She hadn’t seen the point in waiting in London for Louis to get in touch. For one thing, she’d tried his cell phone the moment she’d realized he’d gone and found it ringing behind a cushion on the sofa. And he had not called her since he’d left without saying good-bye.
It had still been dark when she packed up the car that morning, the chill in the air seeping through her coat and sweater. As she slammed the door of the car shut, she stood perfectly still for a second, watching the rising sun streak the dirty sky with gold over the chimney tops and trying to work out exactly what had happened last night.
Everything had been going so well, everything had been almost perfect, and then before she could tell him about the baby, Bella’s whole life, and even Sophie’s estimation of Louis, who she thought she knew so well, had shattered all around her, just like the glass smashed on her mother’s hall tiles. What she couldn’t understand was that Louis hadn’t even stayed to see that Bella had gone to sleep, to check that her feet weren’t too badly cut, to tell her where he was going and when he’d be back. He’d just left, without his phone, and Sophie had no idea why.
Suddenly afraid, she had sat down in the chair and wept. She was frightened for Bella and Izzy, scared of the loss that was still damaging and that she barely understood. And she was fearful for herself and her baby, the tiny life inside her that had to have been battered by the torrents of emotions that had wracked her body recently. But the thought that made her most afraid was that Mrs. Stiles was right about Louis. He would run away from trouble when the going got hard, just like he had when he found out about Carrie’s affair. Sophie thought back to the night when he’d described how he’d felt and why he’d left, the night they’d first slept together. He’d seemed so genuine, so plausible—a vulnerable man who’d made a mistake and bitterly regretted it. But what if he’d said what he knew she wanted to hear in order to get her into bed? What if he’d just run out on Bella because he couldn’t cope, just as he’d given up on Carrie because he didn’t have the guts to fight for her? Sophie shook her head; that wasn’t her Louis—that wasn’t the man she loved, the man she knew—it couldn’t be. She was tired and upset and hormonal and Mrs. Stiles’s warning was echoing around in her head like a siren, tempting sailors onto dangerous shores.
Sophie had picked up Louis’s phone, her thumb hovering over the keypad as she contemplated reading his texts and checking his messages, perhaps trying to find something that might tell her where he was, and then before she knew what she had done she’d thrown it hard against the wrought-iron fireplace, smashing its fragile plastic casing to pieces.
And on that cold September morning Sophie realized that for the first time since she’d met Louis, she was angry with him. She was blood-boiling, heart-pumping, teeth-grindingly furious with him and she knew that if he turned up on the street at that moment she would happily have punched out his lights.
Even so, on the drive back down to Cornwall, she had kept her phone by her side, and her hands-free plugged in, convinced that he would find a way to call her eventually, full of apologies for dashing off, with news of a genuine emergency and wondering what had happened to the phone he’d so stupidly left behind. But as the journey wore on and the girls’ enthusiasm and collection of songs wore out, Sophie’s phone remained silent. She stared at it furiously, willing it to make a noise, but still it didn’t ring, and that made her angrier still.
She was too old and too pregnant to be waiting for her boyfriend to call her at this stage in her life. Now was the very time she should be feeling secure and happy, not wondering if she even still had a relationship. But the fact was that Louis was gone and he’d left her to pick up the pieces of his daughters again.
“When is Daddy coming home again?” Izzy asked just as they hit Devon. It was a question that Sophie had endeavored to answer several times on her journey down, but her trite answers of “Soon, sweetie” and “Before you know it” had not satisfied the four-year-old and had succeeded only in drawing sighs from Bella.
“He’ll be back when he’s finished helping Wendy with Seth,” Sophie told her hesitantly. It was the grain of truth that Bella had been waiting to pounce on.
“Because Daddy is Seth’s daddy and Seth is our half brother,” Bella informed her little sister without ceremony. Sophie had tried to persuade Bella not to tell Izzy about Seth until after they got back, but she knew it was unfair to ask a child for such restraint and she counted herself lucky that they’d made it this far before Bella blew the story wide open.
In the driver’s seat Sophie braced herself for Izzy’s reaction.
