‘Is that it?’ she cried. ‘Or do you blame me for the way I found out and the things I said? Do you hate for knowing the truth you tried to hide-?’
‘No,’ he said, almost violently. ‘The only person I blame for anything is myself. Kaye, I’m doing this for
‘That doesn’t matter-’
‘You think it doesn’t now, but later it will. I’ve seen you and Mike together. You’re a fantastic mother, and that’s an instinct you’ll need to satisfy more than once. With me you never could. Don’t you understand that? I’m no good for you and I never will be. In time you’ll come to hate me.’
‘Don’t tell me how I think and feel,’ she said angrily. ‘That’s for me to say.’
‘All right, I’ll tell you something else. The day you found out that I hadn’t been honest with you everything changed for you-as though a dark cloud had come over the world. Didn’t it?’
‘Jared-’
‘Didn’t it?’ He was holding her shoulders and now he shook them slightly.
‘Yes-all right, yes. These last few years I’ve found it so hard to rely on people, and when you returned I kept my distance because I was being careful. But you overcame that and I found I could love you. I didn’t want to, but it was as though the years had rolled back. Things I thought I could never feel again-closeness, confidence, belief in life and people-’
She stopped, hurt to the heart by the despairing resignation on his face.
‘You felt those things again,’ he said sadly, ‘and then I destroyed them-
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said desperately. She was losing him again. She didn’t want him on the fringes of her life. She wanted him at the centre, in her heart.
‘I know what I have to do-for both our sakes, for Mike’s sake. You won’t lose, Kaye. I’ll see to that.’
She would lose everything, she thought, and he would never understand.
‘You know nothing about what I’ll lose,’ she said bitterly. ‘Let’s have the truth, Jared. You’re not doing this for me, but yourself. You don’t love me, and you don’t want to be encumbered by me.’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ he raged. ‘Of course I love you. I love you more than I can bear. Why can’t you-?’
The door opened and Mike stood there, looking worried.
‘Are you mad at each other?’ he asked.
‘Of course not,’ Jared said with forced brightness.
Kaye was filled with inspiration.
‘Well, actually, I am a bit annoyed at your father,’ she said, managing a smile. ‘We’ve been playing Champion again, and I think he’s cheating. Fancy that!’
‘But he doesn’t need to cheat,’ Mike said indignantly. ‘He always wins everything he does.’
‘Only because he cheats,’ Kaye said, with a fair assumption of teasing indignation.
‘I do not,’ Jared returned, understanding what she was doing and falling in with it.
‘You certainly do,’ she insisted.
‘Don’t.’
‘Do.’
‘Don’t.’
‘Do.’
Relieved, Mike gurgled with delight as they squared up to each other, glaring with just the right amount of comic aggression.
‘You’ve done me an injustice,’ Jared declared.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘I know so.’
‘Oh, yeah?’ he demanded. ‘Yeah!’
They met each other’s eyes, each sending a silent message of pain and farewell, so different from the laughing performance they were giving the child.
‘I think I’d better give in,’ Jared said. ‘Your mother’s a very determined lady.’ He winked at his son. ‘I’ll bet you could teach me a thing or two about that game,’ he said, ‘but now it’s time you were back in bed.’ He gave Mike a hug. ‘See you tomorrow. Goodnight, you two.’
He was gone before Kaye could say anything. She heard his footsteps going down the corridor, and his door closing.
Looking back, she could see how that evening had set the pattern. After their return to England any contact they had was all for Mike. On the night before he went back to school Jared called him, and next morning there was a text wishing him good luck.
A week later there was the Italian Grand Prix.
‘Please, Mum,’ Mike begged.
‘No, darling. It’s too soon after the start of term. I want you to concentrate on school.’
Even so, she thought she might have yielded if Jared had asked them to be there. But he hadn’t.
‘I blew it,’ she told Ethel. ‘You were right about me. I am judgemental. Otherwise we could have sorted it out quietly, he might not have had that crash, and then things would have been all right. But a curtain has come down in his mind and I can’t get past it. Perhaps because he doesn’t really want me to.’
‘Or maybe fate still has a nice surprise for you?’ Ethel suggested.
‘I don’t think that’s going to happen. Life doesn’t work that way.’
But she was wrong.
She discovered just how wrong she was on the night before the race. At first she couldn’t take it in. The implications of what had happened were so tremendous that she could only sit and stare at the wall until Ethel came in, wanting to know what was up.
Kaye told her.
‘Get going,’ Ethel said at once. ‘Call a taxi, go to the airport, catch the first plane you can.’
Dazed, she obeyed. In the early hours she was on her way to Italy, looking out of the aeroplane window at the darkness. So many nights she’d stared into that darkness in tearful despair, as much for Jared as for herself. Now she knew hope again-but with it the fear that hope might once more betray her.
‘Please,’ she whispered. ‘Please-one more chance-for his sake-
