by Fiona Harper
The sinking feeling in Jennie’s stomach overrode her instant mental denial at Marion’s statement. She stared at the kitchen door. Mollie cheered in the other room and Cameron gave an overly theatrical groan. She knew who’d won her father over in the end and it made her smile, made the cold churning stop.
‘I know what I’ve got myself into.’ She looked into Marion’s eyes. ‘And I know it isn’t going to be easy—it might even be my ultimate scrape…’ She let out a dry laugh. ‘But of all the scrapes I’ve ever got myself into, this is the one that’s worth it. I love him, Marion. I love them both. I don’t care whether it’s sensible or not, whether it’s going to be easy or not—I’m sticking with it.’
Marion drew her into a fragrant hug and Jennie realised she always associated her stepmother’s perfume with peace and calm. ‘Good girl,’ Marion whispered. ‘If you attack it with that attitude, you’ll be fine in the end. And I’m here for you whenever you need me.’
Jennie hugged her back. ‘Thank you,’ she replied softly.
***
Alex stared at the large cardboard envelope the courier had delivered to his chambers. While there was a strong chance it contained legal documents, his gut told him otherwise. It was what he’d been holding out for. What he feared most.
The results of Mollie’s DNA test.
He placed the envelope carefully on his desk, making sure it was square to the edges, and stared at it some more. It was bizarre. He was the man who never backed down from facing anything, who always honoured his commitments, yet he was awfully tempted to stuff it in a drawer and pretend it didn’t exist.
He was concerned that Jennie had allowed herself to get too attached to Mollie. He’d tried to warn her, but she hadn’t listened. She hadn’t hesitated at the threshold of parenthood as he had; she’d done what she always did—thrown herself in at the deep end and worried about whether she could actually do it later.
She was going to be a wonderful mother. Already was, he supposed. Okay, she didn’t always follow the traditional approach, but it was clear that Mollie was beginning to adore her, too. What if the contents of this letter ripped all of that apart? It would break her heart.
Carefully and methodically, he packed his dark thoughts away in a place he’d built specially in the back of his head. But there was so much stored in there now the pressure was getting too much. Although Alex didn’t consciously notice it, the darkness started to seep through the cracks, tainting everything with shadows until the few colours inside him were gradually swallowed up with shades of grey.
He picked up the envelope, suddenly feeling much better, much more…well, just not feeling the overwhelming sense of panic creeping up on him any more, not feeling much of anything, really. It was a relief, he realised, to have reached this point, to have finally come to terms with the chaos of the last month or two.
He inhaled and tore off the strip from the courier’s envelope and a smaller white one dropped out. Before he could psych himself out of opening that one, too, he ripped it open, unfolded the single sheet and scanned down the printed page until he found what he was looking for.
Only a ninety-nine point nine per cent chance…
Of what? That he was or he wasn’t?
He forced himself to focus and read the lines of print, not just the numbers, and then clutched the flimsy bit of paper to his chest.
The samples matched. Mollie was his. He breathed out, reached for the phone and dialled Jennie’s number.
The sofa was calling to him. He hadn’t sat down and done nothing for weeks. Too many things had been going round his head, making him restless. He’d thought getting the DNA results last week would help, but his thoughts had only picked up speed.
He sank into the sofa and leaned his head against the back cushion, but he couldn’t get himself comfy. Nothing felt right. He shifted his head and tried to create a dent for it. Eventually he found a position that wasn’t perfect but worked.
Jennie was meeting Alice and that mad Coreen up in London later. A crisis meeting to discuss man trouble, or something like that. Alex shuddered. He was very happy to have been left out of the loop on that one.
He’d tried breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth. That was supposed to be relaxing, wasn’t it? Unfortunately, he didn’t get a chance to see whether it worked or not because he’d only managed four and half breaths when a high-pitched cry ruined his concentration.
He sprang off the sofa and pounded up the stairs just in time to see a half-dressed, half-made-up Jennie disappear into Mollie’s room. He charged in after her, hitting the light switch as he did so. Jennie scooped Mollie into her arms and sat down on the bed with her.
