Buch lesen: «And Mother Makes Three»

CHAPTER ONE

‘FITZ, thank you for stopping by. I know how busy you are.’

James Fitzpatrick took the small, perfectly manicured hand extended to him. ‘Any time, Claire. I’m never too busy for anything that concerns Lucy, you know that.’ But Claire Graham’s response to his smile was the closest she ever came to a frown. More trouble, then. ‘Has she broken another window?’

‘Nothing so simple.’

‘A window and a washbasin?’ Lucy, tall for her age, with arms and legs that seemed to have a life of their own, had been causing chaos since she had first discovered that she could climb out of her cot. She didn’t mean to break things, it was just that anything within a three foot range of her was likely to spontaneously disintegrate.

‘Not even the drinking fountain. It’s been a peaceful term.’

‘It’s not over yet.’

‘Please, do sit down, Fitz.’ Beneath her slightly prim and spinsterish exterior, Claire Graham was as soft as butter and could usually be teased to a smile; after a school governors’ meeting with a glass of sherry inside her she could even be teased to a blush, but not today it seemed.

‘So. What’s she done?’ Fitz enquired, lowering himself gingerly onto the elegant chair fronting her desk. He’d come with his cheque-book in his back pocket, prepared for a catalogue of Lucy’s latest string of accidents; Claire Graham’s reassurance about school property, far from easing his mind, suggested that this summons boded something far worse. ‘Her last report suggested that she was doing well enough,’ he said, ‘so I don’t imagine this is about her schoolwork.’

‘Lucy is a bright child. She has a particularly vivid imagination, as I am sure you know.’ Claire’s confirmation of something he already knew only increased his uneasiness. ‘You’ve done a good job, Fitz.’ Then she paused, as if searching for the right words. ‘I’ve never asked you this before, but under the circumstances I think I have to now. Is there any contact at all between you and Lucy’s mother?’

The apprehension took form and, despite the summer heat that was drying up the playing fields beyond the window, balled like ice in the pit of his stomach. ‘None.’

‘Could you contact her? If you had to?’

‘I can think of no reason that would make any contact between us likely.’

‘Not even for Lucy’s sake?’

‘She has no interest in Lucy, Claire. If it had been left to—’ He stopped himself from even thinking the name. ‘If it had been left to her mother, Lucy would have been adopted.’

‘Then this is going to be very difficult.’ She regarded him with steady grey eyes. ‘I have to tell you, Fitz, that Lucy has begun fantasising about her mother.’

‘Fantasising?’

‘She’s been making up stories about her, pretending that she’s someone famous.’

The ice ball swelled like a snowball rolling down a hill but he couldn’t let his concern show. He attempted a smile. ‘You did say that she has a vivid imagination.’

‘Yes, I did, but this isn’t like her usual flights of fancy. She’s very intense about it. You haven’t noticed anything?’ He shook his head and Claire Graham regarded him sympathetically. ‘Under the circumstances I’d have to say that this is a fairly normal response. It’s something that most adopted children will go through—’

‘But Lucy is not adopted.’ Did he sound as desperate as he felt?

‘I realise that, but in the total absence of the birth mother, the situation becomes somewhat similar.’ Fitz was too busy searching his mind, trying to think how his daughter could possibly have discovered what he had taken such trouble to hide, to respond to the sympathy in the woman’s voice. ‘It’s the same longing,’ she continued, ‘the need to believe that the unknown mother is someone special, that only some great drama or tragedy could have caused her to give up her precious child. Where there is no information children will fill the vacuum with fantasy, creating a situation where the mother is someone exciting, someone admired—’

‘I see,’ he said, stopping her before she could continue.

‘Do you?’ Claire Graham looked doubtful. ‘You mustn’t be angry with her, Fitz. Her curiosity, her longing, is quite natural.’

He finally gave her his full attention as an escape route was dangled tantalisingly before him. ‘If it’s normal,’ he asked, ‘what’s the problem?’

