Australia: Handsome Heroes: His Secret Love-Child. Lilian Darcy

me,’ he said.

      She shrugged. ‘In a nutshell?’

      ‘Take your time.’ His voice was heavy. He hardly wanted to know himself. If she didn’t want to tell him…

      But it seemed she did.

      ‘Some of it you know,’ she said, her voice distant now, as if repeating a learned-by-heart story. ‘I told you the bare facts when we first met. That I’d been married and that I was separated.’

      ‘But—’

      ‘Just let me tell it, Cal,’ she whispered, and he stared at her for a long minute, and then nodded.

      ‘I’m listening.’

      ‘Big of you.’

      ‘Gina…’

      ‘I married Paul when I was eighteen,’ she told him, and there was a blankness about her voice now that hadn’t been there before. ‘He was the boy next door, the kid I’d grown up with. We decided to marry when we were twelve. We went through med school together, we were best of friends—and then suddenly he just seemed to fall apart. There’d been huge pressure on him from his parents to become a doctor. To marry. To be successful in their eyes. Maybe I was stupid for not seeing how much pressure he was under.’

      ‘You weren’t sympathetic toward him when you were here,’ he said, and she nodded.

      ‘No. I was young and I was hurt. We’d made it as doctors, we had the world at our feet and suddenly he didn’t want any part of our life together. He wanted to find himself, he said, and off he went. And to be honest it wasn’t until I decided to come here…until I met you…that I realised that he was right. We’d been kids, playing at being grown-ups. We’d married for the wrong reasons.’

      ‘So?’ He wasn’t going to get sucked into the emotional bit here, he thought. He couldn’t afford to.

      ‘So then I fell for you,’ she said softly. ‘And I got pregnant.’

      He closed his eyes, trying to think back to all that time ago. But it didn’t make sense. He’d never been stupid. He of all people knew the risks. ‘How can you have got pregnant? We took precautions.’

      ‘Are you saying I’m lying?’ Anger flashed out then, bordering on fury. ‘Do you think I planned the pregnancy?’

      ‘I don’t know what to think.’

      ‘Well, think what you like,’ she snapped. ‘But I didn’t plan it. I was on the Pill. I knew how much you didn’t want children, and I was hardly in a position to want them either. So we were careful. But I guess there’s truth in the saying that the only sure contraceptive is two brick walls with air space between. Whatever we used didn’t work. Anyway, I couldn’t believe it. I discovered I was pregnant when you were upcountry on a medical evacuation flight. You were gone. I was down in Townsville, staring at a positive pregnancy test. Thinking I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t.’

      His eyes opened at that and he met her look head on. Challenging. ‘Why the hell not?’

      ‘What would you have said?’ she whispered. ‘Be honest, Cal. How would you have reacted?’

      ‘How do I know?’

      ‘Well, I know,’ she said drearily. ‘You’d said it over and over to me. You didn’t want family. Your family life was the pits. You never wanted commitment. Sure, what we had was special and we both knew it, but it wasn’t enough to make you want marriage. Or children. The thought appalled you. You said it over and over. It was like a warning. Love me despite it—and I did. I was willing to accept you on your terms. But then I fell pregnant. I sat there staring at the test strip and I thought, I can’t get rid of this baby. Maybe I did my growing up right there. I wanted this baby. I wanted our baby.’

      He shook his head, bewildered. ‘Gina, if I’d known—’

      ‘You might even have done the honourable thing,’ she said heavily. ‘I knew that. But honour wasn’t what I wanted from you, Cal, and you were capable of offering nothing more.’

      ‘I might have—’

      ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I knew your background, you see, though I heard much of it from others. Not from you.’

      ‘My background has nothing to do with this.’

      ‘It has everything, Cal,’ she said heavily. ‘If I don’t accept it, at least I can understand. Your mother walked out on you when you were still a kid yourself, trapping you into caring for your two little sisters. Your father was a drunk. You had to leave school to support everyone and then, just as your sisters started being independent, your mother reappeared and offered your sisters a home in the States with her new man. But not you. After all you’d done, they left you without a backward glance. Your dad died and you had to regroup and work your butt off to get yourself through medical school. You learned in the hardest way to be independent. Do you think I was going to trap you again?’

      ‘Hell…’

      ‘It was hell,’ she whispered. ‘For both of us. For different reasons.’

      ‘So you just ran.’

      ‘Strangely, I didn’t,’ she told him, and her chin jutted, just a little. Finding her feet again. This part of the story was easier. ‘While I was trying to sort some sense out of the mess the phone rang and it was Paul’s mother. It was…as if it was meant. It was horrible but it was real. She rang to tell me that Paul had been injured—dreadfully injured—in a motorbike accident in Kathmandu. She was distraught. She couldn’t go herself. Could I go? she asked. She pleaded. There was no one else. I had medical training and that was what Paul desperately needed. Family and western medicine. So…’ She paused and stared blankly out over the sea. ‘So I just went.’

      He stared at her, still disbelieving. ‘Without waiting for me to get back?’

      ‘You were gone for two days. Paul’s mother thought he was dying. I had to move fast. As it was, I only just got there in time. I found him in a tiny village outside the capital and he was dreadfully injured. From then on the drama of the situation just took over. Getting him stabilised. He’d smashed his spine, and the convolutions to evacuate him back to the States took weeks. And then…by the time I’d caught my breath, somehow I was three months pregnant and I was back to being Paul’s wife again.’

      ‘That was what your note said,’ he said heavily, remembering. ‘That Paul had been injured and you were still his wife and you were staying with him. That your marriage had resumed.’

      ‘I didn’t lie.’

      ‘No,’ he said. ‘I guess you didn’t.’

      There was a long silence then. There wasn’t tension here. It was as if the world had somehow paused and was regrouping.

      But finally the questions started again.

      ‘How badly was Paul hurt?’

      That was easy. ‘Break at C1/2. Complete quadriplegia. No function below the neck and barely speech,’ she told him. ‘No unaided respiration. The guy he crashed into had basic medical training so they were able to establish an air supply. Maybe that was a good thing. Sometimes I don’t know. But Paul had almost five years of life before the infections became too frequent and his body shut down.’

      ‘You don’t think,’ Cal said carefully into the stillness, ‘that it might have been fair to tell me this?’

      ‘What? That I still loved you but I’d decided I needed to stay with Paul? How could I tell you that? It wasn’t even fair. If I had to stay with Paul, what was the use of telling you I loved you? Besides,’ she said softly into the stillness, ‘you knew that I loved you. I’d told you that over and over. But you’d never said it back to me. Not once, Cal. Not ever.’

      ‘I…’ He paused and she shrugged, moving on.