A Finer End

Gemma felt herself teetering on the edge of a precipice. Once she committed, the safety of her old life would be gone. There could be no turning back. But she no longer had the luxury of putting off the decision until she had exorcised the very last smidgen of doubt. With that realization came a most unexpected flood of relief, and an unmistakable fizz of excitement.

“Yes,” she told him. “Yes, I suppose it is.”

Moisture ringed the streetlamps along Park Lane as the December dusk faded into dull evening. The air felt dense, as if it might collapse in upon itself, and the smattering of Christmas lights made only a pallid affront to the gloom.

Bloody Friday traffic, thought Dawn Arrowood. Suddenly claustrophobic, she cracked the window of her Mercedes and inched into the long tailback at Hyde Park Corner. She’d known better than to drive into the West End, but she hadn’t been able to face the thought of the crowded Tube, with the inevitable pushing and shoving and the too-intimate exposure to unwashed bodies.

Not on this day, of all days.

She had armored herself as best she could: a visit to Harrod’s before the doctor, tea with Natalie at Fortnum & Mason’s afterwards. Had she thought these distractions could cushion the news she feared, make it somehow easier?

Nor had her old friend Natalie’s ready comfort changed things one jot.

She was pregnant. Full stop. Fact.

And she would have to tell Karl.

Her husband had made it quite, quite clear, before their marriage five years ago, that he did not want a second family. Twenty-five years her senior, with two unsatisfactory grown children and a troublesome ex-wife, Karl had declared he’d no intention of repeating the experience.

For a moment, Dawn allowed herself the weakness of imagining he would change his mind once he heard her news, but she knew that for the fantasy it was. Karl never changed his mind, nor did he take kindly to having his wishes ignored.

The traffic light changed at last, and as she swung into Bayswater Road, she shook a cigarette from the packet in the console. She would quit, she promised herself, but not yet … not until she’d worked out a plan.

If she insisted on having this child, what could Karl do? Turn her out with nothing? The thought terrified her. She’d come a long way from her childhood in a terraced house in East Croydon, and she had no intention of going back. That Natalie had understood, at least. You have legal recourse, Natalie had said, but Dawn had shaken her head. Karl kept a very expensive lawyer on retainer, and she felt certain neither he nor his solicitor would be deterred by the small matter of her legal rights.

And of course this was assuming she could somehow convince him the baby was his.

The shudder of fear that passed through her body was instinctive, uncontrollable.

Alex. Should she tell Alex? No, she didn’t dare. He’d insist she leave Karl, insist they could live happily ever after in his tiny mews flat off the Portobello Road, insist that Karl would let her go.

No, she would have to cut Alex off, for his own sake, somehow convince him it had only been a passing fling. She hadn’t realized when she’d begun the affair with Alex just how dangerous was the course upon which she’d embarked—nor had she known that she’d chosen the one lover her husband would never forgive.

The traffic picked up speed and too soon, it seemed, she reached Notting Hill Gate. The crush of evening commuters poured into the Tube station entrance like lemmings drawn to the sea, newspapers and Christmas shopping clutched in their arms, rushing home to their suburban lives of babies and telly and take-away suppers. The image brought a jab of envy and regret, and with it the too-ready tears that had plagued her of late. Dawn swiped angrily at her lower lashes—she wouldn’t have time to do her makeup over. She was late as it was, and Karl would expect her to be ready when he arrived home to collect her for their dinner engagement.

Appearances were Karl’s currency, and she now knew that she’d been acquired just as ruthlessly as one of his eighteenth-century oils or a particularly fine piece of china. What she’d been naïve enough to think was love had been merely possessiveness, she the jewel chosen with the setting in mind.

And what a setting it was, the house at the leafy summit of Notting Hill, across the street from the faded elegance of St. John’s Church. Once Dawn had loved this Victorian house with its pale yellow stucco, its superbly proportioned rooms and beautiful appointments, and for a moment she mourned the passing of such an innocent pleasure.