The Butterfly Box by Santa Montefiore Read Free Book Online

want to lose her. She was his safety net. He liked to have a home to come back to. Even if he rarely used it, he still liked it to be there. He loved his children. But he wasn’t used to the day-to-day routine of children. He wasn’t a family man.
    ‘So what happens now?’ he said after a while.
    ‘I want to go home,’ she replied, standing up again and walking over to the window.
    ‘You mean to England?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘But that’s the other side of the world,’ he protested.
    ‘Why should you care? You’re always the other side of the world and you always will be. What difference does it make where we are? You’ll always be on another continent.’
    ‘But the children?’
    ‘They’ll go to school in England. We’ll go and live in Cornwall with my parents.’ Then she rushed to his side and knelt on the floor at his feet. ‘Please, Ramon. Please let me take them home. I can’t bear it here any more. Not the way it is now. Without you there’s no point, don't you see? I don’t belong here like
    you do. I would have belonged, I had planned to, but now I want to go home.’ ‘What will you tell them?’
    ‘I’ll tell them that we’re going home. That you’ll come and see us, the same as you always have. We’ll just live in a different country. They’re young, they’ll accept it,’ she said firmly. She looked at him imploringly. ‘Please, Ramon.’
    ‘Do you want a divorce?’ he asked impassively.
    ‘No,’ she replied quickly. ‘No, not divorce.’
    ‘Just a separation then?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Then what?’
    ‘Then nothing. I just want out,’ she said and hung her head.
     
    His premonition had been right. She was leaving him. She needed his permission to take the children out of the country and he would give it to her. How could he deny her that? Their children were more hers than his if one judged it by the amount of time they both spent with them. She was right, what did it matter where they were, he was always thousands of miles away.
    ‘All right, you can take the children back to England,’ he conceded
    sorrowfully. ‘But first I want to take them to see my parents in Cachagua. I want to give them a family Christmas, so they’ll always remember me like that.’
    ‘Ramon,’ she whispered, for her voice had gone hoarse with emotion, ‘you will come and see us, won’t you?’ She searched his eyes, afraid that by cutting herself off from him he would no longer make the effort to be a part of their children’s lives.
    ‘Of course,’ he replied, shaking his shaggy head.
    ‘The children will miss you terribly. You can’t desert them, Ramon. They need you.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘Don’t punish them for my actions. This is between us as adults, not them.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘Fede loves you, so does Hal. I couldn’t live with myself if you deserted them because of me.’ She sat up abruptly. ‘I won’t go if leaving you means depriving my children of their father. I will sacrifice my own happiness for theirs,’ she said and began to sob.
    Ramon was confused. He ran his hand down her blonde hair. ‘I won’t desert them, Helena,’ he said.
    She looked up at him with glassy eyes. Thank you.’
    Suddenly his mouth was on hers. Without understanding their actions their bodies rebelled against the cold detachment of their minds. They clawed off their clothes like thirsty animals scraping at the ground for water. Helena felt the sharp bristle of his chin against hers and the soft wetness of his lips and gums. For the months he had been away she had only dreamed of making love to other men. She had had opportunities but she had rejected every one for the simple reason that she was the wife of someone else, if only in name. Now she abandoned herself to the touch of a man, even though she felt nothing for him now but gratitude. In these intense moments of intimacy they could have been mistaken for believing their love to have been re-ignited. But Helena knew that sexual pleasure