Читать книгу The Mother And The Millionaire - Alison Fraser, Alison Fraser - Страница 7

ESME didn’t cry for long. It was an indulgence she could not afford. It was now mid-afternoon and soon she would have to go to pick up Harry.

She washed her face in cold water from the kitchen tap, trying to take the heat from it, then put the tonic and ice tray back in the fridge. She pushed the offending gin bottle back in its corner, half wishing she had taken a drink. At least then she could have blamed the alcohol for her pathetic behaviour.

It wasn’t as though she was entirely unprepared for Jack Doyle’s reappearance in her life. In fact, she’d imagined just such a scenario. Only in her version he would have changed, would not be so good-looking or smart or superior to most other men. She would wonder what she’d ever seen in him and be remote and dignified. Gone would be the young girl’s infatuation with an older boy, because she was no longer a young girl.

Reality, of course, had made a mockery of all her imaginings. He hadn’t changed, still maddeningly cool and collected ninety-nine per cent of the time, and frighteningly passionate that other one. And her? Well, it seemed she was still a walk-over even if the puppy love had festered into resentment.

Or maybe it was as he’d implied: her private life was too tame. Could that be the reason? It had been a while—a long while, it seemed—since her last abortive relationship had made celibacy an attractive option.

Yes, that had to be it. Sex-starved after three years of abstinence, she might have kissed any personable man in the same circumstances.

It didn’t say much for her self-restraint but she rather liked it as an explanation. In fact, she almost managed to convince herself of its truth. She would have but for the image of Charles Bell Fox, the nearest thing she currently had to a boyfriend. She’d known him for ever, liked him always and, encouraged by her mother, had even recognised him as good husband material. Yet she had repelled all his gentle overtures.

But then Charles was a gentleman. He’d never kiss her against her will, never force physical intimacy until some base sexual urges kicked in. Perhaps if he had, they might have progressed further than their current careful friendship.

A perverse thought, she shook her head, and, checking that Jack Doyle and his undoubtedly expensive motor had disappeared from the drive, locked and bolted the front door, before keying in the burglar-alarm code on the box above the cellar steps.

She exited smartly via the kitchen to the courtyard, then beyond to the back service road through the woods, passing her current home.

Intended originally for an unmarried gamekeeper, and built in the late 1890s, it wasn’t a pretty cottage, the stone roughly hewn and with ramshackle outhouses tacked on. But Esme had done her best to improve the outside with a bright terracotta masonry paint and bold blue doors and an array of pots and baskets of flowers to distract from the random ugliness of the house. She doubted Jack Doyle would have recognised it as his old home.

She slipped inside for a moment to collect a denim jacket and change her heels to flats. Transformed instantly from fashionable woman-about-town to young practical mother, she didn’t bother locking her door as she set off along a short cut through the wood to the rear gates of the estate.

She glanced at her watch, and, though on time, she quickened her pace. It was always an anxiety—that one day the bus would arrive early and deposit Harry alone at the side of the road.

The high wrought-iron gates were locked, so she used the door in the wall, its key hidden behind loose stonework. She emerged onto the verge of the main road and only then did she observe the car parked on the far side.

It was a sleek dark green auto, built on racing lines; she didn’t recognise the make or number and, with the inside obscured by tinted glass, it was impossible to see the driver. But she knew all the same. Who else would be sitting opposite the rear gates to Highfield when there was nothing else of interest on this back road?

He had to have spotted her, too, so no point in scuttling back inside. It would smack of panic and fear, and, besides, the bus was due to arrive. She could only stand there and pray he would tire of staring at two rusting locked gates and a six-foot-high stone wall.

Under her breath she muttered the word, ‘Go,’ over and over, as if she could will him to leave, and believed the spell had worked when she heard his engine start up.

She cheered too early, however, as he pulled out onto the road and executed a 180-degree turn to bring his car alongside her.

The driver’s window slid silently downwards and Esme wasn’t certain if she would prefer it to be him or a total stranger lurking for nefarious purposes.

She opted for the total stranger at about the same second as Jack Doyle offered her one of his slightly crooked smiles.

‘Waiting for someone?’ he enquired.

A ‘no’ formed on her lips but thankfully she never got round to uttering it. Because why else would she possibly be here, standing at the roadside?