Claire Graham sat back, lifted her hands in a small gesture that invited his understanding. ‘The other girls are the problem. They think she’s putting on airs, trying to make herself special. I’ve spoken to Lucy, suggested that she would be wise to keep her stories to herself, but perhaps if you could try and talk to her about her mother, show her a photograph if you have one so that she would have an image to fix her feelings on. Maybe even try and arrange a meeting, if that’s at all possible. I’d be happy to help in any way I can. As a neutral party I might make a suitable go-between—’

Fitz stood up, putting an end to the discussion, needing to get out of the hot, stuffy little office so that he could think. ‘Thank you for letting me know what’s happening, Claire. I’ll deal with it.’

‘You can cut off contact, Fitz, you can destroy every physical memory, but you can’t stop a little girl wanting to know about her mother. There is a need, an unbreakable bond.’

‘You think so?’

‘I know so. She may not have wanted Lucy, but her mother too must be wondering what she’s like, how she’s grown up. Maybe she would welcome the chance to know her. It would be quite natural.’ Except that Lucy’s mother had been anything but natural. Claire walked with him to the door. ‘School breaks up soon—are you going away for the summer?’

He wanted to tell her to mind her own business, the way he’d been telling the world ever since he’d brought Lucy home and had been confronted with the massed ranks of health visitors, social workers, caring citizens who all wanted to know who would be looking after this little girl, convinced that a mere man was incapable of such a thing. But Claire Graham’s expression was kind, she was doing what she thought right, so he was polite. ‘Yes. We’re spending the summer in France.’

‘Then that might be a good time to talk to her. Let her ask questions, and try to be fair. A child needs to love both her parents even if they don’t love one another.’ But what if the mother didn’t love the child? Didn’t want to know? ‘For Lucy’s sake it’s something you are going to have to face, Fitz, no matter how painful it is for you.’

But not yet. Lucy was eight years old, far too young to have her precious dream-world shattered... ‘I’ll talk to her. Soon.’

Claire never frowned, but her forehead creased in something very close. ‘It would be better if she got it out of her system before school begins next autumn,’ she warned as they reached the main doors. Then, having said her piece and recognising a brick wall when she was faced with it, she changed the subject. ‘Will we see you at sports day, Fitz?’

‘Sports day?’

‘It’s on Friday. Didn’t you get the letter? I’m surprised Lucy isn’t full of it. She’s doing the high jump and the fifty metres. She’ll certainly win the high jump—if she doesn’t demolish the jump first. It would be a pity if you weren’t there.’

‘I will be.’

‘Good.’ She held onto his hand for a long moment, her head slightly on one side. ‘You haven’t asked who she picked out for her mother, Fitz. Aren’t you in the least bit curious?’

Claire Graham, Fitz realised, like Lucy’s friends, had made the mistake of believing that she was lying. Perhaps, under the circumstances, that was just as well. ‘I’d rather pick out my own fantasies, thanks all the same, Claire. I’ll see you on Friday.’

‘Such a shame that Brooke couldn’t make it home in time for the funeral. We don’t see much of her these days.’

‘I haven’t been able to speak to her, let her know about Mother,’ Bron said, for what seemed like the hundredth time that afternoon. Had anyone come to the funeral simply to pay their respects to her mother? Or was this huge turnout simply in hope that her famous sister would put in an appearance? She dredged up her hundredth smile. ‘She’s filming in Brazil. In the rainforest. A thousand miles from the nearest telephone.’ Although surely not from the nearest satellite uplink? She’d have got the message, she was just too busy doing her earth-mother bit to get in touch.

‘That is so sad.’ Bron was dragged back to the present. ‘You’ve taken on the burden of caring for your dear mother all these years and now you have to go through this alone, too.’

‘It can’t be helped.’

‘No, I suppose not. And she’s doing so much to help save the earth that we just have to excuse her.’ The woman smiled. ‘She’s made me think twice these days before I use the car and I’m recycling all my newspaper and glass now and when we needed a new door I wouldn’t let Reggie buy mahogany, although how she copes with the snakes and the spiders... I practically faint at the sight of one in the bath—’

‘Oh, Brooke is just the same,’ Bron, close to screaming herself, interrupted. ‘Yells blue murder at the sight of one. I have to put them out of the window for her. And earwigs give her nightmares.’

