by Penny Jordan
‘No such thing,’ Seb denied.
‘But we are going to the Fun Day, aren’t we?’ Charlotte coaxed. ‘It will be fun.’
As he looked into his daughter’s hopeful face, Seb knew that he had no real option.
Although he hadn’t shown it he had been thrilled when Charlotte had telephoned earlier in the week to ask if she could spend the weekend with him.
He had finished work a little earlier in order to spend as much time as he could with her and it had been Chrissie’s suggestion that they all have dinner together at the restaurant owned and run by Guy’s sister Frances and her family.
Charlotte had fast become a favourite with those members of the Cooke family she had met, and if anything she fitted in far better and enjoyed their company much more than he could remember doing as a child, Seb acknowledged.
‘So, it’s decided then. What time are we going to go?’ Charlotte demanded excitedly.
‘Well, I’d recommend a reasonably early start,’ Guy suggested, but then he paused and frowned and turned to Seb, asking him, ‘Didn’t you say you had someone to see at the apartment in the morning?’
‘The interior designer you recommended,’ Seb told him. ‘I’ve got this conference coming up and...’
‘Oh, yes, of course. Well, Jamie is very professional. Once you’ve given her an idea of what you want you’ll be able to leave everything safely in her hands.’
‘Has Katie Crighton moved into her apartment yet?’ Charlotte asked Seb interestedly. ‘She’s nice. I...’
‘She’ll be moving in next week,’ Chrissie told her, adding with a smile, ‘She was complaining the other day that Maddy had walked her feet off when she took her on a tour of some fabric warehouses. Maddy is married to Katie’s elder brother Max,’ Chrissie explained for Charlotte’s sake.
‘She and Max and their children live at Queensmead, which is Ben Crighton’s home, and I still can’t believe how Maddy has managed to turn it from the rather drab and almost unwelcoming house it was into the lovely, warm home it is now.’
‘I think it’s called love,’ Guy told her softly.
‘Mmm... Well, she’s certainly transformed the place. She’s marvellously multi-talented and seems to have a gift for finding a good bargain.’
‘Katie was telling me that thanks to Maddy, she’s found the most wonderful fabric for her curtains at a fraction of the original price.’
The arrival of Frances to chat with them and take their order put a stop to Chrissie’s conversation for which Seb was profoundly thankful. He had not seen anything of Katie since he had visited her office to sign his contract and he suspected that she was deliberately avoiding him. He had told himself that he was glad, that the last thing he wanted was the kind of complications in his life that getting involved in any kind of relationship with her would bring him.
He was bound to see her tomorrow though, of course. From what he had heard, the Crighton family would be out in full force at the Fun Day. Ruth Crighton herself was apparently flying over from America with Grant, specially to be there.
* * *
‘COME ON, EVERYONE, it’s time we were leaving.’
As Katie took a last gulp of her coffee early Saturday morning, she reflected that the annual Fun Day, with the constant stream of arrivals milling about in her parents’ comfortable kitchen, was becoming almost as much of an institution as the charity itself.
Up at Queensmead, Maddy would have a full house, too, and down in the town square the coaches hired to take everyone to Fitzburgh Place would already be filling up with excited children and their families.
One innovative practice that Ruth and Maddy had brought into existence had been the creation of special family rooms within the houses occupied by single mothers and their children so that the men, or more often boys, who had fathered them but who, for one reason or another, had not previously been a part of those children’s lives, could be encouraged to visit and establish contact with their children.
Another innovative scheme, recently been put into practice, taught the young parents parenting skills, and Maddy was currently trying to persuade the local secondary school to allow her to establish a scheme that would mean teenage girls and boys became responsible for a computer programmed ‘baby doll’ which would mimic the responses of a real baby and give them a taste of just what parenthood was really all about.
‘It’s not about frightening them into not having sex, but rather of showing them, warning them, just how much an unplanned pregnancy will change their lives,’ Maddy had told Katie earnestly when she had been explaining what they hoped to do.
