‘How is she? Is she okay?’ Mary’s eyes were sore with crying but relief had dissolved the hard lump that had been in her throat.
‘She is well … she will be well,’ Peter said. ‘The hospital has told Ted she is dehydrated. It must be so. She was in that place for two days.’
‘Alone.’ Mary’s voice wavered. ‘She will have been so frightened.’
‘She is safe now.’ Peter didn’t tell Mary he’d found the little girl in the basement. Somehow, however awful the place, it held a precious memory of the first time they made love. He wouldn’t destroy that. ‘There is some shock,’ he added. ‘But they have done the X-rays on her head and on her ankle. Sadly, poor little girl, the ankle is broken but there is no problem through the bump on her head.’
‘Was there…?’ Mary faltered. ‘Was anything else, was anything else done to her?’
The unspoken question hung between them.
‘No,’ Peter said. ‘Ted said there was nothing else.’ Although every instinct in him wanted to enfold Mary in his arms Peter carefully kept his distance. He would wait until she was ready, until she forgave him. If she ever did. The unwelcome thought forced itself into his brain. And then he couldn’t stand being so close to her yet not touching. He got up and walked to the window resting his head against the window pane and looking out onto the street. ‘The worst is over, Liebling.’
Is it? Mary wondered. She kept her eyes on his back. He’d grown thinner in the months they’d been apart. The weight of unsaid words separated them. Neither of them had mentioned the previous night when she’d turned from him. Now, from the stiff set of his shoulders she knew he was waiting for her to say what she wanted. But the turmoil in her froze any decision. Whatever Peter needed, whatever she needed from him, would have to wait. She was exhausted and too weak to face up to what could be; that everything they had between them had now gone, destroyed by a dreadful secret. And she knew if she started to cry again she might not be able to stop. Because, now she was safe, it wouldn’t be for Linda. It would be for what she and Peter had lost. She wrapped her arms over the mound that held her … their baby.
There was so much pain between them.