The Accidental Family

by Rowan Coleman

  “Sorry, Soph, I just don’t think this is a joking matter,” Louis said, entirely distant, making Sophie feel as if it would be impossible to reach out and touch him.

  “I know, I’m sorry,” she said. “So what’s next?”

  “What is next?” Louis asked her. She wished that he would sit down so they could talk properly, looking into each other’s eyes, holding hands—between kisses, the way they normally did when they were alone. But he persisted in standing, his hands on his hips, looking as if he wanted someone to blame. Looking at her.

  “Well, I suppose the next thing is to get in touch with Wendy, to arrange a time to talk to her …,” Sophie suggested tentatively. “Meet this head-on and deal with it.”

  “Yeah, I suppose. Did she say when would be a good time to call?” Louis asked her, running his fingers through his hair.

  “Well, not exactly,” Sophie said, slowly finding that she was twisting her engagement ring around and around her finger.

  “What did she say, exactly?” Louis asked her darkly.

  “She tried not to tell me and then when it was obvious that Seth was yours, she told me not to tell you. She said she’d gotten by for the last twenty years without anyone knowing and she was doing just fine. She said she was happy and she didn’t want anything to change. She said if I told you, I’d regret it.”

  “She said that?” Louis was perfectly still for a moment. And then he exploded. “Then why the hell did you tell me, Sophie? Why the hell did you do this to us?”

  Propelled to her feet by shock and anger, Sophie stood up to face him, aware that she was trembling.

  “Louis, for god’s sake, keep your voice down,” she hissed at him. “What did you expect me to do? Did you expect me to not tell you? Did you expect me to marry you knowing about your son and not mention it? Is that the kind of relationship you want with me, Louis? If you want to do this, you have to realize it’s about more than snogging in doorways and holding hands.”

  “If I want to do this …?” Louis trailed off.

  “I’m the one who gave up my whole life to be with you,” Sophie snapped back.

  “Yes, and you’re the one who still lives in a B and B.”

  “Because I’m trying to make things easy for your daughters,” Sophie protested, not sure how this conversation had turned so savagely on her. “I want to marry you. I really, really want to marry you, but when you’re like this …”

  “Like what?” Louis asked her darkly.

  “So angry and shut off and—I don’t know how to handle you when you’re like this, Louis. Because I don’t know you when you’re like this. Right now, you’re like a stranger to me.”

  “You don’t know how to handle me? Hell, Sophie, I’m a man, not an animal in a circus. Or maybe that’s what you want me to be. Your performing poodle.”

  “All I want is for you to be you, to be the man I love and the man I want to marry and the man I can talk to about anything and who can talk to me. The man who must know I didn’t have any choice about this. Think about it, Louis. How could you trust me, how could you marry me if I kept this from you?”

  They stood there staring at each other for a second and Sophie could hear all the unspoken words threatening to fly between them. Suddenly everything she had with Louis felt impossibly fragile, a beautiful web of silk that might be shattered at any second by the glancing blow of a casual breeze.

  “I’m sorry,” Louis said suddenly, his shoulders drooping. “This isn’t about you. It’s just that I’m shocked and angry, and you’re right, I’m taking it out on you. I’m sorry.”

  Tentatively he reached out and picked up her hand. “Of course you had to tell me about him. You didn’t have any choice, and I’m glad and grateful that you were brave enough to do it. Honestly I am.”

  Sophie nodded and took a step closer to him and searched his face, which was still stricken with remnants of anger. “You do believe that I want to marry you, don’t you?” she asked him. “You do know how much I love you and how scared I am that all of this could be ripped away in a matter of seconds?”

  “Scared?” Louis asked her, winding his fingers in her hair and pulling her lips toward his. Sophie resisted even though she was desperate for him to kiss her, desperate to be back in that familiar place with him once again.

  “Things change, people change. You left Carrie once when things got tough …what if you leave me?”

