Page 50 of The Christmas Retreat
He stopped and I did too, then turned to look up at him. I could just make out his craggy face and the way he was running his hand through his dark hair, which seemed to be a habit with him when disturbed about something. His bronze crown of oak leaves was askew.
‘I wanted to tell you about that right away. I would have done at the party, before I asked you for your phone number, if we’d had time,’ he said. ‘The marriage wasn’t a great success and we’d become estranged after a final attempt at a reconciliation earlier that year, and filed for divorce.’
He sighed deeply. ‘But then, when I got back to my flat after the party that night, there she was, waiting for me …’
‘And you thought you’d give it another go,’ I said helpfully. ‘You really don’t have to explain anything. Once I’d realized you weren’t going to call me and I googled you, I found you were married to Annie Ashwin, who was not only a talented artist but stunningly lovely.’
‘She didn’t look lovely that night. She was upset and very angry … and very drunk,’ he said. ‘She’d just found out she was pregnant – and so far along they wouldn’t let her have an abortion. She told me she’d done everything she could to try and get rid of the baby and nothing had worked.’
This was the last thing I expected him to say, so it was a few moments before I said, ‘It was …yourbaby?’
‘So she said, from our reconciliation earlier that year, although what led to our final – as I thought – estrangement was finding out she’d never totally dropped the man she was living with before we first met. And come to think of it, I have Verity to thank for that bit of information, too. She“accidentally” let it drop that Annie hadn’t been sharing a flat with her in London, but living with this old boyfriend.’
‘So she wanted to get back with you?’ I suggested.
‘I don’t think she knew what she wanted by that stage, except not a baby. She’d always been upfront about not wanting children, although at the start of our marriage I’d hoped she would change her mind.’
‘But the baby might be this other man’s?’ I ventured.
‘Yes, but he was in a band and touring the US at the time, and when she contacted him he just told her to get rid of it: he’d never wanted kids, especially one that might not even be his.’
‘That’s horrible!’ I exclaimed. ‘And the poor baby! I mean, it wasn’t the baby’s fault.’
‘That’s what I thought. But when she’d calmed down a bit, and I’d had a chance to think about it, I managed to persuade her to give our marriage another go and come back to Triskelion with me to have the baby. I’d moved back here by this point. I thought, once the baby arrived and she’d seen it, she’d feel very differently about it. But it didn’t work out that way and she couldn’t wait to get back to London again after the birth.’
‘And the baby was Cariad?’
‘Yes. The one good thing to come out of the whole sorry affair is my little girl – and sheismine, whether I’m really her father or not.’
‘Of course you are,’ I said positively. ‘She doesn’t look in the least like you, but last night I was struck straight away by how much she resembles you in expression.’
‘Really? Nerys said when she was born that she looked just like me,’ he said, ‘but I couldn’t see it and she’s struck out on a path of her own in the looks department ever since.’
‘Cariad did tell me this afternoon that you and Annie had been divorced for years and she hadn’t seen much of her mother.’
‘No, I tried to keep some connection between them, for Cariad’s sake. I’d take Cariad up to London from time to time to see her, but the only time I let her take Cariad alone for the day, they went back to her flat and Cariad saw her boyfriend taking drugs. Luckily she was too young to understand what was going on. After that, there was no contact before Annie died.’
‘It’s a very sad story,’ I said. ‘Annie was both beautiful and a very talented sculptor, and her life was cut so short.’
I wondered whether I should tell Rhys of my personal involvement in Annie’s final moments, when the Fates had again pulled the web together in the strangest pattern. Somehow then didn’t seem the right moment.
And while I might now understand why he had never rung me after our first meeting, part of me still thought he ought to have done, to explain what had happened, however unreasonable that might be.
‘I’m glad I told you,’ he said. ‘I haven’t really said all that to anyone else, not even Nerys and Timon. Now I hope you and I can start all over again and put this behind us.’
‘Of course. I mean, there’s no reason why we can’t befriends,’ I said firmly.
‘Good,’ he said, his voice warm. ‘You know, there’s something about you that really made me want to tell you the whole truth and not wrap it up at all.’
‘Evie says people confide in me, although I can’t see why anyone should. But if you’ve been bottling it all up, it’s probably better to tell it to a stranger.’
‘I wouldn’t call you astranger,’ he said and then added to my surprise: ‘I don’t suppose you’re an early morning person like me – that is, when I haven’t got jet lag?’
‘Yes, I like to work early in the morning, and in summer I often take a walk before breakfast, too.’
‘Then, to show you’ve really forgiven me, meet me in the garden hall at seven tomorrow and we’ll walk up to the wood to get the mistletoe for the house.’
‘Well, I … OK,’ I said, unable on the spur of the moment to think of a way of refusing, then gave a great shuddering shiver, realising how cold I’d got, standing there.