It took Alex a couple of seconds to get his bearings. He still wasn’t used to seeing a riot of pink and prettiness where the elegant guest room once had been. Jennie had managed miracles in a few short weeks. Unfortunately, he suspected it would take a lot more nodding at swatches and handing over his credit card before she was finished.
Jennie rocked Mollie gently, cradling her against her shoulder. ‘What’s up, Princess?’ she murmured into Mollie’s hair. The squealing had stopped, but Mollie’s eyes were wet and pink and she heaved in a breath that shuddered through every part of her tiny frame before putting her lips to Jennie’s ear.
Alex stepped forward, not sure what to do. Jennie swivelled round so he could see her face, still holding Mollie close, and mouthed the word monsters at him.
‘Where are they?’ she asked Mollie.
Alex frowned. Surely she should be dispelling the silly idea of monsters, not encouraging it.
‘In the cupboard,’ Mollie whispered and pointed emphatically at the built-in cupboard on one side of the chimney breast whilst clutching Jennie even harder.
Jennie peeled Mollie off her shoulder and put her on her lap. ‘Well, I think we have a big, strong man somewhere in the house to protect us. I’m sure he’ll scare them all away if we ask him to.’ She looked deliberately in Alex’s direction, then tapped her cheek with a fingertip. ‘Hmm. Now where do you suppose he could be?’
Mollie started to giggle softly and pointed at Alex.
‘Ah, yes,’ Jennie said very seriously. ‘I knew I’d left him somewhere.’
Mollie giggled harder.
‘Now, why don’t you give Daddy that nice new torch I bought you, and he can check in the cupboard for us.’
Still gripping on to Jennie, Mollie leaned over and retrieved a chunky, colourful toy torch from under the corner of her duvet. It never ceased to surprise Alex just how much junk Mollie insisted on having in her bed. There were so many soft toys he was surprised she could find a flat space to sleep on.
Jennie passed the torch to Alex and gave him an encouraging look. He shrugged, turned the large red button on the torch and marched over to the half-open cupboard door.
‘I think he’d scare me away if he came after me like that,’ Jennie whispered behind his back.
‘Do it, Daddy!’ Mollie said, bouncing on Jennie’s lap. ‘Scare the monsters ‘way!’
This was ridiculous. Still, he made a show of opening the cupboard door and shining the torch around. ‘See? No monsters in there.’ He looked over his shoulder at Jennie and Mollie. ‘Come and have a look.’
Mollie shook her head and dived under the covers.
‘Don’t be silly,’ he said, walking back over to the bed and flipping the duvet aside. ‘Come and look.’
Mollie just squealed and shoved the pillow over her head.
‘There are no monsters,’ Alex said, aware that if he’d had a playful edge to his voice to start off with, he’d definitely lost it now. ‘Monsters aren’t real.’
A muffled voice came from under the pillow. He looked at Jennie, hoping she’d translate. She gave him an exasperated look and said, ‘They’re invisible monsters, apparently. And just because they’ve disappeared now, doesn’t mean they won’t come back again.’
He handed her the torch. ‘If
you’re such an expert, perhaps you’d like to deal with them?’
Jennie stood up and put her hands on her hips. ‘Since it seems our dashing hero has turned into a grumpy old troll,’ she said, talking to Mollie but looking pointedly at him, ‘I’ve got something in my room that will help us deal with those monsters.’
She left Alex standing there and left the room, only to return a few moments later, holding something in her hand. She sat down on the bed and prised the pillow from Mollie’s grip. ‘Look.’ Jennie dangled a pink plastic jewel on a pink ribbon in front of Mollie, who sat up and grabbed it instantly. ‘Now,’ said Jennie, sliding Mollie onto her lap, ‘you have to promise me you’ll look after this because it’s very special.’
Mollie’s eyes grew large and round and she nodded at least six times.
