‘Hi, Mum,’ he said, and Annie gave the boy a smile that melted Michael’s aching heart.
‘Hi, darling. Good day at school?’
Damn. If only he hadn’t said he was going—
Whatever. He’d waited over eight years for a formal introduction to his son. Another day or two wouldn’t make any difference. He forced himself to carry on walking…
* * *
‘Mummy, you aren’t listening to me!’
She jumped guiltily, put down the iron and switched her attention back to Stephen—and away from the man who’d been occupying altogether too much time in her head for the past ten hours.
Heavens, was that all it was? Ten short hours? It seemed—
‘Mumm-eeee!’
‘Sorry, darling. What is it?’
‘My French homework. I can’t do it.’
French. She gave a strangled little laugh. Her French was appalling—just enough to get her in trouble, and not enough to get her out of it.
No. Don’t go there.
She looked at the book opened out on her kitchen table, and felt a flutter of panic. ‘Darling, I’m sorry, my French isn’t up to much. Is it easy?’
‘If it was easy, I wouldn’t need you to help me,’ he said in that tone of voice that eight-year-olds reserved for people who were particularly intellectually challenged. ‘My father would have been able to help me,’ he added with an elaborate sigh.
‘Daddy wasn’t any better at French than me,’ she pointed out, but Stephen just looked at her patiently.
‘No, not Daddy, my father.’
Etienne.
Heavens, how he was cropping up in her life in the last few days! She’d hardly thought of him for years, and now here he was again.
‘Yes, he would have been able to help you,’ she said, her voice a little strained. ‘I’m sorry I’m so useless.’ Useless and exhausted and unable to think of anything but Etienne and… inexplicably—the broodingly sexy Michael.
‘You aren’t useless,’ Stephen said kindly. ‘Just bad at French. But it’s OK, I still love you and you make great cakes.’
She smiled and ruffled his hair, making him duck out of her reach and swat her hand away.
‘What’s a window?’
‘La fenêtre,’ she told him.
‘Why’s it a girl? That’s silly.’
But he wrote it down, checking the spelling, his tongue poking out of the side of his mouth as he struggled with the unfamiliar word. ‘What’s a door?’
‘La porte,’ she said automatically, getting up to answer the phone and hoping desperately that whoever was ringing was good at French, or at least better than her. ‘Ruth—hi! How are things?’
‘Great. Fantastic. I should have done it ages ago.’
Annie smiled, pleased for her friend and feeling only a little twinge of envy. ‘I’m really glad,’ she said, squashing the green streak firmly. ‘You deserve a good man in your life.’
‘Talking of which, how did you get on today with Michael? Did he come over?’
Her heart did that now-familiar tap-dance on her ribcage, and her mouth kicked up a notch. ‘Oh, yes. He’s torn the place apart, judging by the noise and the language overhead and the number of plasters he’s had off me.’
Ruth laughed. ‘So he hasn’t put your rent up yet?’
She chuckled. ‘No. In fact, if anything, he keeps trying to foist new bits of the premises on to me—the antique shop, more room for a store—’
‘Well, let’s face it, Annie, you could do with the extra space.’
‘Yes, but not the extra cost, which incidentally he’s being extraordinarily evasive about. And he keeps pointing out how crowded and poky it is, and I’m beginning to wonder if he isn’t right.’
‘He is right—and that’s part of the charm of the place. Tell him you like it as it is. Have the store, because you need it, but nothing else if you don’t want it. Don’t let him bully you. Be firm, for goodness’ sake, or he’ll railroad you into all sorts. I know him, remember. He’s like a steamroller when he gets going and he’ll kill you with kindness. I should know.’
‘I’ll bear it in mind. How’s your French?’
‘Awful.’ She hesitated for a second. ‘What’s the problem?’
