The Package Deal. Marion Lennox

Cold chicken?’

      ‘I’ve just had lunch. Who fills your refrigerator?’

      ‘A housekeeping service.’

      ‘A housekeeper?’

      ‘It’s a service. More convenient than just the one employee. I don’t need to worry about holidays.’

      ‘So you don’t even need to know your housekeeper.’

      ‘They come and go when I’m not here.’

      ‘That’s awful.’

      ‘What’s awful about it?’

      ‘You really are alone.’

      ‘I don’t need anyone,’ he told her. ‘I like my life.’

      ‘You need Jake.’

      A shadow crossed his face then. How had this woman guessed what was hurting him?

      He didn’t want to talk about it but then...this was Mary. Maybe he did.

      ‘We fight to be independent,’ he told her. ‘But the twin thing makes it harder. When he was hurt in Afghanistan I damned near died myself. And when I didn’t know whether that chopper had made it...it’s not a sensation I’d like to repeat.’

      ‘So you don’t want to get close to anyone else?’

      ‘I don’t want the responsibility of loving like that—but I will do the right thing by your baby.’

      ‘You just said it was our baby.’

      ‘It is,’ he said, and he sounded strained. ‘So I will do what I can.’

      ‘I hope he’s grateful.’ She gazed around with distaste. ‘I can tell you one thing, though. If he’s any child of mine, he won’t want to inherit this place.’

      Inherit. The word was a biggie. Why had she said it? It took things to a whole new level.

      She watched Ben’s face change again.

      ‘I didn’t mean...’ She spoke too fast, trying to take things back. ‘Ben, I’m not expecting anything, I told you. This baby...if you want, he can be brought up not even knowing he’s your son. Or daughter for that matter. Inheritance is nonsense. We won’t interfere with your life.’

      ‘You already have interfered.’

      ‘I shouldn’t have told you?’

      ‘Of course you should.’ He raked his hair in that gesture she was starting to know. It softened him, she thought. It took away the image of businessman Ben and gave her back the image of Ben in a cave. The Ben she needed to care for.

      ‘Ben, you like your isolation,’ she said softly. ‘We’re not threatening that. I’ll return to New Zealand and ask nothing of you. If you want, you can set up a trust for this child’s education, but I’ll not raise him expecting anything from you. You can walk away.’

      ‘I can’t walk away.’

      ‘But I can,’ she said. ‘And I will. Come Monday. Meanwhile, which of these doors leads to a bedroom I can use?’

      ‘The bedroom at the end of the hall’s mine. Choose any other. They all have en suites.’

      ‘Of course.’

      ‘Mary?

      ‘Yes?’

      ‘Have a nap,’ he told her. ‘Then I’ll take you out to dinner.’

      ‘I’m having a sleep, not a nap,’ she told him. ‘A really long one. I’m jet-lagged like you wouldn’t believe and this pregnancy makes me want to sleep all the time. You can go back to whatever you were doing. You need to be independent and I’m not messing with that. Thank you, Ben, and goodnight.’

      * * *

      She slept. He headed for his study and stared out over the park.

      He needed time to work out all that was inside him.

      Maybe it wasn’t possible for him to work it out.

      Mary was carrying his child. He was going to be a father.

      Coming, ready or not.

      The old chant, sung by children for ages past in the game of hide and seek, was suddenly echoing around in his head, almost as a taunt.

      A father.

      Abortion? The word drifted through his consciousness but when he tried to work out some way he could say it to her, something like a wall rose up.

      He couldn’t say it.

      He didn’t want to say it.

      This would be Mary’s baby and he didn’t want her not to have a child. It was a convoluted thought but it was there as a certainty. And somehow... The time in the cave with her had been time out, like a watershed, where fear had laid all bare. That a child should come of it... It seemed okay.

      Was that sentiment? Was it hope?

      He couldn’t get his head around it.

      He didn’t have to, he told himself. For some reason Mary had come halfway around the world to tell him, yet she was proposing leaving again on Monday. He never needed to see her again. He could pay into a trust account once a month. He could stop thinking about it.

      How could he stop thinking about it? He slammed his fist down on the desk so hard it hurt, and suddenly he wished he could talk to Jake. Ring him. ‘Jake, I’ve screwed up...’

      In his present mood Jake could well say he should tell someone who cared.

      In this position Jake might do better, he conceded. Jake would be able to play the caring dad. He was great at acting.

      If he himself was better at acting, maybe he could pull this off.

      Pull what off? Being a caring dad?

      He couldn’t do it. He didn’t know how. He thought back to the rages and the coldness that had been his childhood. He tried to think how he could possibly relate to a child.

      He could try, but he couldn’t act, and if he felt nothing...

      His father had felt nothing. His mother...she’d told them she’d loved them but in different ways all the time. Like she was playing different roles.

      ‘I won’t act,’ he told himself. ‘I can only do what I can do, and I won’t put myself in a position of power.’

      So what could he do? Send money? That felt so much like what his father would do. Send money and get rid of the problem.

      On impulse he hit the internet, heading for the site where Smash ’em Mary flew round the track, dodging and weaving, leading her team to victory.

      It was a rough game, and that was putting it mildly.

      Surely she wouldn’t be able to play now she was pregnant.

      The words of the lawyer he’d sent to help her echoed in his ears as well.

      ‘We’ve won her monetary compensation, and she’s been reinstated in her position as district nurse, but there is local antagonism,’ he’d told him. ‘Her father and stepmother are wealthy. They control much of the commerce in the town and people are afraid to upset them. Her stepmother is vindictive, more so now that we’ve forced this resolution. Life’s not going to be easy for your Mary.’

      Your Mary. The words had swept over him then, but they came back to haunt him now.

      She wasn’t His Mary. She was a woman he scarcely knew. He’d been stranded with her for two days. Two days was tiny.

      She was a woman who’d come half a world to tell him she was pregnant because it was the right thing to do.

      His fist slammed on the desk again. Lucky the walls