He Saved Her Child, Abandoned Ours novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Nine Hours

"Do you want to know when I stopped believing you?" I said.

Rafe turned his face from the dark garden to me.

"Not last week," I said. "Not at the penthouse. Four years ago, in a delivery room at St Thomas's."

His whole body went tense.

"Rhiannon..."

"I went into labour at four in the afternoon. You rang from the car and said you'd be twenty minutes. A meeting had run over, you said, and you'd come straight from it."

"I remember."

"At eight I rang you. You didn't answer. At midnight I rang again, and the midwife asked if there was anyone she should call."

I said it flatly.

I had practised in my head for four years how to say it flatly.

"I had her at one in the morning with my gran asleep in a chair, because my gran was the only one who came."

"You said it was quick," he said.

"I told you nothing. I told you I was fine."

"Rhiannon..."

"It was nine hours, Rafe. Nine hours, alone."

The rain had thinned.

Somewhere down the lane a gutter was running over, loud in the silence.

"There was no meeting," I said. "Was there."

He didn't answer.

"Where were you?"

"Posy had croup," he said hoarsely. "She was a year old. Cressida rang at three, screaming, and said she couldn't breathe. I took her to Great Ormond Street."

"You told me it was a meeting."

"Yes."

"You sat in a hospital with your other child while I had your daughter by myself."

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