Thorn in the Flesh (9 page)

‘I’m sorry, I do. We’re finished.’ He slipped past her, his hand reaching for the door and freedom. ‘Let it go, Kate. And get rid of the baby. That’s my advice.’

‘Please, Peter, please,’ she begged him, her fingers grabbing at his tee-shirt, trying to stop him from leaving, but he pushed her sharply. So sharply that she stumbled against the end of the bed and fell, banging her head on the wall.

‘Leave me alone,’ he said and walked out of her room, never looking back at her once. ‘Stupid dyke.’

One hour after his departure, when she thought she’d cried all the tears she ever would, she swore two things to herself: first that she would tell no-one back home what had happened, not even Nicky; and second, and more importantly, that she would never allow herself to lose control or give another person such power over her again.

Chapter Eleven

By the time Kate arrived at Simpson’s-in-the-Strand the morning after her phone call, Peter was already there. The train had been delayed at Clapham Junction but she was only three minutes late. Handing her jacket to the receptionist, she could see him at the far end of The Grand Divan studying the menu, and allowed herself to drink in, at a distance, the fact of him being here now, in a place where she could see and perhaps touch him. Soon. If she wanted to.

Two days ago, she would never have believed that the sound of someone’s voice could arouse such memories. Since that time, she hadn’t been able to sleep and, as she followed the Maitre d’ across the thick-carpeted floor, her silent heels denied the reality of her presence. They passed a scattering of other groups, other couples, sitting at the tables, some in the private booths, but she kept her eyes fixed on her destination. Above her, the chandeliers threw a gentle light across the ornate plastered ceiling and oak-panelled walls. She could smell coffee and freshly-baked bread. When she drew closer, Peter glanced up, smiled and rose to his feet. Her skin danced and she couldn’t stop her answering smile.

He stretched out his hand.

‘Kate Harris. It is still Harris, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘It’s good to see you again.’

As they gave their orders of croissants, fruit juice and coffee for Kate, and devilled mushrooms, sausages and egg for Peter to the French waiter, Kate took the opportunity to assess her companion. He’d aged well. Fair hair still, but with a distinguished scattering of grey which suited him. His eyes were the same blue, though he had lines round his mouth and on his forehead she’d never seen before. She breathed in the scent of him; his aftershave made her think of oriental herbs and riches. A change of course from the one he’d worn when she knew him. And as far as she could see, he carried no more weight than he had as a young man.

‘Do you still play tennis?’ she asked.

‘Yes. Golf now too. How do you think I’m able to order a cooked breakfast and not succumb to a heart attack?’

She smiled. ‘I don’t imagine you eat this dangerously every day.’

‘No, indeed. My wife sees to it, though I’m a willing participant in her plans.’

‘Married then?’ she asked him, as the waiter arrived with her order. Of course, she already knew the answer, having researched the information on the Durham website when the first of the letters arrived. She just wanted to hear him say it. While she waited, she took a croissant. It was warm in her fingers and flared with heat when she broke it.

‘Yes,’ he replied when the waiter had gone. ‘I married Anna in 1993 and we have two daughters. Camilla who’s eleven and Ruth who’s seven. She’s a handful, that one. We have a good life, or at least I like to think so. How about you?’

Kate shook her head. ‘No, I never married.’

‘Boyfriends? Partners? Other … relationships?’

‘No, no, and no. I never saw the need.’
After you
, she wanted to say, but didn’t.

Peter raised one elegant eyebrow and looked as if he were about to make a comment, but the waiter returned with a steaming plate of food, and Kate let out a slow breath she hadn’t realised she was holding. Her companion piled a selection of mushrooms and egg onto his fork, and ate with obvious enjoyment.

‘Mmm, this is so good. I rarely eat breakfast here these days – clients tend to prefer something more nouvelle – but when I do, I never regret it. The chef, Paul Muddiman, is a genius. You don’t know what you’re missing.’

Pushing more food onto his fork, he waved it in Kate’s direction as if offering her a taster. She shook her head and leaned down, picking up her handbag and feeling the smoothness of the papers inside. Perhaps she should wait until he’d finished eating.

