Angel of Darkness

‘Congratulations would be premature,’ Angelo delivered lazily.

‘Kelda!’ Her mother exclaimed reproachfully.

‘It’s my decision.’ Embarrassed as she was, Kelda was still strong enough not to be browbeaten by opinion into a corner.

‘I want to talk to Kelda alone,’ Daisy asserted sharply.

‘I don’t think that would be a good idea,’ Angelo intervened on her behalf, startling her.

The visit was short and sweet. Daisy, whose quiet temperament was only rarely stirred to anger, waited until Angelo had walked out of the door with his father before darting back and positively hissing, ‘In my day, you married a man you couldn’t keep your hands off...at least if you were lucky enough to be free! You’re cutting off your nose to spite your face. I’m sorry but I have to say it. If I don’t, who else will?’

‘Me?’

Kelda jerked and her mother spun in dismay. Angelo cast them both a slow, splintering smile that did something utterly unforgivable to Kelda’s already shaken composure. Daisy reddened and went into retreat.

Angelo studied Kelda from the foot of the bed. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘There’s no point. I don’t want you visiting me.’

When the door closed behind him, she felt incredibly, childishly lonely. She lay back and the baby chose that moment to kick and squirm. She smoothed a possessive and tender hand over her stomach. It was so stupid to love Angelo! If it had been within her power, she would have torn that love out brutally by the roots. She had tried to do that in recent months, had thought she was on the road to recovery...had learnt her mistake all over again.

Angelo was ruthlessly set on building bridges to pave the bridal path, but she couldn’t marry him. He didn’t seem to realise that no woman with any pride wanted to be married solely because an unplanned baby was on the way. Times had changed since her mother’s day. Women didn’t have to be forced into marriage to save their reputations any more.

Tomaso had undoubtedly made Angelo feel that he had to marry her. That was so degrading. She didn’t need that pressure. She resented Angelo for giving way to such old-fashioned attitudes but, dismayingly, she suddenly realised that she would resent him even more if he ever chose to marry anyone else. And that was far from a logical attitude considering that she was not prepared to marry him herself.

She found her thoughts returning several times over to something that her mother had said. One of those careless statements which people made in temper without realising how much they were revealing. Daisy had said that in her day you married a man you couldn’t keep your hands off...at least if you were lucky enough to be free!

There had been a bitter edge to that assurance. Kelda was shaken when she realised what she had found so disturbing about those words. They were her mother’s acknowledgement that once she had been attracted to someone while she was married. Or had they been an acknowledgement of something more than mere attraction? Kelda frowned, angry with herself for thinking in such a way of her own mother. Her mother had adored her father, absolutely adored him, she reminded herself.

Angelo arrived the next day with magazines, books and two boxed sets of nightwear. ‘You have no right to buy me that sort of stuff,’ she objected.

‘Relax...Harrods maternity department inspired me with no improper thoughts.’

‘Maternity department?’

‘I hate to tell you this, but you wouldn’t make it into anything that didn’t come from that department.’

She saw the size on the uppermost box and almost choked on her chagrin. It would have fitted an elephant, never mind a pregnant size eight. Her bottom lip wobbled. Her throat tightened. She studied her stomach with loathing and burst into floods of tears. ‘Go away and leave me alone!’ she sobbed.

‘What did I say?’ Angelo endeavoured to put his arms round her but she pulled away.

‘Nothing!’

He got a nurse. The nurse came in to soothe, couldn’t resist trying to interest her in the contents of the boxes and lifted out the enormous négligé set. ‘Is this for you?’ she demanded in a choked voice and went off into gales of laughter. ‘Didn’t anyone tell him that you buy the same size in maternity wear as you wore before you expanded?’

Kelda sat up and blew her nose. ‘It would fit an elephant.’

‘It would fit two elephants!’ She called in two of the other nurses. Kelda’s bed was swiftly surrounded by giggling women, bonded by the joy of sheer male ignorance. Kelda began laughing so hard it hurt. She was picturing Angelo in the maternity department, Angelo, who was quite incapable of acknowledging ignorance in any form.

Daisy offered to change them that afternoon. Kelda thought Angelo might visit her again in the evening. He didn’t. She thought he might phone. He didn’t. Since she had taken the trouble to put on one of the nightdresses, a now correctly sized version courtesy of her mother, she was irritated. She had wanted to share the joke with him. That was all, she told herself, watching the television with flat, disappointed eyes.

She waited for him in the morning. He didn’t show. When Tomaso and Daisy rolled up, she was tempted to ask where he was but she fought the temptation. She didn’t want to risk rousing the suspicion that she cared whether he came to visit or not. She didn’t care. It was just that lying flat on her back with very little exercise was boring and, whatever other faults Angelo had, being boring was not one of them.

She drifted off into a doze at about ten and then a slight sound awakened her. Angelo was poised at the foot of the bed in a dinner jacket and bow-tie. Oddly enough, the sight was like a red rag to a bull. Kelda sat up. ‘Where the hell have you been?’ she demanded fiercely.

‘You missed me...you noticed I wasn’t there?’ Angelo launched a sizzlingly provocative smile at her, dark eyes glinting like polished jet over her angry face.

‘I did not miss you!’