Blowing on her coffee, she tried to sound reassuring, but felt duplicitous. 'I can't remember, to be honest with you. We have a standard assured shorthold tenancy agreement, there might be a clause that states Mr. Leblond should give me the opportunity to veto any long term guests or co-tenants.' 'Mr. Leblond' sounded overly formal, but she hardly felt that she knew him, and on the odd occasion they'd communicated he'd always signed himself with his full name.
'Oh. Right.' Caleb pulled a conspiratorial face. 'I don't want to screw things up for Dad, I'll push off to Mum's if I have to.' So whoever Caleb's mother was, Adam Leblond didn't live with her.
Caleb reminded her of Kieran. She felt her lips curve into a small smile. That gangly, young man friendliness, the easy grin, the air of finding everything doable. 'It doesn't matter now. As long as the house has been looked after.'
He waved a dismissive hand. 'Oh sure, you know what Dad's like.'
'Not really. A friend arranged the tenancy while I lived abroad.'
His eyes lit up. 'Where have you been? I've just done my gap, Thailand, Cambodia and Australia. Dad had kittens if I didn't e-mail for a couple of days while I was in Cambodia. Isn't Australia so cool? So cool.' He began to bombard her with stories about hostels and working in kitchens to pay his way, employing the vocabulary of his generation, cool, crazy, wicked. She wondered whether to tell him that she'd been around his age in the early seventies, when the same words had peppered her conversation. She kept waiting for him to throw in groovy or fab, to talk about living on a kibbutz, the icon of freedom in her late teens.
They were interrupted by the rapid rhythm of feet descending the stairs.
Caleb vacated his seat. 'Here's Dad.'
Adam Leblond jumped the final two steps and swung along the hall. He looked as if he'd come fresh from the shower, his hair combed damply back from a face pink from shaving. Brows drawn into straight lines, he looked as if he was always squinting into the distance. He was wirier than she remembered, quick of movement, flesh taut over his jaw and cheek bones. He wore a plain black T-shirt tucked into black trousers.
Caleb passed him in the doorway, carrying his toast with him. 'See you later.'
After a flash of a smile in his son's direction, Adam Leblond looked at Judith and frowned. 'Sorry, I was reading in bed.' His eyes were piercing, alive. He wasn't fat, his hair receded a bit at either side at the front. Faint diagonal lines on his forehead cut across horizontal ones when he frowned.
'It's me who should apologise. I should've phoned and made an appointment. I'm Judith McAllister.' It wasn't worth reminding him that she had been Judith Morgan, in the fifth year when he'd been in the upper sixth. If he'd ever known her name, he would surely have forgotten by now. Automatically, she extended her hand.
He recoiled. Hesitated. Then withdrew his right hand abruptly from his pocket, displayed it for an instant before shoving it back. 'I don't, really.' He half-smiled.
'Oh...!' Her heart hopped in shock at the glimpse of a hand with pink flesh closing over where his first three fingers ought to have been, a yawning gap between his little finger and thumb. Oh, poor Adam! She flushed hotly that she'd embarrassed him with her attempt to shake hands. 'Sorry. I didn't know - '
Compassion for her discomfort flickered in his eyes, darker grey than his son's, one corner of his mouth lifting. 'It's relatively recent. Are you here to inspect the house?'
'Not really.'
He leaned back against the door jamb. 'It's OK if you want to. I expect Caleb's room's a tip, but it's just clothes on the floor and stuff.'
Caleb returned briefly into view, moving from the front room to the stairs, four compact discs clamped in his hand. 'You were supposed to inform her that I was living here, Dad.'
'Oh!' Adam Leblond flushed. 'It didn't occur to me! It's only Caleb, he's my son, a guest - '
'I'm not really concerned.'
'It's an oversight, it's not as if I'm sub-letting.'
'It doesn't matter, now.' Her face felt hotter and hotter. All they'd done so far was to make one another awkward, one apology countered with another. His obvious concern for his responsibilities as a tenant made her feel sheepish. She was here to chuck him out of his home, for God's sake. A deep breath. 'Could we sit down?'