‘Stephen’s homework,’ she said. ‘He’s eight and I can cope now, but I’ll be out of my depth in a week! And another thing—now you’ve moved away I can’t test my soups on you,’ she added in mock protest. ‘Are you sure Tim’s so great?’
Ruth laughed. ‘Absolutely! And if you want a guinea pig for your soup, ask Michael. Wait till he’s pressuring you about the premises and slip it in to distract him. Food’s the easiest way to divert him, because he always forgets to eat and he’s always hungry.’
‘Well, he was certainly hungry today, he had loads—and he’s already volunteered for the soup-testing detail.’
‘He didn’t waste any time, then. I bet you’re spoiling him. You don’t want to do that, he’ll get fat.’
Annie chuckled. ‘I’ll tell him you said that. And you take care. Come and see me some time.’
‘I will. I might bring Tim at the weekend.’
‘Do that. Speak soon.’
She hung up and turned back to Stephen, to find him engrossed in a book, his homework forgotten.
‘Hey, you, come on. French.’
‘Finished it.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. Can we have ice cream?’
‘Not till you’ve put your books away. Are you sure you’ve finished?’
He rolled his eyes, and there was such a look of his father about him that her heart hiccuped. Crazy. She hadn’t thought about him in ages, and now it seemed she couldn’t think about anything else.
Except Michael, and even that was confusing.
She dreamed about Etienne that night, laughing softly in the darkness, kissing her under the spreading branches of the old oak behind the château—but when he turned his head in the moonlight, he had Michael’s face, and she woke hot and breathless and aching for something she’d almost forgotten existed…
CHAPTER THREE
HE WAS already upstairs thumping around and laying waste to the flat by the time she opened up at twenty to nine.
Grace was one of the first in, followed by Chris and then Jackie.
‘So, what’s this with the landlord, then?’ Chris asked, her eyes bright with curiosity.
‘What’s what? He’s doing up the flat—you can hear it.’
‘Hmm. We aren’t blind, we all noticed,’ Grace told her, which meant they’d been talking about it at some point since lunchtime yesterday.
She slapped some bacon into the electric griddle and sighed. ‘Now look, girls, let’s get one thing straight. He’s my landlord—nothing more, nothing less.’
‘You were being very nice to him.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Grace, of course I was being nice to him. I’m hardly going to alienate myself from him, am I?’
‘Alienate yourself from who?’ Michael asked, strolling in as if he owned the place—funny, that—and grinning at her, so that there was nothing to do but brazen it out, and serve them all right.
‘You. They think there’s something going on between us, because they have such sad little lives they have to gossip about something—’
‘Sorry, ladies, she’s right. Nothing’s going on,’ he assured them, and then ruined it by adding, ‘sadly. However, while there’s life…’ His mouth quirked. ‘Have I just ruined my chances of getting breakfast?’
She could cheerfully have hit him. Her heart, however, had other ideas, and seemed to be connected directly to her mouth, which promptly smiled for
givingly. Her tongue, however, was still her own.
‘That depends on whether you’re going to sit quietly and behave, or incite this lot to riot, because believe me, they need no encouragement,’ she said tartly.
‘As if I’d do that,’ he said, cosying up to them all and grinning that curiously engaging crooked grin of his.
‘So, what are you doing upstairs? Apart from making lots of very impressive noises, that is,’ Jackie said, leaning towards him and showing him too much cleavage for comfort. Well, Annie’s comfort, anyway. Michael was probably feeling just fine, she thought acidly.
He grunted. ‘I’m glad you’re impressed. The kitchen doesn’t seem to think I’m being in the least effective.’
He held out his damaged hands, and they clucked and tutted and fussed over him like a flock of broody hens until she could have hit them.
‘Breakfast,’ she said, setting down a huge heap of bacon sandwiches in the middle of the table, followed by a jug of coffee, a pot of tea and a handful of mugs.
The heap vanished in seconds, mostly into Michael.
‘Ruth told me not to overfeed you,’ she said blandly, and he snorted.