She limited herself to a nod.

‘Not very reliable, are they,’ he suggested, ‘leaving you out here on your own? Anyone could come along.’

Fake concern? Had to be.

It prompted Esme to retaliate with a dry, ‘They already have.’

A jibe he ignored as he ran on, ‘I’ll give you a lift to wherever you’re going.’

She was surprised into a passing polite, ‘No, thanks.’

‘All right, suit yourself.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ll just hang around until he comes.’

‘No, you mustn’t!’ Esme didn’t have to feign horror at the idea.

He looked at her curiously. ‘Jealous type?’

He had the wrong idea, totally, but Esme didn’t disabuse him. The important thing was for him to be gone by the time the bus arrived.

‘Yes, yes, he is,’ she agreed. ‘I mean really. He’ll be here any second and if he sees you…’

Esme glanced fearfully down the road and left him to fill in the rest.

He did so with darkening brow. ‘Is that why you were so upset when I kissed you?’

Esme nodded. It was too good an excuse to waste. In fact, a little embellishment wouldn’t go amiss.

‘He’s very possessive. Doesn’t like me even speaking to other men. So please, Jack, just go.’ She trained appealing blue eyes on him.

Jack saw traces of the old Esme and was torn. He suddenly felt responsible for her, certain that any man so possessive had to be bad news. But then what right had he to interfere? He had been away too long.

‘Please,’ Esme repeated with genuine urgency as she heard the bus in the distance.

‘Yes, all right.’ He remained a moment longer, holding her anxious gaze, then, putting the car into gear, roared off along the highway.

If Esme felt guilty, she also felt justified as the bus came into view, passing Jack going in the opposite direction. Talk about close calls.

‘What’s wrong?’ Harry asked as she practically pulled him off the bus and hustled him through the door in the wall.

‘Nothing.’ She just didn’t trust Jack not to change his mind and return.

Because that was something else she remembered about him. How protective he’d been at times, looking out for her when she’d been hurt, physically and emotionally. Her hero until he’d proved otherwise.

‘So how was school?’ She tried to sound normal to Harry and it came out forced.

Her son frowned before shrugging. ‘The same.’

‘And those boys?’ This time genuine worry.

He pulled a face.

Esme interpreted that as bad. ‘Look, if you’ll let me go into school—’

‘No,’ Harry cut across her, ‘you mustn’t, Mum. You’ll just make it worse.’

Perhaps he was right. Esme could see his point. Having your mother go wading in on your behalf to complain about Dwayne and Dean, the twins from hell—or at least the roughest housing estate in Southbury—wasn’t going to do his street cred much good, but she felt so helpless.

‘OK, OK.’ She put an arm round his shoulder and gave it a squeeze. ‘But if it escalates, you must tell me.’

He gave a brief nod.

Unsure if he understood, Esme added, ‘By escalate, I mean—’

‘I know, Mum,’ he cut in once more. ‘If they threaten me with an AK47, I have to tell you, right?’

He gave her a wry smile and she smiled back, although hardly reassured.

‘I realise you’re joking, Harry,’ she ran on, ‘but do any of the boys carry weapons—penknives, say?’

He shrugged again before saying, ‘They’re not allowed.’

That hardly answered the question, either. His junior school, City Road, had a nicely printed booklet of rules and mission statements on bullying, but that hadn’t stopped her son becoming the target for boys in the year group above him.

Esme watched as he strode ahead of her now. Nothing visible could mark him down for derision. He was tall for his age and, to her eyes, a good-looking boy with a shock of blond hair and a thin, clever face, but no spectacles or physical weaknesses or strange mannerisms that would single him out.

The teacher had suggested the fault might lie elsewhere. In a school dominated by the local accent, Harry talked differently—in the same regionless precise English that had been encouraged by Esme’s various boarding-schools. But that wasn’t all. There was his cleverness, indisputable and hard to conceal. Harry had tried, very quickly learning not to put up his hand in class or work too hard or say anything to draw attention to it. But it was part of him, the way he was, self-contained and independent, able to absorb everything at a glance without conscious effort.

Esme had never been able to decide whether it was a curse or a blessing, but she didn’t pride herself on it. She knew it didn’t come from her.

