by Penny Jordan
‘Not today, Lucy,’ she told her daughter indulgently. ‘Heather’s mummy won’t know where she is if she comes home with us now, will she?’ she reminded her crestfallen child gently.
‘Heather hasn’t got a mummy,’ Lucy informed her quickly, speaking for the brown-eyed little girl clinging to her side. ‘She only has a daddy, and he goes away a lot.’
Another quick look at the little girl standing close to her own daughter made Claire aware of several things she hadn’t noticed before. Unlike Lucy’s clothes, although expensive, Heather’s were old-fashioned, and too large. Her fine brown hair was scraped back into plaits, and the brown eyes held a defensive, worried look.
Another victim of the growing divorce rate? Claire wondered wryly. Even here in this quiet, almost idyllic village twenty miles from Bath, they were not immune to the pressures of civilisation.
Everyone in the village seemed to accept her own status as that of a young widow. Her great-aunt had apparently not been born locally but had retired to the village after her many years as a schoolteacher, and had, according to what gossip Claire had picked up in the local post office, been the sort of person who believed in keeping herself very much to herself.
Would she have approved of her? Claire’s soft mouth twisted in a tight grimace. Probably not. She had learned over the years that people drew their own conclusions about young girls alone with a baby to support, and that they were not always the right ones. It had been hard work bringing Lucy up alone, but once she had been born there was nothing that could have induced her to part with her. The love she felt for her child was the last thing she had expected … especially …
‘Mummy, please let Heather come back with us.’ Lucy tugged on her jeans, demanding her attention.
‘Not today,’ she responded firmly, smiling at Heather to show the little girl that her refusal held nothing personal. ‘I’m sure that there’s someone at home waiting for Heather who would be very worried if she didn’t arrive, isn’t there, Heather?’
‘Only Mrs Roberts,’ the little girl responded miserably. ‘And she won’t let me have soldiers with my boiled egg. She says it’s babyish.’
Compassion mingled with amusement as Claire surveyed the childish pout. Boiled eggs and soldiers were one of Lucy’s favourite treats.
‘Mrs Roberts is Heather’s daddy’s housekeeper,’ Lucy told her mother importantly. ‘He has to go away a lot on—on business—and Mrs Roberts looks after Heather.’
‘She doesn’t like me.’
The flat statement was somehow more pathetic than an emotional outburst would have been. And the little girl did look unloved. Oh, not in any obvious way—her clothes were expensive and clean, and she was obviously healthy—but she was equally obviously unhappy. But surely the blame for that rested with the child’s father, and not with the housekeeper? Perhaps he was too involved in his business—whatever it was—to notice that his child was miserable.
It was the look of stoic acceptance on the child’s face as she took Lucy’s hand and started to walk away that decided her.
‘Perhaps, if Heather doesn’t live too far away, we could walk home with her and ask Mrs Roberts if she could come to tea,’ she suggested.
Two small faces turned up towards her, both wearing beaming smiles.
What manner of father was it who would allow his five-year-old daughter to walk home unescorted? Chadbury St John was only a small village, but it was also a remote one. Children disappeared in Britain every day … were attacked in the most bestial and horrible of ways … She … Claire shivered suddenly, things she didn’t want to remember obliterating the warm autumn sun. She had been eighteen when Lucy was conceived. An adult legally, but a child still in so many ways, the adored and protected daughter of older parents who had never taught her that the world could be a cruel and hard place.
They had been killed in a road accident shortly after her eighteenth birthday. She had lost everything then—parents, security—everything.
It had been their intention that she would go on to university after school, but her father’s pension had died with him, and the small house they lived in had had to be sold to pay off their small debts. There hadn’t been much left. Certainly not enough for her to go to university, even if that had still been possible, but an eighteen-year-old girl struggling with the knowledge that she was an orphan and pregnant doesn’t have much time or energy to expend on studying.
Of course she could have had an abortion. That was the first thing the doctor had told her after he had got the truth from her. She had wanted to agree—had intended to—but somehow, when it came to it, she couldn’t.
