No Child of Mine (24 page)

Her face was as ashen as Jason’s as she turned to look at him. She felt sick, disoriented, afraid of what might happen next.

‘Who the hell is that?’ Jason demanded. ‘No, don’t answer. He’s obviously one of the scumbags you deal with over on the Temple Fields estate. This is what your job’s bringing home to us, Alex. Threats to you, my
kids
, for God’s sake ...’

‘Jason, stop, please. He won’t mean that. He’s just saying it to try and scare me off ...’

‘Well he’s bloody well managed it for me. He knows their names, for Christ’s sake. How can he know their names?’

‘I don’t know, but it doesn’t mean anything ...’

‘Are you crazy? Of course it means something. It means he’s gone to the trouble of finding out how to get to you and now he’s using it to get what he wants. So what is it that he wants? Why are you harassing his family?’

‘We’re not harassing them, we’re trying to see his sister. She’s fourteen and has an STD that ...’ She stumbled as she remembered what had happened to the doctor who’d reported it.

‘Well if I were you I’d leave the sister alone,’ he growled, ‘because that guy sounds pretty dangerous to me. How am I supposed to protect my kids from someone like that?’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘What an irony this is, there’s you, all about helping strangers, the down-and-outs, the bleeding hearts, but when it comes to the kids who matter to me you’ve got them right in the firing line.’

‘Jase, please, I had no idea this would happen, but I promise you as soon as I tell Tommy about it he’ll take me off the case, then there’ll be no reason for us to worry about it again.’

He looked far from convinced as he pushed a hand through his hair, trying to make himself calm down.

‘Honest to God, I never wanted to get involved with that family in the first place,’ she told him, going to sit down with him. ‘Everyone knows what they’re like, but if it’s any consolation no social workers, or their families, have ever actually been harmed.’ She couldn’t mention the
doctor, she just couldn’t. ‘Threatened, yes,’ she admitted, ‘but you know that goes with the job.’

‘It’s not something my kids should be dragged into.’

‘I know that, and I’m really sorry. I’ll try to make sure it never happens again.’

‘By doing what, exactly? Asking him nicely not to call you at home?’

‘By making sure I’m taken off the case and don’t have to go near them again. I only got it because Wendy didn’t give me a choice, but now Tommy’s back I can do something about it.’

‘If it’s not already too late.’

‘It isn’t, we haven’t taken his sister into care, and I’m not even sure that we will.’ There was nothing to be gained from telling him she’d wanted an EPO, especially when it had been turned down. Nor was it going to help if she told him that Shane Prince had been targeting her for no reason for a while now. She’d discuss it all with Tommy in the morning, but meanwhile she had to do whatever it took to put Jason’s mind at rest.

As he got to his feet she could see just how strained he was, and when he walked to the window to stare out at the twilight a bolt of unease moved slowly through her. There was something else, she could tell, either that or he wasn’t ready yet to let this go away.

When he turned to face her he looked so pale, so tense, that she felt she could see the bones, the veins beneath his skin. She swallowed hard and bunched her hands together, suddenly afraid of what might be coming next.

He turned his head aside as he said, ‘Look, I didn’t want to tell you like this, God knows I didn’t want to tell you at all, but now, with that call and the way everything’s going ...’ He pressed a hand to his head as he forced himself to continue. ‘Alex, I’m really sorry, I’m already hating myself for this, especially after that fuckwit threatened you and all, but I ... I just can’t live with you any more.’

Alex started to reel.

‘It’s not that I don’t care about you,’ he pressed on quickly, ‘because you know I do, I mean I
really
do. It’s just
that Gina and I ... Well, with the kids and everything ... It’s not fair on anyone to go on the way we are.’

When he stopped Alex almost felt as though she was floating. She couldn’t quite get a grip on this. It couldn’t be real, surely. ‘What – what do you mean, it’s not fair going on the way we are?’ she stammered.

‘Not you and me, me and Gina.’ He threw back his head with his eyes tightly closed, as though trying to force himself to go on. ‘It’s crazy,’ he spluttered. ‘It’s like I’m having an affair with my own wife, when really I should be with her, taking care of her and the kids, being a proper husband and dad, and this ... this tonight only proves it. I just didn’t want to hurt you, or let you down in any way.’

