In The Garden Of Stones Read Free Page A

telling me about yourself,” he
says.
    She
screws her face up on one side. “Do I have to? Can’t we just let it
drop and you sign my release and I go home and clean Alec’s flat
until I feel better?”
    “ Is that what you did before? The first time
you...”
    “ Tried to kill myself? Yes.”
    “ Did it work?”
    She
fingers the fine silver lines crossing her wrist. “In a
way.”
    “ Tell me about it.”
    She cradles the mug in her hand, letting its warmth flow
into her fingers. “I got myself all stitched up and locked up for a
couple of days,” she says. “The doctor I saw shoved some pills on
me and threatened to have me sectioned if I didn’t pull myself
together. Alec would have none of it. He signed a release
responsibility, took me home and locked me in his flat with him,
and gave me reign to do whatever I needed to burn myself out, fully
prepared to have the place trashed or burned, his windows broken
and himself to be battered to a pulp in the process. 'What the
hell,' he
said. 'The
place needs redecorating and those curtains are just dreadful. Do your
worst. '
Nothing so dramatic happened, although, to be on the safe side he
did take the precaution of hiding his kitchen knives, forks and
other sharp implements.”
    “ I take it there was to be no trashing, beating or
stabbing,” says Mal.
    “ No, just a solid twenty-four hours of frenetic cleaning,
scrubbing, polishing, dusting, rearranging of furniture, all
accompanied by non-stop gibberish babbling. When my rubber band
finally snapped, I was spark out on Alec’s couch for a full
eighteen hours. I didn’t need the pills. Wearing myself out and
getting a good solid sleep pressed my reset button. A good long
chat and a cry with Alec and his boyfriend, lots of hugs and fine
red wine and I felt pretty okay again. I went home and carried on
where I left off.”
    “ For how long?”
    “ Nearly two and a half years … until I crossed paths with
that delightful charmer, Connor Mackintosh.”
    She spat
out the name as if it were a bitter tasting poison.
    Mal
rests his head against the back of his chair. “And would he have
anything to do with what led up to this current event?”
    “ Everything. Connor inveigled his way into my life, making
himself my partner, both business and personal. He was that sort of
person … irresistible. He was talented and attentive and life
seemed to be rather peachy … until I got pregnant. That’s when it
all changed. Connor made it perfectly clear that having a kid would
not be the best idea. Business was thriving, we were travelling a
lot, neither of us could give a child the quality time and
attention it needed, or deserved, he said. He told me the best
thing I could do for all concerned was to get rid of it. So I did.
A couple of months later he left me. Just packed his bags and
walked. Said I was spending too much time focusing on the business
and not enough on him. When he’d gone I found out he’d been seeing
at least two other women behind my back, and one of them was within
weeks of giving birth. Talk about rubbing salt into the
wound.”
    She
takes a sip from her coffee, letting its bitter sweet heat caress
her tongue before she swallows it and continues.
    “ I was distraught, confused, angry, you name it. The man I
thought was going to be my forever partner, both in life and
business, turned out to be nothing more than a cheating, lying,
pump action sperm dispenser. My trust had been betrayed, my baby
gone, and he made it sound like it was all my fault because I
wasn’t paying him enough attention. Before I knew it I’d obsessed myself into
a state, feeling guilty, trying to work out what I’d done to make
it all go wrong. I stopped eating and couldn’t sleep, and I
couldn’t face being in the flat with his ex-presence all over it. I
moved out, put it on the market and had to fall on the mercy of my
darling long-suffering Alec once again for somewhere to put my head
down. I got so stressed and