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قديم 28-09-07, 07:46 PM   المشاركة رقم: 11
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thank u so much

 
 

 

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قديم 29-09-07, 11:42 AM   المشاركة رقم: 12
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Rosa

 
 

 

عرض البوم صور Mai Ziyada  
قديم 29-09-07, 12:24 PM   المشاركة رقم: 13
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What's brought that look to your face? " Janice asked Claudia when
she saw the way the younger woman frowned as she suddenly pushed away
her desk chair and got to her feet.

"And don't tell me it's the thought of leaving this and us," she added
bluntly.

Claudia gave her a forced smile. She had been feeling uncomfortable
all day, not in pain exactly just . just. As though just to
contradict and spite her, a jagged pain splintered through her body,
causing her to gasp and try to catch her breath. She clung to the back
of her chair for sup port.

She was five months pregnant another few weeks and she would be
stopping work. Garth would soon be leaving the army and they had
agreed that he would not take up his new job until after she had had
the baby.

Rather unexpectedly. Garth's father had been elevated through the
parliamentary ranks and their frantic new lifestyle meant that his
parents were going to be out of the country for most of the next twelve
months.

"Why don't you move in here?" Garth's father had suggested when Garth
and Claudia had told him and his wife about the problems they were
having finding somewhere suitable to live, but neither of them had
wanted to do that.

"It's a kind thought, but we really need to find somewhere of our own,"
Garth had explained to his father.

Claudia gave another gasp as a second sharp pain ripped through her
body.

"Claudia...?" she heard Janice demanding anxiously and then more
ominously muttering under her breath, "Oh my God, someone ring for an
ambulance. Quickly. Now! Now!" But Claudia was beyond listening,
beyond comprehending anything other than the pain, the agony
threatening to tear her body apart.

She stayed conscious all the way through the siren screaming its
frantic, wailing message from the office to the hospital. She was
still conscious when they rushed her from the delivery room into
emergency surgery. And she was conscious long enough to see how much
blood she was losing and for her own horror and panic to seize hold of
her--long enough to want to suspend her awareness of the searing pain
that was savaging her body.

But she was not conscious when the surgeon pronounced her baby dead,
nor was she conscious when he made the decision to remove her womb.

"It's either that or watch her bleed to death," he declared bluntly.
By the time they managed to locate Garth, it was all over. He reached
the hospital just as they were wheeling an inert and
still-anaesthetized Claudia back to the ward.

"What's wrong? What's happened? Claudia...?" he protested as the
nurse shook her head and placed her hand on his arm.

"Sister wants to have a word with you, Mr. Wallace," she advised him
gently.

Garth didn't bother to correct her, to tell her that officially, at
least, he wasn't a Mister but a Captain. After all, what did such
niceties matter when Claudia, his Claudia, was lying on that hospital
trolley, her face so drained and pale, her body so still that he might
have been looking at a corpse? So still. and so flat.

"Sit down, please. Captain Wallace," Sister instructed rather than
invited him. She was in her fifties, efficient and brisk with the
experience and weight of a lifetime of breaking bad news to patients'
relatives behind her, but that never made it any easier.

"Claudia, my wife ... what...?" Garth questioned, refusing her offer
of a seat and ignoring the brief firming of her mouth that suggested he
should listen rather than talk.

"Your wife, Mrs. Wallace, is rather poorly at the moment," she told
him directly.

"She's lost a good deal of blood and, of course, the trauma of the
operation causes the body to go into shock and--' " Operation? What
operation? " Garth demanded, his own face losing colour. All he had
been told was that Claudia had been rushed into hospital with what her
colleagues feared might be a potential miscarriage.

"My wife's expecting a baby and..."
Her very stillness and her silence warned him of what the sister was
going to say next, but even that warning was not enough to fully
prepare him for it.

"I'm afraid that your wife has lost her baby. He was stillborn. It
happens sometimes."

It was like having a land-mine go off unexpectedly beneath your
feet--only worse, much worse. The pain, the confusion, the awful,
sickening fear while you waited to assess the damage, waited in the
eerie silence for the sound to begin, the cacophony of men crying,
screaming in panic and in fear.

"Claudia has lost the baby." Garth heard himself say the words without
knowing why he had said them. After all, the woman had spoken plainly
enough.

"Yes. I'm afraid so...." There was another small pause and Garth felt
his body tense in response as a sharp tingle of prescient alarm jangled
down his spine.

"What is it ... what's wrong...?" he demanded tersely. "What...?"
"Your wife was bleeding very badly. Mr. Knowles tried to stern it
while he transfused her, but..." The neat, short-nailed, scrubbed
hands that she had folded in front of her suddenly twitched betrayingly
as Garth waited.

"I'm afraid it was no use. m the end, Mr. Knowles had no option other
than to remove her womb."

"Remove her womb," Garth repeated. He felt like a diver who had gone
down too deep, like a swimmer trying to fight against a relentless
tide;

his body grew heavy and lethargic, his thinking slow and dull.
"Yes. I'm afraid so," the sister acknowledged.
"It was either that or..." She stopped and then told him quietly,
"There was a risk that without surgery she could have bled to death. It
does happen--fortunately infrequently--' " But not infrequently
enough," Garth interrupted her savagely.

"Oh, my God... Does Claudia know?" he demanded.
"Has she...?"
"She was conscious--just--when... when the stillbirth occurred," she
told him.

