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I pulled away from him, folded my hands around my waist, the crippling pain turning to agony. But something about his anger, made me angry too.
He was asking me a question I hadn’t had an answer for. Until now.
‘Because it wasmyloss. Not yours,’ I said, feeling that hollow pain becoming a chasm. ‘Because I wanted to have the baby and you never even knew it existed.’
‘Because you kept it from me,’ he said, but his voice broke on the words.
‘You left me without a word the next day,’ I said, my anger building to disguise the pain. ‘I tried over and over to contact you and you didn’t respond. And then I got a text from one of your minions offering me fifty thousand euro to go away. And two days later, the bleeding started.’ I gulped, the tears flowing freely now. ‘It hurt, so much. But what hurt more was realising I wanted you there with me, and I didn’t even know you. I felt abandoned, the way I had when my mother had left me. But just like her, I was clinging to something that had never existed. Wanting the support of someone who didn’t want me.’ The anguish of those days in the hospital which had been trapped inside me made the words queue up too quickly in my throat and then spew out in a rush. ‘I couldn’t be that vulnerable again. So I convinced myself it was okay, that it hadn’t been that bad. That I hadn’t needed you. But I had. And when we got back together, I had to keep on lying to myself. And then...’ I panted, trying to get the words out now so he would see and understand. But I could already see the anger in his eyes had died. ‘And then today you told me you wanted me to stay with you. And for a moment I was so happy. But then I knew it couldn’t be real. That it wasn’t enough. You won’t even sleep the whole night in the same bed as me, Renzo. I don’t know much more about you now than I did back then. And I’m still too scared to ask. How can that be love? Really? When you don’t trust me any more than I trust you?’
‘Stop...’ He clasped my face, dragged me into his body and wrapped his arms around me. The shuddering pain wracked me. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry,’ he murmured, stroking my hair, holding me so tightly I could hear his heart beating against my ear. ‘You are right, I did not check the condom. I should have checked it. But you were... So much. Too much. You were always different from the other women, Jessie. Even then. I left you that morning because I was terrified of the feelings I had for you.’
The wrenching sobs burst from my mouth—the dam of emotions breaking inside me. Suddenly I was pressed against him, my body wracked with the misery of losing our baby all over again. But this time I wasn’t alone. He was with me.
Tentatively, haltingly, I banded my arms around his back, and clung to him, to keep myself upright, to calm the sobs to pants. And accepted his comfort at last.
Eventually, I shuddered to a stop. I was aware of the soreness in my ribs, the feel of his dress shirt damp against my cheek. But the pain in my heart, which would always be there, felt different now, less raw, less cruel, less lonely.
He dragged my head back, cupped my cheeks to lift my face to his.
‘I am so sorry, Jessie. I failed you, as I failed her.’
The agony in his face was so vivid it shocked me out of the last of my crying jag. His eyes were shadowed with guilt and a bone-deep terror. Reminding me of the man who had cried out in his sleep all those weeks ago. The man who I suspected had been chased by the same nightmare in the weeks since, but who I had been sure would never confide in me.
Our problems had never just been about the miscarriage, I realised.
I’d been so terrified to admit I wanted more from him, from this relationship. That when he’d finally offered it, I hadn’t trusted he meant it. But now I could see, this wasn’t just on him, and the mistakes he’d made in the past, but also on me, for never having the guts to ask all those questions because I’d convinced myself he wouldn’t answer them.
So I forced myself to cradle his cheek, I finally let him see all the love in my heart and I took that final leap too.
‘Who did you fail, Renzo? Is she the woman you have nightmares about?’
Renzo
I leant into Jessie’s palm, trying to control the terrifying fear of losing her.
My insides felt as if they had been turned inside out already—at hearing of the pain she had endured, alone, because of my carelessness, my cowardice.
I didn’t want to answer her question. Because then she would know how little I had to offer. But the way she had asked the question—so direct, so artless, so honest, as always—made me realise I no longer had a choice. How could I ever atone for the pain I had caused her, how could she ever trust me, if I could not tell her the truth of my past?
I could not look into her eyes though, while I did it. So I stepped back. The warm weight of her hand dropped from my face and I felt the loss instantly. I thrust my fists into my pockets and looked out at the night.
Luxury yachts bobbed in the marina below us, the headlamps of expensive cars wound through the hillside, past the mansions and chateaux of the superrich... But all I could see in that moment was the squalid room in the small-town brothel in Puglia where I had lived as a child. The place I had run away from as a boy, but had never really been able to escape. Because it had always been there in my nightmares. The ugly sound of sex, bought and paid for, the sickly smell of cheap perfumes and sweat and the suffocating desperation of the women trapped inside.
‘My mother,’ I murmured. ‘My mother is the woman I failed. Just as I failed you.’
‘You weren’t the only one who failed, Renzo. I failed you too, by not telling you about the miscarriage a lot sooner,’ she said with far too much generosity. Her hand settled on my back, rubbing, soothing, drawing me back to the present, and giving me the courage to confront my ugly past. ‘Why do you think you failed her?’
Think?There it was again, her determination to always see the best in me. Despite all the evidence to the contrary. I hadn’t just failed her. I swallowed, my throat raw. I had failed our baby too. I hated myself, imagining what might have happened if I had responded to her attempts to reach me. Would I have been ready to become a father? Certainly not. The thought would surely have terrified me. But the thought of what we had lost was compounded now by the realisation that fathering a child with her wouldn’t terrify me anymore. It would make me so happy.
‘I do not think, Iknow,’ I said. ‘My mother was forced to becomeuna prostitute.’ I spat the word out, because it had always disgusted me, in any language. It was not who she was, but what she had been forced to do. ‘Because of me.’
‘How could it be because of you?’ she asked simply.
‘Because I asked constantly for the things the other children had. I wanted money, respect. I hated to wear other children’s cast off clothes, but this was all she could afford with the money she made as a waitress.’ I shrugged, the bitterness in my voice doing nothing to hide the guilt. ‘The town was controlled by the Brotherhood—a criminal gang. She took out loans she could not afford to pay for the things I wanted. She was still young, still pretty and this is the way they made her pay her debt.’
‘What happened to her?’ Jessie asked softly.
‘She died, they killed her—because they found out she planned to leave with me. The nightmares take me back to that night when I was twelve and I hid under the bed while they hurt her. And I did nothing to save her. She told me to run, so I did. And I kept on running.’
