She answered him with a smile, then felt her curiosity rise. No. She wouldn’t go there…
‘What happened, Harry?’ she asked softly, despite her best intentions.
His smile faded, and for a moment she didn’t think he was going to answer, but then he started to speak, his voice soft and a little roughened by emotion. ‘I found her—Carmen—sitting by the side of the road, begging. Every day I walked past her on my way from the hotel and gave her money. Then after four days she wasn’t there. The next time I saw her, she’d been beaten up. Her mouth was split, one eye was swollen shut and the other one was dull with pain and despair. She wasn’t expecting anything—a few coins, perhaps, nothing more—but I took her to a café and bought her breakfast, and talked to her. And it was only then that I realised she was pregnant.’
Emily clicked her tongue in sympathy. ‘Poor girl.’
He nodded. ‘She’d been raped, she told me. She didn’t know the father of her child, it could have been any one of several men—soldiers. She’d didn’t know which side they were on. It didn’t really matter. She was a gypsy. They aren’t highly regarded in Eastern European countries—liars, thieves, lazy—you name it. And two nights before she’d been raped and beaten again. But she was just a girl, Emily, and she was terrified, and she’d lost her entire family.’
‘So you took her under your wing,’ she said, knowing that he would have done so, because he’d always been like that.
He gave a tiny hollow laugh. ‘In a manner of speaking. I moved her into my hotel room, fed her, got a doctor for her, and while I was in the shower she stole my wallet and ran away. So I tracked her down and asked her why. Eventually she told me she was waiting for me to rape her.’
Emily asked again. ‘So what did you do?’
‘I married her,’ he said quietly. ‘To keep her safe. Ironic, really. I brought her home to London and installed her in my flat. I gave her an allowance, paid all the bills and saw her whenever I could. And gradually she learnt to trust me, but she was lonely. Then she started going out and meeting up with people from her country and she was much happier. She was learning English, too, at evening classes, and starting to make friends.’
He fell silent, and she waited, watching him, knowing he would carry on when he’d found the words.
‘She was mugged. She was seven and a half months pregnant and someone mugged her on the way home from college one night. She ran away and crossed the road without looking and was hit by a car. She was taken to hospital, but she had a brain injury, and by the time they got hold of me she was on life support and they were doing brain-stem tests. So much for keeping her safe.’
The horror of it was sickening, and she put her hand over her mouth to hold back the cry. ‘Oh, Harry, I’m so sorry,’ she whispered.
‘Yeah.’ He swallowed. ‘They didn’t know whether to switch off the machine. They’d scanned the baby and it was fine, but they didn’t know how I’d feel. I’d just flown in from an earthquake, I hadn’t slept in days and I was exhausted. I didn’t know what to say. I just knew I couldn’t give up on the baby—not after everything we’d been through. She hadn’t done anything wrong. She hadn’t asked for this, and I’ve seen so many children die, Em, and not been able to do anything about it. And here was one I could do something about. I couldn’t let her go. So I asked them to keep Carmen alive, long enough to give the baby a chance. And last week she ran out of time. Her organs started to fail, and they delivered the baby and turned off the machine. I got there just too late to say goodbye.’
He stared down at the baby on his lap, her mouth slack in sleep, her lashes black crescents against her olive cheeks, and Emily’s vision blurred. She felt the hot splash of tears on her hands, and brushed them away.
‘Harry, I’m so sorry,’ she said again, and he looked up, his eyes haunted, and then looked down again at the precious bundle in his arms.
‘Don’t be. Not for me. I know it’s hell at the moment and I feel such a muppet—I’m not used to being so phenomenally incompetent and out of my depth, but it will get better. I’ll learn, and she’s amazing. So lovely. So much perfection out of so much tragedy and despair. And I’m all she’s got.’
Emily wanted to cry. Wanted to go into a corner somewhere and howl her eyes out for him, and for the baby’s poor young mother, and for little Carmen Grace, orphaned almost before her birth.
‘So that’s us,’ he said, his voice artificially bright. ‘What about you?’
‘Me?’ she said, her eyes still misting. ‘I’m, ah—I’m fine. I’m a garden designer—fitting it in around the children, which can be tricky, but I manage more or less. Get through a lot of midnight oil, but I don’t have to pay for my accommodation at the moment.’
Although if her parents did sell their house, as they were considering doing, that would all change, of course.
‘And their father?’
She gave a tiny grunt of laughter. ‘Not around. He didn’t want me to keep Beth. Freddie was the last straw.’
Harry frowned. ‘So what did he do?’
‘He walked—well, ran, actually. I haven’t seen lightning move so fast. I was four months pregnant.’
‘So he’s been gone—what?’
‘Two years.’
Two difficult, frightening years that she would have struggled to get through without the help of her parents and her friends, but they’d all been wonderful and life now was better than it had ever been.
‘I’m sorry.’
She smiled. ‘Don’t be. Things are good. Hang in there, Harry. It really does get better.’
He looked down at the baby and gave a twisted little smile. ‘I hope so,’ he said wryly. ‘It needs to.’
‘It will,’ she promised, and just hoped that she was right…
CHAPTER TWO
FREDDIE’S CUP landed in her lap, dribbling orange on her, and she absently righted it and brushed away the drips.
Finally she looked back at him. ‘So—aren’t the legal ramifications vast? Nationality and so on?’
He shrugged. ‘Apparently not. I was Carmen’s husband, I’m down on the baby’s birth certificate as her father. That makes her British.’
‘But you’re not. Her father, I mean. Couldn’t that land you in trouble, if they ever found out?’
‘How? Are you going to tell them? Because I’m not. I know it’ll be hell, but I won’t be the first father to bring up a child alone, and I doubt I’ll be the last. And if not me, then who? The legalities are the least of my worries. I owe her this. It’s the least I can do.’
The least he could do? Devoting his life to her? He was either even more amazing than she’d remembered, or utterly deluded.
Probably both. Rash and foolhardy, his grandfather used to say affectionately. But kind. Endlessly kind. He reached for his cup, the baby held against his shoulder by one large, firm hand, but her head lolled a little and his grip tightened and she started to cry again.
‘Let me—just while you drink your tea,’ she said, and reaching out, she lifted the tiny little girl into her arms.
‘Oh—she’s so small! I’d forgotten! They grow so quickly—not that Freddie was ever this small. Beth was dainty, but even she—’
She broke off, the baby’s fussing growing louder, and she walked down the garden a few steps, turning the baby against her breast instinctively.