"But she was anaesthetized for the actual operation, of course."
Garth closed his eyes.
"How long... how long before I can see her.. talk to her...?"
"Not until morning. She should be out of the anaesthetic before then,
but I'd advise--' " I want to be with her. I want to be there when she
comes round. I want to see her now," Garth interrupted peremptorily.

"I really don't think..." Sister began, but Garth refused to listen.
"I want to see the surgeon," he insisted and the sister sighed under
her breath. If there was one thing she disliked on her wards, it was
someone making a fuss, and this man looked as though he knew how to
make a fuss to very good purpose, knew how to and was fully prepared to
do so.

"Your wife has been put in a small side ward," she told him severely.
"As I've already told you, she really is rather poorly."
What she wasn't going to reveal was that she had already detailed one
of her nurses to position Claudia's bed so that she herself could keep
a watchful eye on her through the night even though officially tonight
was her night off. She hadn't liked the look of her as they wheeled
her into the ward, and the last thing she wanted right now was an
angry, worried young husband pacing her ward and disturbing all the
other pa- dents.

Quickly, she made up her mind.
"Very well, then, you may stay in the side ward with your wife.
Captain, but only, only for so long as you remember that this is my
ward, and on it my word is law. As you are a military man, I hope you
understand me when I tell you that on this ward I am the officer in
charge and the commanding officer, and that I expect instant obedience
to my orders and instructions. "

She was only a little over five feet in height, but as he looked at
her. Garth was conscious of not just her determination but her
strength, as well, and oddly, in the midst of all the anguish and shock
he was experiencing, he felt a small flash of relief that she was
there; that Claudia was in her hands.

The side ward was virtually bare, furnished only with the high-sided
hospital bed on which Claudia lay motionless, her chest barely rising
and falling with her breathing, and a hard, un comfortable-looking
chair.

There was a drip attached to Claudia's arm and pristine sheets covered
her inert body, pristine. and flat.

Garth felt his eyes sting sharply with tears. He was stillborn, the
sister had said. He. That meant that he and Claudia would have had.
should have had a son.

Now his tears were hot, burning his eyes, burning his skin. His son.
His child. His. Gone before he had even had a chance to see him, know
him. Deep down inside his body, a new pain flared, a blazing, fierce
dark sorrow that he knew would never leave him. His arms ached to hold
the small life that should have been. He saw the sister hovering in
the doorway.

"The baby, my son," he choked.
"Where... can I...?"
It was normally the woman, the mother, who asked this question and it
caught Sister a little off guard that Garth should do so and Sister did
not like being caught off guard and unprepared.

He's in the mortuary, she had been about to say but just in time caught
herself up.

Stillborn, pre-term foetuses were not normally considered to be
'babies', but St. Chad's was a world leader in the field of obstetrics
and very forward thinking. The research they had done there among
mothers who had suffered stillborn births had shown that there was a
very clear need for such women to know something of the children they
had lost. No one with the experience that the maternity staff at St.
Chad's had could doubt or deny that even such early still- boms as
Claudia's were quite distinctly recognisable as 'babies', their bodies
and limbs fully formed--if minute.

Sister had seen herself the comfort that their mothers derived from
seeing and even holding these heartbreakingly tiny, lifeless forms, and
so the policy at St. Chad's, unlike other hospitals, was not for the
stillboms to be quickly and silently disposed of, but for them and
their parents to receive rather more gentle and compassionate
treatment.

And so instead of giving Garth the stark truth, she caught herself and
told him, "I don't have any spare staff at the moment, but in the
morning if you wish to see him..."

"To see him?" Garth stared at her.
"Some mothers find it easier to... to accept their loss once they have
seen their... their child," she told him quietly.

Garth swallowed. Was that what he wanted? Did he. ought he.
Breaking into his quandary, Claudia coughed. Frowning, the sister
shooed him out of the way as she bustled towards the bed.

 
 

 

عرض البوم صور Mai Ziyada  
قديم 29-09-07, 12:26 PM   المشاركة رقم: 14
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It was two o'clock in the morning--the death hour--just as his own
eyelids were starting to grow heavy and ache, he saw Claudia's begin to
flutter into warning wakefulness. She moved in the bed and then opened
her eyes and stared at Garth, her gaze unfocused, her face waxy pale in
the low night-light from the main ward outside, her eyes bruised with
the starkness of her pain. Two o'clock in the morning--the death hour.
Her initial keening mourning cry rapidly escalated to rapid-fire, short
hysterical screams that brought two nurses running to her side. Sister
walked, but she still got to Claudia first, firmly taking hold of her
wrist while she checked her pulse.

She obscured Garth's view of the bed while she gave her two nurses
low-voiced instructions.

"What's that? What are you doing?" Garth demanded as one of them
scurried off to return with a hypodermic.

Tranquilliser," the staff nurse told Garth hardily.
"Mr. Knowles left instructions for us to administer it--if
necessary."

Garth had been about to protest that Claudia was only just coming
round, but it was too late;

Sister was already inserting the needle into Claudia's vein.
"She still doesn't know that Mr. Knowles has had to operate on her,"
the sister told Garth once Claudia had sunk back into
unconsciousness.

"She isn't strong enough yet to be told. Her body needs time to
recuperate from the blood she's lost and from the operation, and in her
present state..."