Her contribution was his shock of blond hair and fair-skinned looks but otherwise he was someone else’s child. It wasn’t a striking likeness. It was there, however, in the eyes, solemnly grey to her sky-blue, and some of his expressions. There, if you cared to look. Enough to feel a need to keep him and his father apart.

When they reached the cottage, Harry immediately excused himself. He left his bag in the hall and went up to his room built into the attic space.

Esme knew he would be already logging on to his computer, his intellectual mainstay. She might have tried to stop him if she could have offered an alternative, but, without brothers or sisters or children to play with, it was difficult.

Her mother had suggested boarding-school more than once but Esme had neither the money nor the inclination to send Harry away, having hated boarding herself.

Besides, she couldn’t imagine life without him. Not that it had been easy in the early years. She’d been a frightened teenager, back at school when she’d realised she might be pregnant. Morning sick, then simply sick with anxiety, she had actually lost weight, so her bump had gone unnoticed almost to the seventh month. Then discovery had been followed by disgrace and dispatch homewards.

Recriminations had given way to arrangements. A cousin of her mother’s in Bath. Adoption at birth. Forget it ever happened.

Esme had gone along with it all up until a twenty-hour labour had thrust her rudely into adulthood. Everything had changed after that. She’d looked at her newborn son and, from somewhere, had found the courage to defy her mother’s ultimatum: come home minus baby or don’t come home at all.

Social Services had helped to get her into a mother and baby hostel. It had been a steep learning curve. On top of her new-found responsibility for a tiny human had come the shock of being out in the real world. She’d ceased feeling hard-done-by when she’d heard the other girls’ stories. While they’d talked of bad-news boyfriends and abusive stepfathers and drunken mothers, her childhood had seemed a fairy story.

In the hostel she’d learned to cook and clean and wash; she’d also learned to curse and swear and stand up for herself. From there she’d moved to a flat in Bristol, ten flights up with a lift that rarely worked.

She’d stuck it out until a two-year-old Harry had fallen on the stairwell. A grazed knee—no big deal. But in the corner, inches from his hand, a discarded syringe.

It was at that point she’d swallowed her pride and taken the bus home. Her mother had been speechless for the first thirty seconds, barely recognising her younger daughter in this stick-thin, badly dressed young woman, then, drawing breath, she’d launched into a tirade of I-told-you-sos before eventually allowing Esme through the door.

In this respect Rosalind Scott-Hamilton had behaved pretty much as her daughter had anticipated. The true surprise had been her reaction to Harry. While bundled up in the pushchair and covered by a rain-hood he’d been an anonymous lump, but when he’d woken and climbed out of his pushchair to stand silently gazing at his grandmother it had appeared even she wasn’t immune to his charm.

‘What a perfectly beautiful little boy!’ she’d exclaimed in utter surprise.

Esme hadn’t known whether to be gratified or insulted. She’d certainly understood the implication—how could someone as ordinary as her younger daughter have produced such a son?

Still, it was Harry who had helped bridge the gap. Not that her mother acted the part of fond grandmother—she wouldn’t even allow Harry to use the term—but there was an affection there that allowed her to ignore his ignominious start in life.

Thus, Esme had rejoined the fold, but only partly, setting up home in the cottage and trading some of her acquired domestic skills for petty cash from her mother until her twenty-first birthday had brought a small trust fund from her godmother.

It was hardly an exciting existence but she’d been content enough till today. Now it seemed under threat and she couldn’t wait to phone her mother.

‘Darling—’ Rosalind Scott-Hamilton called most female acquaintances that, having lately taken on the persona of an ageing film star ‘—I was going to ring you tonight. How did it go, the viewing?’

Esme breathed deeply before ignoring the question and demanding instead, ‘Mother, are you aware who the viewer was?’

‘Who the viewer was?’ Rosalind gave herself time to think. ‘Some internet millionaire, I believe. Cash buyer, according to the agent. Why?’

‘It’s Jack Doyle,’ Esme told her bluntly.

‘Jack Doyle?’ Her mother was clearly trawling through her memory for the name.

‘Mrs Doyle’s son,’ Esme prompted.

‘Mrs Doyle!’ Her mother echoed this name, too.

