Читать книгу Baby on Board - Liz Fielding - Страница 10

JOSH couldn’t have said whether it was a movement of air, some almost imperceptible sound or something else, but he looked over his shoulder, certain that he’d just missed something.

‘I think we’d better go and see if your mummy is ready for us,’ he said, scooping up the baby and heading for the stairs, dodging as she grabbed for his beard, catching her hands.

‘No, you don’t, miss.’ She stuck out her bottom lip and he laughed. ‘You’re going to be a handful.’

His handful…

Then, catching a faint whiff of the faintest scent, he let go of her hands and didn’t stop her when she grabbed hold of his ear, distracted by a familiar combination of soap, shampoo, something more that was uniquely Grace, and he knew exactly what had disturbed him.

It was this scent that had always been the first thing to greet him when he’d unlocked the basement door and walked in, usually at some unearthly hour in the morning after a non-stop flight from Sydney.

It was on the sheets when he’d stretched out to sleep, but had instead lain awake, imagining her leaning over to pull them tight, tuck them in, smooth the pillowcases into place.

Leaning over him, her long hair trailing over his skin, the scent of her shampoo—everything about her so familiar and yet completely new.

It had been so real that he had almost fooled himself that this time it would be all right, almost believed that this time she would look at him and the intervening years would be wiped out.

Instead, when he saw her, he’d get a quick, surprised smile as if his arrival was the last thing on her mind and he’d know that she hadn’t given him a single thought since the last time he had been home. An impression confirmed when she’d appear at dinner with some decent, straightforward man in tow. A man who’d get the real smile. And he’d be certain that this time she’d found what she was looking for. Not him. Never him.

And he’d tell himself that he’d always known this was how it would be. Tell himself that it was right, that he was glad for her because he was the last man on earth she needed in her life.

Tell himself that he’d imagined the scent.

But he hadn’t imagined the scent on his sheets, his pillows. She’d been there time after time in his basement flat, preparing things for his arrival, just as she’d been there a minute ago, watching him with Posie.

As he walked into the kitchen she turned from the stove where, apron wrapped around her, she was laying strips of bacon in a pan as casually as if it were the only thing on her mind.

‘I thought you’d be hungry,’ she said brightly enough and, if he hadn’t known that a minute earlier she’d been down in the basement, he might have been fooled.

‘Why didn’t you say something?’ he challenged. ‘When you came downstairs.’

‘Peekaboo?’ she offered, not looking at him.

‘That would have done.’

‘You two were having such a good time I didn’t want to butt in and spoil your game.’

‘Three wouldn’t have been a crowd.’

‘Peekaboo is a game for two.’ She half turned. ‘What gave me away?’

‘Your scent.’

She frowned. ‘I’m not wearing any scent.’

Posie, tired from her games, was falling asleep against his shoulder and he gently lowered her into her crib, held his breath as her eyes flew open, felt something inside him melt as they slowly drifted shut. Awake, playing, she’d been a bundle of energy, but lying asleep he could see just how fragile, how vulnerable she was. Being a parent wasn’t just a full-time job, it was a twenty-four/seven responsibility. There was no time off. No putting the job first.

Phoebe hadn’t worked since the day she had married Michael. With two tricky teenagers and a large house to run, she hadn’t had time. Grace was different. She had her own business, small by his standards, but it had taken years of hard work to build it up from that first market stall and it was her life. Had been her life. Now there was Posie and she couldn’t do it on her own. Maybe she wouldn’t get that chance.

He’d tried to lay it out in words of one syllable, warn her what might happen, but he knew he could never let anyone take Posie from her mother. His mother could be bought. His father worked in a politically sensitive environment and he wouldn’t want his personal life plastered over the tabloids. But that wasn’t the end of it. Grace was going to need help, support. And Posie would need a father. Not just a reluctant sperm donation, but someone like Michael.

He felt his chest tighten painfully.

Not him.

He wasn’t like Michael. He didn’t take in strays. Wasn’t a nest-builder. His apartment had been decorated by a professional, looked like a show house rather than a home. He still had worlds to conquer. She needed someone like Toby Makepeace…

He looked up and realised that while he’d been thinking about her, she’d been watching him standing over the baby. She wasn’t exactly smiling, but there was a softness about her eyes, her mouth…

He straightened. ‘No scent?’ he said, stepping back from the abyss yawning at his feet.

