“I know you didn't mean me,” he reassured her immediately. “But the thing is, I left Pete for those three weeks after Ellen died.”
“But you went back to Pete. My father never came back for me ...”
“I still left. And I'm ashamed to admit that I probably understand what motivated your father to leave. Especially as I ⦔ He stopped and raked a hand through his short blonde hair.
“Especially as you what?”
Adam's eyes volleyed back to hers. “Especially as I forced her into the pregnancy which fuelled her illness. You see, but for me Ellen might still be alive today. We wouldn't have Pete but she'd have had a chance at life.”
Adam stared at Abbie as he swallowed hard. She wondered whether she should prompt him to go on, but she didn't need to.
“You're confused, understandably. But the truth behind Ellen's death is that she fell pregnant when we'd been going out for less than a year. I didn't tell you this when I first met you, but Ellen wanted to terminate the pregnancy. She said she wasn't sure our relationship would last the distance and that a baby would lock us together. But I wouldn't have a bar of it. Even though we'd never discussed marriage before, I proposed to her and talked her into keeping Pete. I knew she was dead against getting married and becoming a mother at that time but I didn't let up on her until I'd worn her down.”
“It's always hard to know what to do when a baby's unplanned,” Abbie offered soothingly. “All of a sudden your life is turned upside down and it's utterly petrifying.”
“But the problem in my case was that the decision I forced on Ellen was catastrophic for her health,” Adam confessed, his voice desolate. “We didn't find out she was sick until the second trimester. By then she'd felt Pete moving and seen him on the ultrasounds. The doctors told her that the chances of the cancer spreading were increasing with every week she delayed the treatment. But Ellen could be very stubborn sometimes. She refused to jeopardise Pete's life or development by exposing him to the treatments. She was determined to take the risk all on herself.”
“Oh God, Adam ⦔ Abbie murmured in shocked dismay as she imagined the hell that the mysterious and brave woman in Adam's past must have gone through. But she couldn't offer any more words of understanding as she watched him stare blindly ahead before switching his eyes back to her.
“Justin and JP know what I did,” he confessed. “And now you. Our friends and family think Ellen wanted the baby from the start, when the truth is she didn't want the baby at all.”
Adam's eyes bored into Abbie's as though he was confiding directly to her very soul. She wanted to say something ⦠anything to console or comfort him over the fateful part he'd played in Ellen's pregnancy. But there didn't seem anything to be said that wouldn't come out as trite when their marriage had turned into one of those perfect marriages that most couples only ever dream about.
“You believed you were doing the right thing,” Abbie murmured. “You couldn't possibly have known that Ellen would get sick.”
“No, Abbie, I wasn't solely motivated by trying to do the right thing. What I wanted above everything else was my own way, which is what I've felt entitled to every day of my life. I'll never forgive myself for what I did to her.”
Adam sat back in his seat and stared into space in the opposite direction. At that moment he withdrew from Abbie, back into his own world of merciless self-recrimination. She knew that nothing she said or did would bring him back. And not knowing whether he would ever reach out to her again made her feel desperately lonely for him, even though he was right there next to her.
God, how she wished she didn't careâbut she did, and she couldn't help it.
Caring for him was bigger than every fear she had about the power he had to turn her life into topsy-turvy-town again. Yet he didn't care for her. She wasn't sure he ever had. The love of his life was dead, and as he'd said not two weeks before, the only reason he was with her now was for his boys.
As Abbie had predicted, she had no more intimate conversations with Adam on the plane.
He slept, watched movies and discussed Incipio and the firmâanything to keep personal conversation with her at bay.
When they reached Heathrow there were new distractions to make sure communication between them was business as usual: boys to keep close, customs to clear, luggage to collect and a car to rent.
Adam took responsibility for the paperwork, and Abbie was happy to take responsibility for two tired boys. Without a hitch, they were soon in a rented car and flying along the motorway towards Gloucestershire and Adam's childhood home.
