‘Nothing’s going to happen to us, Kate,’ Nick said gently, and she forced a smile.
“Course it won’t.’ She bent down to tuck a blanket round the young mother and her baby. ‘Strange to think Stephanie was right all along. She kept saying she felt something was wrong, and I kept thinking, Here she goes again, panicking. And yet she was right.’
‘I hardly think she can have known she was going to have a breech birth,’ Nick observed, and Kate rolled her eyes.
‘Must you be so pedantic, Nick? I didn’t mean she knew she was going to have a breech birth. I just meant sometimes mums-to-be have a sixth sense about whether things are right, or not.’ She gazed down at the sleeping young mother. ‘Actually, although she doesn’t know it yet, this is when the really hard bit starts, and it’s going to be doubly difficult for her as she’ll have to bring up the baby on her own.’
‘She’ll cope,’ Nick said firmly. ‘It never ceases to amaze me how strong women are, and she’ll cope.’
Kate nodded, and cleared her throat.
‘Do you think Jem’s all right?’
Nick’s eyes met hers, calm, unreadable.
‘I should imagine they’ve kept all the kids in school,’ he said, ‘and, as both the high school and the primary school are up on a hill, he’ll be fine.’
‘Yes,’Kate said, more in an attempt to convince herself than in actual agreement. ‘It’s just he’s like me—not keen on water.’
‘Nothing’s going to happen to him, Kate.’
‘No, of course not,’ she said with an effort. ‘Do you think it will be Tom who will come with the helicopter?’
‘God, I hope not.’ Nick groaned. ‘That would be all I’d need. The mighty Tom Cornish winching me out of a window.’
Kate tilted her head, and gazed at him speculatively. ‘You seriously dislike him, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Care to share the reason?’
‘Can’t,’ Nick said tightly. ‘Patient confidentiality.’
‘It’s got something to do with Eve Dwyer, hasn’t it?’ Kate pressed. ‘She looked as though she’d seen a ghost when he turned up at Alison and Jack’s wedding.’
‘Kate—’
‘Nick, given that we’re both medical professionals, and we could well be dependent on Tom to rescue us,’ Kate exclaimed, ‘don’t you think I have the right to know what he did that has made you dislike him so much?’
For a second she saw indecision warring with professionalism on Nick’s face, then he sighed.
‘Eve came to me twenty years ago, asking for a prescription for antibiotics. She told me she had a vaginal infection. Well, there was no way I was going to prescribe anything without examining her first, so I did. She’d had an abortion, Eve.’
‘And you think Tom was the father?’ Kate said calmly.
‘Kate, it was common knowledge twenty years ago that they were lovers.’
‘You mean it was Penhally gossip, twenty years ago,’ Kate replied dryly, and Nick looked irritated.
‘She wasn’t going out with anyone else at the time, so I think we can safely say he fathered her baby. And what did he do? He skipped off to the US, leaving Eve to deal with it.’
‘He might not have known she was pregnant when he left,’ Kate protested. ‘He might only have found out later.’
‘He didn’t come back, though, did he?’ Nick countered. ‘And what kind of man does that?’
‘Nick—’
‘Kate, I was just nineteen when Annabel and I got married, and I was a father to twins soon after. I don’t know how Annabel and I survived those early years, never knowing where the next meal was coming from, always panic-stricken that we wouldn’t be able to pay the rent, but I would never have suggested she have an abortion.’
‘Nick…’ Gently, Kate put her hand on his arm. ‘Things are seldom black and white, right or wrong, and who are we to judge? Our haloes are hardly shiny bright. Ten years ago—’
‘I don’t want to talk about this,’ Nick interrupted, throwing her hand off, and walking towards the window, but Kate followed him.
‘Nick, we might die tonight,’ she said, ‘and I don’t want to die with what I need to say to you—what I’ve wanted to say to you for the past ten years—left unsaid.’
His face contorted, and for a second she thought he was going to refuse to listen to her, then his shoulders slumped.
‘Do you have any idea how much I deeply regret that night?’ he said hoarsely as he stared out of the window into the blackness. ‘It should never have happened, and I blame myself entirely.’
‘Nick, it takes two to make love, and I didn’t push you away,’ Kate said softly. ‘I could have done—should have done—and yet I didn’t. I wanted you that night as much as you wanted me, and when I heard James had died…’ She closed her eyes, then opened them again. ‘I knew it was a punishment. That God had taken my husband from me to punish me.’
