Secret Sins: A Callie Anson (4 page)

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’ll buy you a cup of coffee. Even a sticky bun, if you like. You’ve earned it.’

‘You look knackered,’ said Triona bluntly. ‘How long have you been here?’

Frances shook her head. ‘Oh, a few hours. I don’t usually work nights, but I was called in. Mrs. Godfrey asked for me, and the nurses knew she didn’t have long.’

She might not look very wonderful, Frances was aware, but Triona herself looked worse than Frances would have expected, even given the earliness of the hour. Her hair was as tidy and professional-looking as usual, brushed back into a knot, but her
eyes were shadowed, with blue smudges beneath them, telling of more than just an hour or two of missed sleep.

They went back a long way together, did Frances and Triona, though they’d lost touch for a number of years. Frances still found it difficult to equate this elegant and mature woman with the passionate young firebrand Triona had once been. She must, Frances calculated, be a bit over thirty. In her prime, from Frances’ perspective of approaching fifty.

Frances re-iterated her apologies for the early call. ‘I was really desperate,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know what else to do. The poor old thing was dreadfully upset. And if you’d seen the niece…’

Triona waved her hand. ‘Don’t worry about it. You didn’t wake me, if that’s what’s bothering you.’

‘Are you okay?’ she asked impulsively.

‘Fine.’ Triona turned her head away.

They had reached the cafe, crowded with hospital personnel grabbing something to eat or drink in between various duties. Frances scanned the room and spotted a table about to be vacated. ‘Why don’t you sit there,’ she suggested, ‘and I’ll join the queue. What would you like? Coffee? Tea?’

‘Coffee, please.’

In a few minutes she was back at the table with a tray: coffee and bacon rolls. ‘I thought we ought to have something to eat,’ she said. ‘A bit of breakfast.’ Frances didn’t usually succumb to the lure of bacon rolls, but the smell of the bacon had been too tempting to resist on an empty stomach.

‘Thanks.’

‘You do eat bacon, don’t you? Heather, my daughter, has become a vegan. She’d probably never speak to me again if she saw me tucking into this.’

‘How is Heather?’ Triona took a plate and a mug from the tray and arranged them in front of her.

‘Fine, as far as I can tell. You know she’s married? And they’re coming for Christmas. So it won’t be long now.’

‘Yes, I remember you telling me.’

‘I’m looking forward to it,’ Frances said.

She
was
looking forward to it, but that was only part of the truth. Part of her was dreading Christmas. She and Graham were due to meet their new son-in-law, an aging American
dropout
— with a ponytail—called Zack, who had managed to turn Heather into a self-righteous eschewer of any animal-derived product. It would be nut roast for Christmas this year.

‘Graham is well?’ Triona asked.

‘Yes, fine. Busy as always.’

‘And how is Leo?’

Her dear friend, Leo Jackson. Frances gave an involuntary sigh. ‘I think he’s as well as could be expected.’

‘You know I don’t read newspapers. But I’m aware that they have a short attention span—they must have forgotten about him by now.’

‘Pretty much.’ Frances took a fortifying sip of coffee. ‘He’s dropped out of sight, and the press have moved on to their next victim.’

Triona raised an eyebrow. ‘Gone into hiding, has he?’

‘Not exactly. He did at first, of course—the Bishop sent him off to a monastery. For reflection and counselling. But being Leo, he soon got fed up with that. Wanted action, not
contemplation
.’ She smiled, picturing him: a giant of a man, always on the move. ‘So he volunteered to go to the Caribbean. Hurricane relief work. The last I heard from him, he was helping to rebuild a church that was flattened.’

She missed him terribly. He’d been a part of her life for years, a friend  who was always there—there with a word of
encouragement
, a hug. Through the difficult years of waiting—and
fighting
— for the right of women to be ordained as priests, he had been a rock and a constant support. And recently, as well, they’d been through such a lot together. Their bond of friendship was an extraordinarily strong one. She thought about the number of times they’d been together here in the cafe, drinking coffee and talking. An odd couple, she knew they must have appeared: Leo so large and so black, towering over the petite redhead.
Neither conformed to the stereotype most people attached to the Anglican priesthood.

Suddenly there was a lump in her throat. If he’d been there now, he would have noticed. ‘Frannie, pet,’ he would have said in his booming, lilting voice, leaning across the table in
concern
, covering her small white hand with his large dark one. ‘Whatever’s the matter? You can tell Leo.’