‘Really?’ Bron immediately felt guilty. She shouldn’t tease this kindly woman who had no way of knowing what Brooke was really like. ‘There’s hope for us all, then. Would you like me to stay and help you clear up, dear?’ There was a touch of anxiety in the woman’s voice as she surveyed the fine china and crystal glasses scattered about the living room.

Bron raised a wry smile. Her inability to wash a cup without the handle falling off was legendary. ‘Mrs Marsh has kindly offered to clear up for me.’ Even as she spoke that lady began to load a tray with a speed and deftness of touch that left Bron awestruck with admiration.

‘But you will call me if I can do anything, if there’s anything you want?’

Bron made up for her earlier lapse from grace with a generous smile. ‘I’d be glad of someone to help me sort through Mother’s things one day next week. I’m sure you’d know what would be the best way to deal with them,’ she said. ‘That would be such a help.’

‘Of course, just give me a call.’ She looked around. ‘What will you do now? Sell the house, I imagine. I know your mother would never have wanted to leave, but you’d be much more comfortable in a nice little flat.’

A nice little flat with no room to swing a cat and no garden. She’d loathe it. ‘I don’t know. I’ll have to talk to Brooke about that when she gets home.’

‘Well, there’s no rush. Take a holiday before you decide anything—you’ve had a rough time of it these last few weeks.’

Weeks. Months. Years.

An hour later, Bron finally shut the front door on Mrs Marsh, leaned against it, eyes closed, and the silence swept back like a wave bringing with it a feeling of utter loneliness, the realisation that there was no more cushion against the darkness. Her mother was gone and now it was just the two of them: she and Brooke.

And deep down she knew that she was glad that Brooke hadn’t come racing home. Her appearance would inevitably have turned the whole thing into a media circus. It wasn’t as if her sister were the kind of woman to put her arms around her and offer the comfort she needed. She’d simply have pointed out that their mother was no longer suffering. Brooke had always been able to see things in black and white. They were so alike on the outside it seemed impossible that they could be so different in every other way.

It took an enormous effort to push herself away from the door. She felt utterly drained. Empty. Maybe everyone was right, maybe she should go away for a few days, get right away and decide what she was going to do with the rest of her life.

Rest of it? That was a joke. Twenty-seven years old and she had never had a life. Maybe she wouldn’t have noticed the lack quite so painfully if she hadn’t had her sister to measure herself against.

It shouldn’t have been like that. She and Brooke had been different in character, different in every way except for their looks and their brains. She had been all set to pack her bags and follow her sister to university when their mother had been diagnosed with the illness that had finally killed her.

So she had stopped making lists of the things she would need. Called the university and told them that she wouldn’t be coming after all. What else could she have done? There had been no one else to look after her mother. One of them had had to stay at home and Brooke had already started her degree course. The assumption had always been that once she had graduated she would come home and then it would be Bron’s turn.

But with the ink scarcely dry on her degree Brooke had been offered the kind of job that only came along once in a lifetime.

‘You do see, Bron?’ she’d said, with that winning smile. ‘I just can’t let this go.’ Well, of course she’d seen. It would have been unreasonable... ‘And you’re so good with Mother. I couldn’t do what you do for her. She’s comfortable with you.’

But she loves you best. She hadn’t said it out loud, but she’d thought it, known it to be true. It was so much easier to love someone who was beautiful, successful. Loving the daughter who saw you day in, day out, struggling with pain, at your most vulnerable, was not so easy.

So, she had never had a life—or, at least, nothing that her sister would have called a life. No career, no holidays, no adult relationshp with a man. If it hadn’t been for a surfeit of champagne on her eighteenth birthday, coupled with a determination not to be the last girl in the sixth form to taste the forbidden delights of the flesh, she would probably have been that saddest of things: a twenty-seven-year-old virgin.

