‘People are busy.’
‘I know that.’
‘I heard you speaking to that paramedic,’ Jed admitted, and he watched as she closed her eyes. ‘Jasmine, did something happen at your old job?’
‘No,’ she broke in. ‘Jed, please …’ And then she started to cry. ‘I found out that my husband was stealing from patients.’ It was so awful to say it, to admit to it. She’d made it so huge in her mind that she half expected him to stand up and walk out, but of course he didn’t. Instead, he took both her hands.
‘Come on.’ He was very kind and very firm but he wasn’t going to leave it. ‘Tell me what happened.’
‘I don’t know where to start,’ she said. ‘There was an unconscious patient apparently and there was a lot of money missing.’ She knew she wasn’t making much sense, so she just told him everything.
‘Lloyd,’ Jasmine said. ‘Simon’s father, he was a paramedic. We really got on, but then everyone did with Lloyd. He was very popular. We went out for about three months and—’ she couldn’t really look at that time properly ‘—I thought everything was fantastic at first,’ she admitted. ‘But I know now that it wasn’t because I was being lied to even then. I didn’t know but there had been a report put in about him.’
‘You can’t know if someone doesn’t tell you,’ Jed pointed out.
‘I know that, but it wasn’t just that he didn’t tell me.’ She took a deep breath, because if she was going to tell him some of it, then she had better tell him all. ‘Remember I told you that I can’t take the Pill?’ She blushed as she had the first time she’d told him. ‘Well, we were careless.’ She went really red then, not with embarrassment, more with anger. ‘Actually, no, we weren’t. I know it takes two, but I think he was the one who was careless.’
‘Jasmine.’ Jed was completely honest. ‘I nearly forgot our first time.’
‘I know,’ she admitted. ‘But even if you had, I’ve got a coil now, so it wouldn’t matter. It was more that I didn’t forget.’ She looked at Jed, she knew how they had lost it in bed together, but she never had till him. ‘I reminded him, I tried to stop him. I don’t know, I can’t prove that, but there was an accident, and I found I was pregnant and not sure I wanted to be. I was just so confused and yet he was delighted. He insisted we get married and and then we took three months off to see Australia. As he said, to have loads of fun before the baby. I had lots of annual leave saved up.’
She couldn’t even look at Jed as she went on. ‘What Lloyd hadn’t told me was that he was under investigation for stealing from a patient. It was all kept confidential so not even his colleagues knew, but another patient had come forward with a complaint and they’d placed Lloyd on three months’ paid suspension. We were swanning around Australia and I had no idea.’
‘When did he tell you?’
‘He didn’t,’ Jasmine admitted. ‘I went back to work. I was coming up for six months pregnant by then and he told me that he had another month off and then he started to talk about how, given I love my work, why didn’t we think about him staying home to look after the baby? Every word that man said to me was a lie.’ She could feel her anger rising as it did whenever she thought about him and wondered, as she often did, if he’d got her pregnant deliberately.
‘So how did you find out?’
‘The other paramedics were a bit cool with me,’ Jasmine admitted. ‘They’re a pretty honourable lot, they don’t take kindly to what Lloyd did and there was I, chatting with them like I used to, about our holiday, about things, and then one of my friends pulled me aside and said it might be better if I didn’t rub things in.’ She started to cry. ‘She said it was fine if I could accept what he’d done, but it was a bit much for them to hear about us having fun with his suspension pay. He’d been fired by then and I didn’t even know.’
‘Oh, Jasmine.’
‘He said that as his wife I should have supported him, but the fact is I wouldn’t have married him had I known.’ She looked at Jed. ‘I wouldn’t have. I’m not saying someone has to be perfect, I’m not saying you don’t stick together through bad times, but I didn’t even know that he was in the middle of bad times when we got married, when he made sure I was pregnant.’ She was really crying now. ‘I moved out and kept working right till the end of my pregnancy, but it was awful. I think my friends believed I had nothing to do with it, that I hadn’t had a clue …’
‘Of course they did.’
‘No.’ Jasmine shook her head. ‘Not all of them—there was loads of gossip. It was just awful at the time.
‘I see some of the paramedics now and we’re starting to be friendly again,’ she continued. ‘I think they really do understand now that I simply didn’t know. I’m just trying to get on with my life.’
‘Do you speak to him at all?’
‘Nothing,’ Jasmine said. ‘He came and saw Simon a couple of times when we were in the hospital, but there’s been nothing since then. He’s got a new girlfriend and so much for being a stay-home dad—he doesn’t even have a thing to do with his son. He’s working in the family business, they’re all supporting him, as families do, and making sure it looks like he earns a dollar a week, so I don’t get anything.’
‘You can fight that.’
‘I could, but I don’t want to,’ Jasmine said. ‘I don’t want any of his grubby money. I stayed close by for a year because, at the end of the day, I figured that he is Simon’s dad and I should make it as easy for him as possible to have access to his son. But when he wanted nothing to do with him …’ She was a little more honest than she’d expected to be. ‘I was embarrassed to go back to work too. He just completely upended my life.’
And Jed got that, he got that so much, how one person could just walk into your life and shatter it, could make a normal world suddenly crazy, and he could have told her then, but Jed knew that now wasn’t the time.
‘And I’m the one left holding the baby.’ She was the most honest she had been with another person. ‘And I know if it hadn’t happened then I wouldn’t have Simon and I love him more than anything so I can’t wish it had never happened, except sometimes I do.’
Of course she heard Simon crying then, just to ram home the guilt of her words.
‘I need to go and settle him.’
‘Sure.’
Simon didn’t want settling, Simon wanted a drink and a play and a conversation.
‘He’s not going to settle.’ She came back into the living room a good twenty minutes later.
‘Do you want me to leave?’
‘No,’ Jasmine said. ‘But I’m going to have to bring him in here.’
‘Are you sure?’ Jed checked.
‘It’s no big deal,’ Jasmine said.
Except they both knew that it was. Jed hadn’t seen Simon since that day on the beach when he’d helped get him into the water.
And Jed really didn’t want to leave her.
Simon was delighted with the late night visitor, chatting away to him for as long as he could till his eyes were heavy and Jasmine put him back to bed.
‘Cute,’ Jed said. ‘He looks like you—apart from the blond hair. Is his dad blond?’
‘No,’ Jasmine replied. Simon was a mini, male Penny.
‘Have you told Lisa what happened?’
Jasmine