‘I’m so pleased that Louise and Gareth were able to make it,’ Katie heard her mother enthusing as she expertly loaded empty breakfast dishes into the dishwasher. ‘I can’t believe how much little Nick has grown.’
Nick was Louise and Gareth’s young son and Katie forced herself to smile as her mother started to extol the virtues of her small grandson.
‘Goodness, just look at the time,’ Jenny Crighton exclaimed. ‘Katie, will you run upstairs and warn Louise that we’ve got to leave in ten minutes.’
By the time Seb and Charlotte reached Fitzburgh Place the Fun Day was in full swing. They had stopped off on the way at the apartment where Seb had arranged to meet the interior designer, who, as Guy had promised him, proved to be extremely professional and knowledgeable.
‘You want something comfortable and homey,’ Charlotte had informed him when Jamie had been asking him about his own preferences for the decor of the apartment. ‘Not something high-tech and modern...’
‘I want something that’s in keeping with the period of the building and the features of the rooms,’ Seb told the designer calmly. ‘The office you can leave to me... I intend to commission a desk specifically to house my computer and files. Oh, and I shall need a proper bed in the master bedroom, so please make sure it’s both large and comfortable.’
‘What are you planning to do in there?’ Charlotte had teased him. ‘Hold orgies?’
‘Believe it or not...sleep,’ Seb had corrected her dryly.
Predictably Charlotte had had her own opinions about how she thought her room should be furnished, explaining to the designer just what she wanted and then pausing breathlessly to ask Seb if he approved of her choice.
‘I don’t mind, just so long as you don’t have it Barbie-doll pink...’ Seb told her truthfully.
Charlotte had flashed him an indignant look.
‘I grew out of that years ago, Dad.’
Now, as they left his parked car, Seb surveyed the excited throng of people milling around and reflected that it was just as well that it had turned out to be a warm sunny day.
‘Oh look, Dad, over there, that must be Katie’s twin sister and her husband,’ Charlotte told him, tugging on his arm and directing his attention to where a girl who was quite definitely Katie’s twin was standing, or rather leaning against the impressively tall man standing with her.
Yes, she was quite definitely Katie’s twin, Seb recognised, and yet at the same time he knew that he would have known instantly that she wasn’t Katie, even without the difference in their hairstyles.
‘I wonder where Katie is?’ Charlotte mused. ‘Perhaps we could go over and ask her sister.’
Seb raised his eyebrows. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea. Katie will probably be very busy,’ he warned her.
Ten minutes later as they walked past the informal crèche, which had been organised for the children, Seb realised that he had been right.
Katie was in the middle of a large circle of children, reading them a story, oblivious to their presence until Charlotte waved to her.
Although her voice faltered and her face changed colour slightly, she continued with what she was doing, causing Seb to suggest to Charlotte that they
should move on and leave her in peace.
‘No, she’s almost finished, but you don’t have to stay if you want to walk round. I’ll catch up with you at the tea stall in half an hour or so,’ Charlotte told him.
Shrugging his shoulders Seb left her where she was and walked away to talk with Saul, who he had spotted standing several yards away with his family.
‘Charlotte.’ Katie smiled as her story finished. Charlotte came hurrying towards her.
‘I’ve just seen your twin sister,’ Charlotte told her warmly. ‘She was over past the bouncy castle with her husband and the most gorgeous little boy.’
‘Their son Nick,’ Katie agreed.
‘I think what you’re all doing here is wonderful,’ Charlotte told her. ‘My mother always says how lucky she was that after she and Dad decided their marriage wasn’t working out, Dad always made sure that he provided for me financially and then, of course, Mum met George and they fell in love.’ She gave Katie a rueful grin.
