t going to let some sense of filial duty or honour tie him up any longer. He couldn’t throw his mother out—that would be a step too far. But Effie had told him that he wasn’t like his father and he was choosing to believe her. He was choosing her.
Turning his back on his ranting mother, he called Havers. ‘Tell Effie we’re leaving. We’ll return as soon as my mother has left this house. And as soon as she is gone change the locks.’
‘Effie has gone, Mr Basu.’
In all the time Tak had known the old man, he’d never seen him upset.
Time seemed to slow. ‘What is it, Havers?’
‘She looked rather distressed, sir.’
The room closed around Tak. Everything felt too tight, too constricting. Even his skin seemed to compress on his bones.
She had overheard. There could be no other explanation.
He turned to face his mother. The gleam of delight in her eyes was unmistakable.
‘And so the mighty fall,’ she proclaimed. ‘All this disgust and disdain you show for your father, and all along I’ve warned you that you’re just like him. That you will hurt any woman who doesn’t know what she’s getting herself into with you. All those names you’ve called him and all that hatred you have for him. How does it feel, Talank, to know that you are him?’
Tak didn’t answer. He couldn’t. It was as if a storm was closing in on him. It had come out of nowhere, so fast that he hadn’t even known it existed before. But he was getting caught up in it now, and he didn’t know which direction to even begin to turn.
How had he let himself believe he could be a better person? A man worthy of a woman like Effie? He should have gone with his gut—pushed her away the minute he knew something was happening between them.
But he’d known even from that first moment in Resus that there was something unique, something incredible about Effie. It had lured him in and it had seduced him. And he, in turn, had seduced her. Into his life and then into his bed. He’d taken advantage of her, and what was more he’d justified it by telling himself the attraction was mutual.
‘You could go after her, Mr Basu,’ Havers said suddenly. ‘She would probably appreciate that.’
For a perfect instant Tak nearly obeyed. Then reality set in. He couldn’t go to her now. That would only be rubbing salt into an already very raw wound. Calculating and insensitive. The best thing he could do now would be to stay away from Effie. To let her get back to her life and some semblance of normality.
Swinging around, Tak dismissed Havers and faced his mother. It took everything he had not to react to that cruel triumph radiating from her eyes.
‘You may have won this round,’ he told her, as evenly and as calmly as he could manage. ‘But you won’t win any more. Get out of my home and out of my life. I’m not my father and I never will be, and you’ll need to find a new punch-bag. And if you go anywhere near Hetti or Sasha or Rafi I will make sure you regret it for the rest of your life.’
He didn’t even wait for her to answer. He simply walked away. Out of the room. Out of the house. Into his car.
He didn’t care if he drove all night or all week. As long as he stayed away from Effie—didn’t hurt her any more than he already had—that was all that mattered.
‘This is Maggie, thirty-four...’ Effie briefed the team, relief pounding along her veins as she noted that Tak wasn’t the neurological surgeon assigned to the case. ‘At around six forty-five she was on a ladder, painting the first-floor window frames on her house, when she fell approximately four metres to the ground and landed on her back on a concrete path.’
In truth, she had no idea whether or not Tak was even in the hospital today. And she’d spent her entire shift—the entire past thirty-six hours, in fact—telling herself that she would never think about him again.
But it was like outlining a specific image and then telling someone not to instantly picture it in their head. Impossible.
‘When we arrived GCS was thirteen, transmitted upper airway sounds equal air entry bilaterally, blood pressure was low and she was complaining of lower lumbar