“Oh,” Izzy said, thinking for a moment. “But isn’t Seth a grown-up man? And Daddy’s a grown-up man, so he can’t be Seth’s daddy—that’s just silly! Grown-up men can’t be grown-up men’s daddies!” The idea seemed to tickle Izzy, making her giggle. It wasn’t quite the reaction Sophie had been expecting.
“That Wendy woman is Seth’s mummy,” Bella went on, determined to make her sister understand. “Daddy and that Wendy woman used to do kissing when they were young. So even though Seth is a grown-up man, he is still Daddy’s son and our half brother.”
“How can he be half a brother?” Izzy quizzed her, her giggling rubbing Bella exactly the wrong way. “Hasn’t he got any arms or legs?” She doubled over in her car seat with laughter, finding herself utterly hilarious.
“He’s our half brother because he’s only …,” Bella trailed off, at a loss as to how to explain. Sophie decided it was time for her to step in.
“Half brother means you have the same mummy or daddy. You and Bella have the same daddy as Seth, but there are two different mummies. Your mummy and Seth’s mummy, who is that Wendy woman,” Sophie explained, using Bella’s phrase for Wendy without thinking and gaining some small satisfaction from it.
“So we really have half a brother then?” Izzy asked, perplexed.
“Yes, and that’s where Daddy is,” Bella added darkly. “With him.”
“And when is he coming back?” Izzy inquired, her voice suddenly trembling.
“We don’t know,” Bella said, scowling out the window. “He might not come back at all, not if he prefers them to us.”
“Bella …,” Sophie warned as she caught sight of Izzy’s face in the rearview mirror, on the brink of crumbling into tears.
“Of course Daddy’s coming back.” Sophie glanced at her dark and silent phone and added through gritted teeth, “Eventually.”
“So tell me all about it then,” Carmen asked her as soon as she had the girls settled at a table by the window with a pile of pens, a coloring book, and a plate of sandwiches.
“I don’t really know where to start,” Sophie said bleakly, spreading jam on her second scone. “The long and the short of it is that Bella overheard us talking about Seth when she came down for a glass of water and she found out that he’s their brother. She went ballistic—it was so frightening, Carmen. I thought the girls were settled, that they were moving on with their lives, coping without Carrie. But I was a fool to think that it could be so simple. I lost a parent and I’m still not over it, and I was much older than them when it happened. Bella is terrified that her whole world is going to get pulled out from under her again, and as for Izzy, she’s always laughing and chuckling away, but sometimes I look at her and I still don’t think she really understands that Carrie isn’t coming back one day.”
“Poor little mites,” Carmen said, glancing over at the girls, who were frantically drawing picture after picture of mermaids and fairy ponies. “They’ve had it harder than most, but they’re lucky too. Lucky that they’ve got you and Louis there for them.”
“But have they? I mean, I panicked and went off to London and left them more or less at the drop of a hat and now Louis has disappeared into the night. I have no idea where he’s gone, who he’s with, or if he’s even coming back. I don’t know anything and that means I have nothing to tell the girls. And add that to the fact that he hasn’t called me a
nd I’ve wrecked his cell phone, not to mention that I’m pregnant, and then you’ve got a right old mess.”
“You’re pregnant!” Carmen gasped, clapping her hand over her mouth just in time to stifle the salient word before the girls heard it. “You’re pregnant?” she asked again in a whisper.
“Yes,” Sophie said and nodded. “It came as something of a shock to me too.”
“Well, I don’t know why, what with all that shagging you’ve been doing. One of the little buggers was bound to get through eventually. After all, if there’s one thing we know about Louis it’s that he’s fertile.”
“Thanks for that,” Sophie said through a mouthful of cream and jam. “Anyway, what do I do now?”
“Stop eating cakes for a start,” Carmen said. “I’ve heard that pregnancy pounds are the hardest to lose. I can’t believe that knowing you’re pregnant he left you in the lurch! That just doesn’t seem like Louis at all.”