‘How’s your business consultancy going?’ she asked instead. ‘You must be doing well.’

‘I am that.’ He grinned at her and she noticed a speck of egg on one of his front teeth. He licked it away. ‘I’m where I wanted to be, Kate. Almost a millionaire twice over by the age of forty – and I’ll cross that barrier in the next six months for sure. Then the sky’s the limit. And retirement certainly isn’t on the cards. I want to double the business in the next three years, open an office abroad, maybe two. Buy a third property. Anna and the children love their holidays. How about you? What are you doing now?’

‘Lecturing. I’m a lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Surrey. For the time being, that is. I’ve decided to leave my job.’

‘Good for you,’ he nodded, as if she’d been asking for his opinion. ‘Go where the money is. I’m sure there are lots of lucrative commercial outlets for someone with your skills. What’s your plan?’

Kate smiled and pushed away her plate. Although Peter was still eating, she’d had enough.

‘No plan,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ve decided to hand in my notice and take the summer off. There are things I need to look into, for myself, before I can think about my career.’

She stopped. More than anything, she suddenly wished Nicky or even David were here. But they weren’t. Here, in the middle of this bastion of traditional England, she was on her own. Uncertain what to say next, she smiled again.

Peter smiled back, though his eyes were wary. Scraping the remains of the mushrooms to one side, he laid down his cutlery and, balancing his elbows on the edge of the table, leant his chin on his hands.

‘I see. Well, good luck with it. I hope it works out for you. There is …’ he coughed and took a gulp of his coffee while Kate waited for him to continue. ‘There is something I’ve been wanting to ask you, and I should have asked you a long time ago if I’d had the courage back then.’

Kate frowned as if she didn’t understand him. ‘What would that be?’

He paused and then spoke quickly, as if wanting to get all his words out before they were swallowed up again. ‘Were you all right? Did you have the abortion after all?’

Before answering, Kate stared out of the window. She could see cars, buses and people outside, but could hear no noise. For a moment she understood how that could be true of a life as well, and then the knowledge of it was lost. She turned back to her companion. Peter was leaning forward, his napkin crushed between his fingers.

She shook her head. ‘No, and if you’d looked at me once after breaking up with me, you would have known the truth of that. Even though I didn’t show, not until the very end. I thought you might come back to me. In spite of what you’d said. For a long time, I still hoped for it.’

He blanched and sat back in his seat. ‘Yes, I know. I’m sorry. I was very young and very frightened. I said some stupid things, some very stupid things which weren’t true, and I’m sorry.’

She said nothing. There didn’t seem anything to say now, so many years on. It was he who broke the heaviness of the silence between them.

‘What happened after the baby was born, Kate?’ he asked. ‘And what happened to your life? Is that why you want to see me now? Is it about our child?’

She took a sip of coffee before replying. The sultry power of it in her mouth gave her courage.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I was all right. And, no, I don’t want to see you because of our son. At least, not in the way you think. There’s something else I want to discuss with you.’

When Kate looked up at her companion, she could see at once he was no longer listening.

‘A son,’ he whispered. ‘I have a son. I didn’t know that.’

She waited as he passed one hand over his eyes and stared at something over her shoulder, beyond her.

‘I have a son,’ he said again. ‘What happened to him? Where is he now?’

‘What does it matter to you?’ she asked, placing her hands, which were trembling slightly on her lap, out of sight. ‘You never wanted to see him when he was born either, so why be concerned today?’

‘Now that’s unfair, Kate.’

‘Is it?’ she said, leaning forward and holding his gaze. ‘Is it unfair? Not as unfair as your apparent reasons for starting our relationship. And your reasons for ending it. Not as unfair as not wanting to know what happened to me, never trying to get in touch again. And not as unfair as allowing me to deal with pregnancy and birth almost on my own.’

‘But …’

‘
Wait.
I haven’t finished. Meeting you, being with you all those years ago, set something in me free. I was passionately, physically in love with you. Can you understand that? It was as if I suddenly knew all the words there were in the world. In all the different languages. Do you know how that feels?

