by Vivien Brown
‘Seatbelt signs are on, Pats. Maybe you should stay here for now …’
But the loo was only a few feet away, and she needed privacy, some time alone before they landed. She shook her head, tried to smile, and stumbled into the cubicle, sliding the bolt across, and landing with a thump on top of the loo seat.
You’re going to have to get used to sick if you’re going to be a stepmum, she thought. And temper tantrums, and potties, and God knows what else. She bit down hard on her lip. She wanted to do this. Of course she did. For Michael. He’d already missed too big a chunk of Lily’s life. And that was mostly down to that vengeful ex of his. Since they’d been away, Ruby hadn’t even let him speak to his daughter on the phone, and they both felt sure that the little presents they’d so carefully chosen and posted to her had probably never been opened. Most women left alone with a child would be banging on the door of the Child Support Agency demanding what they felt they were due, but oh no, not Ruby. She wanted nothing from Michael. She’d made that abundantly clear. Not even if that meant Lily went without. Well, it couldn’t go on. As Michael had said, thumping his fist on the table in anger when yet another bank statement showed she had failed to cash any of his cheques, something definitely had to change.
Patsy closed her eyes and tried to picture the Ruby she’d met a couple of times, a while back, before Michael had made the decision to leave, but all she had seen then was a mouse of a girl utterly lacking in confidence, thrown unexpectedly into motherhood far too young and trying way too hard to be a grown-up. She had felt almost sorry for her back then. There was a flicker of guilt too, for her own part in what had happened. If she and Michael hadn’t met, hadn’t fallen in love, then maybe he would still be there now, with Ruby and his daughter. They may have been far from the perfect family, but they had been a family nonetheless. But then, nothing is ever quite as straightforward, or as one-sided, as it appears, is it? Michael may have been the one to cheat, the one to walk away, but …
Patsy had insisted from the start that he talk to her about it, about what his life with Ruby was like, so she could make up her own mind and understand just what she was getting herself involved in, what harm they might be causing if he was to walk away. She still found Michael’s reluctance tricky to deal with sometimes. It was as if he just wanted to bury his head in the sand and pretend Ruby didn’t exist, so she still didn’t know it all, and probably never would, but it seemed there was another side to Ruby. Since Michael had gradually filled in some of the blanks, the meek and mild person Patsy thought she had seen had morphed into someone far more fiery and unpredictable, and feeling sorry for her had become a whole lot harder.
Still, it was Lily who mattered now, much more than Ruby. Lily needed her daddy back in her life, and it was Lily they were coming home for.
She held her finger up and looked again at the sparkling new ring that still felt heavy and unfamiliar. It was beautiful, but it had to mean more than just a decoration, an extra glitzy jewel to add to her collection. It came with responsibilities, conditions that had so far been left largely unspoken but were nevertheless very real. No, it was up to her to support him, to help him fight to find a way back into Lily’s life, to show him she was up to the task. Motherhood, even just part time, was going to be a big thing, a major commitment, especially trying to mother someone else’s child, a constant reminder of the woman – no, the girl – who came before. She shivered, hugging her arms around herself, and tried to breathe slowly and calmly as the plane lurched menacingly beneath her.
Maybe they’d even have a baby of their own one day. Not for a year or two yet, obviously. Or more like five or six. She was still only twenty-seven, and she had her career to think of, after all. She certainly hadn’t reached the point where a career break, even of just a few months, could possibly work. It was a small company, still growing, and she wanted to grow with it. The board were counting on her to get this European project up and running. It was her big chance to prove herself. But one day, when she was ready, when the biological clock that people talked about started to tick – if it ever did – then maybe.