“No—he doesn’t know. I haven’t had a chance to tell him yet. But please feel free to beat him up on the grounds that he has generally left me high and dry with his two angry and confused daughters. He definitely deserves a slap or two for that.”
“You’re pregnant,” Carmen repeated, her eyes wide with wonderment. She reached out a hand to cover Sophie’s. “Oh my god, babe—that’s immense.”
“I know!” Sophie said. “It’s taking me a while to get my head round it, but I think that I am, or at least I will be, really pleased. Me pregnant with an actual child, who’d have thought it?”
“At least now you have a reason to eat for two,” Carmen joked, but there were tears in her eyes.
“Oh, Carmen, I’m so sorry. I’m being completely tactless,” Sophie said, remembering only then what Carmen had told her just before she left St. Ives.
“Don’t be so silly,” Carmen said, shrugging off with one shoulder any pain she might be feeling. “If I tried to avoid every pregnant woman around here, I’d never go out. Thank god I’m not still in Chelmsford—the place is crawling with them. Besides, I’ve had a lot of time to get used to the idea and I’m fine with it. Really I am.”
“And how are things between you and James?” Sophie asked her. “Is that still all okay?”
“Yes, of course it is, me and James are as tight as a drum,” Carmen said, smiling. “For now at least. What you and I need is a plan, a plan to find Louis and get him back down here looking after his girls and wife-to-be like he should be.”
“Short of hiring a private detective to find him again, I honestly don’t know how to do that,” Sophie told her. “Chances are he didn’t know my phone number by heart, because it was stored in his cell, which is now well and truly dead. And I don’t know Wendy’s number. I think the only thing I can do is wait for him to get in touch …and I bloody hate it.”
“I know!” Carmen said. “He’ll have left a message for you on the phone at his house. He knows that number.”
“You’re right,” Sophie said, sitting up. “That’s probably what he’s done.”
“Well then, go home and check it now and then phone me and tell me exactly what he said.”
Sophie glanced at the girls, who were still eating.
“I’d better wait for them,” she said, tapping her fingernails on the gingham tablecloth.
“Leave them here with me, they’ll be fine,” Carmen offered. “They can help me close up and then I’ll take them out the back for a bit of telly.”
“No,” Sophie said. “Thanks, Carmen, but no—I promised I wouldn’t leave them, and for today at least I think that means not even for five minutes.”
• • •
The girls were tired and irritable when Sophie finally let herself into Louis’s house. She made herself wait to check the phone for messages until she got them undressed and washed and into bed.
“I’m glad I’m home,” Bella told her as she kissed her good night. “And I’m so glad we’ve got you.”
“Always,” Sophie promised her.
Downstairs she stared at the phone, hopeful that it would contain some news of Louis and his whereabouts. She picked it up and heard the altered dial tone that signified there was a message. Sophie found her heart was racing as she dialed 1571 and waited to hear the one new message.
“Hello Mr. Gregory, this is Mrs. Tallen from St. Ives First School, calling on Friday afternoon. Bella’s teacher informed us you took her out of school early for a weekend trip to London. We are calling to remind you that early departures are against school policy. We’d be very grateful if you would call back and confirm you understand this policy.”
“You have no further messages,” the automated female voice told Sophie primly.
She hung up the receiver and sat down on the bottom stair with a bump. Her mum had promised to call her if she heard anything from him, so he couldn’t have been there. Where was he?
Suddenly exhausted, weary to the bone, Sophie climbed up the stairs and fell, fully dressed, onto Louis’s bed. She dragged the covers over herself and hugged her arms around her shoulders. Dimly she became aware of another presence on the bed and, opening one eye, saw Artemis turning in three circles before settling down next to Sophie, her back pressed against Sophie’s belly. It was so odd, so uncharacteristic of the cat to ever seek Sophie out for any kind of companionship, Sophie worried the cat was sick. Hesitantly she reached out a hand and ran it along the cat’s sleek back, expecting a tooth-and-claw protest any second. But Artemis remained still, her breathing steady and sedate beneath Sophie’s hand, and far from seeming ill, Sophie noticed that she looked better than she ever had; her natural, always hungry feral thinness seemed to have disappeared and her rib cage had filled out to pleasant house-pet plumpness. Sophie smiled to herself as she let her heavy-lidded eyes close once again. There were four mixed-up females in this house and somehow they had all found a place in the world with each other.