As she was talking. Garth had got up from the chair to walk over to
Claudia's bed. He looked down into her frighteningly shrunken and pale
face.

"I want to see him," he told the sister abruptly.
"I want to see the... my son."
She had been expecting it and this time she was prepared. So, too, was
the pathetically small scrap of humanity waiting for Garth in the
quiet,

simple 'parents' room', where parents were taken to be with their
stillborn child.

The room was painted in soft water-colours to look as though the sun
was coming up through mist. It was furnished with a deep, comfortable
sofa on which two people might sit comfortably side by side, their
bodies touching, and its interior could be discreetly monitored from
behind a small screen set into the wall just in case things should get
out of hand.

The babies were placed in a traditional crib draped in fine white
voile.

Garth's heart missed a beat as he walked into the room. The young
nurse who had escorted him quietly disappeared, gently closing the door
behind her. Garth hesitated just inside the room, unable to move,
unable to do anything other than stare at the draped crib.

Almost, almost, he could see it move, hear that sharp, high-pitched cry
of the newborn, and perhaps, if he concentrated enough, he would do.
Perhaps. Grimly, Garth gritted his teeth and walked towards the crib.
The baby lay inside it, dressed in white, his eyes closed.

Garth wasn't sure what he had expected but it wasn't this. not this
tiny but perfect little face and body. Very gently, he reached out and
touched one cold little hand with the tip of his finger. His hand was
longer than the whole of the child, his finger longer and broader than
its arm. Garth closed his eyes and for a moment the nurse watching on
the other side of the small screen thought he was going to turn round
and walk away, but then Garth bent and very carefully lifted the small
body from the crib.

The nurse looked away. Some things were too private for anyone else to
witness. Some sorrows, some griefs, were too intense to be borne.

Very slowly. Garth lifted the lifeless body of his son towards his
face. He was so tiny, so fragile, so. He was, he discovered, holding
his breath, afraid that somehow in his clumsiness he might
inadvertently hurt. Numbly, Garth swallowed. The small body actually
felt almost warm, almost what? he asked himself bitterly. Almost
alive?

"I'm sorry," he heard himself telling him.
"I'm sorry ... I'm so sorry."
It hurt more than he could say that they would never know one another,
never share the joy and despair of being father and son; that this,
these moments now would be all he would have of him, that for this, his
child, there would be, could be, no memories, no knowledge, no
awareness of how much he had been loved and wanted.

As he kissed the cold forehead and placed him gently back in the
crib.

Garth remembered how he had teased Claudia for talking to the baby as
though he could actually hear and understand what she was saying.

Perhaps. perhaps he had known of their love. Garth certainly hoped
so. As he stood up, he felt a surge of fiercely protective father love
sweep over him, a desire to prevent anyone else from touching, hurting,
doing anything to the small lifeless body. Why had this had to happen?
Why hadn't anyone been able to do something to save him?

Why hadn't he been able to do something?
"We'll always remember you," he told his son softly, 'and so will your
brothers and sisters. "

As he left the room, the nurse watching saw a single tear slide down
his face as he gave the baby a final lingering look.

But it wasn't until he was back on the ward that the full reality of
what had happened hit him. We'll always remember you and so will your
brothers and sisters, he had told him. But of course, there would be
no brothers and sisters, no child or children. Not now, not ever.

It was Claudia's screams that woke Garth up. He had fallen asleep m
the chair just after dawn had broken. Claudia had awakened shortly
afterwards, fully conscious this time and all too aware of what the
ominous flatness of her stomach meant.

Garth went with her when they put her in a wheelchair and took her to
see the baby. When he lifted him out of the crib to give him to her,
she held him so tightly that Garth almost winced and had to stop
himself--ridiculously--from protesting that she might hurt him.

It was the nurse--more experienced by far than Garth--who recognised
what was going to happen and who discreetly alerted the sister so that
when Claudia refused to allow anyone to remove the baby from her arms,
the sister was there within seconds and deftly administering the second
dose of tranquilliser as she had done the first. Even so, they had to
wait until Claudia was unconscious before they could prise her hands
away from her child.

In the end, it was almost a week before Claudia was well enough to be
told about the removal of her womb.

"You're very lucky to be alive," the surgeon informed her.
"Lucky... lucky..."
Garth winced as he heard the sound of her uncontrolled and
uncontrollable weeping.

No one was to be told about her hysterectomy, Claudia insisted to
Garth. No one at all, and because he was so concerned for her. Garth
agreed. So far as even their parents knew, Claudia had suffered a
miscarriage.

"It's awful, darling, I know," her mother had tried to comfort her once
Claudia was allowed home from hospital, 'and I know you don't want to
hear this right now, but one day there wall be other babies and. "

Over Claudia's bent head as the tears poured down her cheeks, her
mother gave Garth an apologetic look. She had suggested that perhaps
Claudia might like to go back with them to recuperate for a while, but
the doctor had already told Garth bluntly that the best possible thing
for Claudia would be to encourage her to get back to work just as soon
as she was physically capable.