'Of course. In here.' He led her into a relaxing room of subtle colours. Her grey-blue carpet was still on the floor, but he'd added inky damask curtains, a charcoal suite and ivory wallpaper. Everything in the room was functional; no occasional tables or ornaments cluttered the gaps. An Apple Mac computer, large, brand-new and what was customarily referred to as state-of-the-art, was hooked up in the same alcove where she used to have her rather more elderly PC.
Despite its sparsity the room was welcoming, lived in. A neat pile of glossy magazines stood on the floor beside one chair, and two empty beer cans beside the other. 'Caleb,' he explained, as he gathered the cans into his left hand. 'I'm sorry. You've caught me on the hop.'
She flushed anew. 'I shouldn't have called unannounced. But I came home yesterday, and I need to discuss something with you.'
His tidying ceased. He straightened. Bright eyes suddenly wary. 'You come home yesterday, you call on your tenant today? Sounds like a problem.' They gazed at each other.
His lightning perception forced her into a blunter approach than she'd prepared for, but she made herself hold his grey gaze, speak calmly. 'I'm afraid so.' Fumbling, she extracted the envelope with his name on from her bag, and held it in both hands. 'This is probably not what you want to hear, but I must give you notice. I shall need my house back.' Her throat was dry.
Slowly, he took the envelope, and opened it awkwardly, holding it in his left hand while he slit the flap with the remaining finger on his right. Read the letter in silence. Folded the page up and studied her. 'So I get two months? Two calendar months from today.'
Wishing the news hadn't made him look so bleak, Judith shifted in her chair. If she hadn't been hoping to get him out without full notice, she would have sent the letter by registered post and been spared this interview. She cleared her throat. 'To be honest - well, I'd really like you out sooner. If possible. I could offer an incentive - '
He laughed, grimly. 'I've nowhere to go.'
She pushed back her hair. It was annoying her. 'Neither have I. And it's my house. I'm afraid I need it back.'
He nodded, sinking into the armchair with the magazines beside it, and regarded her narrowly. 'But under the tenancy agreement I have two months.'
'Yes, you do. But you haven't precisely been sticking to the tenancy agreement, have you?' She glanced up, from where thumping rock music was filtering through the ceiling.
He did that half-smile again. It gathered the corners of his eyes into laughter lines and cut grooves at the sides of his mouth. It didn't seem to mean that he was finding things particularly funny. 'I don't think a court would grant you early possession because I had my son to stay for a few weeks.'
Court. She wouldn't take such a trivial matter to court, and he knew it. 'I suppose not.'
A silence. He frowned, pulling his bottom lip and gazing at the street outside. 'The thing is, Mrs. McAllister,' he began, slowly. 'The thing is that I've been having an awkward time. I had an accident, and my marriage broke down. My wife got the house. The woman always gets the house, doesn't she? I hate solicitors and all the nasty procedure of trying to shoehorn the opposite party out, demanding shares of the equity, her solicitor insisting the dog belongs to her even if the dog thinks it belongs to me. So I left when my wife asked me to, making things easy for her because we have a long history and we're still friends. Foolish of me, on reflection, but I do tend to see myself as the guy who wears the white hat.
'I was relieved when Ian's wife, Melanie, said she knew of a nice rental, and now I'm happy and comfortable here.
'And then you come along and say, "But it's my house!" And it is. But you're out of order - it's my home. Until the twenty-first of August, in law, this is my home. It's kept w
ell, you've no grounds for eviction. You can examine every room if you want to, the empty beer cans are about the worst you're going to find. Sorry, but I don't feel too co-operative.'
He twisted the letter over and over between the fingers of his good hand, the jerky movement the only sign of any agitation. 'So if you've run home in a stress because you've had a row with your boss or been dumped by some man who doesn't realise when he's well off...' He threw down the letter. 'Tough. I'm not inclined to roll over this time. Because the woman always gets the house, and I'm sick of it.'
His tone was calm, but Judith could see anger in his eyes.
She clenched her hands. Her voice was low. 'I'm sorry to even ask it of you.'
'Don't be sorry. You've been refused.'
'I can offer financial compensation for the inconvenience.'
'Inconvenience? It's a flaming liberty!' He snapped his lips shut around his words as if regretting the letting of emotion. Then, more quietly, 'It's not going to happen.'
