‘No-one knew except me and Rory and Marina. Marina must have told Hamish. Even Coco doesn’t know about it.’
‘How long have you known?’ I said dully.
‘As long as I can remember. I got back from school early one afternoon. I heard laughter coming from the bedroom and went in and found my mother in bed with Hector. My father was away at the time. I ran and hid in the woods. My father came home that night and sent out a search party. When they found me, my father thrashed me for worrying my mother. I never told him the truth. I suppose kids have a sort of honour even at that age. But I never forgave Hector, and he never forgave me for discovering what an old fraud he was.’
‘So you always knew Rory and Marina were brother and sister?’
He nodded. ‘About a year ago, I came back from London for a weekend and discovered, to my horror, they’d fallen in love and were thinking of getting married. I tried to stop Marina, but she’d got the bit between her teeth by then, so I went to Hector and told him he’d got to tell Rory the truth.’
‘Not a very pretty story, is it?’ I said.
‘That’s why I’ve been behaving like a policeman, trying to keep them apart,’ said Finn. ‘With insanity on both sides and a blood tie between them, it would be absolutely fatal if Rory got Marina pregnant.’
I sat numbly, trying to take it all in. Finn was holding me in his arms now, stroking my hair, soothing me like a child. I felt the hardness of his body, the gentleness of his hands. It was so long since I’d been in a man’s arms. I’ve always said I have no sense of timing.
His mouth was so near to mine. Almost instinctively, I put my face up and kissed him. The next moment he was kissing me back.
‘Heavens,’ I said, wriggling away, absolutely appalled. ‘I’m terribly sorry.’
‘Don’t be,’ he said softly. ‘It’s one of the nicest surprises I’ve ever had,’ and he kissed me again. This time it was a kiss that meant business. I tried to be frigid and unyielding, but could feel the warm waves of lust coasting all over me. I felt my body go weak. I was torn between desire and utter exhaustion.
‘Strange things happen in stables,’ I muttered weakly. ‘One moment I’m a midwife, next moment I’m bowling towards adultery. Talk about My Tart Is In The Highlands.’
Finn smiled, got up and pulled me to my feet.
‘Come on, I’m taking you home.’
‘Please don’t,’ I said.
‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I never meant this to happen when I brought you in here. I want you very much, but I think now is neither the time nor the place. You’re slightly drunk and you’re suffering from severe shock. I’m not going to let you do anything you might regret in the morning.’
He drove me home. Outside the house he burrowed in his bag and produced a couple of sleeping pills.
‘Take them tonight, immediately you get in, and come and see me at the surgery tomorrow at eleven. Then we can talk things over.’
When I got in I hardly had the strength to undress. I fell, rather than got, into bed, pulled the sheets like a curtain over my head and dropped into a deep sleep.
Chapter Nineteen
I woke up next morning feeling ghastly, went straight to the loo and was violently sick. I had a blinding headache, took four Alka-Seltzers and was sick again. Rory was still fast asleep.
I tiptoed around the bedroom getting my clothes on. I only just managed to make it to Finn’s surgery.
There was only one woman in there when I arrived. Finn came out. He looked tired, but he smiled at me reassuringly.
‘I’ll just see Mrs Cameron first,’ he said. ‘She won’t take long.’
I gazed unseeingly at magazines and wondered why I was feeling quite so awful. Finn’s receptionist eyed me with interest.
Mrs Balniel looking like a road accident, she must have been thinking.
Mrs Cameron came out, thanking Finn effusively, and I went into his surgery.
It was large, and rather untidy, and amazingly comforting. Finn shut the door and leant against it. Then he came across the room and kissed me. It was a different kiss from last night. That was alcohol and pent-up emotion. This was slow, measured, tender, and left me just as weak with lust.
‘Aren’t we doing fearful things to the Hippocratic Oath?’ I said, flopping on to a chair.
‘I couldn’t give a damn. You aren’t my patient yet, though you ought to be, you look terrible!’
‘Thanks,’ I said.
‘And infinitely desirable. Nothing a few weeks away from Rory wouldn’t cure.’
‘I was as sick as a dog all morning,’ I said. ‘Nerves and booze, I suppose.’
‘I’ll tell Miss Bates to shove off, then I’ll give you a going over.’
‘You’d better wipe that lipstick off first,’ I said.
Finn laughed.
He wasn’t laughing half an hour later.
‘You’re pregnant,’ he said.
I was stunned by the news. ‘But I can’t be pregnant!’ I gasped. ‘Rory hasn’t laid a finger on me for months.’ Then I remembered. ‘Oh, God,’ I said.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Finn.
‘After that row on Christmas Eve when you knocked Rory over, he was so mad with rage, he sort of raped me.’
‘That must have been it,’ said Finn.
My brain was whirling. Me — pregnant with Rory’s child! What sort of chance would a baby have with Rory not loving me, and me fancying Finn absolutely rotten all of a sudden? I had a nightmare vision of Rory and me shouting at each other across the baby’s cot, of the baby crying all day, and Rory going spare because he couldn’t work.
‘Oh, heavens,’ I said shakily.
Finn went to a cupboard in the corner of the room and got out a bottle of brandy and two glasses. ‘We’d better have a drink,’ he said.
As I watched him fill the glasses, I was filled with a ridiculous mawkish sadness. I’ll never be able to memorize every freckle on his face now, I thought, or see the grey hairs gradually take the fire out of that red mane.
He put a glass beside me, then took hold of my frozen hands. His were warm and strong and comforting; I felt an irresistible urge to collapse in tears on his shoulder.
‘It’s a hell of a mess,’ he said gently, ‘but it doesn’t matter, we’ll sort something out.’
‘Can we?’ I asked dolefully.
‘Look,’ he went on. ‘You and Rory are washed up. Anyone can see that. Do you want to keep the baby?’
I thought for a minute. ‘Yes I do. Very much.’
‘That means you’ll stay with Rory?’
‘What else can I do?’ I said bitterly. ‘I’m signed up for this gig and I’ve got to play.’
‘You can move in with me.’
The room reeled. For a moment all I could think of was the blissful sanctity of Finn taking care of me.
‘Oh, Finn,’ I said, the tears welling up in my eyes, ‘I’d drive you round the twist.’
‘I wouldn’t think so. We can always try.’
‘But what about the baby?’
He shrugged his shoulders.
‘It’s Rory’s,’ I said, taking a slug of my brandy and nearly choking. ‘You’d hate that, you’d keep seeing all the things you hate about Rory in its character. And your reputation on the island would be absolutely ruined — your
