And he wouldn’t have to face it alone. Until that moment he hadn’t really realised how much he was dreading it, and now he felt as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
‘Thanks,’ he said gruffly.
George gave him an awkward pat on the shoulder. ‘Don’t mention it,’ he said, equally gruffly, and thrust a mug in his hand. ‘Here, wrap yourself round that.’
‘I promised Georgie a cup.’
‘She’ll be down. There’s more in the pot. Sit down and tell me how your mother’s doing.’
She was going to kill her father.
She stood outside the kitchen, her silent approach in bare feet having got her to this point just as they were discussing her relationship with Martin.
Why? she thought. Why did you have to tell him everything?
Although to be fair he hadn’t told Nick everything, exactly, but it was enough, and now he was volunteering her to help him retrieve things from his mother’s house. Well, she didn’t mind that, she conceded, but she could have been consulted first.
Creeping up the first few stairs, she turned and ran down, walked through the kitchen door with a cheery smile and headed for the teapot. If her father was really, really lucky, she wouldn’t break it over his head!
‘Thanks for helping me.’
She gave him a wry smile. ‘You’re welcome,’ she said, and he was. He truly was, despite her reaction at the time, and she could see how hard it would have been for him on his own.
As it was they’d gone through the house, retrieved all Lucie’s things and put them together in the little bedroom she’d shared with the boys. Their things were packed and loaded into his car, and a selection of his mother’s things had been assembled in boxes in the sitting room and bedroom, together with certain items of furniture that had been labelled and listed ready for the removal firm who were due to come in the morning.
They drove back the twenty miles from Framlingham to Yoxburgh, and as they entered the town he turned not right, towards her father’s house, but left, heading down to the site.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
‘Got your site keys?’
‘I always have the site keys,’ she replied. ‘Why?’
‘Because it’s a beautiful night, and I want to go up in the tower with you and look at the moonlight on the sea, and just be alone with you.’
Her heart bumped against her ribs. She didn’t reply, just slipped her hand over his on the steering wheel and squeezed gently.
It was enough. She unlocked the house, and he took her by the hand and led her up the carpeted stairs to the room at the top, and there he took her in his arms and made love to her in the moonlight. Afterwards they sat on the window sill, staring out over the smooth, lazy swell of the sea, their fingers entwined.
‘I love you,’ he said softly.
Her fingers tightened on his. ‘I love you, too,’ her mouth said, her heart joining in despite the desperate protests from her feeble mind. Oh, damn, why had she said that?
He pulled her into his arms and hugged her. ‘I couldn’t have got through tonight without you. Thank you for being there for me.’
‘You’re welcome,’ she said, and wondered how long it would be before she came to regret those three little words that she’d never meant to say.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE tower room became their favourite place.
Every day he came over to see how things were going in the house, and after they’d looked round it they’d end their tour in the top of the tower.
He’d decided to have it as another little sitting room cum home office, and Georgie couldn’t wait to see it finished. He’d ordered the most fabulous furniture for the bedrooms that were completed, and for the main sitting room, and also for the tower room.
It was going to be wonderful, as she’d always known it would, and although it would never be hers, that didn’t stop her from loving it. She escaped to it whenever she could steal a minute, and so did Nick.
They went there several times over the weekend, snatching an hour here, half an hour there, sometimes making love but often just to sit and be alone together with the ever-changing sea stretched out below them as far as they could see. And they talked about Lucie, and Georgie built up a picture of her that just made the children’s loss even more poignant.
‘It’ll be nice to have some furniture,’ he said on Sunday evening, lying propped up against the wall with Georgie in his arms watching the clouds scud across the sky.
She laughed. ‘I would have suggested thicker underlay if I’d realised we’d spend so much time sitting on it,’ she teased him, and he kissed her affectionately and hugged her closer.
‘We’ll have furniture tomorrow,’ he promised, but she wasn’t sure she believed him. Tomorrow was a much overused word in the building trade. It normally meant a person would get on to it tomorrow and it might then happen within the next week. If you were lucky. Still, time would tell.
