Lucy Gordon - The Pregnancy Bond

But this was different. There was no need for him to have bought her anything, and the gesture touched her. Smiling, she looked around at the room where he’d so lately been.

Then her smile faded as she saw how empty it was, a bleak emptiness that seeped into her heart until it felt like a stone crushing her.

KELLY had approached college prepared to discover that her brain was rusty, and she’d been fooling herself for years. Instead she found the course fascinating and easy to follow. The tutors praised her work and she was popular with them and her fellow students. In many ways this was the ideal college life of her dreams.

The only fly in the ointment was the need to work to make ends meet. She’d taken a bank loan to cover most of the fees, and worked three evenings a week in a small café. It was proving more tiring than she’d thought. At the end of the day she longed to return to her little home instead of spending the evening inhaling greasy odours and being rushed off her feet.

Perhaps she should have taken up Jake’s offer of financial help so that she could leave the job and never again have to smell cooking oil, which was making her nauseous these days. Working at the café hadn’t been so terrible before, but meeting Jake again seemed to have left her in a strange mood. Her normally equable temper had been replaced by an irritability that could flare into annoyance without warning.

She’d heard no more from him after he’d rushed away that morning, and she was glad of that because it made it easier to draw a line under the business. Once more for old times’ sake, and no sentimentality on either side.

But it wasn’t that easy. What had happened between them in her bed had felt less like a goodbye than a hello. That was how people enjoyed each other at the start of something, seeking out and conquering new territory, putting down markers for the future. It was absurd to make love like that at the end.

Absurd. Cling to the thought. Laughable. Ridiculous. Idiotic. Words like that would help deaden what threatened to be an ache in her breast.

She knew that Jake had returned from wherever he’d dashed off to because she’d opened a newspaper to see a photograph of him, leaving a glamorous media party. Olympia was on his arm, smiling and looking impossibly gorgeous. Apart from that, if she wanted to see him she watched the television news, which was pretty much what she’d been doing for the last few years.

One evening she was just catching up with the headlines before going to bed, and there he was, looking out of the screen, while a voice-over intoned, ‘Jake Lindley talks to us, live, from war-torn-’

Kelly yawned sleepily, not hearing the rest. Wherever Jake was reporting from, it was fairly sure to be ‘war-torn’. He’d always been happiest in the thick of the action, and she’d sat at home terrified for him, and keeping her worries to herself when he returned. It bored him to talk about dangers he regarded as nonexistent.

‘It’s all hype, darling,’ he’d often said. ‘I never actually get hurt, do I?’

And it was true, he didn’t. It was pleasant not to have to worry because he was nothing to do with her any more.

She had to admit that he looked good on camera, his bronzed skin suggesting a man of action, and his shaggy hair slightly lifted by the breeze as he made his report in a brisk voice.

‘Tonight the two sides seem as far apart as ever-accusations-fierce denials-nobody quite knows-’

She barely heard. All her attention was fixed on Jake’s face. When had that little frownline appeared between his eyes? She tried to remember if it had been there last time, but his face as it had been then refused to come into focus. There were too many impressions pulling in different directions.

‘The sound of gunfire never ceases-there behind me, and all around-’

Jake’s voice stopped suddenly and Kelly came out of her reverie to realise that he’d vanished from the screen. The camera was swinging around wildly, somebody was shouting, and there was Jake on the ground, with people running towards him and an ugly red stain seeping between his fingers, which were clutched to his stomach. Only then did she realise that he’d been shot.

He was still talking to camera, and incredibly managed a painful smile. ‘I guess they were closer than I realised-’ He went on talking, grimacing with pain as people lifted him and raced away from the gunfire, refusing to stop doing his job, until he fainted.

The broadcast returned to the studio. Nobody seemed to know exactly what had happened. Kelly could have screamed.

She snatched up the phone, then dropped it again. She was no longer Jake’s wife, and had no more right to information than anyone else. But she could feel her whole body going cold with shock as she stared at the set, willing it to tell her something.