Probably? Who was she kidding? Who was interested in a woman whose life was devoted to nursing an invalid mother? A five-foot-eleven-inch woman, all feet and elbows, whose life was devoted to nursing an invalid mother?

And as her peer group had left town, gone to university, married, moved away, what little social life she’d been able to maintain in the early years had gradually dwindled away to visits from her mother’s friends, women who ran the WI and the Mother’s Union and did good works and were kind. But there was precious little fun. No one her own age.

Short of dragging the milkman in from the street and having her wicked way with him, she didn’t stand a chance.

Her reflection in the hall mirror suggested that even the milkman would have thought twice. Her hair, which she’d hacked off when she was ten years old and sick to death of everyone saying she looked so like her pretty sister but... hadn’t been near a hairdresser in the last terrible six months. She’d stuck it up in a bun for the funeral and it made her look nearer forty, and with an impatient little tug she pulled out the pins and let it fall to curl untidily around her shoulders.

Her skin, which until a week ago had had the pallid complexion of someone who spent too little time outdoors, was now suffering from the effects of too much sudden exposure to sunlight. She had told herself that the lawn had to be perfect, the borders weeded and neat for the funeral. Her mother had loved her garden, would have hated anyone to see it so neglected. At least that was. what she’d told herself. In truth, without her mother to care for, she had simply felt useless, unneeded...

She pulled a face at herself. ‘Feeling sorry for yourself, Bronte Lawrence?’ Then she laughed. ‘Talking to yourself, too? That desperate, hmm?’

She glanced at the mail where she had dumped it on the hall table that morning. Condolence cards mostly. She picked them up, sorting through them as she walked through to the kitchen. Then she stopped. Tucked in amongst the cards was a letter carefully addressed in a round childish hand. Miss B Lawrence, The Lodge, Bath Road, Maybridge. She eased open the flap, glanced through the letter and then, a frown creasing her forehead, sat on one of the wooden kitchen chairs and read it again, more slowly.

Dear Miss Lawrence,

It is my school sports day on Friday, June 18th and I am writing to ask if you could possibly come.

So formal. Bron frowned. So polite.

When I told my friend Josie that you were my mother she didn’t believe me and now all the girls in my class are saying I made it up...

At this point the careful formality lapsed, the neat handwriting wavered and there was a smudge that looked as if a tear had dropped on the page and been quickly dashed away. Bron’s hand flew to her throat as she continued reading.

...made it up about having a famous mother and everyone is making fun of me. Even Miss Graham, my head teacher, doesn’t believe me and that’s not fair because although I break things, I never tell lies so will you please come...

The please had been heavily underscored.

...so they’ll know I’m telling the truth? I know you’re really busy saving the rainforest and the poor animals and I don’t want to be a nuisance and if you would just do this I wouldn’t ask anything ever again, I promise

And it was signed:

Your loving daughter, Lucy Fitzpatrick

Then:

PS You won’t have to see Daddy because I put the letter about sports day in the bin so he doesn’t know about it.

Then:

PPS I don’t suppose you know that my school is Bramhill House Lower School in Farthing Lane, Bramhill Parva.

And then:

PPPS 2 o’clock.

Bron turned over the envelope, for a moment wondering if she’d misread the name, opened a letter addressed to someone else.

No. The handwriting might be that of a child but it was clear enough. Miss B Lawrence. Bronte Lawrence. So what on earth...? Then the penny dropped. ‘...a famous mother...saving the rainforest...’ The letter wasn’t meant for her, but for her sister. It was an easy enough mistake to make. It had happened fairly frequently in the days when they had both lived at home but it was a long time since anyone had written to her sister at this address.

But she still didn’t understand.

Brooke had never had a baby. This must be from some poor child who had no mother, who had seen Brooke on the television and had fallen under her spell. Well, didn’t everyone?

She read the letter again. ‘Dear Miss Lawrence.’ If it hadn’t been so desperately sad it would have made her smile—as if anyone would write to their mother in such a way. And the idea of her sister as a mother, now that was funny!