  “I left because Carrie was in love with another man, I didn’t leave her—I know I shouldn’t have gone, I know I shouldn’t have walked out on my girls, but I’m a different man from the one I was then. All I’ve done tonight is shout and blame you, no wonder you’re scared. Maybe I’ve been waiting for something to ruin this for us, maybe I don’t really believe I can get this right. I haven’t got much else right in the past …”

  “You have,” Sophie told him. “You’re doing so well with the girls, and building up the business from scratch …”

  “Only because of you. Because I love you. And I can’t lose you, Sophie.”

  “You’re not going to lose me,” Sophie said, willfully snuffing out the small cold part of her that was still frightened because she might lose him. All she wanted now was the closeness between them restored, the safe little bubble they lived in re-formed around them like a shield, even if only for a few more hours, until the sun came up and reality rose with it. “It’s just that kissing can’t be our main form of communication. We have to talk sometimes too.”

  “I know, I know,” Louis told her. “And I promise you that nothing is going to stop us from getting married on New Year’s Eve. I promise you.” He pulled her to him, winding his arms around her as he held her.

  “I really don’t want you to go back to the B and B tonight,” he whispered. “I really don’t want to be parted from you. I need you, I need to be able to hold you tonight, all night.”

  Sophie pulled back from him and looked into his eyes. She wanted to give him something, something to salve the anxiety and worry he was feeling, and more than that—she didn’t want to leave him.

  “I’ll stay,” she whispered with a smile. “I’ll get up early, before the girls, so they won’t even know. I don’t want to leave you tonight either.”

  Sophie surrendered to Louis’s kiss and felt her body burn up at his touch.

  “And I’ll help you get things sorted with Wendy and Seth,” Sophie breathed as Louis kissed her neck and pulled her T-shirt up over her head.

  “I know, I know you will,” Louis said, running his hands down her bare back and unhooking her bra strap.

  “And, Louis.” Sophie forced herself to still his hand and made him look her in the eye. “I love you so much.”

  “I believe you,” Louis said, smiling at her. “And I want you, right now.”

  Eight

  I think Eve is planning to lace my coffee with arsenic,” Cal told Sophie breathlessly as she sat in the guest sitting room with Mrs. Tregowan, her cell phone to her ear.

  “Well, that would be totally in character, but why on earth do you think that? You just got one of London’s most prestigious private houses to open for functions exclusively for McCarthy Hughes. If anything, she should be promoting you.”

  “Yes, if she wasn’t sociopathic, not to mention just plain evil, she would. But when I did my big reveal in the boardroom it made her idea about reinventing the toga party look utterly pathetic and inept. Ever since then she’s been giving me snake eyes.”

  “Oh, you are going to die,” Sophie assured him. “Still, at least when you’re dead life becomes a whole lot less complicated. I should imagine there are practically zero love children coming out of the closet, for example, when you’re dead. Or mothers. Mothers who want to come and plan your wedding when you’ve just found out about all of the above.”

  “She wants to come and visit just when you’ve found out about the love child and the slutty ex?” Cal gasped, momentarily distracted from his own impending doom.

/>   “Exactly. I love her and everything, but the last thing I need right now is her down here making my already complicated life two hundred times more difficult to manage, plus I haven’t exactly told her about her future son-in-law’s unexpected offspring yet …”

  “I don’t believe this.” Cal sounded for once genuinely aghast.

  “I know, I know I should tell her, but it was only five minutes ago I was announcing my engagement and telling her how happy I was. Telling her about Seth would just be so …so …embarrassing.”

  “That’s not what I can’t believe. You not sharing vital information with the people you love, that’s a given as far as you’re concerned. What I can’t believe is that your life is so much more interesting than mine! That’s got to mean Armageddon. Pass me a Bible, I’m checking Revelations, because the day Sophie Mills’s life gets interesting, the end of the world is surely nigh.”

  “I’m talking about my life here, Cal, my fiancé, my wedding, my so-called happiness, my boyfriend’s love child,” Sophie complained. “Besides, your life is interesting. You’re finally getting somewhere with your career, you’re outgunning Eve. This is the first time your life’s been about more than your paycheck and who you’re dating. You’re growing up, Cal.”

