put all that pain behind her. And now Max was dragging unwanted memories back to the forefront of her mind.
Her small, dainty hands fluttered in a bewildered gesture at her stupidity. She knew how and why she’d got pregnant, why she’d taken that mad and fatal risk. They had held back for a long time and he had been leaving for France... And she’d loved him so utterly that when he’d started touching her she hadn’t ever wanted him to stop and had driven him beyond the point of return.
That one occasion had been enough for her to conceive.
Carefully she replaced Fred’s cover. Like it or not, she had to see Max. She must know his intentions.
Trembling, and afraid of facing the past, she resumed her position on the floor, needing something good and solid beneath her shaking body. She took a deep breath, and spoke before she could chicken out.
‘I’m listening now.’
‘Good. I’ll be arriving at one o’clock lunchtime. Be there. It’s important.’
‘Be where?’ she asked guardedly, hating his curtness and the way her voice quaked.
‘The baker’s shop. Where you work—’
‘How do you know this?’ she cried in alarm.
‘I’ve been talking to Daniel.’
Laura’s right hand wobbled so much that she had to support it with her left. ‘Oh.’
Dimly she heard him trying to get her attention. She couldn’t speak. Her whole body felt completely paralysed. He could already have told Daniel! Fay’s marriage and the future of Fay’s two children could be in real danger with Max around. He could ruin Fay’s life. Laura closed her eyes. As he’d mined hers.
When she’d learnt of Max’s affair with her own sister, she’d been in the fifth month of her pregnancy. The news had shocked her so deeply that she hadn’t been able to eat. Some time—she didn’t know when—her baby had stopped moving.
She felt the scream building up inside her, fighting for release. Her baby. Dead.
Of course she’d willed it to live. Refused to believe that Max’s child—her only link with him—had been lost.
She’d waited, day after day, sure that her baby would wake, punch her with its little fists, kick her with its tiny feet...
She blanched. Her stomach cramped. All those hope-ridden days of carrying her dead baby. Then the high fever, the hours of lonely agony until her aunt had found her, crying with pain in the bathroom.
In her head she could still hear the sound of her racking sobs when she’d known for sure that Max had brought about the death of his own child—even though he hadn’t even known of its existence.
For days she’d lain in her hospital bed, weak and numb, with a nurse in constant attendance. And then...a sympathetic doctor had appeared. He’d told her that the infection had meant the removal of her womb and she could never have children. But it would never show, he’d said cheerfully, as if that would somehow console her.
She hunched up in misery. Max’s philandering had taken away from her the one thing she’d longed for, ever since she could remember.
A happy marriage. Children. A whole row of them in ascending sizes. Oh, God! It was tearing her heart to shreds...
‘Laura!’
But she was weeping too much now to speak—and was too proud to let him know that. Loathing the very sound of him, she dropped the receiver onto its cradle. And then disconnected the phone completely before flinging herself back into bed.
In the shop below her bedsit, there had been an epidemic of babies that morning. One set of blonde twins in matching red rompers and cosy hats to combat the October weather. A huge bruiser with the sweetest marmalade curls. And the endearing Rufus with his lopsided, windy smile.
Laura gripped the order book tightly. One deep breath. Another. Slow, steady. Rufus was now safely outside in his buggy on fashionable Sloane Street, softening up unwary strangers with every waft of his incredible lashes.
‘Wait till you have one of your own!’ his mother had said happily. ‘Stretchmarks, sleepless nights, nappies...!’
Sounded wonderful.
But what had Laura done after that innocently tactless remark? Produced a thin smile and hustled for a decision on the Christening cake design. Refused to look at the child again despite the urge to reach out and stroke his peachy cheek...
‘That’s the second baby you’ve cut dead!’ scolded Luke, emerging from the office.
With a face like stone, she dived under the counter and replaced the order book, hoping against hope that would be the last bundle of joy she saw that day.
Laura made much of checking the ribbons and flat-packed cake boxes. She thought of little Rufus with his mass of black hair, saucer eyes and tiny, screwed-up, dear little face that could have melted steel girders, let alone Laura’s susceptible heart.
As she pretended to root about under the counter, she caught herself responding belatedly to him, the gentle curves of her mouth lifting wistfully.
Rot in bell, Max! she thought, and the sweet-sad smile was sharply erased out. This situation would never alter, so she might as well get used to it.
‘Will you come out of there?’
Reluctantly she emerged and straightened, realising as she did so that Luke was warming to his theme.
‘Look, Laura, in the two weeks you’ve been here you’ve not exactly been Mary Poppins as far as kiddies are concerned.’ He looked at her curiously and she immediately turned her back and began fiddling with the cakes on the shelf behind. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ he asked in exasperation.
Remain calm. Pretend his imagination has run away with him.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she managed, with a fair stab at surprise.
Now take the cake from the shelf. Read the lettering. ‘Happy 30th Birthday, Jasper’. Admire your skill in creating a BMW convertible with only Victoria sponge, icing and your talent to play with. Place it in its box for collection and mind the wing mirrors...
‘You ignored that baby! I don’t know what he ever did to you!’
Luke, the owner of Sinful Cakes and Indecent Puddings, was clearly not going to let the matter rest. Blindly she feigned an interest in the shelf again.
‘Don’t you realise it’s part of your job to coo and sigh and make those noises women make whenever they see babies?’
‘Yes. Shall I restack the shelves with sugar mice?’ she asked, her strained voice squeaky enough to belong to a terrified mouse itself.
‘No!’ Luke grabbed her small, rigid shoulders and determinedly turned her around.
She avoided his eyes, too wound up for a confrontation. Two hours, eight minutes to go before Max turned up. The clock had been counting down in her head all morning, with an unbearable tension increasing every second, just as if she were sitting in a command centre and waiting for a missile launch.
Already her mouth was dry, her hands shaking. Something was happening to her lips. They were beginning to tremble—
‘Laura...’ came Luke’s softly spoken concern.
‘Oh, please!’ she whimpered.
Gentleness was unfair! She could have borne anything but that! She made a half-hearted attempt to twist from beneath his hands but he was too much of a vast and friendly bear to be evaded by a five-foot-two slip of a female on teetering heels.
‘Don’t,’ she pleaded, hopelessly scared of losing control.
He set her free. But she couldn’t