‘None,’ she said, turning away to lift a basket of eggs from a hook.

‘I beg to differ,’ he said.

‘Oh?’ She looked over her shoulder at him. ‘And just how are you going to prove it, Josh Kingsley?’

He joined her at the Aga. ‘Like this,’ he said, bending to her hair, the feathery wisps tickling as he breathed in the scent of her shampoo.

‘All you’ll smell if you stand there is bacon,’ she said, twitching away.

‘You’re using one of those herbal shampoos,’ he said.

‘Me and the rest of the world.’

‘No…’ This wasn’t something mass-produced. It came from some little specialist shop; it was a national chain now, but it had started in Maybridge and Phoebe had been a fan. ‘Rosemary?’

She said something that sounded like, ‘Humph.’

As she made a move to escape him, he put his hands on her shoulders and kept her where she was while he lowered his head to lay his cheek against the smooth, fair skin of her neck.

She twitched at the touch of his beard, trembled beneath his hands just as she had when, eighteen years old, she’d come to him. When they’d made love….

‘Lemon and myrtle,’ she said abruptly. ‘From Amaryllis Jones in the craft centre.’

That was it.

The scent on his sheets. The thought acted like an aphrodisiac and he backed off before he embarrassed them both.

‘I had the lemon,’ he said. ‘I’d never have got the myrtle. What is that?’

‘A bush. Small white flowers, long stamens, lovely scent. There’s one in the garden,’ she said, picking up a fish slice and holding it up like an offensive weapon. ‘If you’d rather shower first, I can put this on hold.’

A cold shower might be a good idea. But he couldn’t quite bring himself to leave her.

He’d dreamed about Grace. Hot, sexy dreams that left him aching with need, but he’d never responded to her physical presence with such an instant hard-on before. Not since the night when, trembling in his arms, she’d kissed him and he’d lost his mind.

But then, since that first night, she’d held him off with all the force of a quarterback scenting a touchdown.

‘I’ll eat first,’ he said, pulling out a chair, sitting down, watching her as she fussed with the breakfast, avoiding eye contact, flustered in a way he’d never seen her before. But then she’d always had someone on hand to run interference for her when he’d been home. All those good, steady men. Never the same one twice… ‘So,’ he said, ‘what game can the two of us play with Posie?’

The fish slice slipped from her fingers and clattered on the quarry tiles.

‘I thought I might walk into town,’ she said, picking it up, rinsing it under the tap, drying it. ‘Posie and I could do with some fresh air. You could take my van if you like.’ Then, when he didn’t say anything—since not saying anything was prompting her mouth to run away with her—she pulled a face. ‘Maybe not. It doesn’t quite fit the tycoon image, does it? Phoebe’s car is in the garage.’ He saw her eyes dim as she thought about her sister. Tried to imagine what this last week had been like for her. ‘Eggs?’ she asked. ‘One, two?’

‘Just one, thanks. I’ll walk in with you and Posie, Grace. I seem to have spent the last three days sitting in a plane and I need to stretch my legs.’

Grace, who he’d seen handle the tiniest beads with the precision of a surgeon, missed the edge of the pan and, as the egg shattered against the hotplate, sizzling and burning, she leapt back with a tiny scream.

‘Did you burn yourself?’

He was with her before she could answer, taking her hand, turning it over to see what damage she’d done. Leading her to the sink to run it under the cold tap.

She shook her head, not looking at him but back at the stove. ‘It’s nothing, just a splash. I need to clean up…’

‘I’ll do it,’ he said, leaving her with the utmost reluctance, but knowing that, if he didn’t, she’d do it herself. He removed the pan with the bacon from the hotplate and picking up the slice that was having a very hard day, used it to scrape burnt egg off the cooker.

She turned off the tap.

‘Grace…’

‘It’s fine. Nothing. There’s so much to do.’ She pushed long slender fingers, which could conjure up an original piece of jewellery out of nothing, through her short hair. ‘I need to go and make up a bed for your mother. Did you say she’s coming this morning? Someone will have to be here to let her in. Maybe I’d better stay. She’ll want to see Posie, too. I asked one of my friends to take care of her on the day of the funeral. I thought she’d stay on for a while…’

He saw her stop, think about that and then, as she remembered what he’d said about her being at the back of the queue when it came to Posie’s future, turn to him for reassurance.

