Giselle's Choice (8 page)

Tears filled Giselle's eyes and rolled down her face until they met the barrier of Saul's hands. Very gently he smoothed them away.

‘You are wonderful, Saul. Truly noble and…and visionary. Of course I'll support you. You know I will. I can't think of anything I'd want to support more than what you are planning.'

‘And your assurance? Do I have that as well? It's important, Giselle, because there is bound to be pressure
from the old guard here. If we don't have a child then they won't have a prospective heir on which to hang their arguments for maintaining the status quo.'

‘You have my assurance,' Giselle promised him. How she had managed to be so lucky she didn't know, but whatever the cause of her release from the torment she had been suffering she was grateful to it. ‘I love your plans for a democracy, but you'll face an awful lot of opposition from Aldo's ministers and courtiers,' she warned Saul.

‘I like opposition,' he responded with a glint in his eyes. ‘You of all people should know that. Remember how you fought against me?'

‘Since I had to fight against you, and against wanting you, it was no wonder I lost. And in losing I won the greatest prize of all,' Giselle said softly.

 

Later that day, sitting on the rug they had spread out on the sun-warmed sand of a tiny lakeside bay, with Saul lying stretched out, his head pillowed on her lap, Giselle thought that this day—this afternoon, this minute of time—must be the happiest she had ever had. Her guilt had been lifted from her, to float away as easily and lightly as the small white clouds high above them in the blue sky, and the perfection of their surroundings echoed the perfection of their love and her happiness in it.

There was nothing for her to fear any more, nothing that could hurt her now. She need not worry any longer
about what she had been too afraid to tell Saul because it no longer mattered. She was safe. Their love was safe, and would remain safe for ever.

T
WO MONTHS LATER, AS
she sat staring at the calendar on her desk, Giselle wondered bleakly how she could ever have been foolish enough to believe that she would escape so easily.

She desperately wanted—no, needed to believe that she was completely and totally wrong in her suspicions, but the calendar could not lie and neither could her body. The first month she had simply assumed that the frightening and unwanted suspension of the familiar regular rhythm of her periods had been caused by the stress and the turmoil of their lives following the shocking news of Aldo's death. But now she had missed a second period as well.

Initially, when her period had not materialised, she had told herself that it was silly to worry since after all she was losing weight, if anything, not gaining it. Nor had she been sick at all—apart from the time she had felt so desperately nauseous when they had first arrived in the country, and that had been caused by the effects of Aldo's death, a long-haul flight, and her fears about the future.

She had certainly not experienced any other changes
in her body that she might have attributed to pregnancy. But would she have deliberately ignored them had they manifested themselves? No, she insisted to herself, because she had not had them.

She knew that she hadn't missed a single birth pill, and after missing that first period she had dismissed the entire matter from her thoughts. Or at least she had tried to pretend to herself that she had. However, as the due date for the start of her next period had grown closer her stomach had started to churn with anxiety. And now that date had come and gone—over a week ago—and still nothing had happened. There was a cold lump of fear and disbelief lodged in the pit of her stomach. She remembered that bout of nausea, and the fact that sickness could eliminate the effectiveness of the birth control pill. But surely she could not be pregnant? Fate could not be so cruel when it knew that she
must
not be pregnant. Not only because of the secret fear she carried inside her head, but also because Saul had made it clear that they could not have a child.

She had given him her promise that they would not, not knowing then that it was already too late and she had already conceived.
Might
have conceived, she corrected herself. She had no proof that she had other than her fear caused by the fact that she had now missed two periods. She didn't feel pregnant, and she certainly didn't want to be pregnant. But what if she was? She needed to know. She needed to find out the truth—and that could not be done here in Arezzio, where they lived in a closed community in which there still lived a doctor with the title of Royal Court Physician. A bubble of tormented
anxiety tried to turn into hysterical panicky laughter in her throat, only for her to ruthlessly suppress it.

She could not carry on like this, not knowing—like a terrified teenager, unable to face the potential consequences of an unwanted pregnancy. These days, though, most modern teenagers were probably far more aware and responsible than she was being, Giselle told herself. She was the one who had been naïve, who had been trying to bury her head in the sand and wanting the whole situation to simply go away. She couldn't do that any longer, though. Not now. She must find out the truth and if necessary act on it.

For that she needed the anonymity of a big city— London—with medical facilities that would enable her to find out the truth discreetly. And just as discreetly to make arrangements to bring an end to any unwanted pregnancy? Giselle shuddered.