Getting to know Lily would be a start though, wouldn’t it? Like a practice run, to see if things worked out. But things had to work out, didn’t they? There was no other option. Not if she wanted to keep the ring on her finger, become Mrs Payne, keep Michael happy …
The plane tipped and jolted, suddenly bouncing her bottom up off the seat and depositing her back down again, hard. She only just had time to swivel round in the tiny space between the toilet and the basin and the door, press her hands hard against the wall and line her head up with the pan before she was violently sick. She looked down at the spatter of pale gloopy drops that had somehow bypassed the edge and splashed out onto the floor around her. She’d missed her new Jimmy Choos by a whisker.
Somehow, even that small piece of luck didn’t make her feel any better.
CHAPTER TWO
Geraldine Payne stood among the crowds in the arrivals hall at Gatwick, watching the passengers as they trundled through the doors, sporting new suntans, pushing over-laden trolleys, carrying white plastic bags stuffed with cigarettes and booze, their clothes all crumpled from their flights.
Michael had called her before he boarded, told her that he and Patsy had something important to tell her just as soon as they got home, and would she mind coming to Gatwick to pick them up? Well, it could only be one of two things, couldn’t it? Either an engagement, or the girl was pregnant. Given the choice, and remembering what had happened the last time, she wasn’t at all sure which she should hope for. But Michael was a grown man and he wouldn’t thank her for voicing her opinions. She couldn’t tell him what to do any more. She’d tried that before, and look where it had got her.
She checked her watch again and compared it with the time on the arrivals board. This was the right flight, wasn’t it? Lisbon. Two forty-five. It had to be. Where were they? Too busy canoodling to get themselves out here on time, she shouldn’t wonder. Unless they’d been stopped by Customs, of course. The amount of bling that girl carted about on her wrists, and even round her ankles on occasion, they’d probably mistaken her for a jewel smuggler. Not the sort of girl he might have met had he stayed at the bank. A good, steady job he’d had there. None of this big contract, sweeping-himself-off-to-far-flung-corners-of-Europe stuff he’d got himself mixed up with these days. Too much risk, too much change, too much she didn’t understand. It wasn’t what Geraldine was used to at all. She knew she was a creature of habit, the sort of woman who liked to stick with what she knew. There was safety, and an element of comfort, in the familiar, wasn’t there? The everyday normality of life ticking along the way it always had. Ironing his work shirts, choosing the chops for his tea, the sound of his key turning in the lock at half past five …
But all of that was gone. Long gone. Things were different now, and likely to stay that way.
Where on earth were they? At these exorbitant airport prices, she had been hoping to get away with just an hour’s car parking, and more than half of that had gone already. She was a busy woman, with things to do. She had a shop to run, and it was Saturday, the busiest shopping day of the week. She never liked to leave Kerry in charge for any longer than necessary, and a whole afternoon felt like way too long. The girl meant well, and she was as honest as the day was long, but she didn’t have a lot going on between the ears. It would only take one wrong delivery or a dispute over change and she’d go to pieces.
Geraldine opened her bag and took out two of her migraine pills, the pink ones. The last two in the packet. She could feel one of her heads coming on, and there was still the drive back home to have to cope with. She didn’t have the time to be ill. At sixty-two, if her life had turned out differently and she didn’t have to constantly battle on with everything alone, she’d have been seriously thinking about retiring by now. But there was the house to manage, and a garden just a little too big for her to tackle with any real success, and
the business to keep afloat. And now Michael was coming back after four months away and with heaven knows what bombshell about to be dropped at her feet. Sometimes all she wanted to do was bury herself under a duvet and sleep for a week. The trouble was, she knew it would all still be there waiting for her when she woke up again.
She thought about seeking out a cup of tea. There was nothing quite like a spot of tea and sympathy, even if all the sympathy she could muster was for herself, but they’d be here any minute now and she didn’t want to miss them. Airport tea would probably be horribly expensive anyhow, or just plain horrible. She tipped the pills to the back of her throat without the benefit of any liquid to help them on their way, and swallowed, still feeling the little dry lump in her throat after they’d fought their way down. Bloody Ken. Why did he have to go and die, just when life was finally looking like it might turn out okay after all? And why did she still feel so angry with him? It’s not as if he’d done it on purpose.
