Refracted Crystal: Diamonds and Desire (11 page)

“Is that why he hates me?”

“He doesn’t hate you...”

Don’t defend him, Daniel, she thought to herself harshly. But she did not contradict him. His own words died in his throat, as though he was aware he had broken his promise to her in however small a way.
I don’t lie. Not to you
.

Before he could speak again, the two of them heard his phone coming from the lounge area. As Daniel’s body began to shift, Kris held on to his waist and now she looked up at him, pleading. “Leave it,” she said. “Please.”

Yet his face bore an expression both slightly embarrassed and resigned. “I’d better,” he said quietly.

As he walked through to the other room, naked and firm, his body still lean whereas her own had begun to display a feminine softness that worried her slightly if she told the truth, at the same time she had never seen him look so
small
, as though he had shrunk into himself slightly. When he picked up the phone, he turned to the door and closed her out. She could hear his mumbled conversation beyond the door, and she huddled on the bed, pulling the duvet across herself, pressing it to her stomach. Christ! Why was she so nervous? Why did she have such a feeling of nausea?

At last he came through. “Speak of the devil and he shall appear,” he said, grimly. “That was Felix. There’s something I need to do today. I’m sorry.”

He went to the wardrobe and began to pull out a shirt and suit, quiet and concentrating. Unable to answer for a moment, Kris simply lay on the bed, watching him a little miserably while he began to get ready. Don’t go, she thought silently. Stay. It wasn’t selfish to want him, she told herself. This was
her
honeymoon. Why couldn’t the rest of the world just fuck off and leave Daniel Stone alone for two weeks—two weeks! That was all she wanted. It wasn’t enough, it was never enough, but it was a start.

Perturbed by her silence, Daniel looked back to her. He had forced himself into some sort of resolution, but when he saw the look on her face, and her arm pressed to her stomach, he frowned.

“Are you okay?” he asked. He was unwilling to enter into an argument with her, but he could not hide his concern.

She nodded. “It’s okay. I’m just feeling a bit sick. Sorry, I know it’s stupid, it’s just that all this is making me nervous, I guess.”

He nodded solemnly, then turned away again, unable to look at her. “I’ll make it up to you,” he said. “I need to see someone, though. I thought I could put them off, till the end of our vacation at least, but I need to keep Felix off my back for the moment.”

Aha, thought Kris, somewhat sullenly. So
that
was why he had brought her here.
I may not tell you everything, but I don’t lie
. So when, if ever, had he been intending to tell her of this meeting, that even his honeymoon was not to be free from business? For the first time in a very long period, part of her felt like shouting at him, screaming, beginning an argument just for the sake of it. But she felt too sick now, too unhappy.

“Can you see Elaine and your friends back to the airport? Offer them my apologies, please.” He was courteous and clipped but already distant as he pulled on his trousers and jacket. Sitting on the bed, reaching for his shoes, he had transformed before her. The mask had come down and he was prepared for whatever it was the day would bring—but without her.

Yet when he looked back at her, his eyes flashed with pain momentarily. “I shall make it up to you, I promise.”

And then he left.

The sun was bright overhead as Kris walked along the piers and sea-front beside Fisherman’s Wharf. She had not been eager to return to the hotel particularly quickly, especially not if Daniel was not back, and so had come to visit the tourist attractions for a while. The water of the bay was a deep blue, tinged with greens and sparkling as the shallow waves of the protected sea glinted in sunlight.

She had decided to avoid the most obvious tourist traps, such as the wax museum and the Ripley’s Believe it or Not: she’d had more than her fill of such things as a child growing up in London, and they were inevitably tawdry to her now. Nonetheless, as she caught a tram alongside the piers and alighted in Ghirardelli Square, for a few moments she had imagined herself back in Lisbon and her spirits had lifted.

Sitting outside a restaurant, she sipped her coffee and sketched in a book she had brought with her, determined to take her mind off things, watching people walk by and making quick, sure marks on the white paper of the pad, recording her own impressions of the place more securely than if she had brought a camera with her. For a while she succeeded, but then the recollections of the morning returned to her.

She was still worried about Daniel, that much was certain, but at this present time it was something else that disturbed her.

Accompanying Anne, Andrew and Elaine to the airport in a taxi (surprisingly for him, Daniel had taken their designated driver and not returned him), she had waited for a while at San Francisco International to wish them well on their flight. She apologised to them all that Daniel was not with them, but her three companions did not appear to mind. Anne and Andrew were still a little overawed by him, while Elaine seemed to understand in a way that was more profound than Kris’s own comprehension.

“Don’t expect life to be easy with him,” she had told Kris when the two of them were on their own. “It won’t be—Daniel Stone is not an easy man. He never has been. That is why, in our different ways, we love him so much. But remember this: he loves you, more than I have seen in a long time. Not everything he does is for himself. In fact, though he would hate me saying it, he is capable of being one of the least selfish men I know.” At this, the older woman’s eyes flashed down Kris’s body. “In any case, there’ll be another for him to look after soon.”

“What do you mean?” Kris’s tone was suddenly sharp—much sharper than she had intended.

“Oh,” Elaine replied, withdrawing into herself slightly with an enigmatic smile. “Ignore an old woman’s folly. Ah, our flight is ready to board. I must go—much as I would love to see more of San Francisco, I don’t think any of us should intrude on you and Daniel any longer.”

And so she had gone. Returning to San Francisco, Kris had indeed dismissed her words as folly: she knew precisely what the headmistress was getting at, but how on earth could she know and Kris not realise what was going on in her own body. And yet, as she had sat in the restaurant, picking at the crab she had ordered but suddenly much less hungry than she had been before, her mind began to fit together certain pieces.