To her amazement, not only were his mother’s bits and pieces delivered on Monday but so were the new things which he’d ordered. He’d somehow managed with a combination of bribery and threats to acquire them at zero notice, and the parts of the house that were finished looked lovely. Once pictures were up and curtains hung, the transformation would be amazing, but for now Nick seemed content simply to be able to bring his mother home.
Georgie wondered if she’d see it as home, but, with her things installed and the children around her, perhaps she would.
She came home on Tuesday, the day after the furniture had arrived, and Georgie watched from the site office as he drove her as close as possible to her own entrance at the rear, lifted her into his arms and carried her inside.
Heavens, she looked tiny in his arms. Tiny and frail and broken, like a little bird. There’d be time to go over later, after she’d had time to settle in, and welcome her and ask if there was anything she could do to make the house work better for her, but she was dreading it. What could she say? She hated it, but she remembered when her mother had died, and people ignoring it and avoiding her somehow seemed worse than them talking about it.
So she went, wondering if the woman would even know who she was when she introduced herself, but she needn’t have worried. Nick let her in, brushed a quick kiss of welcome over her lips and led her to his mother’s sitting room. She was in a chair, her leg with its macabre surgical steel frame raised up on a pretty tapestry footstool, and Nick introduced her.
‘Mum, this is Georgie. Georgie, my mother, Liz.’
She summoned a smile. ‘Please, come in. You’ll have to excuse this hideous contraption. Nick, put the sheet over it so she doesn’t have to see it—that’s better. So, you’re Georgie. I’ve heard a lot about you,’ she said, but then her smile wavered. ‘Thank you so much for all your help with the children. Nick tells me you’ve been working long hours getting the house ready for me, too. I’m really grateful.’
‘You’re welcome. I’m just so sorry about Lucie,’ Georgie said softly. ‘If there’s anything I can do, anything you need or want to know about the house or the town or anything at all that I can help with, please ask me. Nick knows where to find me, and I’ve always got my mobile on.’
‘She can ask her nurse to call you,’ Nick said, and his mother smiled patiently at him and shook her head.
‘I’ve got a broken leg and a broken heart, Nick. There’s nothing wrong with my hands or my mouth. If I want to talk to Georgie, I can manage to do it without help.’
‘God, Mother, you are so stubborn!’ he growled. ‘I’m only trying to help—’
‘And you are, but I have to do this my way. I have to live with this, Nick. I don’t want it suffocating me. Anyway, maybe I won’t like your nurse.’
He opened his mouth, shut it and grunted, while Georgie just stood there admiringly and wondered where she’d found so much spirit in the face of such adversity.
‘The nurse isn’t coming till tomorrow,’
he said. ‘You’ll have to make do with me until then.’
‘Heavens. Let’s hope we both survive it,’ she said, and then, as if she’d realised what she’d said, her face puckered and she turned away.
Time to go, Georgie thought, and went back to her site office. They’d made a huge effort to finish the house in time, and, although it still wasn’t completed, they’d switched their energies to the town houses that were being built in the coach house and stable block. It moved the noise away from Liz, and until she was a little stronger, that was how it would stay.
The children came over later in the day, with Una, and moved into their temporary bedroom that night. Una was sleeping in the room beside them with the baby, and Nick was downstairs for now, near his mother.
The Cauldwells’ house seemed awfully quiet without them. It should have been peaceful, but it just seemed empty and lonely. She had her own bed back, but it was small consolation. She’d had Harry in bed with her on more than one occasion after he’d woken with a nightmare, and the warm little body snuggled trustingly up to hers had been more than welcome.
Still, if things worked out with her and Nick, they’d see a lot of the children as they were growing up—and she was getting ahead of herself.
‘It’s just for now,’ she told herself sternly. ‘Just because he says he loves you doesn’t mean he’s going to love you forever.’