And she had never once regretted her decision to bear and then keep Lucy. Of course, pressure had been put on her to give her up, but she had withstood it. In those early days she had still had some money left from the sale of the house, but that hadn’t lasted longer than the first twelve months of Lucy’s life.
The council flat they had been given, its walls running with damp, its reputation for violence and vandalism so frightening that some days Claire had barely dared to go out—these were all in the past now. She felt as though she had stepped out from darkness into light, and perhaps it was her own awareness of what suffering could be that made her so sensitive to the misery of the little girl standing at her side.
The three of them walked to the end of the village, Heather hesitating noticeably once they had left the main road behind.
‘Heather lives in that big house with the white gates,’ Lucy informed her mother importantly.
Claire knew which one Lucy meant. They had walked past it on Sunday afternoons when they explored their new environment. It was a lovely house, Tudor in part with tiny mullioned windows and an air of peace and sanctuary. One glance into Heather’s shuttered, tight face told her that the little girl obviously didn’t find those qualities there.
They walked up the drive together, but once they were standing outside the rose-gold front of the house, Heather tugged on Claire’s sleeve and whispered uncertainly, ‘We have to go round the back. Mrs Roberts doesn’t let me use the front door.’
There could be any number of reasons for that, but even so, Claire frowned slightly. It was, after all, the child’s home.
They had to skirt well-tended, traditional flower borders and walk along a pretty flagged path to reach the back door.
There was a bell which Claire rang. They waited several minutes before it was answered by a frowning, grey-haired woman, her lips pursed into a grimace of disapproval as she opened the door.
‘Mrs Roberts?’ Claire began before the other woman could speak. ‘I’m Claire Richards. I’ve come to ask if it would be all right for Heather to come home with us and stay for tea.’
The frown relaxed slightly. ‘I suppose it will be all right,’ she agreed grudgingly, summing up Claire’s appearance. Her faded jeans and well-worn tee-shirt didn’t make her look very motherly, Claire thought wryly. She had been working in their small garden this morning, and she suspected that some of the dirt still clung to her jeans. ‘Mind you, her father’s expected back this evening, so she mustn’t be late.’
‘Oh no … of course not. He’ll want her to be here when he gets home.’
‘Oh, it isn’t that,’ the housekeeper contradicted with what Claire thought was an appallingly callous lack of regard for Heather’s feelings. ‘No, he’ll be bound to be busy when he gets back and he won’t want to be bothered with her …’ her head jerked in the direction of Heather. ‘Course, her mother should have taken her really, but her new husband didn’t want her it seems, so Mr Fraser got lumbered with her. I’ve told him more than once that she’s too much for me to cope with, what with the house as well. He should get married again, that’s what he should do. He needs a wife, a man like him. All that money …’ she sniffed and glowered at Heather. ‘Still, I suppose it’s a case of once bitten, twice shy. Nuts about that wife of his, he was. Neither of them had much time for her …’ Agai
n she jerked her head in Heather’s direction, and Claire, who had been too appalled by her revelations to silence her before, placed an arm protectively around each child and stepped back from the door.
‘I’ll bring her back after tea. If her father returns before then I live at number five, the New Cottages.’
She was shaking slightly as she bustled the girls away. Both of them were subdued. Claire glanced briefly at Heather. The little girl’s head was turned away from her, but Claire was sure she could see tears in her eyes.
Of all the thoughtless, cruel women! And by all accounts Heather’s father was no better. Oh, she could imagine that it was hard for a man to be left alone to bring up his child, but that did not excuse his apparent lack of love for her. Mrs Roberts had described him as wealthy, and certainly Heather’s home had borne out that assertion. If that was the case, why on earth didn’t he hire someone who was properly qualified to look after the child?
They were half way back towards the village when Heather said suddenly in a wobbly little voice, ‘It isn’t true what Mrs Roberts said. My daddy does love me. She only says that because she doesn’t like me. My mummy didn’t love me, though. She left me.’