Because she had always assumed that she would never be pregnant she had never given much thought to the termination of pregnancy, other than to feel sorry for those women who for one reason or another felt it necessary to go through with it. Such a prospect had always seemed distant from her—the kind of awful decision she would never have to make. But now she might have to. That thought only increased her fear and despair.

She felt so afraid and vulnerable that she wanted desperately to cling to Saul, be protected by his presence. But that wasn't possible. Saul could not protect her from what she might be facing. She needed to go to London.

 

She brought up the subject over lunch—a quick salad and sandwich affair, eaten in the courtyard whilst she and Saul went over the progress being made with the orphanage, and other problems still to be dealt with.

‘I could do with a few days in London—to collect some more of my clothes and then to go up to Yorkshire to see my great-aunt,' she told Saul as casually as she could. ‘There's no need for you to come with me.'

‘I need to set up some meetings in London myself. I can deal with most of my work involving the business here, but I do need to see some people it will be easier to meet up with in London,' Saul responded—so easily that her deceit was even more painful to bear. ‘So we might as well go together.'

Dry-mouthed, Giselle nodded her head. She dared not insist that she wanted to go on her own. That was bound to have Saul asking her more questions than she could answer—especially when normally she always wanted them to do things together.

They flew into London by private jet two days later, and Giselle had to struggle to conceal her relief when Saul asked, when they sat together in the back of their chauffeur-driven car as it left Heathrow for the city, if Giselle would mind going to their Chelsea house without him. He wanted to be dropped off at the office, so that he could get straight to work there.

‘I shouldn't be too long,' Saul told her. ‘Shall we eat out tonight? I'll get Moira to book us a table somewhere. Is there anywhere you'd prefer?'

‘No, you choose,' Giselle told him. Inwardly, all she could really think about was her need to buy herself a
pregnancy testing kit—and the sooner the better. She didn't want to ask the driver to drop her off at the nearest chemist, and she couldn't even risk using a chemist local to their Chelsea home, just in case she was recognised.

Saul's smile and brief kiss as he got out of the car outside the block that housed his company's offices, and his promise not to be any longer than necessary before joining her, only increased her desperation and misery. If only she could just close her eyes and then open them again to find that all this was just a horrible, horrible nightmare, and that in reality she was safe, and she wasn't pregnant at all. She might not be, after all. There was nothing yet to prove that she was.

Nothing except those two missed periods, Giselle reminded herself grimly.

After the chauffeur had dropped her off she went into the house, quickly checking that the concierge service they used had stocked the fridge, and ensuring that everything was ready for them to spend a few nights there—the beds freshly made up with the Egyptian cotton sheets that Saul insisted on, towels in the bathroom, and a supply of their favourite toiletries. Then she hurried out again, taking the tube to Oxford Street with its anonymous crowds, and hesitating apprehensively by the entrance to a large nationwide chemist store before going in.

It was easy enough to find what she was looking for. In fact the choice of pregnancy testing kits was so large that it overwhelmed her at first, confusing her as she picked up one pack and then another, her fingers
semi-numb with nerves as she tried to read the instructions. She wanted one that she could use immediately, which would show her equally immediately whether or not she was pregnant. In the end, because she was taking so long and because she felt so self-conscious, she quickly picked up three different kits and put them into her basket, moving further down the shelves to add a tube of toothpaste and some other toiletries to cover the kits as she headed for the tills—just in case she saw anyone she knew. She recognised that she was probably overreacting. That was what guilt did to you. It made you feel hyper-aware of danger and hyper-sensitive to your own fear.

It wasn't the crowds and dusty traffic-fume-filled air of the city that made her break out into a sweat as she stepped back out onto Oxford Street, Giselle knew. It was her own fear and dread. The sudden ring of her mobile made her freeze, and her hands trembled when she saw that it was Saul who was calling her.

‘I thought we'd have dinner at that place on Berkeley Street, seeing as it's one of your favourites,' he told her, mentioning an expensive and exclusive London restaurant. ‘But it's going to be at least an hour before I can get back home.'

‘That's all right,' Giselle managed to answer as she gripped the phone tightly.

‘What's all that noise?' Saul asked, obviously able to hear the sound of the traffic and other people on the street.

‘Oh, nothing. I've had to come out and get some
orange juice for the morning. The concierge people had forgotten to get some in for us.'