Sophie’s shattered brain had been halfway through forming yet another question when she fell asleep, all her worries and fears still unanswered as she drifted into fretful dreams.
“Sophie …Sophieeeeeeeee …Aunty Sophie, wake up! It’s a school day!”
Slowly, painfully, Sophie opened her eyes to find Izzy’s face looming millimeters from hers, her big eyes looking out of focus as she peered at Sophie.
“Oh god,” Sophie moaned, rolling onto her back and rubbing her eyes. “What time is it?”
“Eight forty-five,” she heard Bella say somewhere in the periphery of her vision. “It’s a really good job you went to bed with your clothes on, otherwise we’d be really late for school.”
Sophie sat upright too quickly, the blood rushing from her head and leaving her dizzy, the corners of the room wheeling around her as she put her heavy head in her hands.
“Right,” she said, waving her arms at the girls, her eyes still closed. “Go and find cereal and I’ll get you some clothes together …we’ll be late but we can blame your father—”
“But we’ve had breakfast already,” Bella informed her. “We had Coco Pops and a cornetto each from the freezer for dessert, because we were thinking that breakfast is the only meal without dessert and we didn’t think that was fair. Plus, we’ve been dressed for hours.”
“And hours and hours,” Izzy reiterated.
Sophie blinked her eyes open and looked at the girls. Sure enough, they had cobbled together an approximation of their school uniform, with a few customized touches gleaned from the dressing-up box. Izzy was wearing one of Bella’s school sweaters pulled over a yellow sundress, which she’d accessorized with her gray school tights and topped off rather optimistically with play high heels that Sophie wasn’t keen on her wearing in the house, never mind out of it. Bella had done a little better, squeezing herself into one of Izzy’s school sweaters, the sleeves of which ended just below her elbows. She wore it over a blue-and-white-checked summer school dress with pink socks and her sneakers that flashed lights every time she jumped up and down.
/> Sophie looked at her watch and weighed the pros and cons of delivering the girls in their own versions of the school uniform on time, or getting them changed and scrubbed and taking them in an hour late. Trying once more to shake the sleep out of her head, she stretched her arms above her head and looked at Bella and Izzy.
“You’ll do,” she said. Painfully Sophie hauled her body out of bed, briefly running her fingers through her tangled hair.
“You know, Bella, you’re right, it is lucky that I’m already dressed.”
If Sophie had not been exhausted, angry, confused, and pregnant when she dropped the girls off at school, she might have felt a little paranoid about the looks that some of the mothers and guardians gave her as she shepherded them through the sea of shiny, newly washed hair and perfectly turned-out uniforms.
But for once she was too preoccupied with her own thoughts to care what other parents might think of her, the interloper, the girlfriend. Besides, Bella and Izzy were the toast of the school, drawing crowds of admirers around them as they showed off their unique styling. As Sophie headed out of the gate, still rubbing last night’s sleep from her eyes, she knew there would be a message left on Louis’s phone detailing the unsuitability of the high-heeled shoes and asking for a replacement pair to be brought in. And no doubt when she picked them up this afternoon there would be a letter in their book bags reminding Louis of the school’s dress code and their policy on glitter-gel eye makeup, but Sophie didn’t care.
Louis had gone, he had walked out on her in the middle of the night to help his first love, not to mention getting her pregnant without her full permission. He’d made her fall in love with him, enticed her away from the life she knew and understood, and then left her, the selfish bastard. And if getting him into trouble with St. Ives First School was the only way she could strike back at him for all he had done to her, then she was damn well going to take it; she wasn’t proud.
Desperately in need of some clarity, Sophie decided to walk, leaving her car parked outside the school gate as she headed toward the B & B where she could find some sanctuary in her twin room, a place where she could think and look in the mirror and try and see her own reflection once again.
The Accidental Family Page 29