A Single Dad at Heathermere

by Abigail Gordon

  Her eyes like saucers, she asked, ‘Are we going to live there? By the river?’

  ‘Yes. We are.’

  ‘With Liam and Laura?’

  ‘Well…er…no. It will just be the two of us.’

  Her face clouded over. ‘Then I don’t want to go. I love Liam and Laura.’

  ‘Yes, I know you do, and you’ll still see lots of Liam at school, or when you’re having your riding lessons, and he can come over to play any time at all.’

  ‘Yes, but Laura won’t be there. She’s soft and warm when we snuggle up together, and she loves me, too.’

  Lucky you, child of mine, he thought wryly, and told her reassuringly, ‘You will soon get used to it, Abby. I’m going to go there this afternoon to see what work needs doing. Do you want to come with me?’

  There was silence and he decided that he would say no more about it until he’d told Laura. What he was contemplating was a last attempt to make her see how much they needed each other, without him breathing down her neck all the time, and if it didn’t work he would have to have a long hard think.

  Laura had been on edge all the time Jon had been at the solicitor’s. Expecting what was coming yet hoping she was wrong. She couldn’t settle to anything, and as she watched Liam playing contentedly with his toys, she was dreading any upset for him and Abby.

  Yet she couldn’t blame Jon if he wanted to take advantage of George’s generosity. It would be far more pleasant for him and Abby to live by the riverside than be cooped up above the surgery.

  When she heard them coming up the stairs she got to her feet ready for what was coming. Abby didn’t appear. He’d unlocked their door and she’d gone straight inside, which was unusual, and she asked, ‘Is Abby all right?’

  ‘She isn’t very happy at the moment.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘I’ve told her what I think you might have already guessed. I’m going to have George’s house renovated and she and I are going to live there.’

  ‘It does seem the sensible thing to do,’ she said flatly. ‘It looks a sturdy property.’

  So that was it, was it? Jon thought. A casual acceptance of what she’d just been told. It made him think even more that he was doing the right thing.

  Standing just a few feet away, Laura was telling herself that she hadn’t been wrong to keep her feelings from Jon. She’d known it would end like this. That he would grow weary of the present situation and want to spread his wings.

  Liam had gone to look for Abby. They could hear them talking in low voices across the landing and Jon said, ‘It doesn’t have to make any difference to the children. They’ll still see a lot of each other.’

  ‘Yes. I’m sure they will,’ she said in the same flat tone. ‘Having seen the bond that has sprung up between them, it is up to us to see that they do.’

  ‘That goes without saying, Laura. I don’t need to be reminded,’ he said abruptly, and then added in a lighter tone, ‘I’m going up there now to have a proper look at the place. I wanted Abby to come with me but she doesn’t want to. Hopefully by the time I get back she’ll be getting used to the idea. Do you mind if I leave her here with Liam and you?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ she said in a tone as abrupt as his had been. ‘Nothing has changed as far as I’m concerned. But aren’t you worried that she’s taken it like she has?’

  ‘Yes, of course I am. Her happiness means everything to me. But children adapt. I’m hoping that she’ll soon start getting excited about the move.’

  He was trying to sound convincing and not succeeding. It was to be hoped he wasn’t making them all miserable for nothing. So far Laura had only shown concern for the children since he’d told her his plans. There had been no obvious upset with regard to herself.

  Which made him wonder if he wanted to be swanning around that big house on his own in years to come when Abby had fled the nest. It would be as if he’d stepped into George’s shoes.

  Jon had only been gone a matter of minutes when Liam appeared with his face all crumpled, and Laura’s spirits sank even further.

  ‘Why can’t we go and live with Jon and Abby in their new house?’ he said tearfully.

  ‘There are reasons that you wouldn’t understand, Liam,’ she said gently, putting her arms around him. ‘Abby isn’t going to be far away. You’ll still be able to see each other.’

  She dredged up a smile and coaxed, ‘Why not go and ask her if she’d like some milk and biscuits…and a really big hug from Laura.’