Instead, though, it was Triona across from her. And Triona was the one who wasn’t quite right. Her very white skin was even paler than usual, and there was an unhealthy sheen on her forehead and upper lip. She swallowed hard, then took a sip of coffee. Her eyes widened, her hand went to her mouth. ‘Excuse me,’ she said faintly from behind her hand, rising to her feet. ‘I’ll be right back.’ Her head swivelled round. ‘Where’s the loo?’

Frances took charge. ‘It’s this way,’ she said, abandoning her breakfast and guiding Triona towards the ladies’ room.

‘Sorry. You don’t need to…’

Frances waited by the row of basins, listening to the
unmistakable
sound of retching. Uncontrollable, gut-wrenching. She remembered how it felt, and instinctively she knew what was wrong with Triona.

Eventually Triona emerged, looking sheepish and wrung-out. ‘Sorry,’ she murmured. ‘I’m so sorry to ruin your breakfast.’

Frances was ready with a damp paper towel to wipe her friend’s face. ‘Nothing to be sorry about. You can’t help it.’

‘I think it was the smell of the bacon that did it. And I shouldn’t have drunk that coffee.’

‘Probably so. When I was expecting Heather, I couldn’t touch coffee.’

Triona swallowed hard, and averted her eyes. ‘You know, then,’ she said in a flat voice.

‘It’s pretty obvious to anyone who’s ever been pregnant. Morning sickness is wretched.’ Frances was shorter than Triona, and couldn’t really put her arm around the other woman’s shoulders, so she rubbed her arm instead. ‘Would you like to talk about it?’ she suggested.

‘No.’ She swallowed again. ‘Yes. But not here. And not in the cafe.’

‘No food smells,’ Frances agreed. She had worked at the hospital for years, and knew its every corner intimately. There were a few consultation rooms, where doctors took families to give them bad news in private, and one was quite near by. She led Triona there and sat her down, then took a seat next to her. Sometimes, she knew, it was easier to say difficult things if you didn’t have to look at someone face-to-face.

‘It just started a few days ago, maybe a week,’ Triona said. ‘But it’s been horrible.’ She clasped her hands together in her lap.

‘The father?’ Frances suggested gently.

Triona almost spat the name. ‘Neville. The bastard.’

‘Neville
Stewart
? Detective Inspector Neville Stewart?’ She was astonished, and couldn’t help showing it.

‘That’s the one.’

‘But…’ Frances thought back, trying to remember. Triona had mentioned that she’d known Neville Stewart, a long time ago.

Neville Stewart. Frances supposed that some women—
perhaps
many women—might consider him attractive, with his slightly boyish looks and his trim body, though she couldn’t see it herself. He’d never bothered turning on his Irish charm with her, of course; she’d hardly even seen him smile. Well, she acknowledged to herself, there was no accounting for taste.

‘I’ll start at the beginning, shall I?’ Triona’s voice was sounding more Irish than usual.

‘That would probably help.’

Triona positioned her body so that she was facing the window rather than Frances. ‘I met Neville Stewart years ago. Nearly ten years back.’

‘About the time you and I lost touch,’ Frances realised.

‘Yes. And he was probably the main reason. When we were together, living together, there wasn’t time for anything else in my life.’

‘Were you together for a long time?’

‘Three months. A lifetime. Take your pick.’ Triona closed her eyes. ‘God, I loved him. I was crazy in love with him. And he…I don’t think he knows the meaning of the word “love.”’ She swallowed, stopped. There was a long silence.

‘Did he leave you after three months?’ Frances prompted eventually.

‘No, I left
him
. I moved out.’

‘I don’t understand,’ admitted Frances.

Triona’s hands twisted together, then sprang apart in a dramatic gesture. ‘I wanted him to marry me, see? But he was terrified of commitment. So I thought I’d shock him into doing something. I moved out. I was so sure he’d come after me. Find me and…something. Whatever. But he didn’t. He never tried to find me. He just bloody let me go.’

Frances still didn’t understand; this seemed to her to be a very perverse way to get someone to marry you, and it also seemed like water long since under the bridge. She waited for Triona to continue.

‘I married someone else after a few months. Someone from work—a solicitor from the firm where I was doing my articles. I didn’t love him,’ she added bluntly. ‘I never loved him. I married him to spite bloody Neville Stewart. I hoped that Irish bastard would lay awake at night and think about what he was missing, what he’d passed up.’