Thinking that if she hadn’t stayed, couldn’t spare the time to wait and see her baby granddaughter, there was no possibility that she’d be interested in custody.

He would not give her that. Could not. Not until he knew whether Michael had made a new will. If he had, then he would surely have named Grace as her guardian. If not, it would be open season…

‘I have no idea what my mother will do about Posie, Grace. But you can be certain that, whatever it is, it will be for her own benefit rather than as a result of grandmotherly instincts belatedly kicking in.’

He wanted her to understand that she was going to have to fight to hold on to her baby. His parents, her mother, maybe even him.

She stared at him. ‘You really do hate her, don’t you? Your mother.’

‘No,’ he said, grabbing the kitchen roll to wipe the surface of the Aga. ‘I don’t hate her.’

For a long time he’d thought he did but he’d learned, over the years, that relationships were never that simple. He’d come to understand that people were driven by desires, forces beyond their control.

Maybe that was the dominant trait that both he and Michael had inherited—the selfish gene that allowed them to fix on a goal without thought for the havoc created in the wake of achievement.

His father had left them both for a younger woman and, in her misery, his mother had jettisoned him to chase her own second chance of happiness.

Much in the same way that, justifying himself that it was in her best interests, he’d walked away from Grace. Had pursued and married the girl every other man he knew had wanted to bed, without a thought what marriage to him would be like. Alone for weeks on end. Not anger, no sense of betrayal, only relief when she’d found someone to console her…

Then, realising that Grace was still watching him, trying to read his expression, he said, ‘If I could have hated her, it wouldn’t have hurt so much when she left.’ Facing a truth he’d fought since she’d left him with Michael. Sharing it with Grace because she was the one person he knew would understand.

‘I tried to hate my mother, too,’ she said. ‘Hate is so much easier. But the bad stuff is mixed up with all kinds of good memories.’

‘What good memories?’ he asked. She had never talked about her life with her crazy hippie mother, her life on the road, and he’d never pushed her, even in teasing, instinctively knowing that it was beyond painful. ‘What good memories?’ he repeated.

Grace thought about it as Josh returned the bacon to the hotplate, cracked an egg into the pan and dropped a couple of slices of bread in the toaster.

‘Stringing beads is my first stand-out memory,’ she said. ‘My mother was making jewellery to sell at a craft fair and, to keep me from bothering her, she gave me a thin piece of leather and a box of big bright beads so that I could make my own necklace.’

She remembered sitting at a table in the old minibus they were living in, sorting through the box of painted wooden beads, totally absorbed by the smooth feel of them, the different sizes, vivid colours. Laying them out in rows until she found a combination of colours and sizes that pleased her. Her delight as each shiny bead slid down the dark leather and the vision in her head became real.

Best of all, she remembered her mother’s smile of approval.

‘I bet you still have it somewhere,’ Josh said, bringing her back to the present.

‘No.’ She grabbed the toast as it popped up, put it on a plate, reached for a clean slice and flipped the egg over. ‘Someone saw me wearing it at the craft fair and asked my mother if she had another one like it.’

‘Absolutely not,’ he said, smiling at her. ‘It was a Grace McAllister original. Your first.’

‘Absolutely. My fate was sealed with that first sale.’

‘Sale?’ His smile faded as he realised what she was saying. ‘Are you telling me that your mother sold the necklace you’d made for yourself?’ Shocked didn’t cover it. ‘That’s a good memory?’

‘Of course. I’d made something someone liked enough to pay for,’ she said, glancing up at him. ‘That made me feel special. I bet you didn’t feel a bigger thrill when you signed your first contract, Josh. And I made myself another one when I got home.’

‘She still shouldn’t have done it.’ He made no attempt to disguise his disgust. ‘If that is as good as it got, I dread to think what the bad stuff was like.’

