One Night She Would Never Forget. Amy Andrews

looked down at her hand and placed his over the top then smiled at her. ‘Yes, I do. Because if I’d slept with you that night and never seen you again, it would have been fine. But here we are. So I need you to know.’

      Miranda nodded and withdrew her hand. It felt too intimate and as much as her empathy meter was blinking off the scale, there were still a lot of reasons why getting too close to Patrick was a bad idea.

      If anything, he was even more off limits. Getting involved with a man who was hung up on another woman was just plain dumb.

      She only needed to look to her mother for a perfect example of that.

      ‘Okay. So what happened?’ she asked.

      ‘There was an extensive search for her. It was all over the news …’

      Miranda thought back and did vaguely recall something now about a missing mother that she’d obviously absorbed subliminally in her new-mother fog with a colicky baby who rarely slept and while studying for her grade-twelve exams.

      ‘Weren’t you … implicated in that?’

      Patrick grimaced. ‘Initially, yes. Despite the fact I’d been at work all day for twelve hours with dozens of witnesses.’

      Miranda supposed she should have been concerned about that startling piece of information but there was nothing about Patrick that raised her highly developed run-away-fast instincts.

      She searched her brain for more titbits for a moment then gave up. ‘I don’t remember what happened after that … Lols was brand new and my life officially sank into a black hole for quite a few months.’

      ‘There was a media storm and some pretty harrowing questioning by the police and then after two weeks Katie contacted her mother. Left a message on her mother’s machine. Said she was okay but she didn’t want to be a mother any more. Had never wanted it. That she was going away and wasn’t coming back.’

      Miranda felt the pressure of something hard and hot wedging under her diaphragm. She couldn’t begin to imagine the state she would need to have been in to abandon Lola. To never see her again. She shook her head in bewilderment. ‘Was there…? Were you having problems? Do you think she was suffering from post-natal depression?’

      Patrick liked how easy it was to talk to Miranda. Just like in the bar that night. Most people were emotional and animated or listened with ghoulish delight but, once again, Miranda was reserved and thoughtful.

      ‘She was only twenty-one when we met. She was in her last year of nursing and doing her prac at the same Sydney hospital where I was an intern. She was this bright, sparkly butterfly. The life and soul of the party, and I was hopelessly smitten. But it was all a façade. She was actually desperately insecure and anxious and she … had some problems with substance abuse. After a few months I began to suspect she was a little bipolar and our relationship had become quite rocky.’

      ‘And then she fell pregnant,’ Miranda supplied. She understood only too well what a life-changing event that was.

      Patrick nodded, feeling again the highs and lows of that time. The dread, the fear, the excitement.

      ‘She was great at first. On a high, I guess. Happy to clean up her act and get married and excited about being a mother. But by the time Ruby was due she was quite down, very flat. I finally managed to convince her to see her GP, who wanted her to go on some antidepressants but she was adamant she wouldn’t take anything while she was pregnant.

      ‘And then in the weeks after the birth she got worse. I tried to get her to see somebody but she refused. When I came home that evening to find she wasn’t there, a part of me wasn’t surprised. But I never thought she’d just disappear … just go … for good …’

      Miranda leaned forward a little in her chair. He was twisting his wedding ring round and round his finger with his thumb, the low strain of emotion in his voice giving her goose-bumps.

      ‘Do you think she had a bit of a … breakdown that day?’

      He shrugged. ‘I think so, yes. Gwen, our neighbour at the time, said she’d seen Katie leave the house clutching her handbag and looking in a bit of a daze. Katie didn’t apparently even acknowledge Gwen when she asked how things were going with the baby.’

      Miranda was no mental-health expert but that didn’t sound good to her. ‘But she rang her mother and you were off the hook, right?’

      He snorted. ‘Not immediately. The police, quite rightly, I suppose, were suspicious about the authenticity of the message, so they ran forensic tests comparing it to the welcome message on our answering machine and eventually they cleared me of any suspicion.’

      ‘So … she’s never turned up?’

      Patrick shook his head. ‘No. The police dropped the investigation once they were satisfied she was alive. I’ve hired several private investigators but it’s hard to find someone who doesn’t want to be found.’

      Miranda’s mind crowded with questions, each more urgent than the next. ‘Aren’t you worried that she may have come to some harm in the intervening years?’

      ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But there’s occasional activity on her bank account and every once in a while she rings a great-aunt of hers, tells her she’s okay and then hangs up.’

      Miranda couldn’t even begin to comprehend what he must have gone through in the years since Ruby had been born. The wondering. The not knowing. Not to mention having to be mother and father and juggle job and family responsibilities and finances and a hundred other things.

      Just like her.

      ‘I can’t begin to imagine what you’ve been through,’ she murmured. ‘It must have been so hard. To have coped with all that as well as trying to be a father.’

      The empathy in her gaze was real and washed over him, oozing into all the cracks that had opened up again as he’d talked about Katie’s desertion. ‘To be honest, it nearly broke me.’

      He paused. It was the first time he’d admitted that out loud. He’d spent a lot of years presenting a tough front but it seemed okay to admit the truth to her. To finally admit it to himself even.

      ‘I didn’t cope that well for a while. I kind of just … survived. If it hadn’t been for Katie’s mother helping out I think I might have gone under.’

      Miranda nodded. She was glad Patrick had had someone to lean on. How would she have survived without her grandmother’s love and support?

      ‘What does Ruby know about it?’ she asked. It was the thing as a mother she found most difficult to comprehend—how could Katie have deserted her baby?

      Patrick dragged himself back from the helplessness of that time, pleased that he now had time and distance and perspective.

      He shrugged. ‘I’ve just tried to be honest. Ruby, like Katie, does tend to be a bit on the anxious side so we don’t make a big deal out of it. She knows she has a mummy who loves her but is too sick to look after her properly so Daddy does it instead.’

      Miranda pursed her lips. ‘Ooh. That’s good.’

      He grimaced. ‘Well, it seems to appease her. For now. What do you tell Lola about her father?’

      ‘Honestly? Lola is far too egocentric to care. She asked once when she was two why she didn’t have a daddy and I told her that some kids didn’t have daddies, which seemed to satisfy her perfectly. As long as there’s Pinky, Bud and cupcakes in the world, she’s happy.’

      Patrick laughed at Miranda’s candid answer. It was nice to meet a mother who had her daughter’s measure. He’d met many a rabid mother since having a child of his own and it was nice for once to talk to someone who wasn’t blind to everything.

      ‘So where is he? Lola’s father?’

      Miranda shrugged. ‘On