Winter Wishes (23 page)

“That was when you knew for certain he wasn’t mine,” Danny said bleakly.

“Morgan
is
yours in every way that matters!” Tara cried. “He’s your son, Danny! Your son! He loves you.”

“And I love him, Tara. I’d lay down my life for him, you know that, but you had an advantage over me. I didn’t really know for sure until you turned up at the hospital and tried to blurt it out. I’d always hoped that I was wrong. I thought that if there was any doubt, you’d have told me at the time. Not seven and a half bloody years later!”

“I thought about it so many times but I was so scared. I tried in the hospital, Danny, but you wouldn’t let me finish! You told me to get out!” Tara cried.

“I’d lost my fucking face, my arm and my career. Did you really need to take my son as well? Jesus, Tara. What were you thinking? That I’d just turn to the wall and die quietly?”

“Of course not!” Tara was horrified. “But I did think you might die, Danny. We all did.”

“So you thought you’d unburden your soul just in case?” His mouth curled into a mocking smile. “How totally bloody selfish and how typical. If you said it, then it was out and a fact, wasn’t it? I couldn’t kid myself that I was being paranoid or had made a mistake. It was true. I lost everything that day and you damn-near made sure I lost my son too. Well, I won’t let that happen, Tara. I won’t. He’s my son.”

It had been a selfish act, Tara knew that now, but at the time she’d been terrified that a secret like that couldn’t be put right. She couldn’t have gone to her grave without telling the truth. But as for how the revelation would make Danny feel? If she was brutally honest, that hadn’t figured.

She bit her thumbnail, a nervous habit she’d thought she’d outgrown. “What do you want to do?”

“Do?”

“Do you want to tell Morgan?” Tara felt sick to the pit of her stomach at this thought. Stability was key for their son and she couldn’t imagine the consequences if he handled it badly.

Danny looked at her as though she was mad. “Why on earth would I do that? Apart from the fact that he’s my son, no matter what the sodding DNA says, he’s only nine. When he’s older then we’ll tackle it together, but not yet. Christ. That would be beyond cruel.”

She nodded. “I agree. Thanks, Danny.”

“Don’t thank me,” said Danny. “I love him and I’ll always love him. That’s never going to change.”

Tears made his face shimmer.

“But you don’t love me anymore, do you? You look at me and all you see is a woman who betrayed you.” Misery clawed at her throat. “I look at you, Danny, and I still see the man I fell in love with.”

“Hardly. Bits of him are still in a sand dune somewhere,” Danny quipped, but the joke fell flat and an awkward silence followed. Tara mopped her eyes on her sleeve. Danny was such a good man: honest and loyal and generous. Of course he couldn’t bear the sight of her anymore. Of course he no longer loved her. She’d blown his world apart more effectively than any enemy bomb ever could.

“We have a history and we shared so many very special times,” Danny told her, “but we messed up. We’ve both made mistakes, but if I’m honest I don’t think I can ever feel the same way again. No way. We’re not the same people. Yes, I look at you and I still see the beautiful girl I fell in love with – but things can never be as they were. I’m sorry, Tara, but nothing you can say or do will make me feel the way I did.”

Danny might have been telling her that their marriage was over, but all Tara heard was him saying that he still thought she was beautiful, and her heart leapt with a tidal surge of hope. Hadn’t he just said that he’d made mistakes too? That as far as he was concerned Morgan was his son? Was he trying to say that there was a chance for them after all? The wine, the warm room and the scent of his very male skin just a fingertip’s touch away made her dizzy.

“Are you sure of that?” she said and, acting on pure longing, leaned forward and kissed him.

It was as though she’d set light to touchpaper. Danny’s hand gripped the back of her neck and his mouth closed over hers in a burning kiss. As he pulled her nearer she could feel the heat of his chest through her thin sweater, and the sensation of his hardness against her loins made her head spin all the more. Instinctively Tara lifted her open lips to him, and his tongue plunged deeper into her mouth as he reached to cup her breast. She remembered all the other times he’d kissed her and all the places they’d made love, and she felt faint with yearning. As though they had a will of their own, her shaking fingers began to unbutton his shirt, her hands slipping beneath the fabric to explore the smooth flesh of his chest and trace the whirls of golden hair.

