Читать книгу I Am Heathcliff: Stories Inspired by Wuthering Heights - Kate Mosse - Страница 11

Heath spent Valentine’s eve closing a deal for his next development with a new contractor. They’d be building in Hertfordshire on the edge of a nothingy plain they thought was real countryside. It would be his biggest project yet, and it got him away from women. It was bad enough seeing Cat’s body changing on a screen, without her parading the real thing in front of him. The men celebrated their signatures with dinner in the hotel restaurant. During the meal he’d left his phone charging behind the bar, on silent. After they’d shaken hands and parted, he retrieved his phone, and, in the second it took to register the twenty missed calls from Izzy, her number flashed up again over Cat’s picture.

‘I don’t know how to tell you this,’ she started, and he knew. He staggered into a wall as though he’d been shoved. ‘I’m with Ed now,’ sputtered Izzy. ‘Detached placenta. The doctors did what they could, but it was too late. The baby was a little girl. They’re calling her—’ He threw the phone at the far wall. The screen shattered Cat’s face into shards, then went black.

He bypassed denial and went straight to guilt. He should never have left her. He should be with her, holding her hand, catching her soul before it slipped away for ever. The impulse propelled him to his feet, but the vertigo lurch told him he wouldn’t get a mile up the motorway before he lost his licence or worse.

Anyway, he couldn’t trust himself to be in the same county as the child.

‘Triple whisky,’ he said to the barmaid, after she’d picked up the mess of silicone and glass. She bit her lip.

‘I’m not supposed to serve …’

Heath slid a fiver her way. ‘Charge the drink to the room, and that’s for you.’

She was a good listener, Lenka or Lilja, or whatever her name was, keeping the drinks coming, and nodding in all the right places when he talked about Cat.

‘I mean, what kind of hospital lets a woman die like that in 2017? More to the point, what kind of man allows that to happen to his wife? Put another double in there, that’s a good girl.’

He woke himself up the next morning by calling her name. The twist of his mouth opened up a deep scratch from the night before. There was vomit on the floor, and a single artificial fingernail snapped on the bedside table. Everything after Izzy’s phone call was a blur. He remembered the bar, note after note after note changing hands, and then his own slurred apology, I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry, and a soft accented voice; I don’t want anything to do with this, you’re seriously messed up, you need help.