She tried the text pages, but the broadcast had been live and it was too soon for anything to be posted. She changed channels, hoping one of the others had picked it up. For an hour she sat there, flicking from place to place, feeling as though she was going mad.

When she couldn’t stand it any longer she dialled the studio and asked for Dave Hadway, who worked in the newsroom and whom she knew slightly. But Dave had left the company, and instead Kelly found herself talking to Olympia Statton.

‘This is Kelly,’ she said, forcing herself to speak calmly. ‘Is there any news of Jake?’

‘He’s been taken to the local hospital out there,’ Olympia said.

‘How bad is it?’

‘I’m sorry, we’re not releasing that information to the public.’

Kelly lost her temper. ‘What do you mean, “the public”?’ she raged. ‘I used to be married to him, as you very well know.’

‘I do indeed, but you went your separate ways,’ came Olympia’s self-satisfied voice. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Harmon, I’m afraid I can only discuss Jake’s condition with his family.’

‘But he has no family,’ Kelly cried.

‘He has people who care for him.’ The line clicked dead.

Kelly replaced the receiver forcefully. Then she did something she’d never done before in the whole of her well-regulated life. She picked up a vase and hurled it at the far wall with all the force she could manage. It disintegrated into a hundred pieces. Cleaning them up gave her something to do.

She sat up into the small hours, gathering crumbs of information from the television. The shooting was shown again and again. She watched it obsessively. There was Jake, standing so assured before the camera, and she wanted to seize him and keep him safe. But she never could, and he always fell to the ground, still gamely talking.

As the night wore on she learned that although the terrain was remote the local hospital was efficient and had managed to stabilise Jake, but his condition was still critical. Still in front of the set, she fell asleep from exhaustion, and awoke to find the morning half over.

The central heating had gone off and she was stiff and cold, with an aching head that swam as she forced herself out of the chair. She sat down again at once, and stayed there until the world had settled back into place. When it was safe to move she rose and put on the heating, then staggered into the kitchen to make herself some hot tea. She needed food inside her after that upsetting night, she decided. But after cooking eggs and bacon she threw it away, untasted. She couldn’t face grease. In fact she couldn’t face anything until she knew that Jake was safe.

She sank back into the chair, castigating herself for her weak will. What had happened to independence and putting him behind her? All gone for nothing, because he was hurt.

And something else bothered her. Olympia had called her ‘Miss Harmon’. She not only knew that Kelly had resumed her maiden name, but she also knew what it was. And only one person could have told her. Kelly reckoned that said it all.

The next day a flying ambulance conveyed Jake out of the country where he’d been wounded and to the nearest large hospital, in southern Italy, for an operation to remove the bullet. After that there was silence, and Kelly was forced to assume that no news was good news.

Now her life was lived permanently on the rack. She tried some mutual friends, but they knew little more than she did herself. The only information came from Olympia, who gave an interview to a tabloid newspaper called, Jake Lindley, the man I know. The resulting piece put Olympia firmly in the spotlight, while hinting at the depth of her relationship with Jake, who, she was quick to state, had recently divorced. The only thing missing was an announcement of their coming wedding. Kelly wondered if they would dispense with that, since they were clearly lovers already.

Finally Kelly struck lucky with a fellow journalist, who told her Jake had called him and asked for some books to be brought to the London hospital where he would arrive at the end of the week. He was out of danger now, and was being sent home to complete his recovery.

Kelly knew the hospital, which was only a few miles from where she lived. It was unnerving to have Jake so close and yet know nothing about him. She tried telephoning but found that all calls were being diverted to the television company’s press office.

Well, it was none of her business anyway. They’d said goodbye, and that was it. Kelly told herself that very firmly, and was still telling herself as she set out, one afternoon, for the hospital.

As she entered its doors she was expecting a rough passage, but her luck was in. The young woman on the desk beamed at the sight of her.

‘Don’t tell me, let me guess,’ she said. ‘Jake Lindley. You’re his wife. I saw you on the telly last year. You were sitting next to him when he collected that award for “TV newsman of the year”. It is you, isn’t it? I mean, your hair’s different, but-’