‘Can you swim?’ Roman asked curiously.
‘Y...’ His eyes slid to his mother’s face. ‘Well, I can with arm bands on and I can kick harder than anything. Can I have another biscuit now, please?’ His hand hovered over the plate. ‘Chocolate?’
Marisa responded to the opportunistic request with a distracted, ‘Yes.’ Glad of the distraction as her son snatched one before she changed her mind, she watched him pull a toy car out of his pocket before he bounded across the room making the appropriate noises.
‘You can be my mum’s boyfriend if you like.’
Marisa could feel Roman’s eyes on her face, but she refused to return his gaze, knowing full well she’d see mockery there and maybe something else... Besides, she would only end up staring at his mouth again and thinking about it sliding across her lips... The self-admission came with a tidal wave of heat that rose through her body until every inch of her skin tingled with embarrassment.
Or was that excitement?
‘I’d prefer Ashley, but Mummy is too old for him.’
‘Yes, she is much too old for him,’ Roman agreed gravely.
‘How old are you?’
‘Thirty-one,’ said Roman, feeling a lot older as he listened to the flow of childish confidences.
‘I’m five next time, and I can already count to ten in French and I know two people who went to heaven. How many do you know?’
‘Jamie, there are some bricks under the chair. Please will you go and put them back in the box?’ Marisa instructed.
Roman, reeling and pale under his tan, directed his question in a low choked voice to Marisa. ‘Does he mean...?’
Marisa, understanding shining in her eyes, tipped her head in confirmation, causing the cold knot in his belly to harden to an iron fist.
Shock bypassed his normal close-mouthed caution when it came to revealing anything about himself. ‘And I thought my childhood was traumatic!’ Caught up in his own thoughts, Roman didn’t register the expression on Marisa’s face. ‘He sounds so casual about knowing people who have died.’ He found that almost as disturbing as the brutal facts themselves.
‘Children who have been through what Jamie has, they grow up quickly in some ways, but they are remarkably resilient. More so sometimes than the adults.’
She spoke quietly, her soft voice carrying virtually no inflection but he could see the shadows in her eyes. For the first time he let himself think about what the nightmare experience must have felt like, wondering if her child was going to die. She had faced more than he had done in his life, and he felt humbled by the strength she had shown.
‘Jamie knew how ill he was?’ he asked.
‘They don’t lie to the children.’
‘Even when the truth is—’ He shook his head, appalled. ‘I cannot imagine how hard it must have been for both of you.’
He had known his child literally for five minutes and already he was positive that if it were required he would lay down his life to spare him a moment’s suffering. The absolute shock of this fresh discovery widened his eyes.
She would have done the same, he realised as he watched her throw out a word of encouragement and a smile to the child who was adding a final brick to the lopsided creation that looked in imminent danger of toppling.
But it hadn’t been an option for her; instead, she’d had to sit there, day in and day out, watching her child suffering and feeling totally helpless. Dios, he could not even imagine the sheer horror of what she and Jamie had been through.
‘I’m sorry.’ The words emerged almost against his will, the deepening furrow in his broad brow an instinctive response to the inadequacy of the words he had never expected to hear himself voice.
She was desperate—wasn’t that what Rio had said? Not that Roman had been listening, because he’d had no space in his head right then for reasons or excuses. Just anger, resentment and a strong sense of betrayal that still hadn’t gone away, but he could see past it now, although he didn’t want to, and it made him mad as hell to acknowledge even in the privacy of his own mind that Rio had only spoken the simple facts; Marisa had been desperate but not desperate enough to come to him.
And maybe she had been right?
He paused that chain of thought before it could get too uncomfortable, her soft voice providing the escape route that he grabbed hold of.
‘It wasn’t your fault that Jamie was ill.’
Her generosity was genuine enough to send a slug of shame through him. ‘I should have been there for both of you.’
She had bent over to scoop up a couple of the stray toy building blocks from under a table, and as she straightened, her ponytail landed with a gentle thud between her narrow shoulder blades.
Face gently flushed from the exertion, she flashed a glance to the corner of the room where Jamie was now playing with his toy car again, before responding to his statement.
‘You didn’t know. I should have told you, I see that now, but at the time I was—’ She turned her head but not before he had seen the sheen of unshed tears bright in her eyes.
Rio’s words came back to him again. Desperate. She had been desperate.
Clearing her throat, she turned back to face him. ‘When you’re in a situation like that, the only people who actually understand, really understand, are those who are living through it too. They become in some ways your support network. You’re all living in a bubble, and, although the world carries on as normal, for you nothing is normal even though you try your—’ She stopped, a self-conscious expression seeping across her face as their eyes connected and she gave a tiny jerky motion of her head, looking confused, as though she’d never actually articulated
