‘Well, OK.’ She felt her cheeks redden. ‘It’s entirely possible that the sex had something to do with it—maybe—just a little.’ She watched while he put his glass down, sensing that he was deciding exactly what to tell her. ‘I wish I could be more like you. I mean, I can see you carefully planning what to say and I just can’t do that! I have all these plans to keep my thoughts to myself and then they sort of tumble out of my mouth.’
‘I’d noticed.’ He smiled at her and lifted the bottle of
champagne but she shook her head.
‘I’m already tired. If you give me any more I won’t wake up until January.’ She hesitated. ‘You don’t trust me enough to tell me, do you?’
‘It isn’t about trust,’ Patrick said evenly. ‘It’s more about not wanting to relive it, if I’m honest. You already know some of it. You know that my wife—ex-wife—left on Christmas Eve two years ago.’
‘Yes.’ But she didn’t know why. And she wanted to know why. ‘The poor children. And poor you, of course,’ she added quickly, but he shook his head.
‘No. Your first reaction was the right one. I’m a grown-up, I can look after myself, but Alfie and Posy…’ After a moment’s hesitation, he topped up his own champagne glass, watching as the bubbles rose to the surface. ‘If Carly had cared more about their feelings, she might have handled the situation differently. But she didn’t. She was angry with me and she didn’t care that they suffered.’
‘Why was she angry?’
‘Because I wasn’t who she wanted me to be.’ Patrick’s tone was devoid of emotion, his eyes strangely blank. ‘She thought she’d married a high-flying obstetrician. When I was made a consultant her words were, “Now I’ve made it.” At the time I thought she’d made a mistake and what she’d meant to say was, “Now you’ve made it.” But, no, she really did mean that. For her it was all about social status. She pictured herself walking into smart dinner parties with me—the problem is that obstetricians are probably the most unreliable guests on anyone’s list.’
‘You were always working.’
‘Of course. In fact, you could say that there was an inverse correlation between the growth of my career and the decline of my marriage. The more successful I was, the busier I became. I started to see patients from all over the country and because some of the work was challenging, I couldn’t always delegate.’ Patrick gave a humourless laugh. ‘In business, inappropriate delegation leads to lost revenue—in obstetrics it’s a dead baby or a dead mother. And that’s a no-brainer as far as I’m concerned.’
‘Couldn’t she understand that?’
‘Carly wasn’t interested in my work—just in the concept of being married to a successful consultant. But there’s not much point in being married to a successful consultant if he’s so busy working he can’t take you anywhere. She was bored.’
‘She had the children.’
Patrick gave a cynical smile. ‘As I said, she was bored.’
‘Did she have a career of her own?’
‘When I met her she was working as a secretary to my colleague—I was a registrar. She didn’t want a career. She wanted a successful husband.’
‘You fell in love with her?’
‘Honestly?’ Patrick put his empty glass down. ‘No. That wasn’t what happened. I thought she was pretty. I asked her out a few times—’
Hayley gave a soft gasp of understanding. ‘Oh, no, she became pregnant—and you married her.’
His blue eyes narrowed. ‘Astute, aren’t you?’
‘Not particularly—but it explains why your first thought when you saw me on your doorstep was that I must be pregnant.’ She stared down at the bubbles in the bath, absorbing that new information. ‘No wonder. No wonder you thought that.’
‘The crazy thing was Carly and I didn’t even really have a relationship—not a proper one. I’d taken her out to dinner twice and on that last occasion she invited me in for coffee.’ Patrick dragged his hand over the back of his neck and shrugged. ‘She told me she was taking the Pill and on that one occasion I wasn’t careful—’
Hayley remembered how he’d always used condoms with her. Always been careful. ‘So you married her.’
‘And we were happy enough, or so I thought.’ Patrick shrugged. ‘She wanted a big house—I gave her a big house; when she said Alfie was hard work, I paid for her to have help. I did my best to turn up at dinner parties, although I confess I rarely managed to stay through three courses. There were lots of occasions when I worked through the night—you know what it’s like. But we muddled through—and then we had Posy.’ He closed his eyes briefly. ‘It went downhill from there.’
‘Why?’
‘Because Carly nearly died in childbirth,’ he said hoarsely, ‘and she blamed me. I think her exact words were, “You save every other bloody woman but you’re going to let me go because I’m not good enough for you.”’
Hayley winced. ‘What happened?’
‘I don’t know,’ Patrick said wearily. ‘I wasn’t doing the delivery for obvious reasons—we were having a nightmare in the department, staff off sick, too many difficult deliveries in one night. Carly was in labour, but everything was fine—routine. And then there was a real emergency and I had no choice but to leave Carly and perform an emergency section on this lady. And I was only just in time—we would have lost that baby if I hadn’t operated when I did. But while I was gone Carly started to bleed heavily.’
‘Oh, Patrick…’