“Are you sure you're happy to go straight out to my parents' place?” Adam asked her quietly as the boys chatted in the backseat. “I know you'd rather spend time with JP and Alex in London first. I would too, to be honest.”
Abbie thought longingly of turning the car around and heading straight back to London, because Adam was right. She would far prefer to spend a few days with their two friends than face the music with his family. But she shook her head in decided response.
“We're doing the right thing, Adam. Your parents are waiting anxiouslyâit would be heartless to make them wait any longer than necessary.”
Within a couple of hours Adam was pulling off the bleak, wintry motorway and onto a side road, and then another. Soon they were making their way along miles of quiet country lanes lined with dry stone walls, woods, pretty farms and the occasional Cotswold village. Each one was picture perfect.
Eventually he began to slow down as he drove past an old church and through the centre of a particularly gorgeous village straddling a meandering river, an old mill perching on its edge.
“This is it,” he announced as he pulled into a driveway next to the last of a line of attached cottages.
“Adam, it's beautiful,” Abbie breathed in wonder as she gazed at the cottage's warm Cotswold stone exterior, deep-set dormer windows and pretty cottage garden.
“You like it!” he declared with a satisfied smile, turning off the engine and leaning on the steering wheel to look across at her.
“It's absolutely gorgeous. How old is it?” she asked as the boys jumped out of the car and disappeared into the back garden to go exploring.
“Three hundred and thirty eight years, to be precise. When they built this place, Charles II was on the throne.”
“You mean son of ⦔ Abbie made a gesture of someone's head being chopped off.
“Yes, Abbie,” Adam laughed, “the very same.”
Abbie shook her head in disbelief as she drank in its quaint appeal. “It's wonderful. I'm in love.”
“I'm glad you like it, but you know that you and Henry don't have to stay here, don't you? In fact my parents are very disappointed you're not staying up at the house.”
“Thanks, but this is a better arrangement,” Abbie replied as she turned her eyes away from the cottage towards its owner instead. “If I'm down here, it will give your parents and Henry some space to get to know one anotherâmuch better than all of us being cooped up together in one house.”
But just half-an-hour later Abbie realised the idiocy of her comment about being cooped up, for Adam was driving down a long gravel driveway lined with perfect hedges. An imposing manor house waited for them at the end, made from the same Cotswold stone as the cottage. But there was nothing quaint about it. It was three-storeys high and sported four imposing stone gables along its endless frontage. Glimpses of the sides of the house suggested that it was as deep as it was long.
Abbie had been nervous about meeting Adam's parents for a few days but at that point a whole new sense of foreboding took over. For as she tried to absorb the stately dignity of the house looming before her, she knew she was about to immerse herself in a family whose heritage of power, influence and wealth was at a level she'd never experienced before.
All she had to do was look at Adam's childhood home to know that he and his forebears were marked out for public distinction from the day they were bornâwhether they liked it or not. And Adam, with his intelligence, his charm and his natural gift for leadership was perfect material for the next generation.
“Whoa, it's a mansion!” Henry announced in delighted wonder, expressing his mother's reserved admiration through the unfiltered eyes of a three-year-old.
Adam swung the car around in the driveway to come to a halt next to the enormous stone portico entrance. At that moment a flood of yellow light streamed out across the gravel driveway.
A heavy wooden front door was thrown open and two Golden Retrievers, tails wagging exuberantly, came rushing out into the night.
Abbie climbed out of the car and stood back in the dim light. As she shivered in the bone chilling cold, she watched an elderly couple emerge and throw themselves into Adam's and Pete's arms.
Cries of excitement from Adam's parents rose above their reunion as Henry came and stood next to Abbie, slipping his hand into hers. Abbie squeezed it back, knowing that her boy was having a rare attack of shyness as he met his new grandparents.
“And you must be Henry!” Tony Cooper announced as he strolled across to where the two of them were standing.
He gave Abbie a friendly wink of acknowledgment before kneeling in front of Henry and holding out his hand. Henry took it and they shook hands solemnly. And at that moment Abbie was taken back to the afternoon Adam had met Henry in the supermarket aisleâwhen they'd shaken hands in exactly the same way.
