Page 92 of A Good Heart is Hard to Find
‘Has she? But then, she might be as firmly underthe Max influence as I once was,’ I said, and Gerald looked baffled. ‘How do you know all this?’
‘I’ve an old friend on the campus out there, and he’s been emailing me,’ Gerald explained. ‘According to the latest story going round, Rosemary found out about the affair and told Kyra to get out, and Kyra said she was pregnant by Max and he was going to leave Rosemary.’
‘Pregnant?’ I felt a coldclutch at the pit of my stomach. ‘She’s pregnant by Max?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, looking concerned. ‘I probably shouldn’t have told youthat, either!’
‘Yes, you should – go on,’ I urged him.
‘She miscarried, which is when she confessed to pushing Rosemary over the edge. Apparently Rosemary laughed at the thought of Max leaving her, and Kyra snapped.’
Over the edge in more ways than one … whichwas where I felt I was heading, too. Strangely, what was hurting most was that Max, who’d always been so fanatically careful that I shouldn’t get pregnant, had been so carried away with another woman that he was careless.
‘The university has asked him to cut his year short,’ Gerald said. ‘You could see him back before long if the police give him permission to go. Probably have to return for thetrial, though.’
‘I expect he will,’ I agreed numbly. ‘And he’s still guilty of Rosemary’s death to some extent, isn’t he? Because if he hadn’t had an affair with Kyra she wouldn’t have had that argument.’
And no wonder I’d read guilt in his mind, because not only had he been unfaithful both to Rosemary and me, he must have had a suspicion Kyra’d done something, too. Yet he’d clearly consideredhis fling with Kyra as just that, and expected to return to me as if it hadn’t happened!
‘Are you all right, Cass?’ Gerald asked anxiously. ‘I know it must have come as a big shock, but I thought it was better to tell you everything. I just wish Jane was still here with you.’
I shuddered. ‘I’mnot. But I am glad you told me. Could you – there’s a bottle of Laphroaig under the kitchen sink?’
‘Laphroaig?’
‘Yes, I seem to have developed a taste for it. Could you pour me a glass, do you think?’
He did, and we sat and silently sipped good whisky with bad thoughts, until after a while Gerald downed the last of his very moderate tot and drove off, not without some reluctance and an offer to spend the night, which was kind but ill-considered.
Jane would not have approved in the least,and Mrs Bridges would have counted him in and be waiting to count him out.
I certainly felt as ifI’dbeen counted out.
Floored.
Phoned the number for Max that Jane got for me, but there was only an answering machine. I told it to tell Max I knew everything and it was all over between us, and not to contact me again, which was perhaps the coward’s way out.
I should have done it long, longago.
Then I relayed everything to Jason and Orla at the pub in order to have my wounds washed clean with sympathy, although by then they were already pretty well rinsed with whisky.
Somehow I seemed to have lost my usual healthy appetite for food.
I think it was Kyra getting pregnant by Max that did it: the final curtain on a long-running and sorry bedroom farce.
After that I might have slidinto the deep, dark pit ofdepression, but fortunately inspiration for a new novel dropped on me from a great height on my way home from the pub. As soon as I got back I started a new book of a Frankenstein persuasion, about a doctor heroine who is mining a Max-like character for spare parts.
The working title isA Good Heart Is Hard to Find.
