Chapter 22 - 22

"Please" Isabella begged Lillian. "You are driving much too fast."

"Poor little wifey. What are you trying to do? Make me slow down so that your wonderful macho husband can catch up with us? No way!" Lillian laughed.

"No way do I stop until we’re back at my home and then, my dear, Sapphire and I will be on the first flight to UK where we will stay until your precious husband comes to his senses."

Isabella winced as she was thrown against the car door when Lillian took a turn

There was no way Sapphire could endure being driven even a few miles at such a break-neck speed without being sick, never mind all the way to the evil woman's home, wherever it was.

And thanks to Lillian all the baby had was the clothes she was wearing.

Isabella had never in the whole of her life hated anyone as much as she loathed and detested Lillian.

How could she do this to any child, never mind her own grandchild? But Isabella already knew there was no point in trying to reason with her.

Sapphire was snuggling as close as she could to Isabella, her baby eyes round with shock and distress.

"It’s all right, little one" Isabella whispered tenderly to her. "Don’t worry…don’t worry."

Out of the corner of her eye she watched in horrified disbelief as Lillian took a corner by driving in the middle of the road, and only just missed being hit by the car coming the other way.

"Typical male driver!" Isabella heard her mutter as she increased her speed.

"God, I hate men! All of them, but none of them as much as I hate your husband" she told Isabella bitterly.

Isabella refrained herself from reminding the woman that she had two sons.

"All he had to do was to part with mere millions. That was all. He could have kept the bloody brat and you as well, but, no…he claims to love the pair of you but he obviously doesn’t love you very much, does he?"

Lillian was already dangerously driving and frantically Isabella tried to think of some way to calm her down and get her to reduce her speed. If she didn’t Isabella was desperately afraid that there could be an accident.

Once she got to airport she would ring Benjamin . Just before she boarded her flight, Lillian decided gleefully. And she would tell him that now the cost of getting custody of Sapphire had doubled, with of course a further million thrown in for the safe return of his wife.

Quite how she was going to persuade Isabella to board the plane with her, Lillian hadn’t worked out as yet, but she suspected that wherever she took Sapphire, Isabella would follow.

Surely Lillian wouldn’t simply be able to leave the state with Muskaan, Isabella fretted.

There would be legalities; formalities; the small matter of a passport. Or is a passport necessary for domestic travel? Isabella had never gotten on a plane before, so she is unaware of the formalities. Her family had migrated to the states from Italy, even before she was born. And they were not financially stable enough to fly back for a visit.

Sapphire had been sick so often as they’d been thrown around the back of the small car that the poor little thing probably didn’t have anything left in her tummy to be sick with, Isabella recognised as she tried her best to comfort her.

Lillian was a rash driver. And Isabella could have sworn that sometimes Lillian forgot which side of the road she was actually supposed to be driving

The inevitable happened just when Isabella had finally begun to relax and convince herself that Lillian’s driving was no worse than that of the drivers coming the other way.

She had taken a corner far too fast, and had to swerve to avoid crashing head-on with the lorry coming the other way.

Isabella felt the sickening lurch of the car as Lillian lost control of it and looked up just in time to realise that they were skidding across the road right in the path of an oncoming car.

Reaching instinctively, she threw herself protectively on top of Sapphire whilst the world turned into a hell of twisting, screeching, tearing metal, punctuated by a woman’s screams and a series of bone-jarring thuds.

She felt the pain in her legs, and then the numbness, but by then a blessed silence had fallen, a stillness in which she was at peace to let go of the pain tearing into her.

Just as long as she didn’t let go of Sapphire…

Later Isabella realised it could only have been a matter of minutes after the crash and her loss of consciousness before willing hands were pulling open the doors of the car, calling out to her in anxious voices that dragged her back from the abyss of her agonising pain.

"The baby! You must take the baby!" she heard herself insisting as she managed to twist her head to look into the eyes of the man bending anxiously over her.

Her thoughts felt muddled and slow; she couldn’t see Lillian but she could feel Sapphire’s warm, squirming body lying protectively beneath her own.

"The baby!" she repeated to her would-be rescuers.

It was an effort for her to talk, her lips felt numb, but she couldn’t lift her hand to touch them because it felt as if the whole of her upper body was trapped beneath some heavy, crushing weight…

"Quick. There is a child in here" she heard one of the men say. And then another called out, "We need to cut the woman free!"

Cut the woman free. What woman? Who were they talking about? Lillian? Even though she disliked her, Isabella hoped that she would be all right…

"The baby" she repeated painfully…as the man leaning over her started to fade and recede in a sickening wave of dizziness…

Sapphire had managed to free one of her arms, and she reached out and touched Isabella's face.

"You must tell Benjamin that Sapphire is safe" she told the man

"He will be worried about us. You must contact him." Slowly and painstakingly she gave him the address and the telephone number, resisting the desire to cling onto Sapphire as she was gently eased out from beneath her own body.

They had to hold her whilst someone put a huge wadding of cushions and what looked like discarded clothes beneath her where Sapphire had been.. She could feel herself slipping into unconsciousness.