There were the times they’d been hungry, cold, but she and her mother had cuddled up together—they weren’t the bad times. Bad wasn’t her mother. It was other people…

‘Bad was angry people. Shouting, forcing us to move on in the middle of the night.’ She stared at the bacon sizzling in the heavy-bottomed, expensive pan standing on the Aga. The kind of luxury that she took for granted these days. ‘Bad is never knowing where you’re going to be when you wake up. Another new school where the kids call you filthy names because you live in a camper van parked on the land of someone who wants you gone. Seeing your mother dragged off by the police, arrested, just because she lashed out at someone who’d smashed the windscreen of her home. Running into the woods to hide so that the police wouldn’t take you away, put you into care…’

She stopped. Where had all that come from? All those long-buried memories. Things she’d hadn’t thought about in a long time. A world she’d left behind on the day Phoebe and Michael had picked her up from Social Services, brought her home. On the day that Josh had tossed her his spare crash helmet and taken her into school on the back of his motorbike.

Memories that she’d almost blotted from her mind. Apart from that apparently everlasting residual fear, the one about waking up and not knowing where she was. The one that still had the power to give her nightmares. That still brought her out in a cold sweat when she had to spend a night away at a craft fair….

Then, having apparently rendered him speechless, she said, ‘There’s juice in the fridge, Josh. Help yourself.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he asked, pouring juice into a couple of glasses she’d put on the table, bringing one over to her. ‘I knew your mother was a “traveller”, that she’d got into a bit of bother with the law. That Phoebe rescued you from care and was granted a Parental Responsibility Order so that your mother couldn’t take you back on the road. But not the rest.’

When she didn’t answer, he looked up.

‘I thought we were friends, Grace.’

Were. Past tense. Because once you’d spent the night naked with a man, utterly exposed, all barriers down, it could never be that simple ever again.

‘Are you saying that you told me everything?’ she said flippantly. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Everything that mattered. Do you think I talked to anyone else about my parents the way I talked to you?’

She knew exactly how much his father’s desertion had hurt him. What it had done to him when, six months later, his mother had flown off to the other side of the world with someone new.

He’d put on a couldn’t-care-less face for the rest of the world but, a few weeks after she’d moved in, when life was suddenly unbelievably wonderful, she’d rushed into the garden with a letter that had arrived for him from Japan. Thrilled by the strangeness of it.

He’d taken it from her, glanced at it and then, without bothering to open it, he’d torn it in two, then torn it again and again before finally discarding it, letting the breeze take the pieces, the savagery of it shocking her into a little scream.

‘It was from my mother,’ he said, as if that explained everything. Then, ‘Sorry. Did you want the stamps?’

The line had been a study in throwaway carelessness, but a shake in his voice had betrayed him, as had a suspicion of brightness in his eyes that she’d recognised only too well. And she’d put her thin arms around him and hugged him while he cried.

This was the first time either of them had ever referred to that moment and their eyes connected as they remembered, relived that moment of anguish when he’d been more completely hers than even at the moment of sexual release.

‘So?’ he said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me how it was?’

‘Fear.’ Faced with the disaster of the last week, the deceit, how could she be anything but honest with him?

‘Fear?’

Fear that if he knew, he’d look at her the same way those other kids had.

Not that honest…

‘I was afraid that if people found out about me, they’d be angry that I was living here. That I’d be forced to leave. And Phoebe, too.’

‘But that’s ridiculous.’

His response was natural. How could he possibly know how savage people could be when they felt threatened by those who didn’t conform to the rules they lived by, who chose to live a different way?

‘I know that now. Michael loved Phoebe too much, was too big a man to have buckled under disapproval, peer pressure.’

But she had often wondered what Michael’s parents had thought of his wife. While her own mother had been accepted, welcomed on her rare visits, neither of his parents had ever been to this house while Phoebe was alive. And there had been no attempt to reconcile Josh with his parents, something that would normally have been a priority for Michael. He’d never talked about them. Had dismissed without consideration her tentative suggestion that he invite them to Posie’s christening. There had to have been more to that than just a messy break-up and divorce.

‘Back then,’ she said, ‘I didn’t know, didn’t understand how special your brother was.’

‘I don’t suppose anyone does until it’s too late to tell them.’ He looked across at Posie, sleeping peacefully in her crib, and said, ‘It’s going to be up to us, isn’t it?’

‘Us?’ She took a sip of the juice, put the glass down, reached up for a plate.

‘To make sure that Posie only has good memories.’