‘Dad tends to beat himself about the chest with guilt a bit because he wasn’t there for me when I was growing up, but to tell the truth, George was such a wonderful loving step-father that I didn’t even realise for ages that he wasn’t my birth father, and then once I did... I was curious about Dad of course, but once Ma had explained that she had felt that it would only confuse me and make me feel torn between them both if she encouraged Dad to be there more for me, I felt she’d made the right decision.
‘It was actually George who encouraged me to go for it when Dad did contact me. I was apprehensive about how he would react but when Dad explained to me how much he regretted the break-up of his and Mum’s marriage and how bad he felt about it and me, how much he’d wanted to make contact with me but hadn’t felt that he had the right to do so...
‘He and Mum have both said separately to me that they never should have married... They confused lust with love. Have you ever been in love?’ she asked Katie curiously.
Too taken aback to feel offended by the intimacy of her curiosity, Katie didn’t know what to say, but fortunately Charlotte didn’t seem to notice her hesitancy, continuing instead, ‘I wish that Dad could find someone to love... I think part of the reason he buried himself in his work when I was a baby was because it was so hard for him to face up to the fact that he and Ma had married for the wrong reasons and that they didn’t really love one another,’ she told Katie wisely. ‘I’d hate to get to Dad’s age without ever having loved anyone properly and being loved back by them,’ she added abruptly.
She giggled, confiding, ‘Dad thinks that every boy I date is going to seduce me, but I’m not ready for that kind of relationship yet. I’ve got too much to do, but one day soon I shall be. Dad has this bit of a thing about the reputation of the Cooke men as wicked seducers. Although he never really talks about it, I think that’s why he insisted on marrying Mum instead of just going to bed with her. Of course, I know things were different when they were young but I don’t think there’s anything wrong in someone wanting to explore their sexuality. It’s part of growing up, isn’t it?
‘When I do commit myself to a man, a relationship, I want it to be because I know beyond any kind of doubt that I love him, so I want to make sure that I’ve got the sex thing sorted out first. I mean for both sexes, losing one’s virginity is kind of a very major rite of passage, isn’t it, and of course I want it to be with the right person.
‘I expect you felt the same when you lost yours,’ she added questioningly.
Katie could feel herself floundering, lost in a sticky morass of conflicting emotions and thoughts. Was Charlotte trying to seek her advice or was she simply using her as a sounding board? The age gap between them wasn’t huge, but it was enough for Katie to know that in Charlotte’s eyes they stood on opposite sides of the chasm that was experience. If only Charlotte knew the truth. From what she had just said Katie felt that Charlotte’s outlook and attitude towards sex was far more mature than her own, but then Charlotte wasn’t in love with a man she could never have.
Charlotte’s comments about her father had been equally enlightening, although after the way he had behaved towards her, Katie was finding it extremely hard to reconcile the man who was so moralistic that he had married a woman he didn’t love with the one who had behaved so sexually demandingly towards her.
‘Hi... I’ve come to relieve you.’
Katie looked up and smiled as Tullah, Saul’s wife, came up to join them.
‘Oh good, that means you can come with me and help me find Dad,’ Charlotte informed Katie as she slipped her arm through hers.
Find Seb! That was the last thing Katie wanted to do, but Charlotte obviously wasn’t going to take ‘no’ for an answer and so reluctantly Katie found herself walking beside her as Charlotte led the way to the spot where she had arranged to meet Seb.
CHAPTER SIX
‘LOOK WHO I’VE brought with me,’ Charlotte told Seb as she gaily wriggled her way through the crowds to his side, tugging Katie after her.
‘I’ll bet you’re dying for something to drink after all that story-telling,’ she teased Katie as she slipped her free arm through her father’s so that she was standing between them.
‘Dad...’ she began, but Katie, guessing what was coming and knowing that Seb would have as little appetite for her company as she did for his, forestalled Charlotte, telling her quickly, ‘No, Charlotte, it’s all right. My mother has brought a family picnic and she’ll be expecting me to join them.’