  Comforted to a minor degree, he did as she’d suggested and disappeared into the other apartment, while Laura went into the kitchen, with the burden of saying the right things to Abby when she appeared lying heavily on her.

  When she turned Abby was behind her, framed in the doorway and looking so woebegone that Laura’s heart ached for her. She held out her arms and Jon’s daughter moved into them like a homing pigeon, then laid her head on her breast and sobbed, ‘I want to stay here. Laura. I don’t want to live in that horrid house.’

  ‘Don’t cry, Abby,’ she soothed, stroking her hair gently. ‘The house will be lovely when your daddy has finished with it. He is only doing what he thinks is best for you and him. Surely you’d like to live by the river.’

  ‘Yes, I would, but only if you and Liam are there,’ she said on another sob.

  This was no good, Laura thought angrily. They couldn’t keep fobbing the children off with platitudes. It wasn’t right, upsetting them like this, even though it might be best for them all in the long term. Somehow she had to console Abby and Liam, and if it had to be at the expense of her own pride, that was the way it was.

  ‘Drink your milk and eat the biscuits,’ she said gently, ‘and then how about the three of us putting on our warm jackets and going to having a look at this house? There’s a place to tie up a skiff or canoes in front of it. And Jon could show you both how to catch some of the fish in the river. People who live beside it have a special piece of paper that says they can fish in it.’

  ‘Really?’ Abby said, and Laura was conscious of a lukewarm show of interest.

  ‘So let’s go, shall we, before it gets dark,’ she suggested.

  There had been a lot of heavy rain in recent days and rather than skipping over its stony bed the river was thundering along at a frightening speed.

  Their woes forgotten for a while, the children were running along in front of Laura and soon the house came in sight.

  Her heartbeat quickened. She didn’t know what she was going to say to Jon when they got there, but hopefully when they came face to face the words would come. She longed to tell him that she loved him. That the children weren’t the only ones to be devastated by his decision. But what good would that do? It would complicate matters even further.

  The children had spotted something in the river. They stopped and went to the water’s edge to get a better look. Abby turned and shouted to Laura to come and see. At the same moment she slipped on mud, lost her balance and went head first into the river, hitting her head on a jutting tree trunk as she fell.

  When Laura reached the spot seconds later she saw Abby being hurled along in the pounding waters like a rag doll, and thought she would die of horror.

  The house was only yards away and Jon’s car was there but there was no sign of him. As Liam stood beside her, transfixed, she kicked off her shoes and cried, ‘Go and find Jon, Liam. Hurry!’ Almost before the words were out she was plunging in after Abby, striking out towards the small figure that was being swept towards a weir just yards ahead.

  Abby could be dead already, she thought frantically, from the coldness of the water and the blow to her head, but if she was swept over the weir onto the rocks below that really would be the nightmare of all nightmares.

  Where was Jon? They needed him desperately and he wasn’t there. Please come, Jon, please, she prayed.

  CHAPTER TEN

  JON was pottering about in the cellar when he heard Liam screaming his name up above,
and as he flung himself up a flight of stone steps he wondered what he was doing there.

  ‘Where are your mummy and Abby?’ he asked anxiously at the sight of Liam’s distress.

  ‘They’re in the river!’ he cried. ‘Abby fell in and Mummy is trying to stop her from going over the waterfall and being drowned.’

  ‘What?’ Jon bellowed in horrified disbelief. Hurtling through the front door, with Liam following as fast as he could, he ran to the bank and saw Abby in her pink coat just a few yards from the weir, with Laura swimming frantically behind her.

  As he threw off his jacket, ready to dive in himself, he saw Laura grab hold of Abby and begin to fight her way to the bank against the rushing waters. Then he was running like someone possessed to where she was trying to heave her onto the towpath.

  ‘I’ve got her,’ he cried as he took his daughter’s cold hands in his and pulled her to safety, as she coughed and spluttered. Laura nodded and as the waters continued to pound around her she closed her eyes and began to slip backwards, as if she’d reached the limit of her strength.

