A Class Apart (31 page)

“Come on,” said Ashley, taking her arm. “Let’s go and find our things. You can stay with me tonight. Will you be all right?” she asked, turning back to Ellamarie.

Ellamarie nodded. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

Once they had found their luggage, Jenneen and Ashley waited in the hall for a taxi to arrive. They sat in silence, and Jenneen was dreading that Kate would come down the stairs with Ellamarie and find her still sitting there. Ashley held onto her hand, and every now and again she gave it a reassuring squeeze. The footmen turned a blind eye, politely not noticing them.

“Ah, there you are!”

Jenneen looked up, and Ashley was shocked to see the look that descended on her face. It was so brief Ashley wondered later if she had imagined it.

“I’ve been looking all over for you,” said Paul. “Where have you been?”

Jenneen didn’t answer, but Ashley could see that she was gritting her teeth.

“You’re not going are you?” said Paul, seeing their luggage on the floor beside them. Jenneen nodded. “But this is going on all weekend,” he protested. “I was hoping that perhaps we could . . .”

“No,” Jenneen snapped, interrupting him. “Something’s come up, we have to go back to London.”

She had known that he was on the point of suggesting that they repeat their earlier performance, when she had dragged him and two other members of his cricket team out of the ballroom and into a small room, hardly more than a cupboard, beneath the stairs at the back of the house. There she had proceeded to strip off her clothes, and sit astride him, his friends looking on, among all the paraphernalia of hunting gear. He had been astonished by her ardour, and her expertise at taking on three men in the way she had, but even more surprising was how cold she had been afterwards, before she had disappeared.

Luckily the taxi arrived at that moment.

“Well,” he said, as she stood up to go, “perhaps I could give you a ring sometime, in London.”

She muttered something that he couldn’t quite hear, and went to walk past him. Ashley went on ahead with the footmen, who were carrying their luggage out to the taxi.

Paul caught hold of Jenneen’s arm. “I’d like to see you again,” he whispered. “You’re quite something, you know.”

Jenneen looked at him, and he drew back to see the contempt and loathing in her eyes.

“Going so soon?”

Jenneen turned to see his cousin Victoria coming towards them, hiccuping and balancing a glass of champagne rather precariously between her fingers.

Jenneen gave a sad smile. What was it like to be her? To have fun, and get merry like that, without the haunting presence of Mrs Green, just waiting for an opportunity to seize her and bury her in the gutters of shame and degradation.

“Yes,” said Jenneen, “I’m afraid something’s come up, and we have to get back.”

“Oh, what a shame,” Vicky slurred. “And we didn’t even get a chance to get to know one another. Oh well, never mind, maybe next time,” and she teetered off again, taking Paul with her.

The following day Ellamarie received the first spray of flowers.

EIGHTEEN

Kate shrunk away from the hurt and anger on her father’s face. Finally, out of sheer desperation, she had turned to him for help. After weeks of agony and indecision he had been the only one left that she could turn to, but now she regretted it. Seeing him standing there, his face clenched, fighting with himself not to say the terrible things he wanted to say, Kate wanted to run away and never see him, or anyone else, again.

He wanted to hit her, beat her – anything rather than have to admit and face up to what she was telling him. He turned away and leaned his hands against the mantelpiece. She watched his knuckles turn white as his grip grew tighter, and she was afraid.

In the end they had all let her down. Joel, her friends, and now her father. Not one of them cared about her, or what she was going through. Not one of them thought about the pain that filled each day, and the terror of facing things alone. She hated them now, Jenneen most of all.

She looked up as her father began to speak, and the sound of his voice was as if someone had a grip on his throat and he had to fight to get air. “He’s right of course,” he was saying, “you’ll have to get rid of it. You can’t even think about having it.”

Kate stared at him and felt that she didn’t know him. “Do you know what you’re saying?” she whispered. Her face was white, and there were dark circles beneath her eyes. “You’re asking me to kill your own grandchild.”

He spun round. “It’s not a child, Kate. Not yet.” It was clearly an effort for him to keep his voice under control.

“It is!” she cried. “Of course it is. It might not be born yet, but it’s still alive, a human being.”

“No!” he growled.

After a long silence he took a deep breath. “This is getting us nowhere. We have to be rational about this, think things through and decide what is to be done. There’s still time, it’s not too late yet. If we contact the doctor today, he will be able to fix you up. Maybe by the end of . . .”

“Stop it!” she shouted, jumping to her feet. “Stop it! I’m not having an abortion. I’ll never have an abortion. This is my baby you’re talking about. Mine, do you hear me? I want it. I love it.”

“You’re talking nonsense,” said her father. “How can you love it? It’s not anything yet to be loved.”

“Is that what you thought about me, when Mum was pregnant? Is that how you thought? That I was nothing, that I couldn’t be loved, just because I was still in the womb?”

“Of course it wasn’t,” he snapped. “But you were planned. Your mother and I wanted you.”

“And I want my baby.”

He closed his eyes and ran his fingers back and forth across his forehead. “This is no way to bring a child into the world, Kate,” he said, after a while.

Kate clenched her teeth, and tried to sound calm. “You’re not listening to me. I will love it, I will look after it, it will want for nothing. I thought you would help me, but I can see now that I was wrong. But let me remind you again that this is your flesh and blood too, it is your grandchild.”

“And Joel Martin’s bastard.”

She turned away, disturbed by the venom in his eyes.

“Have you thought of what this will do to you?” he went on. “To your life? You’ll be carrying his bastard around for all the world to see. You will have no freedom, no time for yourself. You can forget your novel, something you’ve always wanted to do. You can say goodbye to your friends, there will be no time for them. And you can say goodbye to me.”

