The Secrets She Must Tell Page 4

  The whole apartment smelled divine and the sense of peace and tranquillity was like a balm to her soul. She couldn’t imagine a greater contrast to either the bedsit or the mother-and-baby unit of the psychiatric ward where she’d spent close on five months, and once again a wave of gratitude and relief washed over her, along with a hefty dose of curiosity. Who exactly was he, her knight in shining armour who owned a nightclub, drove a Lamborghini and lived in a seven-star penthouse?

  Leaving the door to Josh’s room ajar in case he needed her, Georgie went down the stairs, crossed the hall and stopped in the doorway to the sitting room. Finn was pacing up and down in front of the window, a near-empty glass in his hand and a deep frown creasing his forehead. When he saw her, he came to an abrupt halt. His jaw was set, his eyes were dark and intense, and something in his expression, in the way he was looking at her, sent a shiver down her spine.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ he said.

  ‘Everything is very all right,’ she replied, ignoring the shiver and mustering up her second smile of the day, which had to be a record. ‘I just wanted to say thank you for everything you’ve done.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  ‘You have no idea how grateful I am for your support.’

  ‘Josh is my son.’

  And what was she? An inconvenience? Undoubtedly. Finn didn’t even want her here, she knew, remembering how he’d grudgingly told her she could come too when she’d swiftly disabused him of the idea that he’d be taking Josh without her.

  ‘I didn’t realise you actually lived here,’ she said, dragging her gaze from his to sweep it around the room upon whose threshold she was hovering. ‘When we met you said you were renovating. I assumed your stay was temporary.’

  ‘I was, and in that room it was temporary.’

  ‘But why live in a hotel?’

  ‘Why not? I own it.’

  Her gaze snapped back to his and her jaw dropped. ‘You own it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘As well as the club where we met?’

  He gave a brief nod. ‘Among other things.’

  ‘Who are you?’ she said, thinking that in hindsight it was a question she should have asked him last October. She still didn’t even know his last name. She’d had to leave that space on Josh’s birth certificate blank.

  He muttered something that sounded remarkably like ‘Good question’, which made no sense all, but then added something that did. ‘Finn Calvert,’ he said. ‘Look me up some time. Right now, though, we need to talk. Or rather, you do.’

  As his gaze drilled into her Georgie went still, her pulse beginning to thud alarmingly fast. ‘Oh, well, I really just came to say thank you and goodnight. It’s been quite a day.’

  ‘You’re telling me.’

  ‘I’m exhausted.’

  ‘Too bad.’

  ‘Any chance we could talk tomorrow?’

  ‘No.’

  She stuck her hands into the back pockets of her jeans and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. ‘Because, ah, you know, I think I hear Josh crying.’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ he said, the brusqueness of his tone reflecting the flint in his expression. ‘Carry on prevaricating, Georgie, and I’ll have a team of investigators looking into you so fast it’ll make your head spin.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘One phone call. That’s all it will take. I have them on speed dial.’

  Why would Finn have investigators on speed dial? was her instant thought in response to that, but it was a question for later. Because clearly the moment she’d been dreading had come. Would he really get her checked out? Or was he bluffing? Either way, it didn’t really matter. She couldn’t take the risk that he would do precisely as he threatened. She needed to control the narrative. She needed to provide context and detail to the cold, clinical facts. It was important that Finn understood exactly what she’d been through and sympathised. She needed him on her side. It wasn’t going to be easy. In fact, it was probably going to be hell, but it had to be done.

  ‘All right,’ she said with a nod as her stomach began to churn.

  ‘Sit down.’

  On legs that felt as weak as water Georgie walked over to the sofa Finn indicated and perched on the edge of it, because to sink back into the soft cushions would result in an inadvisable degree of relaxation. She waited until he’d folded himself into one of the armchairs on the other side of the coffee table, then took a deep breath. She opened her mouth, then closed it and gave a helpless shrug. ‘I’m not quite sure where to start.’

  ‘How about by telling me why I am only now finding out I have a six-month-old son?’

  She inwardly flinched at his tone, but it was as good a place to start as any, so she pulled herself together and mentally spooled back to the beginning. ‘As I told you earlier this evening,’ she said, deciding to start with the marginally easier bit, ‘you’re a hard man to track down.’

  ‘You’ve had fifteen months.’

  ‘Not quite.’

  His brows snapped together. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I didn’t know I was pregnant until I went into hospital with severe stomach cramps back in July and had Josh four hours later.’

  The silence that suddenly fell vibrated between them, laden with astonishment and disbelief. The tick of the clock on the mantelpiece, marking the passing of the seconds that felt like minutes, was deafening.

  ‘You didn’t know you were pregnant?’ he echoed eventually, the intensity of his gaze pinning her to the spot and making her squirm.

  ‘No.’

  ‘How is that even possible?’

