Lilia's Secret by Erina Reddan Read Free Book Online Page A

up close to my ear and whispered, ‘I’d like to see that moon in here.’ He tapped my stomach.
    I stiffened for a microsecond, then grunted, before slipping off the bed to get myself a glass of water.
    â€˜You want anything?’ I asked from the doorway, tying my wrap tightly despite the heat.
    Andrés lay back on the bed, watching me. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Come back soon.’
    I smiled as if nothing had changed.
    I stood at the sink trying to steady my breath. I was such a fool not to have seen it coming. There was no way I could have a baby.
    There were dirty spots all over the taps, so I picked up the soggy yellow cloth from the draining board, rinsed it under the tap and scrubbed at them.
    I knew what having kids had done to my mother; it had turned her into a machine, which got by on too little fuel to keep food on the table and clean clothes on the line. Children had left her hollow. Two eyes, staring out from an empty shell.
    It was what I’d been running away from for years.

    When I first met Andrés I’d barely noticed him. I’d given him a quick smile of acknowledgement, but not of encouragement, as he’d folded his long legs under the seat beside me on the aeroplane. It was the same look I’d shot the woman in the tailored navy suit on my other side. It was a nod that set up a force field preventing interaction. It was usually so successful that even when I broke for a meal the communication would be contained to polite smiles as trays were passed.
    As Andrés put on his seat belt, I locked my eyes back to the pages of Beloved , which I was re-reading. I had read it first at university, staying up two nights running, propped against the pillows in my bed, crying, unable to set it aside. I was re-reading it to see if it had been the book that had had such an effect on me, or that particular time of my life.
    â€˜It made me cry,’ was Andrés’ opening line, nodding at the book.
    I noticed his long fingers on the armrest between us, and the sexiness of the dark hairs against the brown skin made me look up at his face. It was unusually round, with high cheekbones, although it didn’t add up to handsome. But his eyes were almond-shaped and cats’-eye green. His accent helped too. He had that flowing rhythm of Latin languages. I had loved French and Spanish at university, but abandoned them in favour of programming work, which paid.
    He wasn’t as old as I’d first clocked him to be. He was probably just under thirty, like me, but that was where the similarity ended. He was wearing an off-white business shirt that nobody I knew of my age would be seen dead in.
    â€˜Which part of it?’ I asked.
    â€˜You know, I don’t even remember.’ He took a folded newspaper out of his bag and smoothed it out. ‘Just the general all of it. The pain they lived inside.’
    It was exactly right. I had my answer so I tucked Beloved into the seat pocket in front of me.
    A few hours after we touched down in Bangkok we were in bed together. That wasn’t unusual for me. I was twenty-eight years old and I slept with anybody who asked. What was unusual was that as I lay on top of him I knew I’d marry him.It was as if all of me recognised all of him. That’s how it began.
    Over the next few days, as we lay entwined or walked the streets of Bangkok, our bodies clamped together, he told me glorious stories. He was a swashbuckler in the face of death. My stories, if I told any, were puny, dry, bitter things.
    I made him swear that what he told me was true. One time, he said, he’d escaped a terrorist bombing in a Peru museum by minutes because he’d stopped to have breakfast with a group of monks. He’d only stopped because one of them had looked up and smiled as he’d passed through the kitchen of the monastery, where he’d spent the night. The smile had reminded him of his sister, Lupita, who used to wake him