Abbie watched as Adam's father, tall and lean like his son but with snowy white hair, gazed at Henry in wonder before muttering almost inaudibly, “My God! You're a chip off the old block, aren't you? Come and meet your grandmother.”
Henry took Adam's father's outstretched hand and walked across to Clarissa Cooper. In the dim light Abbie could see Adam's mother cover her mouth in astonishment. Abbie then switched her eyes to Adam to find him standing to one side, hands deep in his pockets, surveying the family scene with a slightly amused but contented look on his face.
“Adam, he's you at three!” Clarissa breathed in wonder. “I could see the resemblance from the photos you sent but I had no idea ⦔ She then stopped, appearing to remember that the little boy in front of her was no photograph.
Crouching down in front of him, she gathered him into her arms. Abbie watched on with pride fit-to-burst as Henry, being the gorgeous, affectionate little boy that he was, snuck his arms around his grandmother's neck and squeezed her back.
When finally the embrace was broken, Clarissa climbed to her feet and hurriedly swept tears from her face with the back of her hand. Abbie was so transfixed by her reaction that she didn't notice Adam appear at her own side and place both hands on her shoulders from behind to guide her towards his parents.
“Mum and Dad, I'd like you to meet Abbie McCarthy.”
Clarissa and Tony Cooper wandered over to her, embraced her warmly and welcomed her as though she was a long lost friend. And Abbie knew as they enclosed her in their arms that she would forever associate them with the welcoming, earthy aromas of log fires, night-time mists and soft cashmere.
“Darling, I wish you'd stay with us in the house,” Clarissa complained as she held Abbie's cold hands in her own warm ones. “I don't know what Adam was thinking when he offered you the cottage instead. I don't like to think of you and Henry down there all by yourselves.”
“Mum, they'll be fine,” Adam argued gently with his mother, throwing Abbie a conspiratorial wink that sent her heart skipping like a smooth stone across mirrored waters. She smiled back at him, suspecting he'd been arguing with his mother in that patient, gentle manner all his life.
“Yes, Clarissa, they'll be fine,” Tony weighed in jovially. “The girl doesn't want to be overwhelmed by Coopers. Let her have her space and spend as much time up here as she wants. After all, it's barely a five-minute walk across the fields. And she'd be far better served by you if you got her out of this cold rather than standing out here and arguing about the cottage.”
“Oh you're right!” Clarissa cried. “What am I thinking? Come in. You must be frozen and exhausted. Are you hungry? I've kept supper for you.”
“I'm fine, thank you,” Abbie replied as she let herself be lead into the entrance hall of the Cooper's home. “You know what planes are likeâyou never seem to stop eating.”
“Look, Mum!” Henry cried, rushing up and grabbing her hand. He pulled her across to a full suit of armour standing to attention at the foot of an enormous staircase rising up before them.
“Isn't he magnificent!” Abbie declared as she swung around to face Adam's father. “Does he have a name?”
“As a matter of fact, he does,” Tony smiled as he approached Abbie and Henry. “His name's Wilfred, and he's quite a grown up boy reallyâabout five hundred years old.”
“Is there someone in there?” Henry asked in fearful uncertainty before turning to look for Adam who was standing just behind him.
It was at that moment, after hesitating for the merest fraction of a second, that Henry looked straight at Adam and lifted his arms as a sign he wanted to be scooped up by his father.
Abbie pressed a hand to her mouth to stifle a gasp of shocked delight. And in immediate response to Henry's gesture, Adam gathered his son up into his arms so that he could look Wilfred in the eye.
“Lift his helmet up and see,” Adam suggested in a croaky voice, swallowing hard as he visibly grappled to absorb another precious offering of trust from his son.
Henry looked at Adam again for reassurance before finally slipping Wilfred's metal face panel up to reveal the dark empty space within.
“You see, Henry, just a pile of old junk.”