Dimly, like a swimmer who’s dived beneath the surface of a lake and can only hear the muffled world above indistinctly, Tara became aware of a voice calling her. At first it didn’t register but slowly, breath by breath, she surfaced, until she broke away from Danny with a start.

Morgan.

“Mum! Mum! I feel sick!”

“The joys of being a mum,” Tara said ruefully. “Give me a moment.”

Danny’s breathing was ragged and he couldn’t look her in the face. Instead he made a big show of tucking in his shirt.

“Someone’s had too much cake. You’d better go.”

Leaving Danny flustered and dishevelled on the sofa, Tara shot up the stairs, smoothing back her hair and pulling down her jumper as she went. A quick glance in the landing mirror revealed bright eyes and a flushed face, but nothing that couldn’t be explained away by the warmth of the fire and a few glasses of wine.

As Danny had predicted, a surfeit of chocolate cake and pepperoni pizza were playing havoc with Morgan’s tummy. It took a glass of water and a fair bit of soothing to calm him. By the time he’d drifted back off to sleep with his camera clutched tightly in his hand and Tara had returned downstairs, the sofa was empty and the sounds of the dishwasher being emptied and then restacked were coming from the kitchen.

Danny’s back was to her but Tara didn’t need to see his face to know that the heated atmosphere of earlier had popped like soap bubbles. The tucked-in shirt and brisk chink of china spoke volumes.

“You didn’t need to clear up,” Tara said. Her voice sounded flat even to her own ears.

“I think we both know that I did.” Danny turned round and smiled sadly. “Look, Tara, about what happened just now… It was a very bad idea. We got caught in the moment and maybe a little confused by everything.”

She raised one shoulder. “I’m not confused. I know what I want.”

“So do I,” said Danny, “and this isn’t it. There’s too much water under the bridge. Too many resentments and too little trust.”

He couldn’t trust her.

He resented her.

Tara was knifed to the soul with misery. She could hardly blame Danny, not when she’d betrayed him in the worst way possible. Tonight she’d tried everything she could to win him back: nostalgia, honesty, sex… And all in vain. He might still fancy her, he might even have fond feelings for her, but the harsh truth of the matter was that Danny Tremaine didn’t love her anymore. The love was gone.

“I’ve loved being a part of Morgan’s birthday today,” Danny was saying, “and I hope I can come to the next one too, but we both know that you and I will never work as a couple. I’ve told you how I feel about being Morgan’s father and I don’t want to do anything that could upset that. I don’t want to be an absent father just because there’s bitterness between you and me. I don’t want bitterness at all, for Morgan’s sake.”

Tara was once more on the verge of tears. As she looked across the kitchen she suddenly saw the rest of her life stretching out without Danny, and it was a very bleak prospect.

He was looking straight at her.

“I want to be Morgan’s father in the real sense of the word. I want to be there for him, now and for the rest of his life. Stability is key for Morgan. Structure. Routine. We all know that. We’ve read the educational psychologist’s report and we’ve seen Morgan’s special needs statement. This isn’t about us as a couple and the rights and wrongs of what we’ve done; it’s about far more than that. If we took tonight to the ultimate conclusion and it all went wrong – which it would, because there’s too much history – how would Morgan feel then?”

“It could always work out with us,” Tara murmured.

Danny shut the dishwasher with a decisive slam. “If it was going to work out, sweetheart, you wouldn’t have run off to Plymouth six months ago or found your way into another man’s bed nine or so years before that.”

The words were like a slap.

“I made a mistake, Danny! It could still be good with us! Give me one last chance to prove that,” Tara pleaded. “You still fancy me, I know you do.”

“Of course I do,” he agreed firmly. “You’re a very attractive woman. But Tara, I don’t
love
you anymore. I choose to be Morgan’s father and I choose to be your friend if you’ll let me, but I can’t make myself feel that way about you. God knows I’ve tried and I’ve wished that I could, because it would certainly make life more convenient – but emotions like that can’t be forced.”

“You loved me once,” she said sadly.

He stepped forward and dropped a chaste kiss onto the top of her head. “I did and I will always cherish what we once had, but it’s over, Tara. It’s over.”

