Let Down Your Hair (24 page)

The rattle of a gurney pierced my half-conscious brain. My sticky eyelids lifted. Everything in the room looked unnaturally sharp and bright, and a large rubber triangle was dangling over my bed. With effort, I deduced it was an aid to help patients who’d had stomach surgery pull themselves up.

“Sage?”

A female voice, kind but strident enough to rouse the dozy and drugged. Her face was apple-cheeked and rosy above her nurse’s uniform, and she smelled of antiseptic and fresh linen. The photo ID around her neck on a lanyard read “Marjorie”.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

My throat produced a dry, wordless croak, and Marjorie nodded as if I’d said something insightful.

“The twins are doing really well. Your little girl’s already out of the humidicrib, and your little boy should be out by this afternoon. Have you thought about names?”

Before they were out, my twins had never felt real enough for names. I shook my head and closed my eyes, reliving the surreal and wonderful moment when the obstetrician laid their wriggling bodies in the crooks of my arms. Longing for them filled me, and I tried to sit up, but it felt like lifting a building.

“Just lie back, dear. There’s no hurry.” She angled up my bed with a footpedal. “Now,” said Marjorie, easing a tetra-pack of juice into my hand, “someone’s come to see you, but don’t feel obliged. If you’re not feeling up to it, I’ll send him away.”

Him?
Something burst in my chest, and memories of Ryan poured in. Comforting me. Dancing in a blindfold. Picking out my frames. Curled up and clutching his face on the floor before being wheeled away to hospital. All because of me.

Was
it Ryan? Did Freya find him? Had he cared enough to come? I gripped the sheets beneath me for half a minute of silent uproar, then released them and crashed back to earth. Brett hadn’t visited yet. It was probably Brett. Yet there was still a slight tremor in my voice as I asked her for his name.

“Ryan Prince.”

“Ryan?” I seized the rubber triangle and wrenched myself up with a crippling twang of pain.

With a firm, professional hand, Marjorie detached me from the triangle and lowered me back to the bed.

Anger took over as newer, darker memories bubbled up. Leaving voicemails, sending emails. Calling the hospital and the police. Having to find out where Ryan had gone from the infuriating Shell. Getting bitched about at that party, then thrown out by Emmeline, being sexually harassed and fleeing that dreadful strip club. All that, while I was worried about how he was, and terrified he’d dumped me. And had just found out I was pregnant with his twins.

The events of that week brewed inside me, like a volcano about to erupt. Did he think that now the twins were born, he could saunter back into my life? Mouth some cheap apology, see his children and walk out? Let him try. I’d set him straight about the monstrous thing he’d done.

Marjorie was watching me with a cautious, questioning look. “So,” she said carefully, “would you like to see him?”

Would I? I forced the rage down to a simmer and weighed up the pros and cons.

If I said no, I’d be making a statement about what I thought of his desertion. Back when I was panicking and looking for him, he didn’t even respond to my calls. How dare he turn up now the babies were born and expect a hero’s welcome?

But refusing to see him could also mean my twins would never know their father. And I’d never learn why he vanished so completely after the night in Andrea’s office.

If I said yes, on the other hand, what could happen? I’d be backing down and giving him a chance to say his piece. At worst, he might mumble some self-serving platitude and desert me one more time.

And at best? Unbidden, his soft expression when I was on Andrea’s desk floated to the surface. The memory lodged inside me like a tiny, aching kernel, daring me to hang on to hope.

I shifted my focus to the twins. Whether or not Ryan wanted to be part of their lives, raising two babies was expensive. If he fled, I’d get a paternity test and force him to help support our children. If they had to grow up without a father, then at least they could do it with a bit more money.

But maybe, just maybe, Ryan was here to tell me he wanted in.

“Yes.” The word rang through my core like a bell. “I do want to see him. Let him in.”

Marjorie studied me for a long, careful moment, then opened the door just a little to talk to Ryan while keeping him out of sight. “Bear in mind she had surgery yesterday,” she said. She turned to me. “Don’t over-tire yourself. If you need me, I’ll be just outside.”

She pushed the door further open and told Ryan to come in.