‘Oh, right. And how exactly do you intend to do that, Josh? Are you planning to phone them in from whatever exotic location you’re in at the time? Tell her about the great beaches, the palm trees?’ Then, ‘Or maybe send her postcards? That would certainly give her a head start on a stamp collection…’

She stopped. Swallowed. She’d spoken without thinking but he’d think she’d mentioned the stamps deliberately. ‘I’m sorry. I—’

‘Maybe I should take her back to Australia with me,’ he cut in, stopping her apology in its tracks. ‘So that she can experience them for herself. It’s a great place for kids to grow up.’

Her grip tightened on the handle of the slice but she refused to be rattled.

‘The best place for a child is to be with people who love her enough to put her needs first,’ she said, keeping her back to him. ‘Who’d look after her in Australia when you’re off conquering new worlds?’

‘You?’

Now he had her attention and she swung round to face him. ‘Excuse me, but are you offering me a job as my own daughter’s nanny?’

Maybe it was just as well that the doorbell saved him from answering because this was a conversation going downhill fast.

‘Your breakfast is burned,’ she said coldly, handing him the slice and, leaving him to take it from the pan or not as he pleased, went to answer the door.

The slender woman standing on the doorstep was swathed in bright silk, jewellery dripping from every possible location. As exotic as any bird of paradise.

‘Mum…?’

She didn’t reply, just dropped the bag she was carrying, stepped forward and wrapped her arms around her, cloaking her in the faint aroma of some exotic spicy fragrance. For the first time in a very long time Grace did not resist or pull back as soon as she could. Right now she needed her mother in ways she barely understood and they clung together for a long time, not needing to speak.

It was, finally, her mother who drew back first, her gaze fixed on something behind her, and Grace didn’t need to turn around to know that Josh had followed her into the hall.

‘Hello, Dawn.’

‘Josh…’ she said, acknowledging him, but her eyes were on the baby he was holding with a possessiveness that made Grace’s blood run cold. ‘Hello, my sweetheart,’ she said, holding out her arms. ‘Come to your grandma.’

For a moment Grace thought Josh wasn’t going to surrender her, but Posie, attracted by the bright colours, was smiling at this interesting new arrival and, after what felt like the longest hesitation in history, he gave her up.

‘I’m going to take that shower, Grace,’ he said. ‘If you can be ready to leave by half past eight?’ Then, ‘You do still want to come into town? Dawn can let my mother in if she arrives while we’re out.’

She had never wanted to go into town, but she couldn’t put it off any longer. And they had unfinished business to discuss that she didn’t want anyone else overhearing.

‘Will you be all right, Mum? I had a commission for a tiara that has to be delivered by the end of the week.’ Then, straightening for a fight she hadn’t anticipated but would not duck, ‘And you’re right about the workshop, Josh. It’s my livelihood and I need to make arrangements to keep it ticking over while I think about how I can fit it around Posie’s needs.’

That brought something that could almost have been interpreted as a smile to his lips as he recognised the challenge. ‘You’re not interested in hearing my offer, then?’

‘Posie and I are happy here.’ And, before he could say any more, ‘We’ll be ready to leave at half past eight.’

Neither her mother nor Grace spoke until they heard the basement door shut, at which point they let go of the breath they’d been collectively holding.

‘That man is so intense,’ her mother said. ‘Not a bit like his poor brother.’

‘No. But they were very close.’

‘Were they?’ She turned to the infant in her arms and they inspected one another, her mother with a searching look, Posie with her little forehead wrinkled in a frown. ‘What offer did Josh Kingsley make you, Grace?’

‘He didn’t make an offer.’ Well, he hadn’t. She’d cut him off before he’d said the words. ‘It was just a joke.’

‘Really? He didn’t look as if he was joking. Only I did wonder, if he’s been appointed guardian, whether he’ll want to take Posie back to Australia with him.’

‘He can’t do that.’

‘Oh?’ she said. ‘Are you quite sure about that? She’s a beautiful child and he seems… attached.’

‘He wouldn’t. He’s never in one place for more than a week and children need stability. Order. He knows that.’ They both knew that.

‘They are important,’ her mother agreed, ‘but knowing that they’re loved is what really counts.’ Then, looking at her granddaughter, ‘Phoebe must have been so happy. I’m glad she had these few weeks when her world was complete.’