She shook the thoughts away and rummaged about for her phone. Better check that Kerry was all right. She dialled the familiar number and heard it ring and ring, but the girl didn’t answer. Eventually the answer phone kicked in, sending her own voice hurtling back at her, telling her the shop was closed for now, and inviting her to leave a message. It wasn’t closed, of course. Well, she bloody well hoped not! No, either the shop was so busy that Kerry couldn’t get to the phone in time or – God forbid – something dreadful had happened. Geraldine bit down on her lower lip and wondered when she had become such a worrier.
With jumbled images flooding into her brain – of armed robbery, heart attacks, fire engines or worse – she finally saw her son walking across the terminal towards her, and felt the tears welling up quite unexpectedly from somewhere deep inside her as she rushed forward and threw herself into his open arms.
*
William Munro took off his glasses and rubbed his tired eyes. He was worried about his mother. Since his divorce had come through – a quickie, his wife had called it, not unlike their rare forays into a sex life – and Susan, with hardly a backward glance, had driven away to pastures new, he’d suddenly found he had more time on his hands, and a lot more space in his head.
Susan had been the main breadwinner and had borne the brunt of the costs, but not without a lot of spitting and hissing along the way. If this was a quickie, he hated to think what a long and protracted divorce would have been like. But it was over now. After all the bitter rows and sleepless nights, the letters bargaining and counter-bargaining, and a pile of solicitors’ bills that added up to more than the cost of his latest car, at last the house was his again. Originally quite rundown and shabby, it had been William’s long before Susan’s arrival, but it had become their marital home, added to and preened over the last few years to within an inch of its life, until it met her exacting executive requirements. And now she’d gone, and both he and the house seemed to be on the decline again.
Quite apart from the salary she brought home from the publishing house where she worked, a staggering figure which seemed to rise by leaps and bounds as she clawed her way by her long shiny fingernails towards the top of the corporate tree, she’d been sitting on a sizeable nest egg since the death of her parents and had been persuaded to use a small percentage of it to reluctantly pay off what was left of the mortgage, so at least he wasn’t weighed down by a debt he had no way of repaying. She had even been ordered, by a surprisingly understanding judge, to settle a small additional lump sum in William’s favour at the time of the divorce, which she had done grudgingly and with predictably bad grace. He hadn’t felt too sure about that. It wasn’t quite right, was it? A husband being seen as dependent on his wife, not able to provide for himself. But now the money nestled expectantly in his bank account until he made up his mind what to do with it, and finally he had the time to stop and take stock of his life. And what a mess he had made of it.
Agnes, his mother, had never particularly liked Susan. She had never actually said it aloud, but he had always known it, and had decided, probably wisely, to ignore it. Susan had been his choice and his mother had respected that, although the thin pursing of her lips and the uncharacteristic silence that surrounded her during their irregular visits had rather given the game away.
Susan had three major faults. In Agnes’s eyes, at least.
Number one. She worked, not just from nine to five, or more likely to seven or eight, but often at the weekends too. She brought paperwork home and shut herself away in the study for hours at a time, leaving William to fend for himself. William hadn’t minded too much. At least she was there with him at night, even if she often didn’t come to bed until the early hours and usually turned her back towards him as she slept.
William had been proud of his wife’s achievements, the successful authors she had discovered and nurtured, and her occasional appearances on TV book programmes and at awards ceremonies, to which he was rarely invited. He had always enjoyed having a go at various DIY projects, but more recently he had become a dab hand at shopping and dusting and cooking too. Well, if he didn’t do it, then nobody would. He didn’t like the term ‘house husband’, but perhaps, particularly in the two years or so since he had been made redundant, and with very little prospect of finding another job at his age, that was what he had gradually and unwittingly become. Looking back, that was probably when it had all started to go so horribly wrong, with a vengeance. Susan wasn’t the type of woman who wanted to be shackled to a failure, a man in an apron with no real reason even to leave the house every day. As her star rose, his had dropped like a stone, and his self-esteem along with it.