Her eyes began to burn. She blinked. He was right to be annoyed. She was out of order, she'd entered into an agreement with him, and now she wanted to welch. He had every right to be cross and recalcitrant.
But, oh, her heart was sore and she didn't like living with Molly and Frank! She wanted to creep off with her own things, her own phone and computer, where she could decide whether the television went on and what to watch. Her own place to lick her wounds and recover. And this was her house!
She sucked in a big breath, and then let it out slowly, looking away for a moment to let her expression close. 'Mr. Leblond, would you... would you consider just taking my word for it that I had a pressing reason to come home? That I'm in an emotional state that makes getting settled in Brinham and back on an even keel desirable? Without me going into detail?' She looked back at him, and noticed that he was watching her mouth.
Gently, he shook his head, as his eyes flicked back to hers. 'Sorry, Mrs. McAllister.' As his hair was drying it was lightening, becoming a silver-streaked version of the chestnut colour she remembered, sliding down at one side.
She closed her eyes for an instant, and swallowed. The ticking of the clock on the wall seemed suddenly very loud. She rose, hitching her bag onto her shoulder. 'OK, you're right. It's a man.' She saw a look of derision fleet across his face. 'He hasn't exactly dumped me. But it doesn't look as if there's a future for us.'
And, without warning, tears rose up and choked her.
Chapter Six
'Hell,' he sighed.
There were no sobs, she was far past that. The tears just sprang silently from her eyes and poured down her cheeks. Judith opened her handbag and scrabbled for a travel pack of tissues. She'd used a whole rainforest of paper handkerchiefs in the last two months.
She pressed a wad of tissue against each eye in turn, and sniffed inelegantly. Another jerky breath, and her voice came out through a throat that felt stretched like wire. 'I'm staying with my sister, but I need to be on my own. Or I wouldn't ask you to start looking for somewhere else immediately.'
'I'm sorry,' he repeated. But this time he sounded as if he might mean it. He hesitated. Asked gently, 'You don't think you'd be better with your sister, for a while? Rather than being alone?'
Judith gave a strangled laugh through her tears. It was odd to be laughing and crying at the same time. It made her feel as if she might soon be flailing for whatever smidgen of control she had left. 'She's driving me nuts. She makes me these meals. Proper square meals, nutritionally balanced. Huge. I don't even want to look at food, and she wants me to eat.'
He laughed briefly. He'd forgotten to keep his hand out of sight, and she caught a glimpse of zig-zag lines across the palm like white lightning, new pink skin across the strange, shiny knuckles. 'But you do look as if you need to put on at least a stone.'
'I know, I'm a scarecrow.' She wiped her eyes and sniffed again.
'Not as extreme as that. Perhaps a chicken carcass.'
'Thanks a bunch.' She tried a watery smile and he grinned suddenly, and winked.
But he didn't offer her the house back.
The Water Gardens were not so splendid now as when built in the late Victorian era. All the eight fountains of varying sizes were dry and the people of Brinham were left with just one algae-ridden, scalloped-edge pond. Either side, smaller ponds in the same design had long ago ceased to function, and were now flower-beds.
The parks department had planted up the waterless tiers of the fountains with French marigolds and catmint to clash gaily with the scarlet salvias and purple lobelia in the flower-beds below. The weedy grass around the beds and paths was mown and the benches thick with bright green paint, glossing over last year's Baz luvs Katee and Northampton Town F.C.
The park made a pocket of colour just off the town centre, somewhere for office workers to eat their sandwiches on hot days, gangs of teenagers to hang out once they'd exhausted their money at the shops, or the odd street-roamer to loll on a bench and drink special brew. Shoppers nipped through between town and the car park, a bare line in the grass where they cut diagonally across.
Judith had charged her British mobile phone the evening before and now found a vacant bench and pulled it from her bag to ring Kieran, pushing the little rubbery keys with mounting anticipation.
She got him straight away, raising his voice against the happy background clamour of a pub. 'Hey!' he said. 'I e-mailed you this morning, isn't this call costing you, like, loads?'
'Actually, I'm in the Water Gardens,' she said, brightly, making her voice level and serene. 'I'm home.'
