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‘Excuse me?’ Guy said, his head snapping across to look at Meena. Of course he sounded surprised—she was surprised too. She hadn’t meant to say it like that. Or say it at all to his face yet. She had planned to send an impersonal email to Dev and then never have to see the look on Guy’s face when he heard the news.
She wasn’t sure what she was so scared of seeing there. Or maybe it was more a case of what she wanted to see there. Did she want him to be disappointed? To be sorry that after she completed her report there was going to be no reason for them ever to talk again? She couldn’t read him well enough to know which it was. His face was hard, stony, giving nothing away.
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‘I thought you were going to take it,’ he said, his words calm and measured, giving her no clue to what he was thinking.
‘I thought I would too,’ she admitted, lifting her shoulders and letting them fall.
‘What changed?’ he asked, his voice hard.
‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I can’t watch that happen to Le Bijou.’
Guy’s jaw tensed further, and she knew that he was angry. ‘Fine.’
The careful control behind that monosyllable didn’t make him seem any less irritated. He couldn’t really make it any clearer that it was anything but fine. Well, that was okay with her. She wasn’t going to stand here and pretend that she was happy about him destroying the place that she loved more than any other. It wasn’t up to her to make him feel better about what he was doing.
‘Has it got something to do with the secret that you’re keeping?’ Guy asked out of nowhere, taking Meena off guard.
‘No! And there is no secret!’ she said, a little too forcefully, making Guy narrow his eyes at her. Great—she’d made him more suspicious of her. It wasn’t fair—her decision genuinely had nothing to do with having lost the baby. But now her over-the-top denial was making her look more suspicious than ever.
‘I’m not sure that I believe you,’ Guy said, taking a step towards her.
That was fine. She didn’t need him to believe her. She just needed him to drop it.
‘Never mind,’ Guy said at last, when it became clear that she wasn’t planning on answering him. ‘It’s none of my business anyway.’
Her face fell. She knew that her expression was giving her away but she couldn’t stop it. Because of all the things that he could have said to her, that was by far the worst. Because of course it was his business. As much as she had tried to put the thought out of her head, it had been his baby that she had lost. If the accident had never happened, it would have been his baby she would have given birth to. Of course that was his business. She had kept the secret, trying to protect him from the hurt that she knew was inevitable. But she wasn’t sure any more that that was her decision to make.
‘What? What have I said?’ Guy asked. ‘Is your secret something to do with me, with us?’
She wanted to shake her head and deny it, but there was a difference between lying by omission and lying outright, and it turned out she wasn’t actually great at either of them.
‘I think you should probably just tell me what’s going on,’ Guy said, giving her a stern look.
‘I don’t know how,’ Meena admitted, not wanting to look up and meet his gaze. Even after all this time, the pain she felt when she thought about what she had lost felt as fresh as the day she had first found out. How could she inflict that on Guy when she had the choice to spare him?
Was that what she would have wanted? she asked herself. She realised she had never considered the question before. But if she could have woken from her coma with no idea about the life that had once been growing inside her—would she want that?
No.
The answer came to her as quickly as it was decisive. That life had been important. Valuable. And she wouldn’t want to diminish that by forgetting. And she owed Guy the same consideration she had been shown.
She sank into a chair, knowing what she had to do, that knowledge making it more impossible than ever to look him in the eye. Before she realised what was happening, Guy was sitting beside her, reaching for her hand, and she wondered what must be showing on her face for his sudden change of mood.
‘Is it something I can help with, Meena?’ he asked, and she nearly broke at the tenderness in his voice. She shook her head.
‘There’s nothing you can do. Nothing anyone can do. It’s in the past but it still...’
‘It still hurts,’ Guy said simply, and she nodded. ‘It’s something to do with when we were together. Or your accident.’
‘Yes. Both.’
With gentle fingers, he lifted her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze.
‘What is it? You can trust me, Meena.’ And she knew that she could. Despite everything, when she was with him she got that same feeling as she did when she was on Le Bijou. A feeling like nothing could touch her. That she was protected from the worst ravages of the real world. She took a deep breath, knowing that nothing was going to happen that would make this any easier. That she couldn’t delay any longer.
‘I was pregnant, Guy, when the accident happened. I lost your baby.’ She watched as his face creased with confusion, then shock and pain, coming to rest firmly on the latter.
