life and then everything would be as it should be. Ordered. Tidy.’
‘Forget what, Ivo?’
‘That you’d made a bad deal. That security without love, without a family, without…without children, was never going to be enough for someone like you. I wanted you so much…’ He closed his ears to her gasp of something very like pain, forced himself to continue. ‘Needed you. Beyond reason. Maybe, if I’d known, understood that you wanted more, needed more, I would have found the strength to walk away.’ He would have been abandoning all that was vital, alive in him, but he’d have been in control. ‘I believed you when you said you only wanted the security of marriage. None of the emotional trappings. Or maybe I was grasping at straws, desperate to believe you because that way I didn’t have to address my conscience. Tell you the truth.’
‘What truth?’ A tiny crease furrowed the space between her eyes. ‘Tell me, Ivo.’
‘In those few precious days we spent together after the wedding, you began talking about the future as if it was real. About having children.’ He looked up, faced her. ‘I can’t go home with you, Belle. I can’t be the husband you need-you deserve. I know, I’ve always known, that I can never give you children.’
He saw the confusion, the frown deepen as she struggled to comprehend the magnitude of what he had told her.
‘Is that…’ She stopped. ‘Is that why we came home from our honeymoon early?’ She struggled to say more. ‘Is that why you chose to sleep separately? Because you thought I wouldn’t stay. If I knew.’
He nodded, just once. ‘I should have told you.’
‘Yes, you should. But then we should have told one another a lot of things, Ivo, but if I’d married you simply for children, I wouldn’t have stayed after I saw…’ She was struggling with the words. Paused to gather herself. ‘I couldn’t have stayed when you left me alone on the pretext of flying off to deal with some business crisis.’
‘How did you know?’
‘That it was a lie? You didn’t have to say anything, Ivo. You’re good at hiding your feelings, but that day I could read you like a book. I knew that you didn’t love me, that I was always going to be a temporary wife, but when we were alone, after the wedding, I glimpsed a sight of some fairy tale happy ever after. Made the mistake of sharing it. One look at your face told me I was on my own…’
‘So why didn’t you leave then?’ He dragged a hand over his face, struggling to understand what she was telling him.
Belle swallowed. She’d got it so wrong. Right from the beginning she should have fought for her marriage. Fought to hold on to something precious. She’d been so afraid to show him how she felt. Overwhelmed by that horrible house. Intimidated by his sister…
‘I was afraid,’ she said. ‘Afraid I’d lose you.’
‘Then, why now?’
She looked at him. She’d been so afraid, but she wasn’t now. She was struggling, but she was winning-a new life, a sister. Maybe, if she was brave enough, she could even have the marriage she’d always wanted.
‘I left because I hated myself for compromising. For hoping and hoping that one day you’d wake up and…’ she made a helpless gesture as if the words were too difficult ‘…
‘They were the happiest days I’ve ever spent.’
‘Then why? Why couldn’t you talk to me?’
‘You were not the only one who was afraid. You were the most beautiful woman I’d ever met. No!’ he said, when her dismissive gesture suggested that she’d made her point.
That she was no more than a temporary trophy wife.
‘I’m not talking about your looks, although that’s true too. You are lovely. It was your warmth, your vitality, a smile that could melt permafrost that drew me to you. I always knew you wouldn’t stay.’
‘Permafrost? You appear to have overestimated its power.’
‘No. If you hadn’t melted it, why would I care?’
‘I didn’t leave you because you so plainly didn’t want children, Ivo. I left you because I couldn’t stand the coldness. The distance. Couldn’t bear the thought of waking up alone one more day.’ And then, as if everything had suddenly fallen into place. ‘That’s what you’ve been doing, isn’t it?’
He didn’t ask her what she was talking about. In the last week he’d talked to her about Daisy. And about Miranda.
His sister’s desperate need for love had driven her into a series of disastrous relationships. Too needy, too desperate. When, over and over again, everyone she loved, in whom she had invested her emotions, rejected her, she’d spiralled down into a destructive phase of anorexia. Rejecting herself.
Stealing from Belle, he knew, had been prompted by the same self-destruct response in Daisy. Anticipating rejection, she’d provoked it.
He’d been there himself. Had fought his own demons in his own way. Self-destruction came with the territory.
‘You were waiting for me to reject you,’ Belle said, slowly, wonderingly. ‘Protecting yourself from being hurt.’
‘It didn’t work.’
‘You held me at such a distance, Ivo-’
‘I meant about the hurt.’ Living with himself had been a world of hurt. The only relief had been in her arms and selfishly he’d sought to win her back. Keep her. ‘I cheated you. Lied to you. You were right to leave. You deserve better.’
‘Life isn’t about what we deserve, Ivo.’ She raised her hands in a helpless gesture. ‘If it was about what we deserved then there wouldn’t be any kids on their own, cold and hungry. Scared women. Men for whom fatherhood is an unfulfilled dream.’
‘Leave me out of your list of deserving souls.’
‘Why? You’ve suffered too.’ Then, with a sudden frown, ‘What happened to you, Ivo?’ she demanded, the bit between her teeth now, fearless in her refusal to accept anything less than the whole truth. ‘Were you sick as a child? How do you know that you can’t have children?’
He’d hoped she wouldn’t think to ask him that. Unlikely. What man, unless he’d attempted to father a child and failed, would know he was infertile?
He had none of the pity-inducing excuses to offer. No mumps or childhood fever to blame. Only himself.
‘I know,’ he said, ‘because ten years ago I had a vasectomy.’
A vasectomy.
The word filled her head, swelling until she thought it would explode.
Belle looked at the food laid out temptingly on a platter for them to help themselves. Grilled baby aubergines, olives, sundried tomatoes, paper thin slices of meat. All of them untouched.
She made a helpless gesture, then, covering her hand with her mouth to hold in the cry of pain, she scrambled to her feet, rushed outside, desperate for air.
Just desperate.
Neither of them said a word when Ivo emerged in a rush a few moments later, catching up with her as she walked blindly through the lunchtime crowds of the market, draping her abandoned coat around her shoulders.
The tenderness of the gesture caught her unawares. Without warning, the strength went out of her legs and she subsided on to a bench, sat, bent double, her face pressed against her knees.
The awful thing was that she didn’t have to ask why he’d done it. She knew. Understood. The sins of the father. His grandparents, his parents, the fear that he too would follow the genetic imprint-become another cold, distant parent of unhappy children.
Understood why he was so driven-the relentless pursuit of wealth and power filling a bottomless void.
He sat beside her, not touching her, said, as much to himself as to her, ‘At the time it seemed so rational.’
She didn’t look up, just reached out a hand. There was an endless space of time before his fingers made contact with hers; maybe he thought that she was the one who needed comfort. He wasn’t a man who knew how to ask for it.
‘I suspect I was on the edge of a breakdown. Miranda was already there. I’d just signed the papers to keep her in hospital for her own protection…’