Even if she’d love him till the day she died.
She stripped the beds, scrubbed the bathroom and vacuumed the house from top to bottom. Or at least she tried. She was on the last stretch of hall carpet when the vacuum cleaner stopped working. She blinked at it, poked the switch, went to the plug to check that it hadn’t fallen out and found it in her father’s hand.
‘What are you doing?’ she demanded. ‘I want to finish this. Give me the plug, Dad.’
‘No, I won’t. Stop, Georgie. You’ve done enough, and you’re worn out. Sucking all the life out of the carpets won’t change anything.’
She felt her shoulders droop. ‘I miss them all,’ she said forlornly, and felt her father’s arms come round her in a hug.
‘Of course you do, but they’ve only moved down the road. It’s not like Jessica and Emily.’
‘No, and it won’t be,’ she said firmly, pushing out of his arms and coiling up the flex. ‘They aren’t his children, and there’s no way they can go back to their poor mother, so it won’t arise. I simply won’t allow myself to get too attached.’
Her father mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like ‘too late for that’ and took the cleaner out of her hand, stashed it back in the under-stairs cupboard and shut the door firmly. ‘How about a glass of wine?’
‘How about a bottle?’ she muttered, and wandered into the kitchen aimlessly. What had she done in the evenings before Nick and the children had descended on them? Nothing exciting, but it had filled the time. Now the time seemed to drag, the hands on the clock turning in treacle.
She didn’t want wine. She didn’t want food.
She wanted Nick, and the children.
The phone rang, and she snatched it off the hook. ‘Hello?’
‘Georgie?’
‘Nick.’ She sat on the hard kitchen chair, tucked her heels up to her bottom and hugged her knees to her chest. ‘How are things?’
‘OK. Mum’s exhausted, but she seems to have settled, and the kids are finally out for the count. I just wondered what you were doing.’
‘Nothing,’ she said with a smile. ‘My father confiscated the vacuum cleaner—I was driving him nuts.’
‘Missing me?’
‘Missing all of you,’ she confessed. ‘It’s awfully quiet.’
‘It’s quiet here now. I miss you, too. Want to come over and have a drink with me? I’ve got something to show you.’
‘Give me five minutes,’ she said and showered rapidly, pulled on jeans and a clean jersey top, found her flip-flops and stuck her head round the door. ‘I’m going to see Nick—he’s got something to show me in the house,’ she said, and, blowing him a kiss, she ran out, jumped in her car and headed over to the house, hoping that it was the speed camera’s night off.
He was in the tower. She saw him as she pulled in, and he waved to her and indicated that she should come up.
She let herself in the door at the bottom of the tower and ran lightly up the stairs, looking round in delight as she came up into the room at the top. ‘Oh, Nick, it’s gorgeous,’ she breathed.
The softest leather sofa sat with its back to the wall so it was facing the sea. There was a desk on the other side of it, curving round to the side window, and on the desk was a lamp glowing softly in the late-evening light.
He turned the light off, and the moonlight streamed in through the windows. Taking her hand, he pulled her down onto the sofa, poured two glasses of wine and handed her one, clinking her glass with his.
‘To our tower,’ he said with a smile, and she clinked her glass on his again and drank to it.
It might only be temporary, but she was going to enjoy every single second of it while it lasted…
Tory came the next day and brought Nick some paperwork to sign and Georgie flowers and a card from Andrew Broomfield.
She opened the card. ‘“Sorry I gave you such a hard time. Hope your father’s improving and that you’re finding Nick Barron easier to get answers out of.” Well!’ She looked up at Nick and laughed. ‘Are you easier? That’s debatable. I can certainly get answers—but they don’t seem to stay the same!’
He chuckled. ‘It would be all right if I didn’t keep changing the brief. Apparently his wife’s OK, by the way, the baby’s OK after his operations, and he hasn’t lost his house.’
‘I wonder why that is?’ Tory murmured innocently. ‘Couldn’t be anything to do with a hugely magnanimous payout?’
