Scarlet Women by Jessie Keane Page A

it?’
    But he was nodding his head. His eyes were cold. Chillingly cold as he stared at her face.
    ‘Of course I fucking well mean it.’
    He actually shuddered. He looked…revolted. Disgusted by the very idea. Mira drew back, shrank into herself. He really meant it.
    ‘I don’t want children,’ he said flatly. ‘Not now. Not ever. I thought you understood that.’
    But she hadn’t. Cringing with pain at his rejection of the child she carried, she backed away from him. Now he looked deeply irritated. Like an impatient stranger.
    ‘Look, I said I’ll pay and I will. Book yourself into the best clinic. Don’t worry about the expense. Let’s get this over with.’
    Mira couldn’t believe he had said that, either. She was a Catholic. All right, she hadn’t attended church in years; she wouldn’t dare. They’d have to sluice the church steps down with Holy Water if she walked up them. She knew she was a dirty bitch, a whore. Her family had made that clear. But at heart she was still the Catholic girl she’d been raised as. She still believed human life was sacrosanct.
    The first time she’d had an abortion had been bad enough—a crime against God—and she knew she would burn in hell for it. But she had wanted to get rid of the thing, couldn’t even think of it as a child; it was a thing her uncle had forced upon her, not a child. So she’d got rid of it and had tried never to think of it again.
    But this was the child of the man she loved. The child of a man she had believed had loved her. How could he, if he could say that?
    ‘Get rid of it,’ Redmond said again, as she stood there, open-mouthed. ‘I mean it.’
    And so, numb at heart, pierced through with pain, Mira had waited until he’d gone and then she’d found the number, picked up the phone, and dialled.
    They were quite kind at the clinic, although the receptionist was frosty and looked at her as if she was scum. But then, she was used to that. It had long since ceased to offend her. She knew she deserved it. They asked her questions, then gave her the tablets, and told her to come back tomorrow. She went back to the flat and felt nauseous. Overnight, she spewed her guts up.
    She got up next morning—he was away, on business—and dressed and went back to the clinic. Then came the part where she was laid out on a table with her feet in stirrups while they inserted things inside her. It was brief, uncomfortable—not painful. Then she went back to the flat.
    Within two hours she was bleeding heavily, her womb cramping hard. Shuddering, sobbing with grief, she sat on the toilet as blood poured out of her along with the baby she was carrying.
    When the worst of it was over, she flushed the loo. She didn’t look. She didn’t dare. What she had done was wicked, unforgivable. Just another sin in the long line of sins she had been performing all her adult life.
    She took a bath, lay there in a state of shock and horror, watching the blood still seeping out from between her legs. Then she dried herself, inserted a tampon, and took the painkillers they’d given her. She crawled into bed and stayed there all through that day and into the next.
    For Redmond, it was as if nothing had happened. He came back within a week, bearing gifts of perfume and a pearl necklace. She wondered if he had really been away on business at all. No, she thought he had just been lying low, keeping away from her. Getting all the unpleasantness out of the way before he came back and picked up precisely where they left off.
    Only Mira found she couldn’t do that.
    Something had changed in her when she had killed their baby. The wild highs were not so pronounced for her now; the depths were deeper, bleaker than ever before. She sensed he was irritated by her low moods, but he made no comment and she was glad of that. He took her to bed again three weeks after the abortion, and they made love, but she couldn’t reach orgasm and that annoyed him all over