‘She’s a hard woman,’ he murmured.
‘She said you’d get fat.’
He laughed then—not the huge, all-encompassing laugh that Etienne would have laughed, or Roger’s dry chuckle, but a quiet huff of laughter that for some reason made her feel sad.
She didn’t know why, but something gave her the feeling that he didn’t laugh much, that perhaps he didn’t know how, or had forgotten.
Silly, really, when she looked at the easy way he was getting on with her friends, but there was just something—
‘So how is the kitchen?’
‘Winning. I might take a sledgehammer to it.’ He drained his coffee, pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘In fact, I think I’ll do that now, teach it a lesson. See you all later.’
‘And I need to get back and fight with the washing machine,’ Chris said dolefully. ‘I know—perhaps I’ll take a sledgehammer to that. Solve the problem for a few days, anyway! Perhaps then I’d get to dawdle here all morning like you lot while my daughter’s at nursery!’
Annie put the plates in the dishwasher, wiped the table and topped up the coffee before sitting down again with Jackie and Grace. ‘Right, you two,’ she said briskly, to keep them off the subject of her destructive and altogether too interesting landlord. ‘Soup recipes. What works, what doesn’t?’
‘I like your parsnip soup,’ Grace said promptly.
Jackie pulled a face. ‘I don’t. I like the winter vegetable—it’s easier to see what’s in it. The parsnip’s just a purée.’
‘Didn’t like the minestrone you tried last year,’ Grace continued. ‘The broccoli and Stilton was good, though. Try that again.’
‘Mmm—yes. I’d forgotten that. What about carrot and orange?’ Annie suggested.
‘In stick-in-the-mud old Suffolk? They’ll hate it, too weird,’ Jackie said, instantly damning the entire county.
Predictably, Grace bristled. ‘That’s unfair and a sweeping generalisation. And anyway, there’s nothing wrong with sticking to tradition. I think you should try it instead of doing things differently just for the hell of it,’ Grace said.
‘Oh, Lord, I’ve poked a sleeping tiger. Little Miss Let’s Preserve It At All Costs is up in arms—ouch!’
‘Serve you right,’ Grace said. ‘I’ll give you poking tigers. Annie, if you want to try carrot and orange, by all means do so. Why don’t you try it out on Michael?’
‘And talking of Michael—’
‘We were talking about soup,’ she reminded them.
‘So we were. I wonder whose idea that was?’ Grace murmured.
‘Not mine—I can think of much more interesting things to talk about,’ Jackie replied with a cheeky grin. ‘Starting with that very, very sexy man upstairs. Any more coffee?’
* * *
He could hear the laughter underneath, and it was curiously comforting to know that her life wasn’t all just one continuous grind to make ends meet.
Her friends were nice people. Good people, caring, if a little over-curious. They’d look out for her.
And watch him, clearly, like hawks. Well, that was fine. He wasn’t intending to do anything wrong, but their courtship was clearly going to be a more public and open thing than he’d anticipated, and when he told her the whole story—well, there’d be the whole village lined up to hear the tale, no doubt, and judge him accordingly.
Damn.
He didn’t go down for lunch. Instead he slowly and systematically dismantled the kitchen units, ripped up the carpets and ordered a skip. The rest of the day was spent trekking up and down the stairs with armfuls of rubbish, and by the time he’d filled the skip he was feeling shaky with hunger and he’d got a killer headache coming on.
But he didn’t want to go in there until Stephen got off the school bus, and it was nearly six before he accepted that Tuesdays were clearly different.
He was crouched down packing up his tools for the night when he heard a light footfall on the stairs and Annie appeared in the doorway of the kitchen.
‘Hi—I hope you don’t mind me coming up.’
He turned and sat against the wall, stretching out his cramped legs and sighing. ‘Not at all. Come in.’
‘I just wondered—you haven’t been in since breakfast. I hoped it wasn’t because of what I said about Ruth telling me not to feed you too much.’