‘Oh, Kate…’
‘No, please, let me finish,’ she insisted as he turned towards her, his face taut. ‘We made love that night. You were unfaithful to your wife, and I was unfaithful to my husband, and it was
wrong—so very wrong—and when I discovered I was pregnant…’
‘Are you telling me you actually considered having an abortion?’ Nick said, horror plain in his voice, and tears appeared in Kate’s eyes.
‘Maybe I should have done. It would certainly have made everything easier for us both, wouldn’t it, with no living reminder of what we’d done, but despite all the guilt I’ve felt over the years, all the torment…’ Kate’s voice broke. ‘As God is my witness, even though I know I will be damned for all eternity for saying this, I can’t—and won’t ever—regret having him.’
Nick reached out and jerkily clasped her hands in his.
‘Kate, if there is a God, he would never condemn you, but what I can’t forgive myself for—will never be able to forgive myself for—is cheating on Annabel that night, betraying my marriage vows.’
‘And you think I can forgive myself for betraying James?’ Kate demanded. ‘You think I’m saying that because Jem has brought me so much happiness, his birth justified what we did? I’m not saying that, Nick, I would never say that, but…’
‘But?’ he prompted, and she could see the uncertainty in his eyes, and the pain.
‘We can’t undo it, Nick. We will both have to live with our guilt until the day we die, and if by some miracle we’re spared tonight then what I want—what I hope—is for us both to perhaps be able to move on, move forward. Not forgetting what we did—we won’t ever be able to—but living with it, accepting it, and for you—maybe in time—to let Jem become a part of your life.’
‘Kate…’
His voice was deep, strained, but she didn’t get a chance to find out what he’d been about to say. A light suddenly appeared at the window, followed by the sound of a gloved hand knocking against it.
‘You have a woman and a newborn in here?’ the winch man asked when Nick opened the window, and, when Nick nodded, the winch man grinned. ‘Then your helicopter awaits, and Tom Cornish sends his compliments.’
‘He would,’ Nick said darkly.
‘And Chloe really is safe?’ Oliver declared for what felt, to Eve, like the hundredth time, and she nodded.
‘Yes, she really is safe,’ she said.
‘No thanks to Tom,’ the young doctor muttered as he gazed out over the crowded school hall, then flushed when he saw Eve’s expression. ‘I’m sorry, but he didn’t exactly help, did he?’
‘Oliver, it’s not his fault only one helicopter can fly into Penhally at a time because the entrance to the harbour is so narrow,’ she protested. ‘It’s not his fault the water’s rushing so high and fast it would be suicide to launch a boat. What else could he have done—what would you have done if you’d been in his shoes?’
‘Saved the woman I loved first,’ he said simply, and Eve managed a smile.
‘Which is why neither you nor I would make very good heads of operations at Deltaron,’ she said. ‘We can’t see the bigger picture.’
‘I’d rather keep my ability to feel, to care,’ Oliver declared, and, as Eve caught sight of Tom coming out of the small office, her smile died.
‘Tom has the ability to feel, Oliver,’ she murmured, ‘and to care, very deeply.’
And to hate, she thought, feeling her heart contract as Tom’s gaze stopped momentarily on her without expression, then moved away.
‘Eve?’
Oliver looked concerned, puzzled, and she forced her smile back into place.
‘How’s everyone doing?’ she said.
‘Those who have their families with them are obviously coping better than the others.’
‘Are…?’ Eve swallowed hard. ‘Are there many missing?’
‘We don’t know,’ Oliver admitted. ‘What with half the village being here, the other half at The Smugglers’, and some people away at work…Chief Constable D’Ancey has put the number missing at around eighteen, but that’s purely guesswork.’
‘Eighteen?’
Eve echoed in horror, and Oliver squeezed her hand.
‘It’s guesswork only, Eve. We’ll know better when it’s daylight, when the water starts to go down. Hopefully, nobody is lost at all, and people are just sheltering where they can.’
‘Lizzie Chamberlain’s looking a little better,’ she observed, and Oliver nodded.
‘She should do, considering the size of sedative I gave her. Amanda Lovelace is understandably in a bit of a state, but she point blank refuses to let me give her anything.’
And Tom was talking to her, Eve noticed. He was bending down towards Tassie’s mother, then suddenly she saw Amanda’s face light up, and she was gripping his hand tightly, and he was shaking his head, his cheeks darkening slightly, at whatever she’d said.