I’d intended to meet his eyes, stony faced, reserving judgment. But the sight of the man who shuffled in, eyes down, was like an icy slap across the face. Ryan was bright-eyed and vibrant. He had energy and zest, with his springy hair and screen-printed T-shirts. This man was pallid and broken, and his eyes were clouded and hollow. Even his signature fountain of hair drooped lifeless from his scalp. It was someone had reached inside the Ryan I knew and switched out all the lights.

Something nameless made of horror and compassion welled up, and I suddenly longed to hold and soothe him.

He shut the door behind him and looked at me as if afraid of what he might see. “Hey, Sage,” he said, in an unsteady voice, with a weak imitation of his grin.

A spark of anger lit again at this inadequate greeting.
Hey, Sage
. Was that all he had, after dumping me and leaving me homeless while I was carrying his babies?

“
Hey,
” I said, my tone so sarcastic that he dropped his gaze back to the floor. I pointed at the chair beside my bed. “Sit down.”

He perched on the edge of the chair, arms folded as though he was feeling cold. His face had shrunk around his cheekbones; his T-shirt was plain black, and hung like his shoulders were a coathanger.

“How much has Freya told you?”

 “Not much,” he said. “Just where you were, and that you’d just given birth to twins. Our twins.”

Our
twins. At least that meant I could probably skip the paternity tests. My anger receded. What could have happened in just six months to put him in this state?

“I tried to get hold of you,” I said, pointed but more gentle. “I left voicemails, I sent emails, I went to your house. What happened? Why didn’t you get back to me?”

He lifted his hollow face. “Because the police confiscated my phone.”

“
What?
” I tried to process this news, my mind reeling. “Why did they do that?”

He gave a tight, bitter smile. “To search for evidence. About our relationship, about what we’d been planning, to find out more about the keylogger. They never returned it, and in the end I just got myself a new phone, with a new number.”

The last of my anger burned a trail through me and died. All the voicemails I left him. All the photos Emmeline texted. And not one of them got through. Or they
had
got through, to whoever in the police force conducted the investigation.

He looked at me with shadowed, sunken eyes. “Do you want the whole story?”

Feeling numb, I nodded.

“When I got to the hospital, they treated my eyes, and decided to admit me for the night. The next morning, they released me into police custody. The cops drove me down to the station, took my phone, and charged me with trespass, vandalism and criminal use of a computer.”

I’d known that Andrea would probably do this, but hearing Ryan confirm it made me flinch with guilt. He might well end up with a criminal record because he’d offered to help me find my mother.

“They interviewed me for ages about what led up to that night,” he went on, “and told me I’d be summoned to appear in court. When they let me out at last, I couldn’t face going home to Shell. So I rang my mother, and she drove down from the country. She took me home to grab a few clothes and things, and then took me back to her house. I called you, but at that point I thought you must have gone home with Andrea, so I left a message there with my mother’s number.”

That would have been my second night at the penthouse, when Dirk came home, and Emmeline pretended I wasn’t her daughter.

“The next day, my mom and I spend most of the day figuring out what to do about the charges. She rang up some lawyer friend, and it looked like my only option was Legal Aid. I called you again at your home and your office, because I didn’t know where else you could be. Internet reception is dire up there, so I decided not to bother with an email until I got back to town. Besides, I figured you had a lot to deal with, and you might need some space before you called me.”

I smiled wryly. He’d thought I hadn’t called because I needed “some space”. A full day after I’d been terrified that his failure to call me was his cowardly way of dumping me.

“On Monday morning, my mom got a call from the college to say I’d been expelled for serious misconduct. They told me my email account would be disabled, and my course fees for semester one were non-refundable. Sixteen thousand dollars, for a course I was thrown out of. And it wasn’t me who’d paid it. My mom had paid the fees by taking out a second mortgage on her house. I’d promised I’d pay her back when I got a job as a teacher, but now I was never going to get one. Even if I could afford to do a teaching course somewhere else, once word got out about the hacking charge, no one would hire me.”

He put his face in his hands, in a gesture that reminded me how he’d clutched his eyes in pain in Andrea’s office. The tiny, aching kernel I’d felt inside before returned and began to expand.