‘And did he?’

Triona gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘He did not. He didn’t even know I was married! How’s that for an irony? I went through six years of a bad marriage to spite him, and he never even knew it.’

That still didn’t explain how she was now carrying his child. Frances was good at waiting and listening; she folded her hands in her lap.

Getting up restlessly and moving to the window, Triona went on. ‘And then he walked back into my life. Or me into his—I suppose it depends on the way you look at it. That day when you…’ She paused delicately, as if unwilling to remind Frances
of something she would rather forget. ‘I hadn’t seen him since I left him. Nine years, almost to the day.’

Frances observed the tension in her back, heard the pain in her voice.

‘I’d been hating him for nine years. Hating him as
passionately
as I’d loved him. But when I saw the bastard again, I realised that the love was still there, too. Always had been. You can’t just stop loving someone because you want to, can you?’

‘I suppose not.’

‘He was still a free agent. I’d shed my husband a few years

ago. It wouldn’t have been professionally ethical for us to see each other until your business was all sorted out. But after that…he invited me to dinner. And being a fool, I said yes.’

‘So you’re back together.’

‘I wish it were that simple.’ Again the bitter laugh, as Triona wrapped her arms round herself and leaned her forehead against the glass of the window. It had just started to rain; fat drops hit the glass and rolled slowly down, leaving beaded tracks. ‘We slept together. Just the once. Once, which turned out to be enough.’ She rubbed her stomach. ‘He wanted to move in, straightaway. Start where we’d left off. But I…said no.’

‘You didn’t want to get back together?’

‘I wanted it more than anything.’ Triona began drumming her fingers on the window in rhythm with the rain. ‘But on my terms, not his. I told him he’d have to make an effort. Win me over, woo me.’

‘And has he done that?’

Triona shot her a look over her shoulder. ‘Oh, he was brilliant. For a few weeks, at least. Flowers, romantic meals in expensive restaurants, evenings at the theatre. Every night when he wasn’t on duty. I was beginning to feel sorry for him—he was spending so much money on me, and I knew he couldn’t really afford it. I was about to give in, let him move in with me.’

It was all in the past tense, Frances noticed, then she realised what must have happened. ‘But when he found out you were pregnant…’ she blurted. The old story.

Triona turned to look at her, lifting her chin defiantly. ‘He doesn’t know,’ she stated.

‘Then what…’

‘I was feeling a little…peculiar. Started having this wretched morning sickness. So one morning, about a week ago, I did the test. Peed on the strip, turned it blue: pregnant.’ Triona closed her eyes. ‘I was going to tell him that night. Tell him I was having his baby. But then…’ She swallowed. ‘He didn’t call me. Not that night, or the next. And I haven’t heard from him since. The bastard.’

‘But he doesn’t know.’ Frances tried to defend him. ‘Maybe he’s been working hard, on an important case.’

‘That’s what I told myself the first day or two. But after that? He has a telephone—more than one. And a mobile. His fingers aren’t broken, as far as I know. If he were just busy, he could call me and tell me so. No, he’s decided that he doesn’t want to see me any more, and is taking the coward’s way out.’

‘Why don’t you call
him
? See what’s the matter? I’m sure that once you tell him about the baby—’

Triona cut angrily across her words. ‘That’s just the point. I’m not telling him. I
can’t
tell him. I won’t have him marrying me out of pity. Or bloody duty.’ She paused, tempering the tone of her voice. ‘You have to understand about Neville and me. Our relationship was always…volatile. Up and down. The good times were fantastic, brilliant. The bad times were bloody awful. And if he married me because he was backed into a corner—not because he wanted to more than anything in the world—our life together would be hell. He’d resent me, he’d hate me. And I’d end up hating him as well. What kind of a family would that be to bring a child into? It wouldn’t be fair on any of us.’

Frances rose and went to her, taking her hands and squeezing them. ‘Then what are you going to do?’ she said softly.

‘Oh, I won’t be getting rid of it, if that’s what you think.’ Triona blinked hard, as if to dispel tears. ‘I’ve always been pro-choice, and defended a woman’s right to do what she likes with her own body. As you know. In spite of what the Holy
Father says. But when it comes to my own baby…well, I just couldn’t.’ She lost the fight against the tears; they trickled down her cheeks like the rain on the window. ‘I’ll have this baby. Without Neville bloody Stewart. And if I’m lucky, he’ll never find out about it.’