"No point in allowing her to brood," he had told Garth man to man, 'and
that's what's bound to happen, given the situation. "

"Yes," Garth had agreed bleakly.
There was no talk now of continuing with their search for a new home,
or of his taking time off to be at home before getting on with his new
job, but Claudia was still not well enough to be left alone or to go
back to work. She alternated between clinging tightly to Garth,
refusing almost to allow him out of her sight and telling him that
their marriage might as well be over; that for all she cared he might
as well leave. After all, what was the point in their staying married
when so far as she was concerned at least, the very purpose for which
it was ordained no longer existed?

"Thousands of women, couples, can't have children, do," Garth had told
her gently.

"We could adopt...."
"Adopt ... adopt what ... who...? I want my own child... our own
child," Claudia had screamed at him.

They hadn't had sex since her return home despite the fact that her own
doctor and the surgeon had pronounced her well enough. At the merest
hint of any sexual advance from him, Claudia simply froze. What was
the point in having sex, Claudia had demanded passionately, when she
was no longer a proper woman, no longer able to conceive?

Plenty, Garth had been tempted to respond pithily, more than plenty as
his body was urgently reminding him. His desire for her was not
dependent on any ability to conceive--unlike hers for him, or so it
seemed--but whenever he tried to talk to her about the subject, Claudia
refused to listen.

"Sex, sex, that's all you ever think about," she stormed at him when he
pointed out to her very gently, or so he had thought, that it was now
some little while since she had left hospital and that although they
were still sharing a bed--they had to since the flat only had the one
bed after all--sharing it was all they were doing, with Claudia putting
just as much distance between them as she possibly could.

This was his last leave before he formally left the regiment, a few
weeks after he'd originally intended to leave, but the timing was, for
obvious tragic reasons, not so critical now. He had come home full of
good intentions; he would take Claudia out for dinner somewhere
special, and perhaps after a good meal and a few glasses of wine, she
might relax enough for them to be able to talk--really talk--together
as they had once done.

But it hadn't worked. Claudia had been tense all evening, and now that
they had returned to the flat, she was angry and defensive as she faced
Garth across the small sitting room.

"Claudia, that's not true," he protested.
But she refused to allow him to continue, interrupting him to demand
hotly, "Isn't it? Isn't that why you took me out for dinner, so that
you could get me " in the mood"?"

"Claudia, making love, being intimate--'
told Garth man to man, 'and that's what's bound to happen, given the
situation. "

"Yes," Garth had agreed bleakly.
There was no talk now of continuing with their search for a new home,
or of his taking time off to be at home before getting on with his new
job, but Claudia was still not well enough to be left alone or to go
back to work. She alternated between clinging tightly to
Garth/refusing almost to allow him out of her sight and telling him
that their marriage might as well be over; that for all she cared he
might as well leave. After all, what was the point in their staying
married when so far as she was concerned at least, the very purpose for
which it was ordained no longer existed?

"Thousands of women, couples, can't have children, Clo/ Garth had told
her gently.

"We could adopt...."
"Adopt ... adopt what ... who...? I want my own child... our own
child," Claudia had screamed at him.

They hadn't had sex since her return home despite the fact that her own
doctor and the surgeon had pronounced her well enough. At the merest
hint of any sexual advance from him, Claudia simply froze. What was
the point in having sex, Claudia had demanded passionately, when she
was no longer a proper woman, no longer able to conceive?

Plenty, Garth had been tempted to respond pithily, more than plenty as
his body was urgently reminding him. His desire for her was not
dependent on any ability to conceive--unlike hers for him, or so it
seemed--but whenever he tried to talk to her about the subject, Claudia
refused to listen.

"Sex, sex, that's all you ever think about," she stormed at him when he
pointed out to her very gently, or so he had thought, that it was now
some little while since she had left hospital and that although they
were still sharing a bed--they had to since the flat only had the one
bed after all--sharing it was all they were doing, with Claudia putting
just as much distance between them as she possibly could.

This was his last leave before he formally left the regiment, a few
weeks after he'd originally intended to leave, but the timing was, for
obvious tragic reasons, not so critical now. He had come home full of
good intentions; he would take Claudia out for dinner somewhere
special, and perhaps after a good meal and a few glasses of wine, she
might relax enough for them to be able to talk--really talk--together
as they had once done.

But it hadn't worked. Claudia had been tense all evening, and now that
they had returned to the flat, she was angry and defensive as she faced
Garth across the small sitting room.

"Claudia, that's not true," he protested.
But she refused to allow him to continue, interrupting him to demand
hotly, "Isn't it? Isn't that why you took me out for dinner, so that
you could get me " in the mood"?"

"Claudia, making love, being intimate--'
"Having sex," she corrected him bitterly.
"Very well, then," he agreed curtly. '"Having sex" , if you must, is
an important part of marriage. When you and I got married, we--' "I
didn't get married to have sex. I got married to have babies,
children, a family," Claudia told him fiercely.

"Without that... without them... sex to me means nothing."
Dumbstruck, Garth looked at her.
Was what she was saying the truth? Had the intimacy between them, the
sex, the loving he had thought they shared for their mutual pleasure
never been anything more than a mere means to an end? Once, he would
have laughed at the very idea, his body, his mind, his emotions, warmed
by the memory of her responsiveness to him, but it had been a long time
since Claudia had reacted to him with anything other than bitterness
and rage.

Her claim that she had never desired him for himself as a man hurt as
much as if he had been kicked in the stomach, leaving him grappling
with the sharpness of the pain and the humiliation of having been
caught out by the unexpectedness of the blow. Her words had damaged
his male pride, made him feel less of a man, and he acted
instinctively, crossing the floor and taking hold of her by the upper
arms, denying, "That's not true."

