* * *
Grace tossed and turned restively in the bed, tears trickling from below her lowered eyelids. She wanted Leo, she wanted him back so badly, but he had never really belonged to her in the way a real husband would have done and now she needed to learn not to look for him and not to rely on him. She had to accept that this phase of her life was over. There would not be a baby with Leo. He had been so angry when he’d left her and she knew she had provoked him. He had tried to be there for her and she had rejected him, needing him to see that honesty was now the best policy. Their shotgun marriage no longer had a reason to exist and she had recognised that reality long before he did. Wasn’t that better than Leo waking up some day about a year from now and questioning why he was still married to a woman so far removed from his ideal of a wife?
Yet the prospect of life without Leo, life after Leo was unbearable to Grace. She couldn’t sleep and it was mid-morning before she was taken to be scanned. This time the scanner was a bigger, more complex machine and the doctor was present. Grace lay still, all hope of good news crushed by a wretched sleepless night and an irredeemable tendency to expect only bad things to happen to her. So, when the doctor urged her in heavily accented English to look at the screen, she was reluctant and glanced up, startled to see that the small medical team surrounding her were all smiling.
And they showed her baby’s heartbeat and switched on the sound so that she could listen to that racing beat that quickened her own. An intense sense of joyous relief filled her with a wash of powerful emotion and tears flooded her eyes. ‘I was so sure I’d lost my baby...’
The obstetrician sat down by her side to enumerate the various reasons why bleeding could occur in early pregnancy, pointing out that her blood loss had already stopped and that her baby’s heartbeat was strong and regular.
The minute she got back to her room, Grace snatched up her phone to text Leo, but what on earth was she to say to him? What an idiot she had been! Panicking and distraught at the conviction she had lost their baby, she had flung their marriage on the bonfire of her hopes as well. It would be her own fault if Leo received the news that he was still going to be a father with a new sense of regret because she had blown their relationship apart with all her foolish talk about wanting love. She laboured long over the text she sent him, apologising profusely for the way she had behaved and the things she had said before sharing the fact that she was still pregnant. She was a little surprised that there was no immediate response and rather more disconcerted when a nurse came to tell her that a car had arrived to collect her and she was wheeled out expecting to see Leo and instead saw only his driver and two of his bodyguards. Had she expected Leo to rush hotfoot to the hospital to greet her?
Perhaps that had been a little unrealistic after what she had slung at him the evening before, she conceded wretchedly. She sent him another text, hoping to elicit a response, but it was not until the evening that Leo phoned her and the conversation they shared was brief and stilted. He asked how she was, made no reference to the baby or their marriage and told her that he was in London on business and that he would be away for about a week.
‘When you get back, I suppose we’ll talk,’ Grace said uncomfortably, disappointed that he hadn’t once mentioned the baby.
‘Great...won’t that be something to look forward to?’ Leo derided, silencing her altogether.
Had Leo ignored her text because he had decided that there was a lot of truth in what she had said at the hospital? Had he reached the conclusion that the fact they were going to be parents wasn’t a good enough reason to stay married to a woman who wasn’t his ideal? Was that why he had made no comment? And was the divorce she had suggested what he would be discussing when he reappeared?
Five days later, Grace sat out on the terrace below the twining vines that were slowly colouring to autumnal shades and dropping their leaves. She had thrown up before she made it down to breakfast and her breasts were painfully sensitive. It was as if every possible side effect of pregnancy was suddenly kicking in all at once. She had gone for her blood tests with Dr Silvano and he had reassured her that the results were normal.