‘This is a magic pendant that is very good at scaring away monsters. Can you hand me Teddy?’ Mollie stuck an arm under the duvet and produced her favourite bear. ‘It’s not good for little girls to wear necklaces while they’re sleeping, so I’m going to let Teddy look after this.’ She fastened the pendant around Teddy’s neck and gave him to Mollie, who squeezed him tight. ‘But as long as you’re cuddling Teddy it won’t matter even if the monsters do come back, because that jewel means they can’t hurt you.’ She looked upwards and smiled, as if she’d just remembered something. ‘In fact, when Teddy’s got the necklace on, if you even look at a monster it’s going to shrivel up and turn to dust. So, if you think they’ve come back, shine your torch on them and say the magic words…’
She turned to look at Alex and raised her eyes. What? He was supposed to know what the magic words were? If he knew any magic words, he’d have used them on himself to stop himself turning invisible, because that was what seemed to be happening to him.
Look at Jennie, making monster-catching fun. It should be him doing that. He should be the one protecting his daughter. All he’d had to do was join in, shine a torch around a cupboard and say a few nonsense words, and he hadn’t even been able to manage that. He finally had the family he’d always dreamed of, but, ironically, he didn’t seem to be part of it. He couldn’t even keep his daughter safe from imaginary monsters, for goodness’ sake!
‘Well, now we’ve sorted all of that out, I’ve got to finish getting ready,’ Jennie said brightly. She kissed Mollie on the forehead and disappeared back to their bedroom. Mollie looked at him.
‘What?’ he said. Was there something else he was expected to do? Dance a little jig? Stand on his head?
‘Jennie’s busy,’ Mollie said and held a book up.
Alex took it from her and sat on the far end of the bed. ‘I’m not sure I can do the voices as well as Jennie, but I’ll give it a go.’
Mollie smiled sweetly at him and, instead of tucking herself in down the other end of the bed as he’d expected, she climbed into his lap, settled herself there and tapped the book with a finger. ‘Read.’
For a moment Alex didn’t move. It felt so alien, having a little warm body curled up against his. Mollie tapped the book impatiently once more and he opened it and started to read. It wasn’t long before his mind was elsewhere, only involving itself in the story enough to keep the words falling out of his mouth.
This was what he’d been waiting for.
All he’d wanted since he’d known Mollie might be his was to have her in his arms, to share the easy affection he’d seen other fathers share with their kids. It was almost as if he’d known that, when this moment came, the last piece of his disassembled life would clunk back into place and the world would start spinning again.
He held his breath. He waited. But nothing happened.
He felt the warmth of her skin through her pyjamas, did his best to mould into her, but he felt stiff and cold. What was wrong with him?
Coreen winked at Jennie and Alice as the barman placed identical gaudy-looking cocktails in front of them.
‘What on earth is that? ‘ Jennie said, lifting the umbrella out and looking warily at it.
Coreen sipped hers through the glittery straw, not pausing until she’d run out of oxygen. ‘It’s called a Runaway Train. House speciality. Just the thing when the man in your life is driving you crazy.’
Jennie took a tentative sip. Wow!
And then she took another.
‘Is there a man in your life?’ she said. ‘I thought you were between lovelorn swains.’
Coreen grimaced. ‘That, my darling, is the problem.’
Jennie just laughed. The idea of Coreen not being able to command male attention was just plain ridiculous. With her wild vintage look, her glossy red lips, her eye-popping curves, well, you could sum her up in one word—naughty. And, last time she checked, the male of the species liked naughty.
‘There’s this guy…’ Coreen’s shoulders sagged forward and she took another sip of her cocktail. When she’d finished, she looked at Jennie. ‘How did you get Alex to propose so fast?’
Jennie had been getting ready to quip about man-eating Coreen finding a man who didn’t want to nibble her back, but Coreen’s question took her by surprise. Whoa. For her friend to be thinking proposals, this guy must be something else.
‘I didn’t get him to do it,’ she replied. ‘He came up with the idea all by himself.’
Coreen nodded encouragingly. ‘Okay…so how did you get him to come up with the idea all by himself?’
Jennie laughed again and cooled herself with a sip of Runaway Train. Coreen had spent so much of her life winding men around her little finger that she’d forgotten they often had a will of their own.