Esme sighed heavily. ‘Mrs Doyle. Our cook. Lived in the cottage.’

‘Yes, yes,’ Rosalind Scott Hamilton dismissed, ‘I do know who Mrs Doyle is, or was. I was expressing surprise…Jack Doyle. Who’d have thought it? After all these years and in the market to buy Highfield… Did he say if he was interested?’

‘No, Mother, he didn’t!’ This conversation was not going how Esme had planned.

‘Well, he must be,’ her mother ran on. ‘I mean, he knows what the place is like and it hasn’t changed much from when he was a boy. The question is whether he can afford it—or was he just on a sentimental journey? Perhaps Robin can make a few enquiries in the City.’

The City was the heart of London’s money markets from where her stepfather did his wheeling and dealing.

‘But surely you wouldn’t sell to Jack Doyle even if he was interested?’ Esme appealed.

‘Why not?’

‘Well…all the things you said about him once.’

To her mother, Jack had been a jumped-up working-class boy who had dared to imagine himself suitable for one of her daughters just because he’d managed a first from Oxford.

‘Things,’ her mother muttered vaguely. ‘Oh, you mean the time he fancied his chances with Arabella? Yes, that was quite absurd. Still, in hindsight, who knows? She might have been better off with him than that character she did marry.’

Esme was speechless for a moment. How the world had changed! Her mother had been absolutely delighted when Arabella had married Franklin Homer, supposed heir to an American banking fortune. Only the fortune seemed to have dissolved along with the marriage.

‘Anyway,’ her mother resumed, ‘if Jack Doyle wants to buy Highfield, then good luck to him.’

Esme’s heart sank. ‘You can’t mean that, Mother.’

‘Whyever not?’ An impatient edge crept into her mother’s voice. ‘I really am surprised at you, Esme. I would have thought you’d be delighted at the whole idea. You’re the one who has always championed the underdog, maintained there is no fundamental difference between the working class and us, apart from money.’

Esme didn’t know about ‘championing’ the underdog. She was usually too busy looking out for herself and Harry. But she had always deplored her mother’s blatant snobbery.

‘Anyway, I need the money,’ her mother continued. ‘You know that, darling. I’ve explained.’

Esme could have said, No, you don’t. You have a husband as rich as sin. But her mother saw Highfield as her insurance policy in case anything happened to her second marriage.

‘You’re bound to sell it eventually,’ Esme pointed out. ‘You don’t have to sell it to Jack Doyle.’

‘No, but it would be simply perverse to turn down an offer from him,’ Rosalind argued back. ‘And I don’t really see the problem. It’s not as if you and Jack were ever involved.’

A silence followed. Esme could have broken it with the knowledge she’d always withheld from her mother, but she doubted it would change anything.

She changed tack instead. ‘Well, at least make sure the estate agent clarifies what’s included in the sale.’

‘What do you mean, darling?’

Was it her imagination or did her mother sound cagey?

‘He thinks the cottage is up for grabs. I told him it wasn’t but he didn’t believe me. Perhaps Connell, Richards & Baines could draw his attention to the fact?’

‘Yes, well…’ There was a pause while her mother decided on her phrasing.

‘Mother?’ Esme prompted with growing suspicion. ‘You haven’t changed your mind? You said I could have a life interest in the cottage.’

‘I know, darling, and I meant it,’ her mother claimed, ‘but James Connell says it just isn’t feasible, parcelling up the estate that way. But don’t worry, you should be all right. You’re a sitting tenant.’

Esme did not believe this. ‘And if we’re not all right, what do Harry and I do then?’

‘Well, obviously you’d have to find somewhere else,’ Rosalind sighed in reply, ‘but would that be so awful? I mean, the cottage is very basic. Little better than staff quarters.’

‘We like it,’ Esme claimed, temper finally rising, ‘and, compared to bed and breakfast accommodation for the homeless, it’s palatial!’

‘Don’t be absurd, darling!’ Rosalind snapped back. ‘You have other alternatives.’

‘Like?’ Esme was confident that her mother wasn’t about to invite Harry and her to live in her Kensington four-storey in London.

‘I don’t know,’ Rosalind replied just as crossly. ‘I’m sure there are lots of places you could go, if you would stop playing the martyr… I’ve heard Charles Bell Fox would have you at the drop of a hat, and you could do a lot worse.’

