The Price of His Redemption

In the tiny loo she flicked on the light and read the instructions. In three minutes she’d find out, if her shaking hand could just hold the stick steady. She kicked off her panties and did the deed and then stepped out.

She couldn’t watch.

Instead, she headed to the dark studio and paced but, really, it wasn’t the result that had her heart in her mouth and her nerves in shreds, it was being in love with a consummate bastard. It was the next forty or fifty years, or however long she had left on this planet, to get through without him.

Oh, but she would, she vowed.

And she’d listen to Rachel and have acting lessons if she had to just so she could address him airily if the need arose.

‘Yes, it’s your baby but not your problem...’ She would practise those words till she could look him in the eye and say them, she would...

And then she had the most horrible vision of arriving in Reception with his screaming baby and being pointed in the direction of a creche...a creche filled to the brim with dark-haired, dark-eyed babies and all the other harried mothers who’d succumbed to that devilish charm.

And yet, despite visions and fears, there was want there, too, for that little pink cross and a baby that was his, for a piece of him she could keep, because he had her heart. From the moment she’d walked into his office she might as well have tied up her heart in a pink satin bow and placed it on his desk.

A baby was the only gift he’d ever give, Libby thought.

She’d had to practically beg for flowers.

And then she heard him.

Or rather she heard the purr of his car and the pull of the handbrake, and just as Daniil had been disconcerted to recognise her legs on a business card, that she knew the sound of his car and the way he slammed the door just about brought her to her knees.

Her heart recognised his footsteps and so did her body because it wanted to run to the door and fling it open and leap to him.

Instead, she sat on the floor, curled into the wall, and hugged her knees not just so that he would not see her—more so that she would not succumb, so she would not give in and hit the snooze button on warning thoughts just for ten more minutes with him.

He was the diet that started tomorrow.

The hope that refused to die.

‘Libby.’

His voice was low and rich and annoyingly calm.

Bored even?

‘I know you’re in there.’

He opened the letterbox and started to speak and she put her fingers in her ears so as not to hear that chocolaty voice that lowered her guard and could make her believe she was mad not to give them a try.

‘I know that you’re there,’ he said through the opening. ‘I can see you in the mirror.’

‘We’re closed!’ Libby shouted. ‘Go away.’

‘If you don’t want to talk, fine, you can listen. I’m sorry for what happened back there. It was never my intention to ignore you—’

‘It just comes naturally to you, does it? Did it give you a kick?’ she shouted, forgetting that she was supposed to be ignoring him now. ‘Were you hoping for a threesome?’

‘For God’s sake—’ Daniil didn’t sound so calm now ‘—open this door.’

‘No,’ she shouted. ‘I just want you gone. Tonight was a huge mistake—I didn’t even want to go to the ballet. I knew how much seeing Firebird was going to hurt but that you’d do that to me, that you’d take me backstage and introduce me to one of your ex-lovers. Have you any idea how much it hurt, how badly I wanted...?’ She could barely get the words out. ‘Everything that happened to her tonight I dreamed of for myself and you can call me childish and selfish, I don’t care. Tonight hurt, but what you just put me through doesn’t even compare...’

Daniil closed his eyes. It had never entered his head that she might not be ready to go to the ballet.

Not for a moment.

Now, though, he could see how hard tonight would have been.

‘We’re not lovers,’ he said. ‘We never have been.’

‘Liar!’

‘I mean it,’ he said. ‘I knew Anya from the orphanage where I was raised. You know I left there when I was twelve.’

She was so about to be glib, about to ask if that was how they’d all kept warm or passed the time, but decided against it.

‘Open the door, Libby.’

‘No,’ she said, though she did move over to the letterbox. ‘I know what I saw, Daniil. She ran to you like...’

Just like I would, she thought.