Just One Last Night

That evening was to set the pattern for the next few weeks, but the morning after her first visit to Miriam she attended the local hospital for her first scan. It was a bittersweet day. She remembered how she and Forde had come together for Matthew’s first scan, excited and thrilled as they had waited to see the baby on the monitor, and slightly apprehensive in case everything wasn’t as it should be.

This time she sat alone in the waiting area, which was smaller than the one in the hospital in London—her own choice, she reminded herself as she watched the couple in front of her come out of the room where the scan took place wrapped in each other’s arms and smiling.

Once she was lying on the bed it was more of a repeat of the time before. The lady taking the scan was smiling; all was well, heartbeat strong, baby developing as it should be and no concerns.

She left the hospital clutching two pictures of the child in her womb and with tears of relief and thankfulness streaming down her face.

Once she was sitting in the truck in the hospital car park she took a few minutes to compose herself before phoning Forde on his mobile. He answered immediately. ‘Nell? What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing’s wrong. I’ve been to the hospital for the first scan and everything’s fine with the baby. I just wanted you to know. I’ve a picture for you. I’ll leave it with Isabelle.’

It was a moment before he spoke and his voice was gruff. ‘Thank God. And I mean that, thank God. They can’t tell if it’s a boy or a girl at this stage, can they?’

‘No. That’s at twenty weeks. Do you want to know?’ They hadn’t found out with Matthew.

‘I don’t know. Do you?’

‘I’m not sure. I’ll ring you near the time and discuss it then. I have to go to work now. Goodbye, Forde.’

His voice was husky when he said, ‘Goodbye, Nell.’

It took her another ten minutes to dry her eyes and compose herself again before she could start the truck and drive out of the hospital confines, but by the time she got to Isabelle’s house she was in command of herself.

Isabelle insisted on giving her a hot drink before she joined James in the garden, and her mother-in-law was entranced with the picture of her future grandchild. ‘Do you mind if I take a copy of it for myself before I pass this on to Forde tonight?’ Isabelle asked as they finished their hot cho

colate and custard creams at the kitchen table. ‘He’s calling in later for dinner. I don’t suppose you’d like to stay too?’

Melanie shook her head. ‘I’m going to see Miriam again.’ She had thought it only right to tell her mother-in-law what she was doing yesterday and now she was glad she had. It was the perfect excuse and had the added bonus of being the truth.

‘Is it being nosy if I ask you how it went?’ Isabelle said gently.

‘Of course not.’ Melanie shrugged. ‘But I can’t give you much of an answer because I’m not sure myself. It was… traumatic, I suppose.’

‘But helpful?’

Melanie shrugged again. ‘I don’t know, Isabelle. I guess time will tell.’ She drank the last of her hot chocolate and stood up. ‘I’d better go and help James with the planting.’

Once outside, she lifted her face to the silver-grey sky. Helpful. How could anything so painful be helpful? She wasn’t looking forward to the next weeks.

November turned into December amid biting white frosts and brilliantly cold days, but she and James managed to complete the work at Isabelle’s by the end of the first week of December.

And Forde kept his word. He didn’t come to the cottage and he didn’t call her. In fact he could have fallen off the edge of the world and she’d be none the wiser, Melanie thought to herself irritably more than once, before taking herself to task for her inconsistency.

Pride had forbidden her to mention him to Isabelle while she had still been working at her mother-in-law’s house. It seemed the height of hypocrisy to do so anyway after she had left him and was still refusing to go back. What could she say? Was he well? Was he happy? And after that time when Isabelle had asked her to stay for dinner on the day of the scan, her mother-in-law had talked about everything under the sun except Forde. Which wasn’t like Isabelle and led Melanie to suspect her mother-in-law was obeying orders from her son.

She could be wrong, of course, maybe she was being paranoid, but, whatever, she couldn’t complain.

But she missed him. Terribly. It had been bad enough when she had first left him in the early part of the year, but then she had been reconciled to the fact her marriage was over. She had thrown herself into making her business work and finding herself a home, and, although that hadn’t compensated for not having him around, it had occupied her mind some of the time. Furnishing the cottage, turning her tiny courtyard garden into a small oasis, making sure any professional work she did was done to the best of her ability and drumming up business had all played its part in dulling her mind against the pain.

But now …

Since he had muscled his way into her life again that night in August he’d reopened a door she was powerless to shut. He’d penetrated her mind—and her body, she thought wryly, her hand going to the swell of her belly.

And in spite of herself she wanted to see him, the more so as the sessions with Miriam progressed.

She was finding herself in a strange place emotionally as her deepest fears and anxieties stemming from her troubled childhood and even more troubled teens were unearthed. She had to come to terms with the truth that she’d buried the fact she’d always felt worthless and unloved behind the capable, controlled façade she presented to the world. And as time had gone on something had begun to happen to the solid ball of pain and fear and sorrow lodged in her heart. It had begun to slowly disintegrate, and, though the process wasn’t without its own anguish and grief, it was cleansing.

Gradually, very gradually she was beginning to accept the concept that her confusion and despair as a child had coloured her view of herself. She hadn’t been responsible for her parents’ death or that of her grandmother, or her friend’s tragic accident either. None of that had been her fault.