  “Oh god,” Cal sighed. “I’m not entirely sure I want to do that.”

  “Cal,” Sophie said. “You’re becoming a man, a real one. That’s sexy.”

  “Well, there’s always a bright side,” Cal said. “But actually, Sophie, I’m sort of past that …casual sex with strapping young men. I’m ready for something more.”

  “How many times have I heard that before?” Sophie laughed. “When you say something more you mean a one-night stand plus breakfast. Come on, Cal, you’re not the settling-down type.”

  “I don’t know,” Cal said a little sadly. “I’ve got this sudden urge to share custody of some bed linen and maybe a Gaggia espresso machine. I’m broody for a washer and dryer.”

  “Okay, I promise that once I’ve sorted out the hell that is currently my life, you and I will settle down and plan how best you can become a blushing bride. But in the meantime let’s talk about me,” Sophie demanded, something she could get away with only with Cal. “I’ve found out that Louis has a fully grown love child on the loose. And more important, he’s just found out—and he’s all weird about it and angry and tense.”

  “I can see where he’s coming from,” Cal said. “I’d be angry and weird and tense if one of the little buggers who have surely been sired from my donated sperm ever turned up on my doorstep.”

  “You donated sperm? When?” Sophie asked, aghast.

  “Oh, a few years back. I thought it was wrong to deprive the world of my superlative DNA just because the idea of impregnating a woman makes me want to heave. So I cut out the middleman, or rather, put one in …anyway, if a child suddenly turned up I’d be angry and resentful and confused and desperate to make sure they’d inherited my fashion sense. So god knows what Louis must be feeling.”

  “No one knows what Louis is feeling, that’s the problem,” Sophie said. “He won’t talk to me, not properly. And let’s face it, he hasn’t exactly got a good track record on dealing with difficult issues. The last time he had a major problem in his life, he ran away to Peru.”

  “True, but he came back when it counted,” Cal reminded her.

  “And then there’s this Wendy woman,” Sophie mumbled, picking at the hem of her sleeve. “His first love and all that nonsense. You should see his face light up when he’s talking about her. I think he still has feelings for her.”

  “He still has memories of feelings for her,” Cal said. “That’s a different thing entirely, that’s nostalgia, not love. Anyway, tell me more about the love child. He looks just like Louis, you say?” Cal mused. “Is he straight?”

  “I’m not dignifying that with an answer,” Sophie said tartly, smiling at Grace, whose attention had briefly wandered from the TV. “The point is, I’m already marrying my dead best friend’s husband who I’ve known for barely a year. And now it turns out the countryside is littered with his progeny. Cal—what am I thinking?”

  “‘Littered’ is a bit of an exaggeration—at least as far as we know,” Cal told her. “And what do you mean, what are you thinking? Are you getting cold feet, Miss Mills? Has the love child put you off?”

  “No!” Sophie protested. “Well, not exactly but …Cal, what do I think about it? Why do I feel as if things have changed between Louis and me? Why do I feel that I’ve somehow ruined everything for us?”

  “Things have changed between you and Louis,” Cal said simply. “The honest truth is, you don’t know that much about him …which doesn’t mean you don’t love him. I’m just saying, you haven’t known him for long. You’ve found out something about him, a part of him you hadn’t seen before, and it’s bound to change your perception of him slightly.”

  “But it’s not as if this was last year or even five years ago, this happened when he was a kid,” Sophie said. “He made a mistake, so why should that bother me?”

  “Everything else shouldn’t bother you, not if you’re sure about Louis. All you should be worrying about is helping him get through this and getting on with marrying him. And you are sure about him, aren’t you? You said so.”

  Sophie paused for a long moment. She knew what Cal was waiting for her to say. She knew that as soon as she uttered even one word of uncertainty, he’d pounce on it like Artemis on an injured bird. She glanced sideways at Mrs. Tregowan, who seemed immersed in the story of a mother who sold her daughter’s baby to pay for drugs.