Alex could only stare at him. ‘What do you mean, an affair?’ she finally blurted.

His eyes darted to her and away again. ‘You know what I mean,’ he replied.

He’d been deceiving her, cheating on her, and she’d had no idea. She was trying to think what to say, or do, but she was finding it too hard to connect with the words. Suddenly they all seemed to be coming at once. ‘I don’t believe this!’ she yelled. ‘You told me your marriage was over! When we got together you said there would never be any going back ...’

‘I didn’t think then that there would be ...’

‘I’d never have let you move in here if I’d known you were going to do something like this. I trusted you, Jason! I thought you were a decent, honest person ...’

‘I am! I mean, I try to be. I swear I had no idea things were going to turn out like this. The last thing I ever wanted was to hurt you ...’

‘Well you’re making a pretty damned good job of it now! I thought you ...’ She broke off as a sob wrenched away her words. This couldn’t be happening, please God, it just couldn’t.

‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured, making to put a hand on her, then drawing it back. ‘But you don’t need to worry. I’ll still do all the technical stuff for the show, and obviously I’ll pay my share of the bills up to the end of the month.’

She was shaking her head. ‘I should have seen this
coming,’ she muttered angrily. ‘I can’t believe I didn’t see it coming.’

Sitting down at the table, he took her hands and waited for her eyes to come to his. When she saw how tormented and guilty he looked, she pulled sharply away. ‘How long?’ she demanded, her temper rising again.

He shook his head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘It does to me.’

‘OK, a few weeks, maybe months.’

Alex wanted to take a breath, but was afraid to.

‘If you think about it,’ he went on gently, ‘we were both in a really bad place when we met. Your dad hadn’t long died and my marriage was in pieces ... I guess we kind of needed each other then, but now time’s gone on and things have changed ...’

‘For you, maybe, but not for me. I still love you, Jason, and I really, really don’t want you to go.’ Tears were swamping her eyes as panic started to climb into her heart. She couldn’t bear to think of him going, walking out of the door and leaving her here all alone. He was such a big part of her life, the very centre of it, how was she going to cope without him?

When he was gone there’d be no one.

‘Alex, I’m sorry,’ he groaned. ‘I swear to God if I could make this any easier I would, but I have to be true to myself as well as to everyone else, and if I stayed here, well, it just wouldn’t be the right thing to do.’

‘Maybe not for you, but what about me?’ she cried, hating how desperate she sounded, but it was how she felt. And afraid, terrified even of letting him go. ‘You can’t do this, I won’t let you. You said you were going to fix this place up so we could sell it for more, so what was that all about if you knew we didn’t have a future? Oh God, don’t tell me, you offered out of guilt, didn’t you? You thought that if you did something nice for me you wouldn’t have to feel so bad when you left. It was never about us and what kind of house it would help us to buy together, because you never had any intention of buying anything with me.’

‘Listen to me,’ he said, grabbing her hands as she tried to get up. ‘I’m not going to deny that was part of the reason
I offered, but I still want to do it. For
you
, so you’ll have something ...’

‘Stop it, just stop,’ she shouted. ‘I don’t want your pity, for God’s sake. I want you, the man I trust and need and ...’

‘No, you only think you need me, but when it comes right down to it you don’t, not really. It’s your job that really matters to you, and all those kids whose lives would be even worse than they already are if it weren’t for you. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great what you do, and I understand why you do it after what’s happened to you, but it’s not what my life is about.’

‘I’m not saying it has to be. I’m not about building houses or extensions or any of the things you do either, but that doesn’t mean we’re not right for each other. We’ve been really happy here, or that’s what I thought, so are you telling me now that you weren’t, that what we had never meant anything to you?’

‘You know I’m not saying that. I’ve loved being with you, and if it weren’t for Gina and the kids this is exactly where I’d want to be, but I have to put them first, surely you understand that, especially now that fuckwit’s started threatening them. I can’t leave them to fend for themselves. They haven’t got a clue how to deal with people like that.’