  ‘No!’ he cried. ‘Laura, I love you. Come back! Don’t leave us!’ He turned to a terrified Liam, ‘Son, cover Abby with your jacket.’ And then he was in the water beside Laura, reaching out until he got a hold on her and then supporting her as he swam with her towards the bank, and once again he found himself helping another of those he loved most in the world to the safety of dry land.

  Voices were coming from somewhere and when he looked up he saw that a group of walkers were running towards them, quickly taking in the horror of the scene before them, and he cried hoarsely, ‘Please, carry my daughter into the house. There are heaters and towels in there, and if any of you have a mobile, we need an ambulance fast, or they’re both going to die of hypothermia.’

  ‘I’ll help you get her inside,’ the man in charge of the walkers said as he looked down anxiously at Laura lying white and unmoving on the muddy bank.

  ‘I can manage, thanks,’ Jon said grimly as he scooped her up in his arms. As he hurried inside to where the women were removing Abby’s wet clothes as fast as they could, he saw that two of the men had plugged in the heaters that he’d mentioned and found some clean but faded bath towels to dry Laura and Abby with.

  He was quaking with terror inside, knowing that he could yet lose them both, even though they were still breathing. But he daren’t give in to it. It was vital that not a moment was lost in bringing up their body heat.

  They wrapped Laura and Abby in blankets that they’d found in an old bedding box and now they were lying beside George’s antiquated but surprisingly efficient electric heaters, waiting for the ambulance.

  Both Abby and Laura were semi-conscious and Jon thought frantically that the signs of hypothermia were there, and in Abby’s case there could be concussion, too from striking her head on something.

  If they’d been anywhere else they could have been placed in a warm bath to bring up the body temperature more quickly, but there had been no hot water in the house for weeks and to try boiling kettles would have been futile.

  But the women walkers were filling hot-water bottles from the kettle, and now, decked out in an ill-fitting assortment of George’s clothes, Jon was doing frequent body temperature checks.

  In the middle of it all there was a traumatised small boy clinging to him for comfort. The poor lamb had already lost his father by drowning and must have thought that the same was going to happen to his mother, and it might have done if he hadn’t got Laura out of the water in time. As he cradled Liam to him Jon thought he must have been crazy to think he could live apart from Laura and young Liam.

  He still didn’t know why they’d been there on the riverbank when he’d left the three of them all snug and warm at home, but that didn’t matter now. Nothing mattered except that his beloved family were safe, and with regard to that, where was the ambulance, for goodness’ sake?

  At that same second he heard the wail of its siren as it approached the back of the house from a side road that ran parallel to the river, and as paramedics came hurrying in and quickly took in the seriousness of the situation, within minutes Abby and Laura were being wrapped in space blankets, and being carried into the ambulance.

  As Jon took hold of Liam’s hand and prepared to follow them, he turned to the walkers, who were gathered around anxiously, and said with a catch in his voice, ‘Thank you, all of you, from the bottom of my heart.’ Then he lifted Liam into the ambulance, one of the paramedics shut the door after them, and they were off.

  ‘The children!’ Laura cried weakly, holding out a cold white hand beseechingly as she began to surface on the short journey to A and E. ‘Where are they?’ ‘They are here, my darling,’ Jon said chokingly. ‘Abby is just across from you on the other stretcher, and your brave boy is right here beside me waiting to give you a big kiss, aren’t you, Liam?’

  Liam smiled for the first time since the moment when Abby had gone hurtling into the river, and bent over and pressed his lips against his mother’s worried brow.

  She touched his cheek gently, and then with returning anxiety asked, ‘Jon, what about Abby? Our beautiful Abby. Is she going to be all right?’

  He was holding her small hand and as he looked down at his daughter’s white face he said sombrely, ‘She swallowed some water but hopefully has brought it all up. I also think she might be concussed. She’s swollen around the temples, and Liam tells me that she struck her head on a treetrunk as she fell into the water. So that is a worry, too.

