Memories of the Past

by Carole Mortimer

  She should have known that Daniel’s work would be up to standard. There could be no doubt about his professional skills; it was his professional ethics that she had questioned. All that she could hope for was that his natural aversion to being in the countryside would eventually take precedence. Otherwise she was going to feel very uncomfortable every time she came home to see her father.

  ‘I wish you had been willing to consider the job.’ Cal looked at her ruefully.

  ‘I still don’t think that would have been a good idea.’ But for different reasons now! The way their relationship was developing, it wouldn’t have been wise for them to work together too.

  ‘Possibly not,’ he considered, his eyes warm. ‘Are you ready to leave?’

  She had been ready for the last hour! Although it had been pleasant enough, dangerously so; she hadn’t wanted to argue with him once!

  The silence between them in the Range Rover was companionable on the drive back rather than awkward, although Helen could feel her anticipation rising as they neared home.

  ‘Care for a nightcap?’ Cal asked huskily.

  Remembering what had happened last time she went to his home, Helen knew she didn’t want a repeat of that. She wanted to avoid seeing Daniel again at all if she could.

  ‘Let’s go to Cherry Trees,’ she suggested lightly. ‘Daddy can join us too then.’

  Cal gave her a searching look in the last of the day’s light, as if looking for a reluctance on her part to spend time alone with him. He seemed satisfied with what he read in her face, nodding agreement.

  The lights were still on in the house when they got there, although Helen knew as soon as she went inside that her father had already gone to bed, the television silent, the lights only left on for her return.

  ‘Coffee? Or something stronger?’ She looked at Cal enquiringly.

  ‘Actually, I’m not worried about either.’ He smiled. ‘Unless you would like something?’

  She wasn’t particularly worried about a drink either, but it was a little ridiculous neither of them wanting one when that was supposed to be the reason they were here at all!

  She shook her head, suddenly feeling very self-conscious. ‘I won’t bother,’ she said abruptly.

  ‘But if you would like—’

  ‘Really, Cal,’ she laughed. ‘Stop being so polite, I’m not used to it!’

  He grinned. ‘As I remember it, you were usually the one who was impolite.’

  Her smile faded. ‘I had good reason—’

  ‘You think you had.’ He moved across the room to tap her lightly on the nose. ‘Things aren’t always what they appear.’

  No, she had realised that concerning her ideas about Sam’s possibly being Cal’s son. She knew now that wasn’t true, but from initial appearances it had seemed a possibility to her. Could she be just as wrong about his plans concerning Cherry Trees? But she didn’t see how she could be when her father seemed intent on selling and Cal seemed just as keen to buy the house.

  Cal had watched the emotions flickering across her face, giving a rueful sigh. ‘Could we not talk about that just now?’

  ‘We have to talk about it some time,’ she reminded herself as much as him; it was the reason she was here, after all.

  ‘But not now,’ Cal insisted firmly, caressing the side of her face with his thumbtip.

  No, not now, she accepted achingly, moving willingly into his arms, her face raised to his as she returned his kiss. If anything she was more deeply affected than the last time she had been in his arms; the movement of his lips against hers was sweet torture.

  Cal raised his head with a husky laugh. ‘David is probably imagining all sorts of things going on down here now that it’s gone quiet.’

  Helen couldn’t help smiling herself; it was like being two teenagers stealing illicit time together. ‘It’s more likely he’s gone to sleep with a smug smile on his face,’ she said drily.

  ‘Or that he’s resting himself ready for tomorrow,’ Cal murmured indulgently, his arm resting along the back of the sofa behind her as they sat down.

  She looked up at him enquiringly. ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Believe it or not, I used to weigh a stone more than I do now,’ he grimaced.

  ‘Yes?’ Helen frowned her puzzlement with the statement.

  ‘Your father will probably have lost weight too after running around after Sam for a couple of days,’ he said with a shrug.

  Helen stiffened. What did he mean by that remark?

