bride and groom came more clearly into view.
Here was Carson as she had never dreamed he could look: a young man with all the hope and joy of life before him, brilliantly, whole-heartedly in love.
It was there in his eyes as he gazed down adoringly at his bride-surely the loveliest bride any groom had been blessed with. They walked out of the church into the sunlight, sure that the sunlight would last for ever.
The cameraman tracked them as they came down the path, laughing and ducking confetti. Then they got into the black limousine, where his arm immediately went around her, drawing her close for a kiss that threatened the ruin of her veil. As they drove off they were oblivious of the crowds. They needed only each other.
A curious little pain had started in Gina’s breast. She wanted to turn the video off and wipe out those glorious young people whose love excluded everyone else. She longed to obliterate that handsome young man who’d thought he had all he could ever want, and nothing could hurt him. Above all, she didn’t want to see the adoration with which he looked at the woman.
She wanted to switch off, but she couldn’t move. She had to watch as the scene moved to the reception. How proudly he escorted his bride to the top table, how tenderly he pulled out a chair for her, and bestowed a quick kiss on her before standing up, then leaned down for another. He kissed her whenever he could.
Now the speeches. ‘On behalf of my wife and myself…’ Cheers and laughter. Carson looked self-conscious and very young. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, so confident and happy, so different from the bitter, tense man he’d become.
The pictures flickered out, then started up again, a few months later. There was Brenda, heavily pregnant, still managing to look glamorous. They were in a garden and Carson was leading her towards a seat, adjusting the cushions, holding her hand, regarding her tenderly, bursting with pride. The pictures faded again.
More pictures. Brenda sitting up in bed, her newborn baby in her arms, a doting expression on her face, yet still managing to pose so that she was seen to best advantage. Even in hospital she was perfectly made up and there was calculation in her every movement. Gina could see it clearly now. She wondered how long it had been before Carson saw it.
There was Carson with his little son in his arms. The boy had grown; he might be a year old. Carson was holding him high in the air, smiling into his eyes, the picture of fatherly pride. The child too looked happy, his face covered in a fat, gleeful baby grin as he gazed down fearlessly at the man whose big hands held him high and safe.
Gently the father lowered his child, settling him on his arm so that they could look at each other. Gina watched, transfixed. The picture was enchanting in itself, but full of heartache to anyone who knew what had come after.
A noise made her turn her head. Joey was standing there, his eyes fixed on the screen. Gina reached out and touched him, drawing him to the sofa to sit beside her.
Have you ever seen this before? she signed.
He shook his head.
‘Do you know who that is?’
Now a close-up, showing the pride and joy in Carson’s face as he regarded his son. Joey never moved. His eyes were fixed on his father with a yearning expression that brought tears to Gina’s eyes. What was the child thinking? That he never saw such a look from his father these days?
The screen went dark.
‘That’s it, darling.’ She gave him a hug. ‘Bedtime.’
But Joey shook his head.
Gina hesitated, wondering if this was good for him. But he turned beseeching eyes on her, and she knew she couldn’t refuse him. She rewound to the start of the scene. Joey watched, riveted, a little smile on his face.
‘Just once more,’ she told him. ‘Then bed.’
Joey took the handset and, to her dismay, wound the tape right back to the start so that the wedding came up again. Gina wished time itself could be rewound, so that she could go back to the point where she was rummaging through the videos. Then she would put that one aside, and never have to see Carson’s face as he looked at the love of his life.
She didn’t doubt that was what Brenda was, because no man ever looked like that at more than one woman. Besides, he’d told her on the night he’d confided about his marriage, ‘I had some very naive notions in those days- true love conquers all… If ever a man and woman loved each other, we did. And it all fell apart like a shoddy toy.’
Brenda had used up all his capacity to love, leaving behind only a husk. Now she knew why he’d drawn back from the kiss that meant so much to her. It wasn’t because of Dan. It was because he was a fair man, and wouldn’t risk making her love him when he had no heart to give. Why, he’d practically warned her!
She closed her eyes, longing to escape the racking jealousy that would overwhelm her if she had to see him gaze at his bride. But it was no use; he was there behind her eyelids. And so was Brenda, her lovely face seeming to say that what was hers was hers for ever, even when she no longer wanted it.
Carson was a prickly, difficult man who went at life like a bull at a gate, and hurt himself more often than anyone else. He expected everything to be as straightforward as a business deal and, when it wasn’t, he was lost. But beneath the rough exterior he was sensitive and easily hurt. He’d reached out to her in his awkward way, and gained a hold on her heart that was painful and unbreakable.
He needed her, at least for the moment. Perhaps, for Joey’s sake, he might even come to feel a kind of affection for her. But he wouldn’t gaze at her with the passionate adoration he’d offered Brenda.
And that was what she wanted, more than she’d ever wanted anything in her whole life. In the years when she’d longed to hear again, she’d thought that was wanting. But it had been nothing like the yearning that possessed her now, for something she could never have.
As the wedding scenes began again she heard Carson’s key in the lock and went to meet him with relief.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, seeing her anxious face.
‘I was watching some of your tapes and I found one that seems to be home movies,’ she said, speaking quickly. ‘There are some pictures of you with Joey when he was a baby, and he came in while I was playing them. Carson, please go carefully. It makes him so happy to see them-I don’t want anything to spoil it for him.’ She saw him frown and added quickly, ‘I suppose I shouldn’t have been looking at your private video-’
‘Never mind. I should have put it away, but I forgot it was there.’
Together they moved quietly into the doorway, and Gina heard Carson’s swift intake of breath. Joey was looking at his mother, smiling at her baby.
The little boy looked up and saw them. He touched the place behind his ear that was almost healed now, and signed something.
‘What did he say?’ Carson asked hoarsely.
Gina spoke with difficulty. ‘He asked-if his mother would come back-when he can hear again.’
She tried to give the child some kind of answer, to say that Brenda hadn’t gone away because of his deafness. But he gazed at her with sad, wise eyes until she gave up. After that he didn’t ask any more.
He watched the scene again, then again. Finally he froze a frame showing Brenda dropping a kiss on the forehead of the child that lay in her arms. And he sat there, gazing at it.
Gina turned away and went hurriedly into the kitchen. After a moment Carson followed her.
‘My God!’ he said softly. ‘My God!’
‘That poor little boy,’ Gina said huskily.
‘All this time I’ve tried to tell myself that Joey understood-about why I’ve tried to keep his mother away-I didn’t know he felt that way about her. Maybe I didn’t give him the chance to tell me.’
‘I do my best for him, but I can’t touch his real pain,’ Gina said with a sigh. ‘She’s his mother.’
‘A terrible mother-’
‘But still, his mother. And he wants her.’
‘He wants a fiction created out of his own imagination. The reality would only break his heart again.’
‘That picture of her holding him wasn’t imagination. It was real.’
‘But it stopped being real the moment she discovered that he had problems with his hearing. Why can’t he face