“So that’s it? There’s no hope?”

“There’s hope that we can actually work together now rather than being at loggerheads,” he told her. “We need to move on and move forward, not just for our sakes but for Morgan’s too. There will come a time when he has to know the truth – and I want him to hear it from us both, without bitterness and accusations. I want him to understand just how loved and wanted he is by us both.”

“But we won’t be together,” Tara said quietly. “We won’t be married.”

“No, we won’t.” There was steel now in Danny’s voice, and this was when she knew that it really was over. The last time he’d sounded so determined and set on his course was when he’d told her he didn’t want her anywhere near him in the hospital. Danny had kept his word then and she knew he would now. He was a man of strong principles. When Danny Tremaine gave his heart he didn’t give it lightly. He gave it with every fibre of his being. The same applied when he took it back. There were no half measures.

Danny reached for his coat and shrugged it on, before opening the little kitchen door and stepping into the dark, smoke-scented night. Pausing on the doorstep, he added gently, “Tara, I don’t love you anymore and, if you’re really honest with yourself, I think you’ll find you no longer love me either – the man I am now or the man I was then. It’s time we both moved on. Let’s not waste the chance of finding happiness again.”

The door clicked shut and Tara stood in the empty kitchen, her arms wrapped tightly around herself. She stared at the door Danny had just closed.

Let’s not waste the chance of finding happiness again…

At the moment she couldn’t imagine ever being happy again. Any hopes she’d cherished that she and Danny might work things out were well and truly dead, and for that she had nobody to blame but herself.

Her tears were falling in earnest now. Tara turned off the lights, sat at the kitchen table and wept until dawn’s pink fingers streaked the sky.

Chapter 15

“I don’t often hate my job,” Tess Hamilton told Jules, putting her curly head in her hands, “but I have to say I come very close when it’s time to organise the school nativity. Honestly, Jules, I’m a total wreck. Have you any idea just how many times I’ve been approached by irate parents who all think their child should play Mary or an angel? I’m starting to dread leaving my classroom at the end of the day because there’s bound to be someone waiting for me.”

It was late November and Christmas was creeping up on Jules. It was always the busiest time of her year and there was so much to do that if she thought too hard about it she would start to panic. The nativity play was a highlight and traditionally took place on the village green on the same night that the Polwenna Bay Christmas tree was lit. This meant that there was only a week to go. No wonder Tess was fraught. The shepherds were on strike because nobody wanted to wear a dressing gown, and Mo’s old pony Bubbles had objected violently to wearing donkey ears and given Joseph a very sharp nip. Floods of tears had followed (Joseph) and then a steaming pile of pony crap (Bubbles). It did not bode well.

Following this afternoon’s big dress rehearsal, the two women had headed through the village for an early supper in The Ship. It was supposedly a working dinner where they could liaise about the Polwenna nativity, but Tess was so stressed that most of their time together had been spent with Jules trying to calm her down. On top of marking, assessments, report-writing and trying to actually have a life of her own, taking charge of 23 children for the Christmas show was clearly taking its toll on the exhausted primary teacher, if the three gin and tonics she’d knocked back were anything to go by.

Jules had every sympathy because the same outraged parents had taken to doorstepping the vicarage as well. The Polwenna nativity play was a huge deal in the village – it even made
X Factor
look amateurish – and all parents were determined that their child should be the star. Those of the
Jeremy Kyle Show
persuasion were ready to knock her block off, while the Boden-wearing brigade were slightly more subtle with their offerings of wine from Waitrose. No matter what their methods, both sets of parents were equally convinced that their own offspring should have the starring role. Nobody wanted to see their little cherub with a tea towel on his or her head. It was tinsel or broke. Still, like Caesar’s wife, the vicar of Polwenna Bay had to be above suspicion, and it was taking all of Jules’s tact and determination to turn them away.

“The rehearsals are looking great though,” she said, determined to cheer Tess up.

“You think?” Tess looked across the bar and gestured for another drink. “Even when Morgan insisted that it’s
A Whale in a Manger
and then, rather than reading his set piece, stated that God doesn’t exist, fact?”