'Shut up, shut up!' she heard him yell into the escalating racket around him. Then, into the phone, 'What, the Water Gardens in Brinham? You're in Brinham? How cool is that? I'm, like, in The Punch! Stay put!'
She folded the phone shut, and waited, her gaze on the old black iron arch that led to the lane threading between two hotels and into the town centre, her heart thrumming gently with anticipation. The Punch was a bar in the cellar of The Duke of Brinham Hotel on High Street. When she'd been a youngster it had been a popular venue for discos or parties. They'd tried to pretend it was The Cavern Club.
Judith had been Kieran's stepmother for the nine years from when he was seven until he was sixteen, really important years. Such a little mouse he'd been when she first knew him, an unlikely son for big, bullish Thomas McAllister. While Tom made her the subject of an exciting, conspicuous courtship, Kieran and Judith quietly clicked, the little boy who'd lost his mother, the woman who'd never had time for a relationship sufficiently lengthy to consider children.
Her gratitude to his mother, the unknown Pamela, was boundless. She felt guilty, as his father settled possessively on Judith for his second wife, to see Kieran dance with joy and demand to be allowed to call her 'Mummy'. Pamela's death gifted Judith a son, a dear little boy with an endless capacity for love.
Tom was a big cattle rancher of a man, gruffly kind to Judith and gratifyingly active in bed, but on her wedding day Judith probably loved Kieran more than she loved Tom. She loved Tom. But, oh, she did love Kieran!
She should have pushed harder for the adoption that would have given her parental rights. But whenever she brought the subject up, Tom merely pulled her into his arms and kissed her roughly. 'He is your son, he more or less chose you himself. We don't need any fuss in the court.' And so Judith settled down to the novel position of mother.
She loved it. Swimming lessons, football club, friends for tea, parties, school open evenings, new school uniform, bedtime stories. She took a five-year break from her career as a surveyor and invested herself in Kieran until he was safely settled in senior school.
Yes, mother had been more satisfying than wife. Constantly resisting being just another of Tom's possessions became wearing.
And when, after almost a decade of Judith being with Tom, Exotic Liza came on the scene, Judith was almost relieved. Tom's betrayal gave her back her freedom.
But then Tom tripped her up.
Because she might have thought twice about removing herself from a suddenly crowded marriage if she'd realised for just one instant that Tom would avenge himself in his enraged bitterness at her lack of forgiveness by roaring, 'You can forget about keeping in touch with Kieran!' Would she ever forgive Tom for using highly-strung, gentle Kieran against her like that?
Sixteen or not, Kieran wept. Judith lost her head, screaming at Tom, 'You overbearing arse! You never have his best interests at heart! No wonder the poor boy's scared of you!'
Her hasty words compounded the damage. If she'd kept calm and reasoned with Tom he might have rescinded his edict. She should have negotiated, cajoled if necessary. Tom, desperate to patch things up, was trying to force her to heel, she knew that.
Well, his clumsy strategy hadn't worked. Kieran, growing up fast, sneaked in meetings with her between school and home, meetings he didn't bother advertising to his father. And Judith certainly felt no compulsion to own up.
Tom's fury at Judith for refusing to pardon him his infidelity eased in time, of course, but Kieran had moved on to seventeen, then eighteen, and was well into the habit of being secretive with his father. Judith moved to Malta to work with Richard while Kieran was at Sheffield University, and had since funded his visits to her, as well as timing her visits home to coincide with his.
Thank God for e-mail.
And suddenly he was there, running into her view, multi-coloured trainers on jet-propelled feet, brown spikes of hair tossing over his forehead, eyes scanning the benches to find her. She sprang to her feet, her lips stretching effortlessly into a great grin of welcome. She faltered slightly when she realised he was towing along a slight, teenage girl in tight, turned up jeans who must, she realised with a spurt of irritation, be the fabled Bethan he'd talked endlessly about in every recent phone call and e-mail. But then Kieran let go of the girl and sprinted the final yards across the grass and Judith threw her arms open wide.
His long arms swept her completely off her feet. 'Mum! Wow! This is so good, so cool! When did you get here? I didn't know you were coming!' He hugged her so tightly that she literally couldn't inflate her lungs, and when he let her go she had to cough for breath.
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