“I had to pay Mom back. And my rent and bills were due. So I made a snap decision, called Shell, and told her I was moving out. On the Tuesday, I borrowed Mom’s car, drove to town, packed my room up and tried to track you down.”

Tuesday. The day I’d found out I’d been suspended.

“It was mid-semester break, so the buildings were locked on campus, but I sent you a note through internal mail and made a few more calls to your office. When no one answered, I went to Andrea’s house and hung around. When you didn’t show up, I left a note in the letterbox and drove back to my mom’s place. The next day, Andrea must have come home from her conference and found all the messages and voicemails. So
she
rang my mom’s place to tell me you’d walked out, and that if she heard from me again she was applying for a restraining order. At that point, I gave up.”

He fell silent, his face still in his hands, his body tense and trembling. Like mine, that day in the park when I cried and he stroked my hair and kissed me.

“After that, I decided to put everything I had into paying back those fees. I took all the modeling work I could get and found a full-time job.” 
His fingers stiffened, hooking his nails in his scalp.

“What sort of job?” I said, dreading the answer.

He lifted his head. His face was flushed and his mouth was taut with pain. “Your everyday Arts graduate fallback,” he said, with a brief, savage smile. “Answering customer complaints in a call centre.
Tower Bank customer service line,
” he recited. “
How can I help you today?
”

His face twisted and sank into his hands again, as if his head was too heavy to hold up. “Angry, abusive callers on the line, eight hours a day. Commuting an hour and a half each way and working in rotating shifts. One week I’d be starting work at six in the morning, the next I’d be starting at midnight. Six months of hell, and then out of the blue some woman called Freya rings my mobile. To tell me you’d also been chucked out of your course, and that I’d vanished when you were pregnant with my twins.” His voice broke, and he hunched and closed his hands over his face, so I couldn’t see him cry.

I pulled myself up, reached over and put my arms awkwardly around him. He tensed, too scared to let me in. Then he scraped the chair towards me and pressed his face into my thighs, clutching my surgical gown with both hands. I smoothed his limp hair with long gentle strokes as his shoulders shook and shook. When they finally stilled, he raised his head.

“I’m so sorry, Sage.” He smeared his tears with one hand. “That you had to go through all that alone. That I wasn’t there to care for you, and see the twins for the first time. I’m so sorry.”

His eyes filled again, and he put his face back in my lap. He cried, and I held him. And somehow, seeing him as fragile as this gave me strength.

“Have you paid back your mother?” I asked.

“Pretty much,” he mumbled.

“Then quit,” I said. “Before it kills you. Find something else to do.”

He sat up. “Like
what,
Sage?” he said, his eyes lit with something between frustration and despair. “I have a degree in Visual Art and a third of a teaching diploma. What
something else
can I do?”

I plucked his hands from my surgical gown and held them in my own. “Something you’re passionate about.”

Ryan gave a hard, brittle laugh. “I’m not qualified to be employed in something I’m passionate about.”

 “I’m not talking about being employed. I’m talking about going back to your art. Reclaiming your vision.”

He laughed again, more brittle and bitter than ever. “My vision’s gone, Sage. I’m not cut out to be an artist. I can’t even get a decent job so I can support you and our children.”

I gave a snort worthy of Andrea, and tossed his hands back in his lap. “Who said we need you to support us? I’ve been supporting myself for the last six months. By life modeling, tutoring students in essay writing and shifts at my housemate’s cafe. All of which I plan to keep on doing. I won’t earn much, but I don’t need much.”

Ryan looked down, and his lifeless hair slid down to hide his eyes.

“Besides,” I continued, “I have my own passion to follow. And I’ve been working on a way to make it pay.”

He looked up again, his brows drawing together. “Your own passion?”

“I’ll explain later. But if I’m going to make it work, I’ll need help.” I lifted my chin. “Someone to care for the twins while I set myself up. Someone who’d love to live in the mountains. Exhibiting his work in a gallery cafe. Designing T-shirts. Writing and illustrating children’s books. Someone that … someone I love.”