Herfeelings, whatever they might be, weren’t important right now.
‘What happened to make you hate her?’ she said, determinedly stamping out the emotions hurtling around her system, and focusing.
‘We got married when she was twelve weeks into the pregnancy. A couple of months after that we had a discussion about the future. I wanted to focus on building a secure, stable life for our son, she hadn’t let up socialising and wanted to carry on. Things got increasingly heated. I told her in no uncertain terms that the partying was to stop and she told me that she’d got pregnant on purpose but really wished she’d chosen someone else.’
And there went another piece of the lovely fantasy, crashing to the ground and shattering. ‘What sort of woman does that?’
‘One who’s all alone in the world and desperately wants a family,’ he said. ‘Her parents died when she was young. She was very insecure.’
‘She was very beautiful.’
‘Yes,’ he said with a frown. ‘She was. I wanted her and I pursued her. But she was clever. She held out.’
‘Was she the mistake you referred to when you were telling me about the dangers of letting desire go unaddressed?’
He gave a brief nod. ‘It made me want her more. It made me dull-witted and blind.’
‘What did you do when you found out?’
He sat back, closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘Lost it,’ he said gruffly. ‘I realised I’d been trapped. I felt like a fool. I felt somehow betrayed. We had a monumental argument. Two days later I took her to the hospital because she hadn’t felt any movement for a while and Arturo had previously been very active. A scan showed that he no longer had a heartbeat.’
That hung between them for a moment during which Orla’s eyes began to sting and her heart ached so badly it hurt. ‘You don’t believe the two events were linked,’ she said, barely able to get the words past the lump in her throat.
‘Why not?’ he said bleakly.
‘Is there any evidence for that?’
He shrugged. ‘There’s no evidence to the contrary. And Calysta certainly blamed me.’
Whatever the truth, the grief and the guilt must have been unbearable. On top of the betrayal he’d already been feeling, he had to have been torn apart. She couldn’t begin to imagine what it must have been like. ‘What happened after that?’
‘We buried him and I went back to work, but it was all a blur. We stopped speaking and she was out every night and eventually I told her I wanted a divorce. A week later she took an overdose and died.’
‘Deliberately?’ she asked, and held her breath.
‘I don’t know,’ he said on a shaky exhale. ‘The inquest was inconclusive. All I do know is that I should have noticed what was going on. However I felt about her, she was my responsibility. If I hadn’t been so wrapped up in bitterness and resentment, I’d have been able to help. But I was a wreck on all fronts and my judgement was screwed.’
‘You were young.’
‘I was twenty-seven,’ he said with a slow shake of his head. ‘Not that young.’
‘She can’t have been well.’
He regarded her thoughtfully for a moment, his brow creased, then he gave a shrug. ‘You’re probably right about that. She was very volatile. One minute she was the life and soul of the party, the next she was under the covers with the blinds closed to shut out the light. And she had to deliver Arturo, which must have been hell.’
‘She could have been depressed.’
‘Or she could have decided that if I was never going to love her then life wasn’t worth living.’
Her heart stopped for a second. Did he truly believe that? If he did, no wonder he was still so affected by what had happened. ‘Did she see anyone afterwards? A doctor? A counsellor?’
‘Not to my knowledge.’
‘That’s a shame.’
‘Believe me, I know,’ he said bitterly. ‘I live with the guilt of it every single day.’
‘I’m not judging.’
His eyebrows lifted. ‘Aren’t you?’
‘No. Of course not.’
‘You have impossibly high expectations of people.’
‘Well, yes. But—’
His mouth twisted. ‘But this is only sex, so you have no expectations of me at all.’
What?Where on earth had that come from?
‘That wasn’t what I was going to say,’ she said, utterly bewildered by his observation, which was so very wrong. ‘I was going to say, I’ve never been in a position like that, so how could I possibly judge? How could anyone? But I do know that what happened wasn’t your fault.’ Everything else might be up in the air right now, she knew that down to her bones.
‘Everything points to the fact that it was,’ he said roughly. ‘It feels like it was.’
A strangely fierce need to protect surged up inside her. ‘No. You’re wrong. It was just an impossibly tragic set of circumstances, initiated by a woman who might have had issues, but was also selfish and manipulative,’ she said, wishing she could rewind time and rewrite his history. ‘I’m not surprised you’re angry.’
‘I’m not angry. I’m guilty.’
‘You are guilty of nothing.’
‘I refuse to believe that.’
‘You have to.’
‘I can’t.’
He suddenly looked devastated, as if the weight of the world was crushing him, and the backs of her eyes stung.
‘What do your parents say about it all?’ she said, swallowing down the boulder in her throat.
‘They believe the myth.’
So he’d been handling this all on his own? It made her heart ache for him even more. ‘How did that come about?’
‘Assumptions were made from the moment Calysta and I got together,’ he said. ‘In the aftermath they continued, and I was in no fit state to correct them. I was too busy drowning my grief and guilt in wine.’
‘Here.’
He nodded. ‘The villa where we’d lived on the outskirts of Porto held too many memories. I spent two full months here—you saw the evidence—and then returned to work, coming back only when I needed to escape. There were enough people waiting for me to screw the business up without me giving them more ammunition. It was easier to accept the pity and the sympathy than to explain. I’m not proud of that.’
No, that much was clear. He was tortured by all of it. He blamed himself, and she could see why, but he shouldn’t. He’d done what he’d thought was the right thing and been punished for it. He hadn’t had the ideal marriage. He’d had a terrible one.
She’d been right to suspect that her view of him would be turned upside down by what he had to say but she hadn’t expected the truth to be quite so gritty. Her perceptions of perfection, of him, were shattering all around her. It was huge, overwhelming, and she didn’t quite know what to do with it all.
‘Do you want to carry on talking about this?’ she asked, taking refuge in something that thanks to him she did now know how to handle.
His eyes glittered. ‘No.’
‘Then come back to bed.’