‘And I have, so it’s OK to leave me on my own?’ Her eyes were flashing the challenge as behind her anger misery and despair were trying to choke her.

She wanted to beg him, plead with him, barricade him in, anything to make him stay, but for the moment at least her pride wouldn’t allow it.

‘Are you leaving tonight?’ she managed to make herself ask.

He looked up at her, and seeing the answer in his eyes she felt herself starting to break down. ‘It’s OK,’ she told him, trying desperately to hold it together. ‘It’s probably for the best if you go straight away.’

‘You understand, don’t you,’ he said, ‘that it’s because I feel the way I do about you that this is so hard. I’m going to miss you like crazy ...’

‘Don’t patronise me,’ she spat, moving away from him. ‘You’ll get over it. We both will.’

He got up too and seemed at a loss for what to do next.

‘You should go and pack a bag,’ she told him sharply. ‘We can arrange for you to collect the rest of your things another time.’

As he went upstairs it took every ounce of willpower she possessed not to go after him and beg him to change his mind. Instead, she turned to the sink and clung to the edge as denial tore through her with a terrible might, trying to stop her from believing it, or fool her into thinking he’d only be gone a few days and then he’d come back. He wouldn’t, though, she knew it, because he’d always told her that his children came first, and now he was proving it. They mattered far more than she did, and always would. She didn’t blame him for that, he was their father so it was the way it should be; she simply couldn’t stand the wrenching loneliness that was already trying to engulf her, the terrible chill of isolation as she realised it was why he’d never really tried to make her feel a part of his family.

When he finally came down again he stood at the front door and watched her come into the hall. ‘You realise, don’t you,’ she said, masking her pain with anger, ‘that you’re making me feel as though I’ve been having an affair with a married man all this time.’

‘But it’s not true ...’

‘I wish it weren’t, but actually, you are still married, legally, it’s just that you told me it was over.’ Her eyes were flashing the challenge as her heart shrank from the hurt.

‘I thought it was,’ he said miserably.

‘I trusted you,’ she cried. ‘I’ve told you things I’ve never told anyone else in my life.’

‘And I swear they’ll always stay with me.’

‘And I’m supposed to believe that?’

His eyes gazed deeply into hers. ‘I hope you do,’ he said softly.

She turned abruptly aside, unable to bear the way he was looking at her.

It was too tender, too regretful – and final.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered.

Suddenly she wanted to strike him, shake him, barricade the door so he couldn’t get out, but somehow she managed to stay where she was.

‘Are you going to be all right?’ he asked.

‘What do you think?’ she retorted.

He flinched and put his head down. ‘I’ll see you on Saturday then,’ he mumbled.

She’d have preferred him not to come, but it wasn’t possible to stage the play without him, and it would have been selfish to ruin it for the others.

‘If that idiot calls again you ring me, OK?’

She almost wanted to laugh. Exactly what did he think he was going to do with the likes of Shane Prince? Or was the concern mainly for his children? ‘He won’t,’ she said, not really caring for herself in that moment whether he did or didn’t.

He returned his eyes to hers and her heart gave a painful twist to see how anguished he was inside, but as he made to reach for her she took a swift step back. ‘You should go,’ she told him. She was so close to breaking now that she didn’t think she could hold on another moment.

He nodded silently, then turning around he opened the door.

As it closed behind him she could feel the breath starting to shudder and catch inside her. She clasped a hand to her mouth in an effort to keep control, but she couldn’t. Her knees buckled and as she slumped helplessly to her knees she buried her face in her hands, sobbing with wretched, tormented despair.
This wasn’t happening. It just couldn’t be. He hadn’t left
. It was a nightmare and any minute now she was going to wake up to find him coming down the stairs to take her back to bed. Yet even through her sobs she could hear him getting into his car, starting the engine and driving away. She pressed her hands to her mouth, trying to stifle the desperate cries for him to come back.
Jason, please, please, I don’t want to be without you. I thought you loved me
.

She had to go after him, do something, anything to make him understand that she couldn’t go on without him.
He was all she had and she felt so afraid now, so lost and rejected. What was the matter with her? What was she doing wrong? Why was it that no one ever loved her enough?