He gave a wry smile. Well, they all looked wry these days, or awry, anyway, but this one at least was meant to. ‘I just wanted to get the place cleared. I didn’t really think to stop,’ he lied, and she tutted.
‘Ruth said you often forget to eat. I wondered—Stephen’s at chess club at school tonight until seven, and he’s being dropped off by a friend’s mother after she’s fed them. It’ll be about eight o’clock, and I was going to play with a soup recipe. I’ve also got some leftover bits of quiche that are destined for the bin if they aren’t eaten today. Can I tempt you?’
‘Don’t you want to go home?’ he asked, unwilling to admit even to himself how horribly tempted he was, but she flashed him a tentative smile.
‘Oh, I am going home,’ she said. ‘Sorry, I didn’t make that clear. I wondered if you wanted to come over—but I expect you’ve got better things to do.’
He jack-knifed to his feet, dusting off his seat and trying not to look too damned eager.
‘Not at all. I can’t think of anything I’d rather do.’
‘In which case you can carry the bag with all the dishes in it for me.’ She grinned, and headed for the door.
Flicking off the lights, he followed her down, locked the door of the flat and slung the strap of the bag she handed him over his shoulder. ‘Just lead the way,’ he said.
They went in through the back door, over a mat that said ‘Beware of the Kids’. That made him smile, till he remembered one of them was his. Then he felt a strange pang somewhere in the middle of his chest.
A large ginger cat was lying on the windowsill, paws tucked under his chest, and he turned his head and studied the newcomer with baleful eyes.
‘Nice cat.’
‘He’s a horrible cat. He rules the house. Stephen’s the only one he’ll tolerate, and he’ll let him do anything. He drapes him round his neck like a collar and the cat just lies there. If I try and stroke him he shreds me, so be warned. Stick that there—thanks.’
He set the bag down, and she put the kettle on, told him to sit down and started putting the contents of the bag away and pulling things out of the fridge.
‘So—what’s the soup going to be?’ he asked, to take his mind off the sight of black trousers stretche
d taut over a firm, slender bottom that was doing unspeakable things to his fragile self-control.
‘Don’t know. I’ll see what I’ve got. I like to use seasonal vegetables, but that can be a bit restricting, so I have to put unusual things in, like nuts and spices and stuff. I’ve made a Stilton and broccoli soup that goes down well, and there are the usual standbys, but I just fancied doing something unusual.’
‘How about Jerusalem artichokes?’
‘Fiddly to peel.’
‘My godmother doesn’t peel them; she scrubs them and cooks them in with onions and something else—can’t remember what, but it’s gorgeous. Spinach, maybe. I know it’s green. Want me to ask her?’
Annie nodded. ‘Could you? That would be really kind.’
‘No problem,’ he murmured, stretching out his legs and easing the kinks in his body while he watched her.
She made a cup of tea and set it down in front of him, then started chopping and slicing.
‘Anything I can do?’
‘Sit there and talk to me.’
‘OK.’
But where to start? So many questions to ask, so much he wanted to know. This one he knew, but he thought it might get him other answers, answers to the questions he couldn’t ask. ‘Why a tearoom?’ he said, and waited.
‘Oh. Well, that goes back years, to Roger’s first wife—Liz. I was telling you about her. Roger was my husband—you met him once. You probably don’t remember.’
‘Of course I do. He was incredibly generous about my writing. I was sorry to hear he’d died.’
‘Thank you. He liked you—said you were very interesting. I was out at the time—you popped in because Ruth had said he liked your books. You brought him a signed copy—it’s in his study, in pride of place. He treasured it.’
Guilt washed over him. He’d only done it so he could see the man she’d married, talk to him and find out what kind of man was bringing up his son.
Decent, had been the answer. Decent and straightforward and endlessly kind, and he’d felt relieved and guilty at the same time. Not to mention jealous as hell.
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