Could this mean Tassie was on her way? She prayed the girl was. She prayed, too, that Gertrude Stanbury had survived. The elderly school teacher was a determined, spunky woman, but she was crippled with arthritis, and though Tassie was agile enough to have reached the attic she couldn’t see how Gertrude could possibly have managed to clamber up there.
‘Is…is Tassie safe?’ Eve said hesitantly as Tom passed her, and he paused, but he didn’t look at her.
‘Mitch has picked both her and Gertie Stanbury up. He’s going to drop them on the playing fields, and the police will bring them here.’
Eve closed her eyes tightly.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you.’
‘Nick knows, doesn’t he?’
Eve’s eyes flew open. ‘What?’
Tom caught her by the arm, and steered her none too gently back into the school office.
‘Nick—you went to Nick, didn’t you, when you decided you weren’t going to have the baby?’
‘No—I—No,’ she faltered. ‘I went up to Bude when I discovered I was pregnant. I had…I had it done there.’
‘But Nick knows.’
Tom’s face was tight with barely suppressed anger, and she wished she could lie, but there was no point.
‘He knows I had an abortion,’ she said. ‘I didn’t realise until quite recently that he knew—had guessed—but I caught an infection afterwards, so I had to go to him for antibiotics and he must have guessed then.’
‘Which is why he thinks I’m scum,’ Tom said. ‘He thinks I walked out on you when you were pregnant, forced you into having the abortion.’
‘Why would he think that?’ she protested. ‘Why would he even suspect you were the father?’
‘Oh, give me credit for some intelligence,’ Tom said, his voice harsh, bitter. ‘You and I were an item that summer so he had to suspect it was me, didn’t he?’
‘Tom—’
‘What else haven’t you told me?’ he said, talking right over her. ‘What else don’t I know?’
‘You know everything now,’ she said wretchedly. ‘You’re the only one who does. No one else. I told no one else.’
‘Couldn’t your parents have helped?’ he demanded. ‘I know
they didn’t have much money, but—’
‘They didn’t know either.’
He stared at her blankly.
‘They didn’t know? But—’
‘Tom, you know what my parents were like,’ she cried. ‘My dad—he was a kind man, a generous man, but he disapproved of me even going out with you. He would have said I’d made my bed, and I had to lie in it, and my mum…She would have wanted to help, but this was twenty years ago, and her first thought would have been, What will the neighbours say?’
‘So, you kept this from them,’ he said, ‘just as you kept it from me.’
‘And I paid for it, Tom,’she said, her voice thick with unshed tears. ‘Because I couldn’t tell them, because they never knew they could have been grandparents, it got harder and harder for me to face them so I visited them less and less, so I lost my parents, too. I didn’t just lose my baby, I lost my parents, too.’
‘But you didn’t have to,’ he protested. ‘Even twenty years ago, women had babies without being married, without their parents’ approval.’
‘Tom, I’d only just qualified as a nurse, and you know what the wages were like back then,’ she said, willing him to understand. ‘I thought of adoption, but what was I going to live on while I was pregnant, unable to work? I was twenty-two, Tom, and I was scared witless. I couldn’t see any other way out.’
‘If you didn’t want it—’
‘Don’t…don’t you
dare
say that to me,’ she said, her voice breaking on a sob. ‘Don’t you
dare
say I didn’t want my baby. I would have given anything to have kept that baby.’
‘Except given birth to it.’
‘I
loved
you, Tom,’ she replied, feeling her heart splinter with absolute loneliness at the coldness in his voice. ‘I loved you back in school even when you and your friends used to shout “Starchy Dwyer” after me in the corridor. And when I discovered I was pregnant, knew there was a part of you growing inside me, I wanted to keep your baby so badly, but I couldn’t—I
couldn’t
.’
‘So you just…you just…’
‘Took the easy way out,’ she finished for him. ‘That’s what you’re accusing me of, isn’t it, taking the easy way out?’
‘Perhaps not the easy way out,’ he muttered, hot colour darkening his cheeks. ‘Maybe that was the wrong thing to say.’
‘You want to know how easy it is to have an abortion, Tom?’ she said, her voice every bit as hard as his now. ‘Then maybe I should tell you. Maybe I should tell you
exactly
how easy it is to have an abortion.’
‘I know what the procedure involves,’ he said, turning his back on her, and she came after him, and grabbed his arm.
‘Maybe you do—medically,’ she said, forcing him round to face her. ‘But you don’t know what it’s like emotionally. You don’t know what it’s like to sit in a waiting room full of women where nobody makes eye contact, and nobody talks, because you all know why you’re there, and you’re all locked inside your own private little hell.’