  ‘That’s a question I’ve asked myself many times.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I apparently had what’s called a cryptic pregnancy,’ she said, rubbing her damp palms down her denim-clad thighs. ‘I carried on taking the pill, so I didn’t miss a period. I didn’t have morning sickness or any other signs. Because I was so busy at work I was exhausted anyway. Maybe I ate a bit more and gained a couple of pounds, but I put it down to stress-related comfort eating and cut back.’ She paused to give him time to at least partly absorb what she’d said, then added, ‘I realise how this must sound.’

  ‘You can’t have any idea how this sounds,’ he said darkly. ‘Implausible doesn’t come anywhere near it.’

  She couldn’t blame him for his scepticism. If she’d been in his shoes she’d have dismissed the idea as ridiculous too. ‘It’s rare but it happens. To one in about two thousand five hundred women. I had an anterior placenta. If I ever felt any movements, I put them down to tummy rumbles. I really had no idea. When my waters broke and I started having contractions right in the middle of A&E, no one was more surprised than me.’

  And wasn’t that an understatement? Stunned and terrified was a more accurate description of the feelings that had stormed through her. She’d never felt physical pain like it. She’d thought she was dying. And then, when realisation had dawned, the awful, horrible confusion. How could she be pregnant? How could she not have known that she was? She wasn’t stupid. She wasn’t uneducated. Yet in those bewildering, petrifying moments she’d felt both.

  ‘And subsequently?’ he said bluntly, yanking her out of the chaos and confusion of the delivery room and back to the present. ‘Josh is six months old.’

  ‘The whole thing came as a massive shock to me,’ she said, remembering with a chill how quickly and devastatingly her smooth, well-ordered life had been blown apart. ‘I was totally unprepared. I hadn’t been to any antenatal classes. I’d read no books and looked nothing up. I had no baby things and absolutely no idea what I was doing. I was thrown in at the deep end and expected to swim. It’s been a busy time and insanely tough.’

  His dark gaze held hers, not allowing her to look away, not letting her off the ho
ok for one second. ‘Still, Georgie. Six months.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Well?’

  This was it. Her moment of reckoning. ‘Could I possibly have a drink? I’m not prevaricating,’ she added in response to the sharp arch of his eyebrow. ‘Truly. I could just do with a bit of fortification.’

  ‘That bad?’

  Worse. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘What would you like?’

  ‘Whatever you’re having.’

  ‘Scotch.’

  ‘That’ll do. Neat. No ice.’

  With a brief nod, Finn got to his feet and strode over to the bar to fix her drink and refill his while Georgie tried to marshal her thoughts, her mouth dry and her heart pounding. How much should she tell him? What could she leave out? Was there anything she could do to make this easier? Unlikely.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, accepting the glass he held out and taking a long, slow sip of the whisky. ‘Delicious. Peaty.’

  The look he gave her was forbidding, his patience clearly stretched. ‘Georgie.’

  Right. OK. She lowered her glass and braced herself for the guilt and shame and anguish that still crucified her even though she knew that none of it had been her fault. ‘So, as I said,’ she said, her voice shaking a little despite her efforts to control it, ‘Josh’s arrival was unexpected. It was also extremely traumatic. Not from a medical point of view—in those terms it was very easy apparently—but from a mental one. I’d left home that morning expecting to be given some strong prescription painkillers. I’d envisaged being back in time to finish the report I’d been working on. Instead, ten hours after being admitted, I went home with a tiny newborn baby.’

  She looked at him, willing him to at least try to understand, however big an ask that was. ‘The shock was cataclysmic. I can’t begin to describe the weight of responsibility. Or the terror. I was all on my own and I had no clue what to do. I didn’t know how to feed him or soothe him or anything. For forty-eight hours neither of us slept, which meant that nor did my flatmates, who were quick to point out I was now in contravention of the tenancy agreement and threatened to call the landlord.’

  She glanced down at the glass she was turning in her hands, the amber liquid swirling continuously. ‘I phoned my parents but they didn’t answer, which I more or less expected, since we hadn’t spoken for a while, so I rang Carla, the friend of mine you met earlier. She came over and scooped us up and took us back to her house. And that was great for a couple of days. I scoured the internet and read books and did a crash course in babies. And I got a bit better at changing Josh’s nappies and feeding him and generally looking after him. But as the shock wore off, reality kicked in.’ She looked up at Finn, who was sitting impossibly still, his eyes dark and his expression unreadable, although she guessed he wasn’t missing a thing. ‘Did I ever mention my five-year plan?’ she asked with a slight tilt of her head.

  ‘You mentioned having one.’

  ‘Well, that went out the window. And so did all the structure and routine I’d created for myself and have always depended on. My life fell completely apart, and for the first time in years I had no idea where I was heading.’ She shook her head, the memories swirling. ‘It was all so overwhelming. I went into a sort of spin and it happened really quickly and really intensely. I wasn’t sleeping much anyway, but suddenly I wasn’t sleeping at all. My appetite all but disappeared. And then I started doing things that were really out of character. Like talking really fast one minute then not uttering a word for hours. I developed panic attacks and became convinced that Carla’s neighbour was following me. I even called the police one night,’ she said, biting her lip and remembering how scary it had been to realise on some level that what she was doing wasn’t normal, wasn’t right, but not knowing why she was doing it and not being able to do anything about it. ‘Anyway, eventually I was admitted to the psychiatric ward of my local hospital, where I was diagnosed with post-partum psychosis.’