His mother was incensed on his behalf and no longer made any attempt to disguise her feelings. Yes, he was at home all day, and his spaghetti carbonara may have been so good it could win prizes, but it was the principle of the thing. Leaving the domestic side of life to the man of the house was not the way a wife should behave, and certainly not something Agnes, who had devoted her entire adult life to the needs and comfort of her own dear husband Donald until his untimely death, could ever understand.
Fault number two. Susan had never wanted children. An only child herself, and determined to stick to her belief that there were other more rewarding, and less messy and demanding things to be enjoyed in life, she had made William’s promise not to cajole, trick or persuade her an absolute condition of their marriage. And, short of signing in his own blood, William, who had met and married her a little late in life and had already resigned himself to the probability of a childless future, had felt there was no option but to agree, thus depriving Agnes of the grandchildren she could now only dream of.
And then there was number three. Susan didn’t like cats. This, in his mother’s eyes, was beyond all reason, and utterly unforgivable. Whenever they had visited Agnes in her old cottage, poor Smudge had been banished to the garden or the bedroom, his pathetic cries and the claw marks he scratched into the panelling of the old oak door frames failing to touch even the tiniest part of Susan’s cold, unfeeling soul.
Now that Susan was gone, William had found he had both the time and licence to consider his mother’s opinions, and had realised, to his dismay, that, on all three counts, she just might have been right all along. Susan wasn’t the woman he had hoped she was and, looking back, it was hard to figure out just why she had married him in the first place. He had certainly believed, at the time, that it had been for love, but Susan’s idea of love had turned out not to be quite the same as his.
With his own parents’ marriage the only model he could base his expectations on, he knew he would have liked a wife who, if not necessarily putting her husband first in all things in that old-fashioned way his mother had done, would at least have sat with him on the sofa in the evenings and rubbed his feet, or massaged his neck as they watched the news; brought him a nice mug of tea every now and then, and a couple of digestives to go with it. Perhaps, in the early years, before her career had exploded into the all-consuming pa
ssion that seemed to overshadow all else, that just might have been a possibility, but it had never happened. It was just the way she was.
In truth, she had probably accepted his proposal in the same way a drowning woman accepts a lifebelt. She was getting older, she was embarrassingly single, and he was there. He was presentable enough, and solid, and convenient. They had met during the rehearsals for an amateur production of The Sound of Music, she having just moved to the area and keen to find something to do, and someone to do it with, and him doing battle with producing lights and sounds from an ancient backstage control panel, understudying for just about all the walk-on parts, including the nuns, and wishing he’d had the nerve to try out for the part of Captain Von Trapp.
As it turned out, she had quickly realised that treading the boards was not for her and had moved on to joining, and then running, the book club at the library, and he had discovered that messing about with spotlights was far less stressful than standing beneath them. Still, some sort of spark had been lit and they had found that they enjoyed being in each other’s company and later, as things progressed, in each other’s beds. He may not have been her Mister Darcy but he just might have been her last chance. Nowadays, he thought, she probably wished she had simply carried on bobbing along without him.
He would have liked a child, of course – maybe two – to bounce on his knee, someone to inherit his house, and his money (what little of it there was), and the flecked brown of the Munro eyes, but barring that one time when her period had been late and, just for a few frantic days, he’d felt a tiny flicker of rapidly extinguished hope, that had never really been on the cards either. And, as for poor Smudge, well …
William knew he had made mistakes. He had almost forced his mother and her beloved cat into that London flat. Susan’s idea, of course. Selling the old cottage, she had insisted, before it needed some serious maintenance, before Agnes’s impending and inevitable frailty forced their hand, surely made sense. Good financial sense. But money in the bank didn’t bring happiness. After sixteen years of half-hearted marriage, and with very little to show for it, he knew that only too well.