‘Yes…’ Grace tried to say more, but there was just a great big lump in her throat.

‘And you, Grace? What will make your world complete?’

She shook her head. Some things were never meant to be.

‘Come on through to the kitchen. I’ll get you something to eat,’ she said, anxious to change the subject.

‘I’m not hungry, just tired.’ Then, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t get here in time to share the burden, help with the arrangements.’

Grace shook her head. ‘They’d left instructions. They chose a woodland burial site. It’s very peaceful. I’ll take you there when you’ve recovered. Josh hasn’t seen it, either. He only arrived yesterday.’

Her mother nodded. ‘I need to make a phone call, let someone know I’ve arrived. Then perhaps a bath and a nap?’

‘Why don’t you use my flat? I’m staying down here with Posie so you’ll be quiet up there,’ she said, picking up her mother’s bag and heading for the stairs. ‘Private,’ she added, wondering quite how Josh’s mother would react when they met.

‘Nice idea, but I’m not sure that I could cope with all those stairs.’ She pulled a face. ‘Years of damp and cold, living in vans, hasn’t done my hips any favours.’

Concerned, Grace stopped. ‘Are you okay? I could sort you out something on the ground floor for sleeping, but there isn’t a shower on this floor.’

‘I’m going to need replacement joints sooner rather than later but I can just about cope with one flight. I’d like to make my call before I go up, though. I need to tell a friend that I arrived safely.’

That was such an unexpected thing for her free-as-a-bird mother to say that Grace said, ‘A friend?’ Then, ‘You’ve met someone?’

‘You think I’m too old?’

‘No, Mum. I’m just jealous.’ Then, ‘Help yourself to the phone in Michael’s study. I’ll put your bag in the front bedroom on the right—it’s the one nearest to the stairs. Then I’ll get Posie ready for her outing.’

‘You’re taking her with you?’ She sounded disappointed. ‘I would have taken care of her.’

‘You need a rest and, to be honest, we could both do with some fresh air. I thought we’d come home through the park so that she can feed the ducks. You know how Phoebe loved to do that.’

Her mother laughed. ‘Phoebe?’

‘Wasn’t it Phoebe who once gave all the bread we had to the greedy little beasts?’

‘No. She gave the bread to you and you gave it to the ducks.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Oh, yes. She was supposed to be looking after you so that I could put together some stuff to sell at a craft market.’

Grace had vivid memories of her mother bent over a table, working long into the night to put together her intricate necklaces and bracelets. Easy in hindsight to understand how hard it must have been for her, a single mother trying to make enough money to keep her girls fed and clothed as she lived the travelling lifestyle that she’d taken to with the man she’d loved. Had never left, even when he’d disappeared one day. How lonely it must have been.

A scenario that she was now faced with. Not that Posie would ever be hungry or afraid. Not while she had breath in her body.

‘Leaving us all without supper was her way of letting me know that she had much more interesting things to do than babysit her little sister.’

‘No!’ Grace found that hard to believe. ‘Phoebe was always so protective. So caring.’ So… good. Or was that the grown-up Phoebe she was thinking of?

‘It was me she had a problem with, Grace. Not you. We both know that I would never have made the shortlist for greatest mother in the world. Something she made very clear when I came to fetch you after my twenty-eight days for vandalism and disturbing the peace.’

‘You came for me?’ Her mother hadn’t just abandoned her, taken the easy option, the get-out-of-jail-free card? ‘I never knew.’

Phoebe had never told her. It seemed that her big sister was better at keeping secrets than she’d ever imagined.

‘We agreed that it was for the best. You didn’t have her rebelliousness, her toughness. You needed to feel safe. I loved you more than words could say and it was like cutting off my right arm to leave you, but I knew you’d be happier with her. That it would be easier for you if you weren’t torn by any foolish loyalty to me.’ She kissed Posie’s downy head and handed her over. ‘She would have been such a wonderful mother. But you will be, too. Much better than I ever was.’

There was such a world of need in her eyes that Grace put an arm around her, held her and said, ‘You gave me up because you loved me. That’s the hardest, finest thing for a mother to do.’

‘Oh…’ There were tears in her eyes as she pushed her away, saying, ‘Go and pretty yourselves up. I’ve got a call to make.’