‘Right.’
‘And I’m sure we can work out something sensible with the financial side of things. I mean, the arrangement we have at the moment seems to be working all right—and, of course, the more established I get in my freelance work, the less dependent I’ll be on you...’
‘Right.’
Her words were floating around his head without really registering. He was staring down into an abyss and for the first time in his life was paralysed with inaction. How was it that he hadn’t spotted the ground opening up beneath his feet? He had never in his entire life taken his eye off the ball, but he had done it with her.
‘And then you can get back to your busy life. I don’t know... Would you want me to sign anything?’
‘My busy life...?’
‘Earning money, running an empire, being a mover and a shaker in the big, bad world...’
Over time she had come to grasp not just the extent of his wealth but the extent of his power and influence. Neither impressed her, because if he’d been poorer and less influential, then maybe he would have wanted what she wanted: just a normal relationship. Maybe he would have loved her the way she loved him. She didn’t enjoy thinking like that, but she couldn’t help it.
‘I seem to have taken quite a bit of time out of my “busy life” over the past few weeks, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘But I didn’t force you to—’
‘Did I say that you did?’
‘No, but—’
‘Did it ever occur to you that I may have wanted to?’
‘For the baby,’ Susie inserted hastily, before her heart had time to pick up speed and before her head could start building castles in the sky.
‘Love... It comes with a lot of high hopes and bitter disappointments...’
‘I know that’s how you feel.’
‘Or so I thought.’ He ran his fingers through his hair—a gesture that was part frustration, part weird nerves. ‘My father had a long and successful marriage with my mother and it was a marriage that was arranged. When he flung himself headlong into love it crashed and burned.’
‘His marriage might have been arranged, but has it ever occurred to you that he fell in love with your mother? That what he felt for his second wife wasn’t love at all? Maybe just a reaction to loneliness? He was weak and he fell for a pretty woman who flattered him. It happens. But it isn’t love.’
‘I have been doing some thinking, and for the first time...’
For the first time he had thought of his parents, remembered the way they had been with one another, and had realised, slowly but surely, that what had begun as an arrangement had ended as true love. The story hadn’t been as black and white as he had imagined. He had always equated marriage as an arrangement as successful and marriage as a whirlwind of emotion and so-called love as a nightmare. It had subtly altered his approach to relationships.
‘For the first time...?’
‘This situation between us isn’t going to work, Susie,’ he said roughly.
It felt as though he was on the edge of a cliff, a yawning drop at his feet, but the thing was that he was going to step off the side—whatever the outcome.
‘You don’t want to be married to me—you see that as some sort of unacceptable sacrifice, where the only inevitable outcome would be both of us being miserable and resentful...’
‘You would miss your freedom.’ She stared down at her fingers while her mind darted like quicksilver in a thousand different directions.
‘I would miss you more.’ Their eyes met and he found that he was holding his breath. ‘We work. I challenge you to deny that. We can live together and it’s good between us. And that’s without sex.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘I don’t want you on a part-time basis when the baby’s born. Just think about it. Think about what we have. This isn’t a relationship that’s destined to fail just because it’s been generated by the fact that you became pregnant. Maybe that was Fate. I’ve never been much of a believer in that old chestnut, but lately I’ve had a turnaround. Fate brought us together and it conspired to keep us together—and that’s what I want. To be with you. With you both. You and our baby.’