  Cal turned to her enquiringly at her prolonged silence, frowning a little at the incomprehension on her face. ‘He didn’t tell you?’ he said slowly.

  She was so tense now she felt as if she might break, the pleasant interlude in his arms over in the face of this new threat to her peace of mind. ‘Tell me what?’ she pushed tautly. But she knew. She knew.

  Cal sat forward on the sofa as she stood up restlessly, his elbows resting on his knees as he looked up at her with concern. ‘I have to go to London for a few days, a legal matter, and David has offered to have Sam here while I’m away,’ he explained almost reluctantly.

  Exactly what she had thought he meant! Sam here, in this house, playing, sleeping, just being here. She didn’t know if she would be able to bear it.

  Cal stood up and came across the room to her, grasping her shoulders. ‘David said it would be all right,’ he muttered almost to himself. ‘But it isn’t, is it?’ he said heavily. ‘Damn it, I had no idea it would affect you like this, or I would never have asked… I should have realised it might be too much for you.’ He shook his head in self-disgust at his thoughtlessness.

  Helen looked at him sharply. ‘What do you mean?’

  Her heart was beating a wild tattoo in her chest; her hands felt clammy and yet cold at the same time.

  Cal gave a deep sigh, as if regretting what he was about to say, and yet knowing he had to say it none the less. ‘I know about Ben, Helen,’ he told her gently. ‘David told me about him months ago.’

  Ben. Oh, lord, how just the mention of his name could still hurt her!

  Ben. As beautiful as Sam, but fated to die despite all her efforts for it to be otherwise. A precious child who hadn’t lived to see his first birthday.

  CHAPTER NINE

  HELEN moved abruptly away from Cal, putting some distance between them as she went to stand in front of the window, staring out with sightless eyes, her hands twisting together in her agitation.

  She put her head back, stiffening her shoulders, although she couldn’t turn and look at Cal, her eyes filled with unshed tears, even now, after all these years.

  ‘What did my father tell you?’ she asked flatly.

  Cal seemed to sense that she wouldn’t let him near her, standing where she had left him. ‘I had to know, Helen, otherwise I might have said or done something unthinkingly that would have hurt David in a way I wouldn’t have been able to understand.’

  She closed her eyes, swallowing hard. ‘Yes,’ she finally managed to choke out.

  ‘Helen—’

  ‘Please don’t!’ she almost shouted, her hands held up defensively as he would have come to her. She couldn’t bear for him to touch her, would have broken down if he did. ‘That year—it was the worst time I’ve ever known in my life,’ she said shakily.

  Much worse than anything Daniel could ever have done to her, touching her in a way that Daniel never could, although she acknowledged that it was because she had already been hurting so much that Daniel had been able to reach her in the way that he had. Maybe if she hadn’t already been in such pain she would have been able to see through him from the first.

  Cal drew in a ragged breath. ‘In a way I can understand, although I was lucky, I still have Sam,’ he said thankfully.

  Of course. He had lost his brother and his brother’s wife. Suddenly. With no warning at all. They hadn’t really known what would happen, but she and her father had had more warning of what was to come than Cal could have done.

&nb
sp; ‘I’m sorry,’ she trembled. ‘I didn’t think.’

  ‘As I said,’ he shrugged, ‘I was luckier than you and David, I still have Sam.’

  And they had had Ben for almost a year. A year when they had almost lost him several times. But he had fought back, until that fateful day only eleven months after his birth when he hadn’t been able to fight any more. It had broken Helen’s heart to sit and watch him die.

  ‘You were very close to your mother?’

  She closed her eyes as fresh pain washed over her, taking her breath away.

  Her mother. Tall and beautiful, her hair still naturally blonde, green eyes full of laughter, of a love of life. But she had lost that life giving birth to the son she and Helen’s father had longed for for so long.

  The pregnancy had been so unexpected, a complete surprise in her mother’s fortieth year, none of them believing there would be another child after all these years; after all, Helen had been over eighteen by this time. The excitement for all of them when what Elizabeth Foster had believed to be an early ‘change of life’ had turned out to be a pregnancy!