Oddly as she looked at him, instead of seeming relieved at the prospect of being freed from her company Seb was actually frowning. She was just on the point of disengaging herself from Charlotte when a small boy suddenly dashed towards her carrying a sharp pointed stick which must at one stage have had a balloon attached to it from the strips of brightly coloured plastic dangling from it. It wasn’t the burst balloon that caused Katie to dart forward anxiously snatching him up as he started to fall, however, but the knowledge that the sharp end of the stick was potentially dangerous to him.
As she grabbed him he gave a loud wail of protest that quickly turned to a broad beaming smile as Katie deftly distracted his attention by cuddling him and asking him who he was.
‘Me Joey,’ he told her, flashing her an impishly devilish Cooke smile so like Seb’s that her heart suddenly lurched against her ribs, causing her to miss a breath.
‘Joey...there you are...’
Katie turned round as a plump dark-headed woman came hurrying towards them. Immediately Joey stretched out his arms, wriggling to be handed over as he cried eagerly, ‘Mum...’
‘He was going to fall,’ Katie told the young woman as she handed him over, not wanting her to think that she had had any ulterior motive in picking him up.
‘Yes, I know... I saw you,’ the other woman told her. As she cuddled her son her eyes studied Katie, their velvety dark gaze so intense and hypnotic that Katie couldn’t drag her own gaze away.
‘Here,’ the woman added meaningfully as she touched her forehead. ‘I sensed he was in danger and then I saw you reaching for him...’ Her eyes flashed with pride and hauteur as she saw Katie’s expression.
‘If you don’t believe me ask him,’ she told Katie with a small toss of her head, looking at Seb. ‘He’s one of us and he knows that some of us have the sight...the gift...’
Katie knew it, too. The ability for certain female members of the Cooke clan to foretell future events was a well-documented local fact, but this was the first time she personally had been the focus of witnessing it in action.
‘I wasn’t doubting you,’ Katie reassured her, gently reaching out her hand to smooth the little boy’s tangled curls. His hair was dark like his mother’s—like Seb’s—and wonderfully soft to touch. Seb’s child... Seb’s son would have just such hair. For a moment she thought she must be falling under some extr
aordinary spell the gypsy woman had cast, for unbelievably she suddenly had a mental image of Seb’s child, as potent and lifelike as though he actually already existed. But almost immediately her common sense reasserted itself and she told herself that she was simply being over-imaginative.
But then, just as they were about to walk away, the gypsy woman reached for Katie’s arm and told her softly, nodding in Charlotte’s direction, ‘She is not a child you have made together but there will be one and very soon.’
Releasing Katie she turned to Seb, who had listened to the entire exchange in silence.
‘You do not believe me, but it is true,’ she told him fiercely. ‘Give me your hand,’ she instructed Katie, reaching for it and taking hold of it before she could draw back from her.
It was ridiculous of her to feel that she was in the presence of a mystical power as awesome and ancient as life itself, Katie acknowledged, and yet that was how she felt as the girl pored over her hand and then pronounced firmly, ‘It is written quite clearly here. You are one another’s fates, although neither of you has recognised it yet, but before you can do so, you,’ she told Seb, turning to him and addressing him almost sharply, ‘must close the door on what you are using to deny yourself your future. There is no need for it, no place for it. And you,’ she told Katie a little more gently, ‘must close the door on that which you know can never rightfully belong to you...’
For a moment none of them spoke. A stillness—a silence—seemed to envelop them like an invisible cloak and then excitedly Charlotte was holding out her hand to the girl, pleading, ‘What about me? What can you see in my hand?’
The woman’s expression lightened as she released Katie’s hand and took hold of Charlotte’s.
‘I see that you still have a long journey to complete along the path of knowledge before you begin your life’s work. And I see, too...’ Very gently she closed Charlotte’s fingers over her palm and then told her slowly, ‘I see that you will be among those who will give to the world a very great deal of good.’