  ‘But, Laura, thanks to you, you wonderful woman, my girl is alive…and so are you. If we’d lost you both, I shudder to think how Liam and I would have faced the years ahead.’ He shook his head, his expression distraught. ‘I don’t know why you were all down by the river when I’d left the three of you safely at home, but I know that somehow I’m to blame and it will haunt me for the rest of my life.’

  She shook her head slowly. ‘It wasn’t your fault. It was my idea that we come to find you. I thought that if Abby and Liam saw the house again they might be less upset, as children don’t always take kindly to change, you know.’

  There was no time for further discussion on who was to blame for what. They were in the hospital grounds now and as the ambulance pulled up outside A and E Abby opened her eyes and said tearfully, ‘My head hurts, Daddy, and I’m cold.’

  ‘You’ve had a nasty bump,’ he told her gently, ‘but we are at the hospital now and the doctors here are going to take care of you, Abby. You will soon be warm. That was some very cold water that you fell into.’

  The paramedics were wasting no time. As Laura and Abby were lifted out of the ambulance they were placed on trolleys and taken quickly to an empty cubicle in A and E and within seconds a doctor and a nurse appeared.

  Abby was given a skull X-ray and to their great relief there was no sign of a haematoma or fracture present. Just a painful swelling and a lot of bruising was the verdict.

  Both she and Laura were still wrapped in the space blankets and were looking less pale as their body heat rose, but there was still the anxiety regarding the amount of water that Abby might have in her lungs, and until they had a report on that, Jon knew he wasn’t going to relax for a moment. He wasn’t surprised when they were told that she was going to be kept in for observation for a couple of days.

  ‘And so are you, Mrs Emmerson, until we are satisfied that you are in good health again,’ the doctor said, adding with a sympathetic smile, ‘It’s the wrong time of year for open-air swimming.’

  Jon wasn’t sure if Laura had picked up on the doctor’s mistake. Her glance was on Abby and it was full of tenderness as she told the man, ‘On this occasion it was very much the right time. I am just so grateful that I was there.’ She held Liam close to her. ‘We have two precious children who mean everything to us, don’t they, Jon?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes, they do indeed. Just as we mean everything to each other,’ he said decisively and hoped he wasn’t wrong
about that. Soon he would know the answer. The moment he had Laura to himself he was going to sort things out once and for all. Today he could have lost her. It was a horrifying thought and he wondered if she saw it that way, too. Or if her love was only for the children and she was happy for him to stay on the sidelines.

  Once Abby and Laura had been settled into a small side room adjoining the children’s ward, Jon rang his mother to tell her what had happened, but there was no reply. Minutes later she appeared, her face grey with shock and anxiety and told them, ‘Someone came to tell me what had been happening down by the river and I got a taxi here as I was in no fit state to drive.’

  Some of Marjorie’s habitual calm came back when she saw for herself that the two patients were recovering and she said, “I’ll take Liam home with me and tuck him up at my house. The poor child looks exhausted.’

  ‘Yes, and I’m hungry, too,’ Liam said in mild protest.

  ‘Go with them, Jon,’ Laura said. ‘You look great in whatever you wear, but that old cardigan of George’s and the baggy trousers are not really you. As you can see, Abby is sleeping naturally now that she’s warmed up, and I’m not going anywhere. We’ll still be here when you get back.’

  ‘All right,’ he agreed. ‘But I won’t be long. I can’t bear to let either of you out of my sight.’

  When he’d gone Laura lay back against the pillows and wondered if she’d imagined that Jon had called her his ‘darling’ when she’d been drifting away from the riverbank. She thought she’d heard him cry that he loved her.

  Had it been wishful thinking on her part, or maybe just gratitude on his? She wished she knew. She didn’t want to be made to feel that she was loved just because she’d saved Abby.

  When they’d left the apartment what seemed like an eternity ago she had once again been on the point of telling Jon her true feelings, but always something was there to stop her. This time it had been of terrifying proportions, and whatever had been in his mind of late she could not let him think he was to blame for what had happened.