  It had been such an easy pregnancy too, closely monitored because of her mother’s age, but there had been nothing to warn them of her mother’s heart defect that only showed itself at the height of labour, causing her heart to stop and never begin beating again; no warning either that Ben would have that same heart defect, except to a greater degree. The double tragedy had been all the harder to bear because the problem had never shown itself before, Helen born a normal, healthy child after a relatively easy labour.

  But it wasn’t to be a second time—her mother’s heart had been strained too much, although she had never known that her son would only live another eleven months before he too died.

  Helen’s father had been devastated by his wife’s death, theirs a marriage of love and laughter, and Helen’s grief had only been slightly less because her time was so occupied with taking care of a very sick baby.

  With her father unable to deal with the baby at all for the first few weeks of Ben’s life, his desolation at losing her mother almost crippling him, Helen’s closeness to Ben had been complete. She had fought so hard to keep him alive. But it had been a fight that the doctors and specialists had warned her she was destined to lose. Although it hadn’t stopped her trying to win.

  Her heartbreak at Ben’s death had been so deep that she’d had to get away, completely away from anything that reminded her of him and the happy family she had once known, which was why she had originally gone to London. Where she had ultimately met Daniel and been hurt all over again.

  ‘Yes,’ she said heavily. ‘I was very close to my mother.’

  Cal shook his head. ‘David told me how you bore the responsibility of Ben when he was too broken to cope with anything.’

  She swallowed hard. ‘Could we talk about something else?’

  She hadn’t realised Cal had moved until she felt his hands on her shoulders turning her towards him. But at his first touch her control broke and she buried her face against his chest, clinging to him as the sobs racked her body.

  ‘Oh, lord, I didn’t mean to upset you,’ Cal groaned, holding her tightly against him. ‘Helen, I’m sorry, so sorry.’

  She wasn’t, not really, Ben just something else that had stood between them. She had loved her brother dearly, had been more like the mother to him that he had never known, and she had found it impossible over the years to talk about him with anyone, even her father. Especially her father—both of them were too close to Ben. But she had known how much her father needed to talk of the baby they had lost, had regretted not being able to share that with him, even in words, knew that he had recognised an affinity in Cal that made it possible for him to talk to the younger man.

  Helen now knew that same affinity.

  She regained some control, shaking her head. ‘It was so long ago.’

  ‘That doesn’t lessen the pain,’ Cal said understandingly.

  ‘It should have dulled it,’ she returned firmly.

  ‘You had a double tragedy of the magnitude most people couldn’t even begin to imagine,’ he soothed gruffly.

  And he understood all too well what she had been through. In a way she had always known that he would, had feared even that closeness between them, could feel the tendrils of that known affinity wrapping themselves around her heart. She knew, and in a way, accepted, her physical attraction towards this man, but she didn’t want to care for him any more deeply than that, was afraid to care for anyone in that way. And yet she knew that with this man she was dangerously close to doing just that.

  She pulled out of his arms, making an obvious move away from him. ‘It was all a long time ago,’ she repeated firmly. ‘So Daddy has offered to have Sam here while you’re away?’ she added briskly, the distance she had deliberately put between them not just one of proximity.

  Cal looked as if he would have liked to have said more on the subject of Ben and her mother, but he could obviously tell by her expression that she wouldn’t welcome any further intrusion upon her battered emotions.

  ‘Yes,’ he confirmed heavily. ‘But if it’s going to upset you…?’

  ‘Of course not,’ she denied offhandedly, having no real idea just how Sam being in the house would affect her. ‘I’m sure we’ll cope very well. I can take him down on the beach during the day, I’m sure he would like that.’

  ‘Yes,’ Cal agreed distractedly. ‘I’m going to sort out things with Enid and Henry once and for all, legally, if possible.’