Alice’s eyes opened wide. ‘You’ve got it bad!’
Coreen sighed. ‘He thinks I’m a minor annoyance—if he thinks of me at all.’
‘Ouch,’ Jennie said.
Coreen picked the slice of pineapple off the rim of her glass and sucked it. ‘So how did Alex propose, anyway? You kept it all such a secret we never found out. Was it wildly romantic?’
‘Yes…and no. It wasn’t flowers and champagne and fireworks—’
Coreen bounced on her chair. ‘Ooh! I love fireworks. If I ever get a proposal, I want there to be fireworks!’
Jennie shrugged. ‘Sorry. None of that stuff. But it was romantic.’
‘Cameron’s proposal was very romantic,’ Alice sighed. ‘It was just before Christmas—’
‘Yes, yes,’ Coreen said with a dismissive wave of her hand. ‘We’ve all heard the story a million times before! What I want is to hear about Jennie’s proposal.’
Alice narrowed her eyes at Coreen, even as an indulgent smile played on her lips. She got her revenge, though. Coreen leaned forward, her elbows on the bar and rested her chin on her knuckles. While she wasn’t looking, Alice swapped her mostly empty cocktail glass for Coreen’s almost-full one.
Jennie was about to laugh, but Coreen’s expectant stare stopped her.
How did she explain it to Coreen without it seeming ordinary and run-of-the-mill? Because Alex’s proposal hadn’t felt that way at all. They’d both been working hard, hadn’t seen each other for almost a week, and she’d come to meet him at King’s Cross station as he’d returned from working on a case in Manchester. He hadn’t known she was coming so she’d had to resort to scanning the crowd and, as rush hour had got underway, the concourse had got busier and busier and she’d started to panic she’d missed him altogether.
She told Coreen and Alice all of this.
‘It’s silly, really,’ she added, blushing slightly. ‘I couldn’t see him anywhere…’ She paused and pulled the tissue-wrapped memory from its careful storing place. She smiled dreamily, and the bar, the cocktail, all drifted away.
‘And suddenly there he was—running towards me.’
Just thinking about it made her heart turn over. She’d sensed something moving fast in her peripheral vision and had turned around, and he’d been running towards her, not even looking at the commuters milling around waiting for their train to show up on the departures board.
He’d just dodged them on instinct, never taking his eyes from her.
‘It was the way he was looking at me,’ she said. ‘As if he couldn’t see anything else. As if he didn’t want to see anything else.’
Coreen clasped her hands together and sighed. ‘See? That’s what I’m talking about!’
Alice took a slurp of her drink. ‘What happened next?’
Jennie’s lips tingled. ‘He kissed me.’ Alex had kissed her until she’d felt giddy and alive and totally, totally lost in him. ‘He was laughing…’ She was almost whispering now. ‘Even as he kissed me, he was laughing, and then he just said, “Let’s do it” and I didn’t even have to ask what he meant. I knew. I don’t know how, but I knew.’
Coreen’s eyebrows arched high and she stopped looking wistful. ‘He didn’t even say the words?’
Jennie shook her head, knowing that Coreen wasn’t quite getting it, but it didn’t matter. She got it. Who needed words when you could hear someone’s heart?
And Alex’s was such a good heart—strong, courageous, noble.
The image of him laughing returned, and it bothered her.
When had she last seen Alex laugh like that? When had she last seen him laugh at all? The Alex she lived with now was withdrawn and silent. If his heart was saying anything nowadays, she was deaf to it.
She hoped he’d slowly come out of it. She’d told herself he’d just needed time to recover from the shocks life had landed on him thick and fast but, stopped short by the memory of Alex’s face that day, she couldn’t ignore the truth any longer. Something was wrong between them.
Alice’s voice broke though her thoughts. ‘It’s rather wonderful, isn’t it?’
Jennie made a forgettable comment about the cocktail and Alice elbowed her in the ribs. ‘Not the drink, you dafty! Marriage! I feel as if I’m in a perpetual state of bliss, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’