She read it again. For heaven’s sake, how could Brooke have had a child without any of them knowing? How could she have kept the fact hidden all these years, because it must have been years—the careful lettering had to have been the work of a child of eight or nine years old.

Yet even as she was discounting the possibility, her busy brain was doing the mental arithmetic, working out where her sister had been eight or nine years before. She would have been twenty, or twenty-one—and at university.

Bron read the address at the top of the letter. The Old Rectory, Bramhill Bay. Bramhill was on the south coast, just a few miles from her sister’s university. Then she shook her head. The whole idea was ridiculous. Impossible.

She went upstairs, changed out of her black dress and into a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, tied her hair back with an elastic band. Then she picked up the letter from the dressing table, where she had dropped it.

During her third year Brooke hadn’t come home after Easter even though their mother had been going through a crisis, had been asking for her. And Easter hadn’t been much fun for any of them. Brooke hadn’t been feeling well, had moped about complaining about feeling cold all the time, wrapped up in a huge baggy sweater, eating practically nothing.

Bron sat on the bed, her skin prickling with foreboding. Easter. After that she’d stayed away, pleaded fieldwork that she hadn’t been able to put off. Then after her finals she’d been offered a chance to take part in some project in Spain. Not that they’d had any postcards from her. She’d be too busy, Mother had said.

And she hadn’t been exactly tanned when she’d come back on a flying visit, high on her first-class honours and the offer of a dream job with a television company famous for its natural history programmes. She’d spent the next two months on some Pacific island and, naturally photogenic, had been an instant hit with viewers. After that the visits had been few and far between.

Hand to her mouth, she read the letter through again. It was polite, formal even, for a little girl at a primary school—formal, but just a little desperate too, Bron thought as the questions flooded through her head. Could Brooke have had a baby and put her up for adoption?

But then how would this little girl have found out who her real mother was? Surely you had to be eighteen before you could even begin to search the records?

But no, that couldn’t be right. It was there in the letter. ‘...You won’t have to see Daddy...’ Oh, God bless the child, it was enough to break your heart.

She stuffed the letter in her pocket and went downstairs, picked up the kettle, filled it and switched it on, then took out the letter again.

No, really. It had to be a mistake. It was impossible. Brooke wasn’t the kind of girl to get pregnant, after all. She was too focussed, too smart, too selfish. She’d known what she wanted and had set out to achieve it with a single-mindedness that had taken her to the top. She had known their mother was dying when she had left for Brazil, chasing the latest in a long line of television awards for her Endangered Earth series.

If she hadn’t wanted her precious car tucked up safely in the garage while she was away it was entirely possible that she would have made some excuse not to find the time to come home and say goodbye.

Yet if it was impossible why was it so difficult to simply brush away the idea?

She read the letter again, felt the tug at her heartstrings. Lucy. The child could be her niece...

No. She refused to believe it Or was she afraid to believe it? Afraid to believe that her sister could be that heartless? No. It had to be some little girl in a world of hurt latching onto a woman who had made caring for the planet her personal crusade. A little girl hoping that a woman with so much compassion would have some love left over to spare for her.

Fitz turned from the cooker. Lucy was drawing a picture, working at the kitchen table, her arm curled protectively about the paper. ‘Will you be long, sweetheart? Tea’s nearly ready.’

She tucked her pencils and the picture carefully away in her school bag then looked up, her bright blue eyes unusually shadowed, like someone with a secret.

And she did have a secret. How long had she known? When had she found her birth certificate, the photograph of Brooke Lawrence, all the things he had kept locked away at the back of his desk, at the back of his life?

He had been going to tell her. One day. He had fooled himself into believing that he would know when it was the right moment to sit her down and explain about her mother, tell her what had happened. But what time was ever right to tell a child that her mother hadn’t wanted her?

‘I’m done,’ she said with a quick smile. ‘Shall I lay the table?’

God, when she smiled she looked so like Brooke. He hadn’t anticipated that. The chestnut hair and blue eyes had fooled him into thinking that there was nothing of Brooke to see in the child. But that enchanting smile...

