Chương 3
Evelyn concentrated on walking.
Her left heel had loosened. Each step made a small, irritating click.
At the end of the corridor, she stopped and took both shoes off.
Dr. Sayeed glanced down. “Sensible.”
“I haven’t been sensible all day.”
“Most people aren’t at weddings.”
Malcolm made a sound that might have been a laugh and seemed annoyed with himself for it.
A sitting room had been cleared near the rear entrance. Dr. Sayeed checked Evelyn’s blood pressure and listened for the baby’s heartbeat with a handheld monitor. The rapid galloping sound filled the small room.
Evelyn covered her face.
She did not sob. The tears came silently through her fingers.
Dr. Sayeed waited.
Malcolm stood by the window with his back turned, granting privacy without leaving. His reflection hovered over the dark lawn outside.
When Evelyn lowered her hands, the doctor asked, “Do you know your rhesus status?”
“O positive.”
“Good. We still need proper monitoring because of the fall. I’ve called an ambulance.”
“I can take a car.”
“You can. You’re not going to.”
Evelyn nodded.
Her phone began vibrating on the table.
Julian.
The name appeared exactly as she had saved it months before, followed by the small black heart he had added himself while teasing her for using full names in her contacts.
She watched it ring.
Malcolm saw the screen in the window’s reflection.
“Answer it,” he said.
“No.”
“He may say something useful.”
“I’m not collecting him anymore.”
The words surprised her. For almost a year, she had collected him constantly: explanations, receipts, inconsistencies, moments of tenderness, reasons for lateness, reasons for silence, reasons to trust the next promise instead of the last failure.
Malcolm turned from the window. “You sent the recording to my private address. How did you obtain it?”
“It was in an old email Julian forwarded me. He copied you months ago and forgot your address was visible in the chain.”
“Careless.”
“He wasn’t careless with me until he’d finished needing me.”
Malcolm’s eyes rested on her face. “What did he need?”
Evelyn hesitated.
The ambulance siren was faint beyond the estate walls.
“Somewhere he wasn’t your son.”
Malcolm looked away first.
Nora reached the rear entrance before the paramedics. She came through the door in jeans, a raincoat, and white trainers, moving with the furious purpose of someone who had spent forty minutes imagining every possible disaster and found reality insufficiently organized.
She crossed the room, crouched in front of Evelyn, and held her face between both hands.
“Are you bleeding?”
“No.”
“Is the baby moving?”
“Yes.”
“Did he push you?”
“He pulled away.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
“I fell.”
Nora’s eyes filled, but her voice remained brisk. “Right. We can argue about grammar after a doctor looks at you.”
She noticed Malcolm.
“You’re the father.”
Malcolm’s eyebrows lifted.
“His father,” Nora clarified. “Obviously.”
“Yes.”
“You raised him?”
Lady Margaret, appearing quietly in the doorway, said, “Not alone.”
Nora looked between them. “Good. I’d hate to place all the blame inaccurately.”
Under other circumstances, Evelyn might have apologized. Instead, she leaned back in the chair and let the baby’s heartbeat remain the loudest thing in the room.
The paramedics arrived. Questions were asked twice, then a third time in the ambulance. Evelyn answered as clearly as she could. She described the fall without embellishment. She said Julian had pulled his arm away sharply when she caught his sleeve. She said she did not believe he intended to make her fall. Nora sat beside her, jaw tight, and did not interrupt.
Before the doors closed, Malcolm approached.
“Miss Hart.”
Evelyn looked at him.
“Do not delete anything.”
She nearly smiled. “That is your concern?”
“It is one of them.”
“Your son has been calling me unstable for months. Your daughter-in-law just implied my baby might belong to someone else. I fell in front of a ballroom full of people, and your concern is evidence.”
“No.” His stern face shifted, though not enough to become gentle. “Evidence is the part I know how to protect.”
The ambulance doors shut between them.
At the hospital, the baby’s heart rate remained steady. Evelyn’s hip bruised dramatically but harmlessly. The cut on her palm required three adhesive strips. She lay beneath fluorescent lights while a midwife adjusted the monitoring belt and Nora sat in a vinyl chair eating crisps from a vending machine.
At two in the morning, Nora said, “I’m going to ask a question you’ll hate.”
“Then chew first.”
Nora finished the crisp.
“Did you go there because you wanted the truth, or because you wanted him to choose you?”
Evelyn watched the paper strip sliding from the monitor.
“I don’t know.”
“That’s honest.”
“I thought if he had to see me, he couldn’t keep pretending.”
“He saw you for nearly a year.”
“Not like that.”
“Pregnant?”
“In front of everyone he tells the truth to.”
Nora folded the empty packet into smaller and smaller squares.
“What did you expect him to say?”
Evelyn had rehearsed dozens of possibilities during the drive to Wycliffe Hall. Julian might apologize. He might take her into a private room and explain that the wedding was a business arrangement, as he had once claimed the engagement was. He might admit he had panicked. He might ask for time. In the most humiliating version, the one she had never confessed to Nora, he might look at her and realize he still loved her.
“I expected him to know my name.”
Nora placed the folded packet on the windowsill.
“He knew it.”
“That’s worse.”
“Yes.”
Near dawn, Dr. Sayeed called the ward personally. She had returned to the ballroom after Evelyn left. The wedding reception had ended without dinner. Guests had been asked to provide their contact details to the family’s solicitor, though several had already departed through the kitchens and one elderly couple had simply walked across the lawn.
Julian had denied the relationship for eleven minutes.
May you like
Then Malcolm played another section of the recording.
After that, Julian admitted he and Evelyn had been involved but described it as brief, casual, and finished before he became engaged to Beatrice.