"Let go of me. Garth." Angrily, Claudia tried to prise his fingers
away from her arm.

"You're hurting me."
Bleakly, Garth focused on her.
"And do you think that you're not doing the same to me?" he challenged
her, but Claudia refused to listen.

"Sex, sex, sex. I'm sick of hearing you complain about it. If you
want it so badly, why don't you go and find someone else, someone who's
a proper woman... a woman..."

She broke off, her voice suspended by the tears that were suddenly
pouring down her face. Instantly, Garth's anger retreated, melted by
the fierce surge of protective love that swept over him.

"I never said that," he contradicted her gently.
"You are a proper woman, my woman, the only woman I could ever want."
"Oh, Garth."
Suddenly, she was the Claudia he remembered, the Claudia. his Claudia,
who suddenly felt all softness and warmth in his arms, all woman. With
a husky groan. Garth tightened his hold on her, but this time she made
no objection, her mouth opening eagerly beneath his kiss.

It was impossible for him to be as restrained and gentle as he had
planned, impossible to hold a tight curb on his emotions, on the needs,
both physical and emotional, that were swamping him, but gloriously,
wonderfully, Claudia seemed to be just as eager for him as he was for
her, clinging to him, kissing him back with a fervency, a passion that
made his heart race.

She was the one now who was the aggressor;
she was the one tugging his shirt free of his jeans and pulling
impatiently at the buttons.

They made love quickly, passionately, desperately almost, there and
then in the sitting room. Garth responded to Claudia's fierce
exhortations and demands by turning her around and bending her over the
low arm of the sofa so that he could enter her from behind, his hands
free to caress her body, his fingers stroking her nipples and then
moving lower, parting the outer lips of her sex and finding the tight,
hard nub of her clitoris and caressing it with the same rhythmic
pressure with which he was moving within the welcoming warmth of her
body.

But even in the intensity of his passion, his drive for physical
release, a part of Garth remained aware of her body's potential
fragility, and just before he exploded into orgasm. Garth acknowledged
that their lives were never going to be the same, that quite simply
they could not go back to being the people they had been. For the rest
of their lives now, there would be a part of him that felt extra
protective towards Claudia, extra aware of her vulnerability. A
vulnerability that he knew she had hidden from everyone else--her
parents, her colleagues and even her new doctor. She had decided none
of them was to be made aware that it wasn't only the child she had been
carrying that she had lost and she had fiercely resisted all his
attempts to persuade her to tell them.

His fingers still caressing her clitoris. Garth felt her body explode
into orgasmic shudders of release, but when he turned her around he
knew that the tears on her face were not merely tears of sexual
satisfaction.

"Oh, Garth, I don't know if I can bear it Claudia cried against his
chest as he folded her protectively into his arms.

As he tried to comfort her, his gaze fell on an open file she had been
reading, the girl's face staring up defiantly at him from the
photograph attached to it. His stomach muscles tensed in sharp
recognition.

"Who's this?" he asked Claudia as he released her to bend over and
pick up the file.

"Katriona Spencer," Claudia told him, taking the file from him and
closing it.

"I'm very worried about her. She's disappeared, left the squat, and no
one there seems to know where she's gone. Why did you ask?" she
added. The privileged aspect of her work meant that Garth rarely asked
her any questions about the clients--he was very sensitive and acute
over such matters and Claudia was grateful to him for the fact that
unlike some of her colleagues' spouses he had never shown any
resentment over the fact that there were certain things about her work
that she was not free to discuss with him. But then, of course, his
training in the army meant that he was well aware of the importance of
confidentiality. And there were, after all, certain things about his
own work that naturally he could not discuss with her.

"No reason," Garth denied in response to her question, shaking his
head.

How could he tell Claudia that he had recognised the girl in the
photograph as being the same one he had woken up to find going through
his clothes? She had quite obviously 'acquired' Claudia's house
keys.

His frown deepened. He wasn't quite sure why he felt reluctant to tell
Claudia about his discovery other than perhaps because, male-like, he
didn't want to cause any upset. They had, after all, changed the locks
and fitted a safety chain on the outer door, and besides, with any
luck, they would soon be moving anyway.

Dismissing Katriona from his thoughts, he pulled Claudia back into his
arms and whispered teasingly to her, "That was very nice for an
aperitif. Now how about something a little bit more... sustaining for
our main course?" As he spoke, he was gently urging her in the
direction of the bedroom.

"Garth, we said we'd spend the rest of the evening going through those
new details the agent sent," Claudia reminded him.

"Mmm... I know. But there's nothing to stop us going through them in
bed, is there?"

Claudia laughed.
"You know quite well that that isn't what you've got in mind at all,"
she reproved him.

Garth didn't bother to deny it. Instead, he gave her a wicked smile as
he picked her up bodily and carried her towards their bed. This was
more like it. This was more like the real Claudia. his Claudia.

 
 

 

عرض البوم صور Mai Ziyada  
قديم 29-09-07, 12:31 PM   المشاركة رقم: 15
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كاتب الموضوع : Mai Ziyada المنتدى : الارشيف
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The letter was waiting for him when he returned to camp. It was marked
'strictly private and confidential' and had been placed discreetly on
his desk.

