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An empty blue cot stood along one wall and over it a mobile of coloured aeroplanes gently rocked in acknowledgment of their presence. Next to the cot, a dresser displayed blue-framed photographs: of Nina and of Ryan, and of the little boy with the curly black hair and blue eyes astride his push-along horse. The photograph she hadn’t wanted to see. Nina picked it up.
‘Liam…’ The name was a sigh on her lips and an ache in her heart. ‘Liam…’
Her son. So bright and full of promise. Her bundle of joy, snatched away so violently, his merry spirits quenched in an instant.
She put the photograph down and touched the upper rail of the cot. ‘We were going to move this out and get him a proper bed because he’d started learning to climb out,’ she said softly. ‘He took his first steps the week before he died. My baby was growing up so fast….’
Ryan moved in behind her, his hands settling on her shoulders. ‘Nina…’
She wrenched away from his touch and spun around. ‘He was only one year old—he didn’t deserve to die!’
Ryan’s face filled with a torment to match her own. ‘No, no, he didn’t. And if I hadn’t suggested we go down to the marina that day—’
‘No!’ Nina flung herself back at him, surrounding him with her arms. ‘God, no—it wasn’t your fault. It was a freak accident. I never blamed you.’
The aluminium-alloy dive tank that had exploded, killing Liam and the marina employee who had just refilled it and injuring several others, had been found to be faulty. But no amount of hindsight or offer of compensation could make up to Nina for the loss of her son.
‘I never blamed you,’ she repeated savagely. ‘You were hurt, too. I thought I had lost you, as well.’ Tears began pouring down her face. ‘I couldn’t bear it—I…I couldn’t have borne to lose you both….’ And suddenly, she was sobbing violently against his chest, hoarse, gut-wrenching sobs that shook both their bodies.
‘Oh, Nina, thank God,’ Ryan murmured in anguished relief as he buried his face in her hair and rocked her from side to side, allowing her the luxury of her long-delayed grief. ‘Thank God you’re back, and safe, and able to cry for our lovely little boy and cherish him in your memory again. You never cried for him after the funeral. You held everything tightly inside you. You tried to be so brave, to pretend for my sake that you were all right, that you were coping better day by day so I wouldn’t worry about you. I tried to believe that, but you weren’t all right. Months crept past and you still weren’t eating or sleeping properly, you couldn’t paint, you didn’t want to talk about Liam except in the most superficial way, you never set foot in this room. I think the accident must have brought your memories of your mother’s death too close to the surface, so you tried to repress them both, and the pressure inside you built up until you just couldn’t take it any more.’
‘So I ran away. In my mind I ran away…and I left you to face this all alone. I’m so sorry,’ she sobbed. ‘I’m so sorry. Please don’t hate me.’
‘How can I hate my foreign self? Nina, twice in your life you’ve witnessed the death of people you loved in explosions. How could you not find that unbearably traumatising? You were in deep shock yourself, yet you cradled Liam’s body until the ambulance came and still had the presence of mind to put my belt around my leg as a tourniquet. You saved my leg if not my life. I may have been angry and hurt, and frustrated by you, but I never, ever stopped loving you.’
‘He looked so whole and perfect, I couldn’t believe he was gone,’ she whispered against his shuddering heart. ‘There wasn’t even any blood.’
‘It was the concussive shock to the brain that killed him. He wasn’t hit with shrapnel like me. It was a blessing of a kind, darling, being so instant. He didn’t have time to suffer.’
‘Like we have.’ She lifted her head and saw that his olive cheeks, too, were tracked with the glittering evidence of his solitary grief, now shared. ‘I thought…I was afraid…that with Liam gone…He was the reason that you asked me to marry you when you did.’