‘I'll see you in an hour,' Saul repeated, before ending the call.

An hour. Giselle felt as though her whole body was bathed in apprehensive sweat as she hurried down into the underground.

The rush hour had begun and the train was packed, the heat in the packed carriage making her feel light-headed and faintly sick. Maybe this was it. Maybe her period was going to start. Giselle prayed that it might, fighting back her nausea, wincing inwardly at the sight of a heavily pregnant woman seated in front of her, desperate to look away from her. She was thankful when she was finally able to exit the underground and make her way back up into slightly fresher air.

Despite hurrying, and ending up with a stitch in her side from walking so fast, it still took her nearly half an hour from speaking to Saul to get back to the Chelsea house. Once she got inside she leaned against the closed door, welcoming the cool silence. Her head was throbbing and all she wanted to do was have a shower and then lie down—but she couldn't. She had to do the tests first.

In the master bedroom she read the instructions on the first pack she had removed from the chemist's bag and then went into the bathroom.

Two minutes later, as she waited for the result, she was so nervous and shaking so much that she could hardly focus on the line in front of her as it relentlessly
gave her the news she didn't want and had dreaded receiving. She was pregnant.

Frantically she repeated the procedure with both the other two tests, hoping against hope for a different result and falling further into despair when those hopes were dashed. She was still staring at the third telltale line when she heard the front door open, followed by Saul's voice calling up to her.

‘I'm home.'

Appalled, Giselle looked at the wrappings she had strewn on the bathroom floor. There was nowhere to hide them, so in the end she gathered them up and simply stuffed them hurriedly into her handbag, along with the results, forcing it closed just in time as Saul walked into the bedroom, shrugging off the jacket of his suit as he did so.

‘Why is it that London feels so much more uncomfortable than other cities?' he asked. ‘It's actually almost ten degrees cooler here than Arezzio, but it feels more like twenty degrees warmer.'

Giselle forced a smile that made her feel as though her skin was splitting. Even though she had known what to expect, the results of the tests had still shocked her, reinforcing the reality that she was caught in the worst kind of trap.

‘I've arranged for us to meet with the head of the Dutch company that was involved in setting up the food-growing greenhouse system in Kent tomorrow. I agree with what you said when we first discussed the whole project—about not starting on it formally until we've got enough of our own people trained to instal, run and
manage all aspects of it so that it provides work for the people as well as food—but I do want to have some preliminary discussions with him. I want to find out how much help they would be prepared to give us as experts in this field. And most importantly I want to see if we can get him to take on training people for us.'

Giselle tried to force herself to act normally and concentrate on what Saul was telling her. She nodded her head. The growing project would be a hugely important step towards modernising the country, but right now it was a struggle for her to think about anything other than those telltale tests hidden away in her handbag.

Normally when they had dinner out in the evening it was because they were dining with business associates, and the time spent getting ready was a precious time of shared intimacy during which they discussed the events of their separate days and what they hoped to achieve from the evening ahead. Tonight, though, the normal comfortable familiarity of their shared routine—Saul stepping out of the shower to tell her something, her immediate response to his proximity and nudity making her smile at her own love and desire for him, his teasing comments on seeing her expression, about her being welcome to share his shower—which was the stuff of their married life, the warp and weft of what bonded and held them together, only reinforced her guilt and despair.

She should not be in this dreadful situation. She had, after all, done nothing to deliberately cause it. She had not secretly wished for it or in any way encouraged it.
Being pregnant was the last thing she wanted. The last thing she could be. But she was.

‘You smell nice. New scent?' Saul asked, emerging from the bathroom with a towel wrapped round his hips to come up behind her and kiss the nape of her neck, exposed because she had clipped up her hair for her own shower.

His compliment had Giselle freezing. Her scent hadn't changed—it was the same one she always wore—but obviously she smelled different because of the hormonal changes within her body. A feeling familiar from her childhood gripped her. A feeling of sick panic and helplessness at being in a frightening situation over which she herself had no control. Now, as then, her first longing was for someone to turn to, someone to help her, but as before there was no one, and she was once again alone with the horror of her situation.

Perhaps it was no mere coincidence that the first dress she automatically reached for out of the wardrobe which held her evening clothes was black—the colour of mourning—a sliver of a matt jersey in which the pleats and folds, once on the female human body, took on the subtle sensuality that was the designer's hallmark.