Frowning slightly, he opened it. When he saw the *******s, his face
lost colour.

There was a plain sheet of paper on which someone had written in large
uneven capitals, "Congratulations', and then as he lifted the sheet to
see what was pinned behind it, he caught his breath.

It was a simple and very brief typed letter confirming that its
recipient was pregnant.

At first, he thought it was the very worst kind of bad joke--a cruelly
bad joke, the kind that would surely destroy Claudia if she ever got to
hear about it. But then he realised that if it was a joke, it was
being played on him by life. fate. and not some boneheaded rookies
out to put one over on an officer, because the letter wasn't addressed
to Claudia. And the letter had been sent by a Katriona Wallace--a woman
using his surname.

Garth swallowed and stared at the top left- hand corner of the letter
again.

"Katriona Wallace, Flat 12, Stanway House, Victoria Street."
Katriona. Katriona Spencer.
Claudia's client, the girl who had stolen her house keys, the girl who
had broken into the flat, the girl he had caught going through his
wallet. Katriona. The girl, who it now seemed was trying to claim
that he was the father of the child she was carrying, which was, of
course, impossible. He had never been near the girl. He had never
touched her. He had always had a strong suspicion that some of the
people Claudia had to deal with came very close to being pretty
psychotic. Now he had proof of it.

What on earth had made her pick on him for the role of father to her
child? Surely not the fortunately small amount of money she had taken
from his wallet.

So what then? Had her choice been a deliberate act of spitefulness or
merely a motiveless act of pointless boredom? She must have got his
address from his wallet but she hadn't actually taken his ID papers,
which meant that she must have memorised it.

Congratulations. His face contorting, he screwed up both papers and
hurled them into the waste-paper basket. Then on some impulse he
couldn't define, he got them out again, smoothed them flat and reread
them before searching in his desk drawer for a box of matches. Very
deliberately, he proceeded to rip them into small pieces before burning
them.

The girl was obviously just trying it on. She had to be. There was no
way he could possibly be the father of her child. No way at all.

"Any luck with the agents?" Garth forced himself to sound bright and
cheerful as he waited for Claudia's response, picturing her standing by
the telephone they had recently had installed in the flat as she
answered his call. He had hoped to get home for the weekend but there
were one or two matters he had to tie up at HQ before he took his final
leave of the army.

"Nothing we'd be interested in," Claudia responded.
"All that seem to be around at the moment are rambling country
rectories, not the sort of thing we'd want at all."

"But that's..."
Just in time. Garth stopped himself.
As they were never going to have a family, there was no point in
looking at family houses, Claudia had told him. Since she had now
decided to stay on at work and since he, too, would be working in
London, they would be much better off with a modern London apartment
rather than buying some ridiculously oversize country house.

Garth didn't agree with her. The last thing he wanted was a soulless
city apartment. He had been looking forward to spending his weekends
and his free time in some sleepy little country town, preferably one
with a decent stretch of fish able river close to it and certainly one
with a good golf course, but he had learned over the past few months to
tread warily around Claudia and not say or do anything that would bring
on one of the deep, dark moods of despair that were caused by anything
reminding her of what had happened.

To Garth, she had become heartbreakingly and very worryingly frail in
recent weeks, both in appearance and manner, but she stubbornly
resisted all his attempts to discuss his concern for her with him. She
was perfectly all right, she in n sis ted But, of course, they both
knew that she wasn't. And Garth had taken to telephoning her every day
when he was away from her just to make sure.

Just to make sure of what? It was a question he didn't want to ask
himself, never mind answer.

"I'm going to see what sounds like an ideal place in a new block with
views over the river," Claudia told him brightly--overbrightly. Garth
recognised.

"It will be perfect for us--almost within walking distance of where
your office will be."

"Claudia, I didn't think--' Garth began, but she refused to let him
finish.

"I must go. Garth," she broke in abruptly.
"I've got a conference meeting in half an hour."
Garth's meeting finished earlier than he had anticipated. With a free
afternoon and evening ahead of him, his first instinct was to go home
to Claudia, but a couple of miles from the flat, he got caught up in a
traffic jam caused by some roadworks he had forgotten about, leaving
him no alternative but to sit and wait. On some impulse he refused to
name, he reached into the glove compartment and withdrew the A to Z
road map he kept there and thumbed through it.

As he had suspected, Stanway House in Victoria Street had to be a
sixties tower block built by one of the city councils.

There was a side-street several yards away and after a very creative
interpretation of the traffic laws, he was able to turn into it and
follow the labyrinth of narrow backstreets into which it led,
eventually coming out half an hour later onto the main road that ran
past the block of flats.

Wisely, he parked his car far enough away not to be at any risk from
vandals and, having rechecked the A to Z, started to make his way on
foot towards the flats.

The smell that reached him as he climbed up the first set of stairs
made him wrinkle his nose un appreciatively but when the group of
youths clustered together in the shadowed overhang started to make
jeering comments about his appearance, all it took to silence them was
one quick, steady look.

Tucking copper pig," he heard one of the youths muttering as he started
up the next set of stairs.

"Naw/ one of his companions denied.
"He's no pig. He hasn't got the look. He's army. Look at his
hair."

