Christmas at Lilac Cottage: (#1 White Cliff Bay) Read Online Free Page B

it was gone.
    She took a sip of the wine.
    ‘What charity is it for?’
    ‘It changes every year. This year we’re raising money for research into miscarriages, stillbirths and premature babies.’
    ‘That sounds like a very worthy cause. My sister, Anna, miscarried, I know how utterly heartbreaking it can be. She just has her second child, but I don’t think the pain of it ever really goes away.’
    She stared at him, a huge lump forming in her throat. He understood. He stared right back, narrowing his eyes slightly. When he spoke his voice was soft. ‘I’m guessing you’ve lost a baby too.’
    She swallowed. ‘You’re very astute. It was a long time ago, eight years in fact. I was only twenty-one.’ It had been a long time since she had spoken about it too but he seemed to command so much honesty from her. ‘You’re very easy to talk to. I never talk about this with anyone. Chris and I had only been going out for three or four months but I just knew that he was my happy ever after, that we were going to be together forever. Then I fell pregnant. He didn’t want to keep it, he wanted to travel the world, not be tied down by a baby. But there was no way I could get rid of it; from the moment that I found out, I loved that baby with everything I had. I was nearly four months when I lost it. Chris was so relieved, he practically cheered when I told him. I couldn’t stop crying, for the baby, for his reaction to it. He left me a few days later. I was heartbroken.’
    ‘I’m so sorry.’
    ‘It’s fine. Well, it’s not but it was a very long time ago. And looking back now, I’m so glad we never stayed together. He was wrong for me in every way. I cannot even begin to imagine raising a child with him. He was an ass. So maybe in some horrible way it was for the best.’
    ‘I went through a similar thing myself when I was sixteen, got my girlfriend pregnant. She was horrified, kept saying that she wanted an abortion, that the baby would ruin her life. I couldn’t bear the thought of that – this was my child and I couldn’t believe that she hated this baby so much when it hadn’t even been born. Thankfully her parents were Catholic and wouldn’t let her have an abortion but they blamed me entirely and I wasn’t allowed anywhere near her. They moved away and said the baby was going to be put up for adoption. I was absolutely gutted. I suppose I should have been relieved, a drunken fumble that turned into a pregnancy, I was sixteen years old with my whole life in front of me and her parents were giving me a way out, but I never saw it like that. I never saw my girlfriend again. Last I heard she ran away to Australia not long after the baby was born.’
    Penny stared at him in horror. Was it worse that Penny had lost her baby or that Henry had a baby somewhere that he wasn’t allowed to see? ‘What happened to your baby?’
    Just then Bernard leapt up from his position at the window and started barking furiously at something unseen outside.
    Henry quickly moved to the front door as if he was ready to take on the world. She giggled at his over-protectiveness as he flung the door open and Bernard ran out into the night.
    ‘It’s just rabbits, Bernard hates them.’
    She followed Henry to the door as he stood on the doorstep with his fists clenched, scanning the darkness for any threat. Bernard was sniffing round the rabbit holes, clawing at the grass with his big paws, with the obvious hope that one day one of the rabbits would run straight out the hole and into his mouth.
    Clearly seeing that there was no one waiting outside ready to kill them, Henry turned back and banged into her, nearly sending her flying. His hands shot out and grabbed her arms. She looked up at him, silhouetted against the night sky, tiny flakes of snow fluttering around him like icing sugar, his sweet, spicy scent washing over her as he was standing so close. She had bared her soul to this man tonight and, for the first time in a very