  After the other day Helen had a feeling that might be the only way he could stop the arguments! ‘Poor Sam,’ she sighed.

  ‘I don’t know what else to do to put a stop to all this,’ Cal confided sadly. ‘I do have an alternative, but—Well, it isn’t one I could ever use,’ he dismissed hardly. ‘Susan wouldn’t have wanted me to do that. They left me a letter, you see,’ he agitatedly paced the room. ‘Explaining why it had to be me who had Sam.’

  Helen had sensed there was something he was keeping to himself, felt uncomfortable at having him confide in her in this way, felt those tendrils about her emotions drawing in tighter.

  ‘Susan loved her parents,’ Cal continued heavily. ‘But she knew they were the last people to bring up Sam. Susan was born to them late in life, was almost suffocated by them during her childhood; she couldn’t bear the thought, much as she loved them, of their putting those same restrictions on Sam’s life.’

  So this was that other ‘act of defiance’ that Susan had committed, not openly as her marriage to Graham had needed to be, but quietly, privately, with the man they had entrusted their son’s life to. It just made Helen feel all the worse for all the awful thoughts she had had of Cal since before she even arrived here a couple of weeks ago.

  Was it really only two and a half weeks since she had first met this man? She was beginning to feel as if she had known him a lifetime!

  And what she had just learnt of the trust that had been placed in Cal made a nonsense of all the bad things she had been imagining of him. And she could only admire him more for the restraint he was exercising concerning Enid Carter; it must be so tempting for him to just show the other woman the letter and stop her insults once and for all, and yet she knew Cal would never do that, that he would try to maintain the love the Carters had for their daughter no matter what the cost might be to himself. Although Helen was equally convinced that he wouldn’t exercise that same constraint if Sam’s welfare was to become really threatened.

  It was a terrible, if necessary, burden that had been placed on him. And he had chosen to share that burden with her…

  ‘I’d better go,’ Cal decided suddenly, as if he too was slightly taken aback at having confided in her the way that he had. ‘I’ll be over early tomorrow with Sam. Is that going to be all right with you?’ He looked at her anxiously.

  She shrugged with much more nonchalance than she actually felt. ‘It really isn’t my decision; as my father is
fond of pointing out, this is his house, not mine,’ she said ruefully.

  ‘Helen—’

  ‘Cal, it will be all right,’ she cut in tautly, her cheeks colouring slightly as she realised she had used that shortened version of his name for the first time. But then, their relationship had changed so drastically in the course of just one short evening that it wasn’t surprising she was slightly off balance! ‘It will be all right,’ she repeated firmly.

  He looked as if he would have liked to say more but restrained himself with effort. ‘I’ll see you in the morning, then,’ he told her gruffly.

  ‘Yes,’ she acknowledged abruptly, walking out to the door, looking at him expectantly as he seemed reluctant to leave. ‘I had better get some rest too if I’m to chase after Sam the next few days,’ she said lightly. ‘I’m sure that’s what Daddy really had in mind when he made the offer!’

  Cal seemed relieved that the tension had been lifted, smiling down at her. ‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised, although the two of them do get on well together.’

  She sobered a little, knowing how much her father had regretted the fact that Ben had rarely been well enough to play with, let alone get into mischief the way Sam did. ‘I’m sure.’ She nodded curtly.

  ‘Helen?’

  She looked up at Cal warily. Her emotions were too ragged already; she couldn’t stand much more tonight!

  ‘Goodnight.’ His lips lightly brushed her own before he left, seeming to sense her vulnerability and not want to take advantage of it.

  Helen stayed in the lounge a long time after he had gone, tired and yet not sleepy, knowing that the next few days were going to be a severe strain on her emotions.

  ‘Asleep?’ her father asked indulgently as she came down the stairs.

  She had just fed Sam his tea, bathed him, put him to bed, and read him a story, which he had fallen asleep halfway through. So much for that story of Rapunzel that Cal had said he liked; she had a feeling Cal enjoyed that story more than the baby did!