Ruefully, Garth applauded the youth's visual astuteness--pity he wasn't
putting it to better use. Claudia had already teased him about the
fact that once he was formally 'out', he would have to adopt a more
trendy hairstyle, but Garth suspected that he would feel uncomfortable
with the foppishly long hair currently favoured by so many members of
his own sex after years of sporting a short army back and sides.

Number 12 was on the third landing, a no man's land of boarded-up
windows and barred doors. The flats were quite plainly being emptied,
hopefully getting readied for demolition, Garth reflected.

They were more like a nest of rat holes than a good environment for
human beings to thrive in.

Number 12 looked no better than the rest. The only difference was that
someone had removed the boarding evidently meant to keep unwanted house
hunters out, a someone who did not in tend to be put off by any
would-be attempts to remove them if the graffiti scrawled across the
doors and windows were anything to go by, Garth decided as he briefly
read the colloquial message to the effect that uninvited visitors would
not be welcome.

Ignoring it, he rapped sharply on the door. When no one opened it, he
paused for a second, studied it thoughtfully, then reflecting briefly
on the wisdom of his un citizen-like behaviour, he leaned forward and,
putting his shoulder to the door, gave it extremely professional if
somewhat illegal encouragement to open of its own accord.

He was just about to make a second attempt when he heard sounds of
movement behind the door and an irritable female voice calling out, Tor
God's sake, if you're that desperate. " and then the door was being
unbolted and pulled open.

As Garth stepped into the gloomy, dank darkness of the unlit hallway,
his first thought was that she was far prettier than he remembered; in
fact, so pretty that the shock of it jolted through him as though he
had gripped hold of an electrical cable. That she had recognised him
as immediately as he had done her was equally evident.

"Well, hello there. Daddy," she spat viciously at him, giving him a
wide and totally unwelcoming smile.

"Come to check it out for yourself, have you? Well, go ahead ... here
he is."

Still smiling mockingly at him, she patted her round belly, the only
part of her that was round, the taut mound of her pregnancy somehow
grotesque against the shocking thinness and gauntness of the rest of
her body.

"It isn't true," Garth denied flatly.
"It can't be."
"Can't it?" she taunted him.
"Then why are you here? What's wrong... frightened your little wifey
will find out? What will she say? I wonder. She won't be pleased,
will she? Not that she's got anything to boast about. She couldn't
manage to hold on to hers could she? Mine's going to be a big, fine,
strong baby." She patted her belly again and laughed.

"She wasn't even really showing, was she? Call herself a woman. I bet
she didn't give you as good a time in bed as I did. I bet she's never
even given you a proper blow job, has she, never mind if you had to go
down on her? I bet it felt good, didn't it, getting a real taste of
pussy juice, from the way you were licking away at it?"

"Stop it," Garth warned her.
"Stop that right now. You're making it up. I've never been to bed
with you. I--' " No. Want me to tell you some more about what you
did. what you said? Want me to describe the mole you've got right
here? "

As she accurately touched the place on his in n ner thigh where he had
a small, flat, oval mole, Garth winced and not just because of the fact
that she was touching him.

"Not got much to say for yourself now, have you?" Katriona gloated.
"You were begging me for it," she told him.
"Begging me... you couldn't wait to get it... couldn't wait to have me.
You told me that you'd never had a fuck like it, that you'd never had a
woman like me.

You said it was a hundred, a thousand, times better than it had ever
been with her. Do you want me to tell you how many times you had me?
"

she asked him softly, watching mercilessly as his colour came and
went.

"For a man who had drunk as much whisky as you had, you did pretty
well, but then I suppose you have to be tough in the army."

As she was speaking, she was reaching out as though to caress his body.
Instinctively, Garth stepped back from her.

What she was saying was some grotesque perversion of the truth. It had
to be. It couldn't possibly be true. He couldn't possibly have made
love to her. had sex with her, and yet as his brain was forging the
furious panic-stricken denials, deep down inside a part of him was
already recognising that somewhere in what she was saying there lay a
vicious, poisoned shard of truth. He couldn't remember saying or doing
the things she had said, but there was something not so much a memory
as a shocked sense of awareness.

"What? Nothing to say?"
Swallowing hard. Garth tried to compose him 7
self. No matter what he might feel towards her, if she was speaking
the truth, then this wretched creature was carrying his child and if
that was the case, no matter how unpalatable, how appalling he found
the prospect, he had a moral obligation towards that child.

That child. his child. Oh, my God, what was he going to do? How the
hell was he going to tell Claudia?

"We need to talk," he announced curtly, starting to move farther into
the hallway, but Katriona immediately blocked his way.

"Talk? What about?"
"About the fact that you're carrying my child. Arrangements will have
to be made." Wearily, Garth pushed his hand into his hair. Never in a
thousand years had he ever envisaged himself being in this sort of
situation, at least not once he had left his youthful wild-oats-sowing
excesses behind him. It made him feel sick to think. to contrast this
with the loving hopes he and Claudia had shared; the excitement and
pleasure with which they had been looking forward to the arrival of
their child.

"Arrangements. The only arrangement I'll be making is when to get rid
of it," he heard Katriona telling him ruthlessly.

"Get rid of it? No, you can't--' " Who says not? " she demanded
scornfully.

"This is my baby ... mine, and I can do what the hell I want with it
and there's not a fucking thing you can do to stop me."

As he saw the way her eyes were glittering,
Garth recognised that there was no point in trying to reason with
her.