‘I got a lot of other properties as part of the deal, don’t forget. The redevelopment opportunities might be valuable. I’ll get you to have a look at them some time, Georgie. We might be able to do something there when this place is finished.’
‘OK,’ she said, letting it sink in. Surely he wouldn’t be talking about the future in that way if he didn’t mean it…?
‘And on the subject of this place, are either of you guys ever going to take me on a guided tour of the site?’ Tory asked, and then turned to Nick. ‘In fact I’ve chosen my guide. Go and make us some coffee and talk to your mother. She was looking a little lost.’
And, linking her arm through Georgie’s, she headed towards the town houses. ‘Right, that’s him dealt with. Tell me all about it. How do you think he is?’
‘Nick? Coping, I suppose. He’s finding working long-distance difficult and frustrating, but I imagine you’re bearing the brunt of that.’
Tory smiled. ‘Sorry—not for much longer.’
‘You aren’t going to Simon!’
‘Shh! Not yet. Not until this is all sorted out—and not as his PA. He’s asked me to marry him, and we’re going to New York.’
‘Nick’ll be lost without you,’ Georgie said, aghast, but Tory just shrugged and smiled ruefully.
‘What can I do, Georgie? I love him, and he loves me. When you love someone, you have to compromise. For me, it means giving up a fantastic job with a brilliant boss—brilliant in every sense of the word, by the way—and believe me, that’s hard.’
‘Does he know yet?’
She shook her head. ‘No. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I don’t know if I can tell him yet. How’s his mother, really?’
Georgie shrugged. ‘Improving slowly, I gather, but it’s very early days. And her grief will take years to resolve. So will Nick’s. If you can give them all a bit longer, I think it would be a kindness.’
Tory nodded. ‘OK. I thought that anyway, I just wanted to check with you. Right, now, about this building site. I thought it looked fantastic on plan, but in real life it’s even better. These town houses look interesting. Tell me all about them. I might get Simon
to buy one so we can come and visit you all.’
All? Oh, please God, but just as it was too soon for Tory to tell him she was leaving, it was too soon for Nick to know how he felt about Georgie, with all the things going on in his life. It might be months before he had time to give their relationship serious consideration, and Georgie could only hope that, by then, their love would have grown to the point that it was strong enough to last, and not shrivelled and dead like the weeds underfoot…
As the days and weeks went on, the site grew closer to completion, and marketing started on the town houses. Nick had pulled the chapel and the sanatorium out of the equation for the time being, for reasons he hadn’t really discussed with her, but, as she didn’t have time to worry about it, it didn’t really matter. There would be plenty of time to deal with those areas later.
They were closer to the house, and she suspected he wanted time to consider their impact on his home now he was actually living there.
And in the meantime, life was good. The weather was fabulous, the kids were a delight and she and Nick managed to sneak many lovely hours alone in their tower.
And their mutual parents, an apparently unlikely combination, were getting on like a house on fire. Liz was much better, the barely tolerated nurse was no longer required, and they’d all grown used to the fixator on her leg. Her father was now driving again, and a couple of times he’d taken Liz out for a little trundle in the car. Georgie was delighted, because apart from anything else it kept her father out of her hair and, more significantly, her site office.
One afternoon in June she was in the site office going over their marketing strategy with Nick when their parents returned from another of their drives.
‘The old crocks are back,’ Nick murmured, and she dug him in the ribs.
‘That’s mean. It could be us one day.’
He gave her an odd look. ‘Crocked up, or growing old together and coming back from a little drive in the country?’
She shrugged and smiled. ‘Either,’ she said lightly, but she’d meant the whole growing old together thing. If only, she thought wistfully, but it wasn’t likely. She was still waiting for him to wake up and realise that she was just a boring little nobody. It was only a matter of time, she was sure. Once the site was finished and he’d lost interest in the development, then it would all fall apart, and she’d be a fool to tell herself otherwise.
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