She was on the pill: pregnancy was impossible. And yet Kris’s care and attention had begun to waver in the months before her exhibition. She had, frankly, become a little scatty in many things as her focus fixed upon the paintings which demanded everything other than the love she had to show Daniel when he was with her.

But even so, she had been through her period. Actually, when had her last period been? Suddenly, Kris was not so sure. Totting up the days, she realised with a shock that perhaps six weeks had come and gone since the last one, and even that had not been particularly heavy.

Her weight, feeling sick all the time... Kris was not entirely sure how she felt about this apart from one thing: uncertainty was what was affecting her most now.

Picking up her sketches, sure that she would not be able to keep her mind from this until she had a more certain idea of herself, she left some money on the table and searched around the neighbourhood with her eyes, hunting out what she needed. The nearest drug store was only a hundred yards or so away and, with renewed determination, she set across the road.

She clutched the bag in her hand as she caught the tram to within a few hundred metres of the hotel, not even looking at it, not tempting fate as she entered. Nodding to the concierge at the reception desk, she kept her eyes straight ahead at all other times, acknowledging nobody else as she took the lift up to the floor where their room was situated and unlocked the door.

“Daniel? Are you there?” She paused for a moment with the door half open: it was actually a relief to her when there was no answer and, entering the suite, she dropped her handbag with her sketchbook on the table nearby and shrugged off her coat, still clinging to the other paper bag with her purchase as she went through to the bathroom.

Still fully clothed, she sat on the toilet with the lid down and, slipping the contents of the bag into her hands read the instructions on the pregnancy testing kit repeatedly. She had to get this right. It promised more than 99 percent accuracy, but Kris was aware that this would only be the first step in proving what she already felt to be true.

Lifting her skirt and dropping her underwear, she flipped up the seat and sat down, pressing her arm between her legs with the plastic strip of the tester dangling beneath her buttocks. For a few seconds, she couldn’t make herself pee and cursed at the sheer inelegance of it all, her cheeks flushing red with annoyance.

At last, her urine began to flow and droplets from the stream splashed over her hand as well as the applicator. Not that this mattered. Instead, she whipped the kit before her eyes, staring at the clear, plastic strip, unable to take her attention off it even though she knew very well that she was incapable of speeding up time.

After an age one of the windows in the strip turned blue. She did not need to read instructions to know what that meant, and let her hand fall away. She sat against the toilet for a while, lost in thought.

Pregnancy did not fill her with any horror, and indeed explained so much about how she had been feeling recently. Indeed, part of her was thrilled about the thought of having Daniel’s baby, but she was also a little confused.

While she had made plenty of mistakes thus far in her life, having an abortion had not been one of them. There was no question of that being the case now—Kris’s Catholicism was so far in the background of her life now that this was not an issue of being especially pro-life, for she had always been of the opinion that the choice would be hers. And in any case she certainly wanted Daniel’s baby—but this had not been planned nor expected at all.

And that was her problem for a moment. She did not particularly worry about Daniel’s reaction in many ways: she knew that one of the losses that had affected him at the time of his first wife’s death was that she had been pregnant when she had been killed in the car crash. But it was also clear that other things were worrying him at the present time, and she felt a little ashamed that she had not discussed the possibility of trying for a child with him. It seemed unfair to spring a child on him without at first letting him know. After all, she thought with a wry smile, things could have been a lot more fun if they had been actively
trying
.

And yet here she was: pregnant. Her head spun at the thought of it, and she tried to work out how long it could be. Possibly six weeks, even longer perhaps if, as she increasingly suspected, her last period had not been a full one. She chewed her lip: part of her couldn’t wait to tell Daniel, but she also felt that she should wait for the right opportunity. At the same time, she wondered if she should wait a few more days until they returned to London and, from there, visit a doctor, just to make sure. With a sense of dread, she considered the possibility that, despite the claims of 99 percent accuracy, this could be a false alarm: that would be even worse—to raise Daniel’s hopes and then to dash them.

She was only on her own for less than an hour when Daniel arrived. Seeing the scowl on his face as he flung his jacket down on a chair, any consideration of being immediately open to him quickly retreated. This would require sensitive handling, and she had no intention of one of the most important things in her life becoming the opportunity for a misunderstanding or even argument. She would not lie to him; she would just not tell him everything—yet.

“Not good?” she tried to ask as innocuously as possible.

For a second as he looked at her, his eyes blazed with anger, but almost immediately they calmed and he lifted a hand to his brow, his exhaustion and frustration evident.

“I’m sorry,” he said, moving to the table and flinging him onto a seat. “Well, they could have been better. Back home I’m used to being able to lord it over most people, but here I’m small fry.”

She came and placed herself on the sofa next to him, her fingers somewhat tentative as they moved across his chest. Sometimes in such a mood, Daniel required space to deal with his anger. Today, however, her need was greater than his own: she wanted to be touched by him. She
needed
to be touched.

Fortunately, his arm came up instinctively around her shoulder and he hugged her into him, kissing her on the top of her head. She could feel that he was not completely present, that his mind was still infuriated by other aspects of the day’s business, but the warm animal of his body needed to touch her as much as she wanted to be touched.

Not that she was allowed to enjoy it for very long. While he was holding her, his phone sounded again.

“Daniel, please,” she began to say. Leave it! she wanted to cry out, but he was already taking out his phone and, jumping up to move away from her, he was speaking into it immediately.