He was no stranger to the sight of someone on drugs. It happened.
Even in the army.

"It might not even be yours," Katriona was saying now.
"You aren't the only man I've ever rucked, you know."
Garth could well believe it. His stomach churned nauseously as he
looked away from her, praying that she wouldn't guess how much he hoped
the child she was carrying was not his, or rather how much he hoped
that she was not going to be the mother of a child he had fathered, and
not just because of what that knowledge would do to Claudia if she ever
found out about it.

"What did you come round here for anyway?" Katriona challenged.
"Another chance to get a taste of what you don't get at home? I don't
come cheaply. I don't come cheaply. Get it?"

She laughed wildly at her own joke, the humour dying from her face to
be replaced by a sour look of dislike as she stared at Garth.

"Think you're so good, don't you? Too good for someone like me. Well,
that wasn't the way it was the night you gave me this." Eyes flashing,
she jabbed downwards at her stomach.

"I was the one you wanted then, not her, your precious Claudia.
Claudia. My God, even her bloody name's precious, but I'm the one
who's having your baby, not her."

"You just said you didn't know if it was my child," Garth reminded her
grimly.

She shot him a sideways look.
"Yes, I did, didn't 17' " If it is my child, then I have a right to--'
"You have no rights over me. No rights. No man does. No man ever
will," Katriona denied angrily.

"If this turns out to be a man child, then God help him," she told
him.

"I hate men... hate them. I'd have him castrated at birth. All men
should have their balls cut off the moment they're born..."

Garth tried to hold on to his self-control as he listened to her
drug-crazed ravings.

"I just want to help you," he began when she eventually fell silent.
Was the child she was carrying his? Did she even know? Would he ever
know if it was. If it was what?

"Now what are you going to do?" Katriona was demanding softly,
watching him.

"Pay me to go away somewhere and keep quiet, to disappear...?"
Garth looked away from her. That thought had crossed his mind, but he
knew that if he had voiced it, it would have been to open himself to
even more verbal ridicule from her, to make himself and through him,
Claudia, even more vulnerable. Because this was what all this was
about, he guessed intuitively. It wasn't so much him the wretched girl
wanted to get at but Claudia. He could sense it, feel it, smell it
almost, as he listened to the hostility, the resentment and the
jealousy in her voice whenever she mentioned his wife.

"I suppose she's trying desperately to get pregnant again, but I've
beaten her to it," she boasted triumphantly, confirming his
suspicions.

"I'm the one who's going to have your baby first. Just think," she
added cooingly, 'my baby and hers will be blood relations. "

"If you are carrying my child, then certain arrangements will have to
be made," Garth persisted determinedly. He knew he would never forget
the sick feeling that filled him as he recognised that, through him,
Claudia was now vulnerable to the malice of this malevolent harpy, this
this creature, who looked at him with eyes as old and as knowing as
time.

Thank God she didn't know the whole true story; thank God she had no
idea that for Claudia there could never be another child.

"Don't you want to feel it ... touch it?" she asked slyly now,
thrusting her small taut stomach to wards him.

Nervously, Garth looked away, his emotions contorted by the vice like
grip of his pain as he compared the obvious blooming health of her
pregnancy with the pale wanness that had been Claudia's.

It was all so bloody unfair. You only had to look at this wretched
being to know she could never be half the mother that Claudia would
have been.

"Been struck dumb have you?" Katriona taunted. Sullenly, she added,
"If you want me to get rid of it, you're going to have to pay me. It
won't be cheap. I should have done it before... I meant to...1
shouldn't have let it go on so long."

She was talking more to herself than to him, Garth recognised. He also
recognised that beneath his instinctive rejection of her suggestion ran
an ugly thread of relief. Why not give her some money. why not.

He closed his eyes as he felt the sweat break out on his forehead. For
Claudia's sake, for everyone's sake, it would be the best thing, the
sensible thing to do. For everyone's sake. including the child's.
his child's. "I don't have any money on me--' he began.

"But you can get it," Katriona interrupted him swiftly. Her supplier
was getting impatient for her to pay him what she owed. She hadn't
been able to work much recently. She hadn't been feeling well
enough.

She felt sick a lot.
"Bring it here tomorrow," she snapped at him, 'and make sure you do.
Otherwise. otherwise Claudia could find out what her precious husband
has been up

Half an hour after Garth had gone, Katriona opened the door to the man
she was sharing the squat with.

"Come on, we've got to get out of here," he told her tersely.
"We're leaving."
"I can't," Katriona objected.
"I've got a John coming round tomorrow.. he owes me."
"Let him," he retorted forcefully.
"We're leaving." Even as he spoke, he was looking shiftily over his
shoulder. Tm in big trouble, girl, and you're going to be in it with
me. I owe some bad men some big money.

There's some guys I know. They're on the road. travellers. we can
join up with them. "

Katriona frowned and nibbled on her bottom lip. She and her companion
had been 'friends' but not lovers on and off for several years. She
knew he was heavily involved in the drug scene both as a pusher and a
user and she knew what he meant when he talked about bad men with big
money. It wouldn't mean anything to them that she wasn't him if they
broke in here and found that he had gone and she was here. If they
were out for revenge. for punishment. Set against what she had to
lose, the money she could expect to gain from Garth was nothing.

"Are you coming or not?"
"I'm coming," she agreed.

 
 

 

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