Claire had absolutely no idea what to say. All she could do was to squeeze the small hand comfortingly and say bracingly, ‘Well, you and Lucy are in the same boat, aren’t you? You don’t have a mummy and she doesn’t have a daddy.’
She had little idea, when she made the comforting remark, of the repercussions it was to have, and if she had she would have recalled it instantly. Instead, she saw to her relief that Heather seemed to have taken comfort from her words, and by the time they had reached the cottage both little girls were chattering away so enthusiastically that she couldn’t get so much as a single word in.
She let them play in the pretty back garden while she watched from inside. A bank statement which had arrived that morning lay opened on the kitchen table, and she frowned as she glanced at it. Her inheritance meant that she was no longer eligible for state benefits, and her small income barely stretched to cover their day-to-day living requirements. Next year she would have rates to pay, and the old stone cottage needed new window frames; there was also, according to her next-door neighbour, a problem with the roof. If only she could get a part-time job? But doing what exactly? She was not trained for anything, and even if she had been, there were no jobs locally; she would have to travel to Bath.
Pushing her worries to one side, she started preparing the girls’ meal. Her small garden boasted several fruit trees, and she had spent the weekend preserving as much of it as she could. Now, when she had least expected it, she was finding a use for the old-fashioned homely skills her mother had taught her. Her mother. Claire stilled and stared unseeingly out of the window. What would she think if she could see her now?
Claire had not arrived until her mother was in her early forties and her father even older. They had surrounded her in their love, and then with one blow fate had robbed her of that love. When the police came to tell her about her parents’ accident she had hardly been able to take it in. They had been going out to dinner with some friends and the car which ran into them and caused the accident had been driven by a drunken driver.
She thought that she had endured as much pain as life could sustain, but six months later she had learned better.
‘Mum, we’re hungry …’
Lucy’s imperious little voice was a welcome interruption, and although she pretended to frown, Claire soon got both girls seated at the kitchen table and watched in amusement as they demolished the boiled eggs and thin strips of bread and butter.
Real nursery fare. Her mother had made it for her, too. Just as she had made the deliciously light scones and the home-made jam that Claire too had prepared to follow their first course.
‘Mrs Roberts never makes any cakes,’ Heather complained, happily accepting a second scone. ‘She doesn’t even buy them. She says sweet things are bad for me.’
Mrs Roberts was quite right, Claire thought wryly, but she prided herself on the methods she used to adapt her mother’s recipes to fit in with her own more up-to-date awareness of what was healthy and what wasn’t.
She considered that children at six years old still needed the calcium supplied by unskimmed milk, and she poured them both full glasses, watching the childishly eager way they gulped it down. Heather spilt some and instantly her small body froze, her eyes widening in fright and tension, fixed on Claire’s face.
‘Don’t worry about it, it’ll soon wipe up,’ she told her cheerfully, trying to hide her shock at the little girl’s frightened reaction. Wasn’t she ever allowed to spill anything? She was, after all, only a very little girl, but Mrs Roberts hadn’t struck her as the type of woman who would make allowances for a six-year-old, and by all accounts Heather’s father was too engrossed in his business to notice or care what was happening to his child.
Mentally she contrasted Heather’s life with Lucy’s. Lucy might lack things in the way of material possessions, but her daughter had never doubted that she was deeply loved. Watching Heather, Claire was fiercely glad that she had never allowed herself to be persuaded to give her child up. Both she and Lucy had lived in poverty, and it had been very hard, but Lucy had never looked at her with such fear and dread in her eyes, and she promised herself that she never would.
Heather was a much less stalwart child—shyer, and more withdrawn; in Lucy’s company she seemed to blossom, but whenever Lucy moved out of sight she withdrew into herself again, staring wide-eyed at Claire while she moved about the kitchen.
‘Lucy, you’ve got a spare toothbrush,’ she instructed her daughter briskly when they had finished their meal. ‘Take Heather upstairs and both of you wash your hands and clean your teeth.’