‘Please,’ he said quickly and looked away, making a performance of stirring the sauce. Why did it still get to him? Brooke Lawrence might have had a smile like an angel but that was as far as it went. Somewhere, deep inside him he’d always known that, even when he’d been pursuing her with a single-mindedness that had been nine parts testosterone to one part common sense.

How on earth was he to tell this child, this little girl that he loved so much that he sometimes thought his heart might break just looking at her, how was he to tell her that her mother had never wanted her, had handed her over to him and walked away without a backward glance the day after she was born?

He had never believed she would do it. He had always believed that once her baby was lying in her arms she would love her.

No. He could never tell Lucy how it had been. But Claire Graham was right—he would have to tell her something, as much of the truth as she could manage. When she was old enough she could confront Brooke herself, ask her why. Ask her how she could do that. Maybe she would be able to tell him, because he had never understood.

He should tell her now, before she fabricated a dozen fantasies about how it might be. He stared into the saucepan as if the contents might provide him with inspiration. Nothing. ‘Lucy—’

‘What are we having?’ She hooked a long, thin arm about his waist as he stood at the cooking range and, standing on tiptoe, peered into the saucepan.

‘Spaghetti carbonara.’

‘Oh, yummy. Can I have a Coke with it?’

He glanced down at her and his courage failed him. ‘If I can have a beer.’

‘Yeuch. Beer’s disgusting.’

‘Oh? And how do you know what beer tastes like?’ She giggled and his heart did its usual somersault. ‘Go on, then, get the drinks while I dish up.’

Later, he tried again. ‘Lucy, Miss Graham asked me to visit her today.’

A brief startled glanced then a casual, ‘Oh?’ Then, ‘Can I turn on the television?’ She was avoiding asking him why her head teacher had wanted to see him.

‘Leave it a minute.’

‘It’s something I want to see,’ she protested, unusually sulky. This was worse, far worse than he had ever imagined. Or maybe he had just refused to imagine this moment.

‘She told me...’ he began, then cleared his throat. ‘She told me...’ He stared at the top of her head as she suddenly became totally engrossed in her trainers. ‘She told me about sports day,’ he said, finally. ‘Did you forget, or didn’t you want me to come?’

She flung her head up. ‘No! You mustn’t! You mustn’t come!’

‘Why?’ Her reaction startled him but he tried not to show it, tried to hide his concern beneath a grin. ‘Are you going to come last in everything?’

For a moment he saw her struggle with a lie, with the temptation to tell him that she was going to be terrible. But maybe she realised he didn’t give a hoot where she came in the fifty metres, or whether she fell over her feet in the high jump, that he would come because he loved to see her having fun. ‘No. But if you come it will spoil—’ She stopped.

‘Spoil what, sweetheart?’

‘I...I...’ She reddened, swallowed. ‘I’ve done something that’s going to make you really angry. Daddy.’

He was almost afraid to ask, but he had to know, so he pulled her towards him, picked her up and settled her against his chest. ‘Let me decide about that. I don’t suppose it’s as bad as you think.’

The words were a long time coming and when they did come they were mumbled into his chest. ‘I—wrote—to—my...’ His heart seemed to stop beating during an endless pause.

‘Who did you write to, sweetheart?’ he prompted, when be could no longer bear it.

‘My mother. I wrote to my mother and asked her to come to sports day.’ And then the words tumbled out, unstoppable. ‘I asked her to come because they said I was lying, they wouldn’t believe me, but it’s true, isn’t it?’ She sat back and looked up at him, every cell in her body appealing to him to tell her it was so. ‘Brooke Lawrence is my mother.’

His throat was tight, a lump the size of a tennis ball blocking the words. But he had to say them. ‘Yes, Lucy. Your mother is Brooke Lawrence.’

If he’d expected anything, it would have been reproach that he hadn’t told her before. Her triumphant, ‘Yes!’ was like a knife to his heart. ‘And she’ll come to sports day and everyone will know—’ She slid from his lap and twirled giddily across the living room floor.