Esme agreed. She could. But it was hardly any business of her mother’s.

‘Charles and I are just friends,’ Esme could claim in perfect conscience.

‘Only because you won’t let the poor boy be anything else,’ her mother countered, ‘and goodness knows why. He’s rich, he’s eligible, he’s even quite good-looking. What are you waiting for?’

‘Nothing,’ Esme replied tartly. ‘I’ll call him up now, shall I? Ask if he’d like us to shack up together?’

Her mother gave a weary sigh. ‘Is that meant to be funny?’

‘Not especially.’

‘Because it isn’t—and you know perfectly well I was talking about marriage, not cohabitation. I think you’ve already done enough of that, don’t you?’

‘What?’ Esme was genuinely puzzled for a moment. She’d never lived with anyone other than her family. ‘Oh, right, my fall from grace? I don’t think casual sex counts as cohabitation, Mother.’

A loud tut came down the phone. At times her mother liked to pretend she was a prude.

‘Really, Esme,’ her mother reproved, ‘it’s nothing to be proud of—having a baby with someone you barely knew. What have you said to Charles about Harry?’

‘Nothing.’ Charles had scrupulously avoided the subject.

‘Well, I trust when you do,’ Rosalind continued, ‘you’ll dress it up a bit. Falling into bed with some Italian boy you met in a café sounds very loose.’

Esme controlled an errant desire to laugh. Such a lame story, it was a source of perennial wonder that her mother still believed it.

‘OK, Mother, I’ll bear it in mind,’ Esme replied, tongue-in-cheek, ‘when and if Charles ever asks me to marry him.’

‘Good.’ Her mother seemed oblivious of any irony. ‘Because he really is your best bet. You certainly can’t expect me to keep bailing you out… Now I really must go. I’m having people for dinner.’

Boiled or fried? Esme was tempted to ask, but was already holding a dead line. She replaced the receiver and pushed a worried hand through her hair before hearing a sound behind her.

She turned to find Harry standing on the open staircase from his bedroom. He looked vaguely troubled. How much had he overheard?

He stared at her briefly before saying, ‘I’m hungry. What’s for tea?’

A normal, ordinary-boy question. Esme allowed it to dispel her fears and led the way through to the kitchen as she declared, ‘We have a choice: pizza, pizza or pizza.’

Harry rolled his eyes at this familiar joke but joined in by saying, ‘OK, pizza. The second one.’

‘That’s pizza with pepperoni and olives,’ she announced.

It elicited a boyish, ‘Yuk. I’ve changed my mind. I’ll have pizza, the first one.’

‘Anchovies.’

‘Double yuk.’

‘Ham and mushroom?’

‘Yeah, suppose that’ll do.’

‘But no picking off the mushroom,’ she warned as she got the ready-made meal out of the freezer, ‘and you’ll have it with orange juice so at least something healthy passes your lips today.’

He pulled a face. ‘I had chips for lunch. That’s a vegetable.’

‘Potatoes are a vegetable,’ she corrected. ‘Fry them and we’re talking a whole new ballgame.’

‘Like the difference between football and pinball,’ he suggested wryly.

‘Quite,’ she agreed, wrestling with an oven shelf that refused to pull out.

The cooker was ancient. It had been here in the time of the Doyles and must have been antiquated then. A poor tool for a woman like Mary Doyle, who had been a wonderful cook.

A lovely person, too. Kind and thoughtful and endlessly patient. That was how Esme remembered her, anyway.

She’d died that same year, before Harry had been conceived, so she’d never seen her little grandson.

It was sad, really. Though her own mother wouldn’t even let Harry call her grandmother, she imagined Mary Doyle would have been different.

Would she have told her? Esme suspected there would have been no need. She would have seen. The smile was Jack’s, as was the temperament. Maybe it was elemental, a recognition of genes shared.

Thank God it hadn’t been put to the test that afternoon. But what if Jack actually bought Highfield? Wouldn’t a meeting of man and boy be inevitable?

She shook her head. Yes, it would, but it wasn’t going to happen. It couldn’t.

Esme had no logical reason for this certainty, just blind faith and the fact she couldn’t allow herself to believe otherwise.