The cottage was only small, with a sitting-room and a dining-kitchen. Upstairs they had two bedrooms and a tiny bathroom, but after the grimness of the London flat it was sheer bliss to look out of the windows and see the mellow lushness of the Cotswold countryside. They fronted right on to the main road through the village, but even that was a pleasure to look out on to. The cottages lining the village street had been built during the eighteenth century, in mellow cream stone; all of them had small front gardens, filled with cottage garden plants.
As yet the village hadn’t been discovered by commuters, but Claire suspected that that state of affairs wouldn’t last long. Most of the younger generation had moved away looking for work. All of her neighbours were old—her great-aunt’s generation; the village had no industry, other than the land; there was one general store, the post office and a pub. There was talk of the authorities closing the school, but since it took children from two neighbouring villages also, and was well attended, Claire was hoping that this wouldn’t happen. If it did, no doubt Heather’s father would be able to send her to a private boarding school, but she … She was frowning over this when she heard someone knocking on the front door.
She opened it and looked at the man standing on her front doorstep. He was very tall, so tall that she had to tilt her head back to look at him. The immaculate tailoring of his pale grey suit made her lift nervous fingers to her tangled chestnut hair. She hadn’t so much as brushed it since coming in with the girls. His own hair was black, and very thick. His eyes were grey and totally expressionless. They were studying her assessingly, and she felt herself blushing hotly as she realised how closely her old tee-shirt and jeans clung to her body.
It had been such a long time since a man looked at her like that she had lost all awareness of her own sexuality. Now, recognising the way his hard glance rested on her breasts, she felt her whole body tense with immediate rejection. He felt her tension too, she could see it in the way his eyes narrowed thoughtfully on hers.
‘I believe you have my daughter here.’
His voice was cool, as though warning her off, but warning her off what? For a moment she was so bemused that she couldn’t think.
‘Your daughter
…’
‘Yes.’ He sounded impatient now, his eyes sharp and cold, as though he had judged her and found her guilty of some unknown crime. ‘Mrs Roberts, my housekeeper, informed me that you …’
‘Oh yes, yes … of course. You’re Heather’s father.’ Why on earth was he making her feel so flustered?
‘Jay Fraser,’ he agreed smoothly, watching her. ‘And you are …’
‘Claire Richards.’
‘Mummy, we’ve cleaned our teeth and …’
Lucy galloped down the stairs, coming to an abrupt halt at Claire’s side, and staring at the man standing in the doorway. Now it was her daughter’s turn to be tongue-tied and wide-eyed, Claire saw, while Heather, who had been behind her, raced up to her father, her face alight with pleasure.
‘Daddy, this is Lucy, my best friend,’ Heather explained to her father importantly, dragging Lucy forwards for his inspection. ‘We had boiled eggs for tea and soldiers, and Lucy’s mummy made scones …’ The babble of chatter suddenly dried up and Claire saw Heather’s eyes suddenly go wide and tearful as she added huskily, ‘Mrs Roberts told Lucy’s mummy that you don’t love me, but that’s not true, is it?’
It most indisputably was not, Claire recognised, watching the mixture of rage and anguish that darkened the grey eyes as Jay Fraser bent down to pick up his daughter.
Over Heather’s head, Claire said impulsively, ‘I know it’s none of my business, but why don’t you get someone else to look after her? She needs—’ She broke off when she saw the expression on his face.
The grey eyes had frozen. He stepped inside the small hall and put Heather down.
‘Why don’t you and … and Lucy, go outside and play for a little while while I talk to Lucy’s mummy.’
Obediently both little girls did as he instructed leaving Claire with no alternative but to invite him into her small sitting-room.
Once inside the room, he dwarfed it. He must be well over six feet, Claire thought absently, watching as he took the chair she indicated, sinking down into it in a way that suggested an exhaustion his face did not betray. How old was he? Somewhere in his early thirties, probably. What did he do for a living? He certainly wasn’t her idea of a businessman. He looked too fit, too physically hard for that …