‘No, I didn’t think so,’ she continued as he shook his head once. ‘It was like nothing else I’ve ever experienced either before or since. When you left, everything around me turned grey. I thought I might die then, but I didn’t. I thought about having the abortion – I didn’t want a child anyway, never have – but it would have been killing something of you and I couldn’t do that. So I held onto the hope that when the child was born you might reconsider, come back to us, because of him. Even though I’d been sensible, arranged for an adoptive couple to be contacted, done all the right things, I still hoped you’d come back. Humiliating, I know, but it was the way it was. I would have taken anything.’

He made as if to speak, but Kate carried on, ‘When our son was born, you weren’t there. I’d left a message for you at Castle, but you never came. Because of that, I didn’t want to see or even touch Stephen. Oh yes, that was what the couple named him. Stephen. I had no objections. By then, I didn’t care. Because of you, I had no feelings towards him then and I have no feelings for him now. Because of that, you have no right to ask me where he is. But in any case the truth is I don’t know. I simply don’t know.’

He had stopped eating. As if from nowhere, the waiter reappeared and began to collect the plates. For a few vital seconds, the conversation, or rather her monologue, was put on hold and Kate took the opportunity to lay on the table what she’d brought to show him.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, I never received any message. If I had, perhaps I would have … I don’t know, Kate, I don’t know what I would have done. What I said to you all those years ago about being with you because of a stupid dare was only true at the beginning. Later, well, later it was different. It might even … I don’t know, you overwhelmed me. Your feelings were so strong, I didn’t know if I could deal with them. You frightened me. Perhaps if …?’

Kate shook her head. It was too late for any of this.

‘Never mind,’ she said. ’It’s over now and you already know how much you hurt me. But all that has to remain in the past. What is important today is
this
.’

With her
this
, she pushed the letters across the white cotton space between them and pointed.

‘I’ve been getting these letters,’ she said. ‘Since Christmas. The first person I could think of who could have been sending them was you.’

‘What are they?’

‘Read them,’ she said.

He did so. As he turned the pages, reading a few in full and skimming others, she watched his face redden and then grow pale again. When he finished, he looked up at her and she could see the lines more clearly on his face.

‘They’re horrible,’ he said. ‘Why has someone been sending these to you? And why would you think they’d be from me?’

‘They mention things only you would know. Our relationship. My pregnancy. The birth of my son.’

‘But I didn’t know about the birth, Kate. I swear it. And I swear these letters are not from me,’ he picked one up with the tips of his fingers and dropped it back on her side of the table as if to demonstrate his disgust at the whole idea.

Staring at him, she could tell it was the truth. His eyes held a world of bewilderment and also shock. He was not so good an actor. She’d been wrong. As she’d feared. She would have to start again. And from a place she had no wish to visit.

While she’d been in a reverie, he’d been talking to her but she hadn’t heard his words.

‘I’m sorry?’ she said, blinking and gathering up the letters. ‘I didn’t catch that.’

‘Of course,’ he said and took her hands in his own. His touch flared her body with heat but she shook him away. ‘You must be worried. You should go to the police, Kate.’

‘Never.’

The strength of her own reaction drove her to her feet. The room around her seemed to quiver and the people at the tables, together with the sounds they were making, drifted out and back in her vision. She mustn’t faint. She’d never fainted before in her life and she wasn’t about to start now.

‘Kate? Are you all right?’

Peter was standing, slipping round the table, holding her elbow.

‘Yes. I’m fine. Really.’ She eased herself out of his grasp and took two steps back. Behind his shoulder, she could see the waiter’s thin shape looming. ‘It was good to see you, Peter, but I must go. I can pay my half of the bill.’

‘No, no.’ He waved her offer away. ‘I’ll deal with it.’

In the end, she watched as he paid. Surely he owed her that.

Outside, on the street, with London beginning to swarm into life for the day, she turned to leave, but he reached out and took her wrist. His touch again made her hands tremble. She looked at him, unsure what he wanted. A part of her longed to go, but another part, a part she was unable to acknowledge, also longed to stay.