  “I am sure,” she whispered. “I couldn’t wait to marry him before all this happened, and I still can’t. I’m just worried, worried that somehow this is going to ruin things between us.”

  “You know what you need to help take your mind off things, don’t you?”

  “Vodka?” Sophie asked hopefully.

  “A hen night. A massive full-on London-based hen night organized by the nearest thing you’ve got to a best friend.”

  “And how on earth will your taking me to a string of gay clubs help take my mind off things in a way that won’t mean I will require psychiatric help?”

  “Because we won’t go to only gay clubs and because once you’re back in the Big Smoke, you’ll feel like yourself again. You’ll have perspective, distance, decent shoes on, and, most important, vodka on tap. You could be here by the weekend.”

  “Bizarrely enough, that does sound quite tempting, but we’re going to confront Wendy today,” Sophie informed him. “Louis is coming by to pick me up any minute. I can’t just say, ‘By the way, darling, I’m clearing off up to London for a drinking binge because the skeletons in your closet are freaking me out.’ ”

  “Well, you could, but since you won’t …I’ll bring the hen night to you. Well, I’ll bring me to you anyway, you drum up some hens. I’m coming down and I won’t take no for an answer. Line me up some fishermen! I’ll see you Friday night.”

  “Cal, I’m just not sure that now is the time—”

  “Oh come on, Sophie, I need to get away from London and forget that the woman I depend on for an income hates me. I want to be with you, miserable, bitter, dysfunctional, and doomed-to-romantic-failure you, because you always make me feel better.”

  “It’s tempting when you put it like that but—”

  “Book me a room with Mrs. A., I’m on my way, darling!” Cal said and hung up.

  Sophie stared at her silent handset and wondered why her life was populated by a whole lot of people who thought they knew more about what she needed than she did herself. She concluded that it was probably a statistical inevitability given that most of the time she felt as if she knew nothing at all.

  “So today’s the big day with the love child then?” Grace asked her.

  “Well, the love child’s mother,” Sophie said. She should have known that nothing got past her fellow guest. Besides, Mrs. Alexander had been po
lishing the occasional table on the landing outside her room for quite some time while she’d been making arrangements with Louis about going to see Wendy.

  “All set?” Mrs. Alexander asked Louis as she opened the door for him. He looked tense, his face tight and drawn, an expression Sophie was not familiar with. He hadn’t even looked that way when he’d first come to claim his daughters. Her own stomach was in a tangle of knots, but she was determined not to let her anxiety feed Louis’s. She was going to be the calm one, the one who was strong for him even if she did feel like running a million miles in the opposite direction.

  “I guess,” Louis said, looking at Sophie.

  “I looked her up on the Internet and I’ve printed off the address of her workshop,” Sophie said. “All we do is go there and hope she’s in.”

  “Right.” Louis nodded. Sophie was surprised by exactly how much the prospect of seeing Wendy again terrified him, even considering the circumstances. She had seen him in adversity and he had never been like this. No matter how hard it had been for him to come back and find that Bella hated him and Izzy didn’t know him, he never lost his optimism or his confidence that he would work things out. It had been one of the things about him that had infuriated and impressed Sophie the most. Sophie wondered if it was the prospect of meeting his son that was making Louis so nervous or if it was seeing the girl he’d once been so in love with.

  “I’m sure it will be fine,” Mrs. Alexander said, rubbing Louis briskly on the back as if he had no more than a bad case of dyspepsia. “You just tell her you want to meet your son and there’s nothing she can do about it.”

  “Right,” Louis said, pecking Mrs. Alexander on the cheek.

  “Do I?” he asked Sophie as he was about to get into her car.

  “Do you what?” she replied.

  “Do I want to meet my son?”

  The workshop was on an industrial estate outside Torquay, one of thirty or so identical-looking units.

  “It’s unit thirty-seven,” Sophie said as she drove slowly down the concrete-covered road that ran between the tentlike buildings. “Can you see the number? Louis?”