“What!” she gasped.

“You heard what I said. If you have this child, I want nothing to do with it. I couldn’t stand to see it, or you, my own daughter, as the used and discarded instruments of Joel Martin.”

“For God’s sake, why do you hate him so much?”

“How can you sit there and ask me that? Don’t you realize what he has done to you? You are soiled and labelled. I could never look at that child and forget what that man has done to you.”

“It’s not entirely his fault, you know. It takes two to make a baby.”

“Don’t be disgusting!” he spat. “Don’t ever let me hear you talk like that again. I don’t want to hear it, any of it.”

“All right, all right,” she said. “But you can’t just pretend that there isn’t a baby . . .”

“A child without a father? Is that what you want?”

“Of course it’s not what I want, but it’s what I’ve got. Besides, who knows, once it’s born Joel might come round.”

“Stop fooling yourself, Kate. You won’t see him again, he told you as much, and you have to believe him. If anything, you should be thankful to him for getting out of your life.”

“Thankful?”

“Yes. You only saw what you wanted to see in him, and you fooled yourself into believing that he loved you. Well, he didn’t, and you’re going to have to face up to that. He doesn’t want you, or the child.”

Tears were streaming down Kate’s face now. “Don’t say that,” she cried. “Don’t say that.”

“For God’s sake, Kate, what’s got into you? You can’t ruin your life, not now.”

“I’m not ruining my life. Why won’t anyone listen to me? Even if it does mean bringing it up alone, I still want to have this baby.”

He sighed wearily and went to sit down beside her. “Look,” he said, putting his arm round her shoulders, “it’s difficult for you to see things clearly right now, you’re too emotional, too upset. But you will, in time, you’ll see that it’s the only sensible answer. Darling, I love you, you know I do. Do you really believe that I would ask you to do something that I felt to be wrong? I am only asking you to do this for your own sake. It would make me very unhappy to see you bringing up the child of a man who doesn’t even want to see you. And, I’ve been thinking this for some time now, and now that this has happened, well, perhaps you will see that it’s not such a bad idea. I want you to come home and live here, with me. I get lonely when Mummy’s away in hospital, and she’s away such a lot of the time now. And there’s no real need for you to be in London, not now that you’re freelancing, is there? You’ll be able to write here, undisturbed. And then later, when things are, well, more settled, then we can think again, and who knows, perhaps then it will be the right time to have children. But not now, Kate. Not now, when everything is going so well for you.”

“But things aren’t going so well for me,” she said. “That’s just where you’re wrong. I didn’t want to tell you, but now it looks like I’ll have to. I can’t write a book, I’ll never be able to write a book. I just don’t have it in me.”

“Of course you don’t, at the moment. But that’s because Joel Martin has been messing up your life for the past few months. But you will, you’ll see. You will write, Kate, and I will do anything I can to help you. But you won’t be able to do it surrounded by nappies and crying babies. Now what do you say? The operation can be done in no time at all, and then we can begin again. Here at home, like we used to be.”

She shook her head and wiped her eyes with her hand. “Please stop it, don’t say any more.”

“All right, you’re tired, I can see that. Why don’t you go up and have a lie down, think about it for a while? You’ll see that what I’m saying is for the best.”

“I won’t!” Kate yelled, and she pushed him away. “Please, please listen to me, I beg you. I’m going to have this child, and if you’re not going to stand by me. Daddy, then I’ll have it alone. I can see now that none of you care about me, that all you’re thinking about is yourselves, but I’m thinking about
me.
Me! Do you hear? And my child. We don’t need any of you, we can make it without you. I hate you, I hate all of you . . .” and she fell onto the arm of the settee, shaking and sobbing.

Her father pulled her head up onto his shoulder.

“All right,” he said. “All right. We won’t discuss it now. Let me take you up to bed. You’re tired. You’ll see things differently when you’ve had some sleep.”

Kate wanted to scream at him, but she was too weary. Her nerves were taut, and she had been on an emotional see-saw ever since Joel had walked out on her. She had rung him several times, but he had refused to speak to her. Jenneen had rung, but Kate had refused to speak to her, and had hung up on her. And neither would she see Ellamarie or Ashley. She didn’t want anyone. She had only wanted her father in the end, but even that had been a mistake.

She allowed him to lead her up to her room, where she lay down on the bed. Her father sat with her for a while, saying nothing as he stroked her hair, and held her hand. She would make him see, she had to make him understand. She must have this baby. She loved Joel, it was his child, their child, and she couldn’t kill it. He would come round in the end, they all would. They had to.

Ellamarie came back into the room and handed a glass to Jenneen. “Have either of you heard from her? Spoken to her at all?”

“Not a word,” Ashley answered.

“She hangs up on me every time I ring,” said Jenneen, and Ellamarie could see the hun in her eyes. “I keep trying, but it’s no use, she just won’t speak to me. What about you, Ellamarie? Have you spoken to her?”

Ellamarie shook her head. “No,” she said. “Like you, I’ve tried, but she won’t listen. I have spoken to Joel though.”

“When?” said Jenneen.

“This morning. I rang him. I wondered if perhaps he had spoken to her.”

“And has he?” Ashley asked.

“No, and no more does he want to, by the sound of it.”

“What did he say?”

“He said that she’d tried to ring him a couple of times, but that he really didn’t see any point in going over things again.”

“The bastard!” Jenneen muttered.

“Precisely,” said Ellamarie. “But we have to do something. I think one of us should ring her father.”

They looked at one another, none of them relishing the idea of speaking to Mr Calloway. Ellamarie went on. “I thought that as I spent Christmas with them, then maybe it should be me. I just wanted to know that you were in agreement.”