  ‘Which is what?’

  ‘Like postnatal depression but worse.’ Far, far worse. ‘I stayed there for a week and then a bed came up in a mother-and-baby unit a hundred miles away. Josh and I left there ten days ago,’ she said, glossing over five intervening months, since Finn did not need to know how bad it had got before the medication had kicked in and the therapy had started to take effect. In any case she doubted she could even begin to explain how terrifying the delusions and the hallucinations and the disorientation had been, or how distressing she’d found it knowing that she wasn’t well. The feelings she’d had for Josh, or, rather, the lack of them, were far too upsetting to put into words, and Finn would never understand her gut-churning dread that the long, dark tunnel she’d been in had no end. He’d never fully understand any of it. No one could.

  ‘And that’s why it’s taken so long for me to contact you,’ she said, determinedly not letting those agonising memories descend but instead focusing on the man who was now looking at her a little as though he’d been slapped round the head with a wet fish. ‘I wasn’t in a position to do so. As soon as I was, I did. And that’s it. Now you know everything.’

  * * *

  Everything? Everything?

  He knew nothing.

  Watching dazedly as Georgie finished her drink, set the glass down on the coffee table and sat back against the cushions, Finn could barely recall his own name. He was reeling too hard, too stunned and shattered to be able to make head or tail of anything. Whatever explanation he could possibly have envisaged, none would have come anywhere near the one she’d just given him.

  That she was telling the truth was without doubt. He might have had suspicions initially—who wouldn’t?—but not for long. No one would make up such a story, and no one could fake the emotion that had emanated from her, despite her attempts to contain it. When she’d been talking about what she’d been through, her voice had cracked and her eyes had become twin pools of pain. Her hands had trembled and her anguish had been palpable, and her obvious distress had cut right through him.

  On one level he could identify with some of what had initially happened to her. He knew what it was like to have your life turned upside down and your plans destroyed. He’d experienced the sort of catastrophic shock that imploded your world, and the subsequent feeling of being utterly at sea. In that respect their recent histories were not unalike.

  As for the rest, however, he couldn’t begin to imagine what she’d been through. He thought he’d been having a rough time, but compared with her past six months, his had been a breeze. Giving birth like that must have been terrifying. Finding herself wholly and solely responsible for a tiny, helpless human being that came with no instruction manual must have been petrifying.

  And then afterwards... God, he didn’t even know what post-partum psychosis was. But it sounded horrendous, like hell on earth. Georgie hadn’t gone into detail about her stay in hospital but what she had revealed had been harrowing to listen to, let alone to actually live through, so how had she got through it? Had she got through it? Well, clearly she’d recovered at least to some extent because she and Josh were here, not that it was any thanks to him.

  He should have been there, he thought, a white-hot streak of regret and guilt suddenly burning through the defences he hadn’t had time to shore up. He should have known. Never mind that he couldn’t have. Never mind that her recent experience was no one’s fault, not even his. And never mind that even if he had been around he probably wouldn’t have known her well enough to recognise the out-of-character behaviour or any of the other signs that indicated she was ill.

  What mattered was that he hadn’t been there for his father, and he hadn’t been there for Georgie and Josh either. History had apparently repeated itself and that ended right now because, while he hadn’t been able to help his father or the Georgie of then, he could help her now. In whatever way she needed, whenever she needed it. He wouldn’t let her, them, do
wn.

  ‘How are you doing now?’ he asked gruffly, aware suddenly that she was looking at him with the expectation of some sort of response.

  ‘Better. Much better.’

  ‘And Josh?’

  She released a long, slow breath and the troubled expression that flitted across her face made his chest tighten with renewed regret that things hadn’t been different for her.

  ‘I’d like to be able to say that I’ve totally bonded with him and everything’s great,’ she said carefully. ‘But the truth is that, while I am getting there, it’s a work in progress. For a long time I couldn’t look after him properly. I couldn’t even look after myself. He was cared for by hospital staff so we didn’t get a chance to create that connection that everyone talks about and I missed many milestones.’ She shifted on the sofa and frowned for a moment as if something had suddenly occurred to her. ‘But maybe subconsciously I knew that there’d be a time when I was OK because I took photos and kept a diary. I did everything that was recommended. And I think it’s working. Now I find him fascinating. I can’t imagine not having him around, and when I think... Well... I’d rather not think about any of it actually.’

  As she tailed off Finn could see the undeserved guilt and shame in her eyes, which deepened his regret, but he could also recall the fire in her expression when she’d stood there in her flat and told him that Josh was going nowhere without her. Perhaps the bond between them was stronger than she was able to recognise right now.

  And, seeing as how he was now thinking about where she and their son had been living... ‘How on earth did you end up in the bedsit?’ he asked, seeking some sort of refuge from the emotions battering him by switching to practicalities.