by Ally Blake
CHAPTER NINE
ON SOME level Lydia had always known that Nick would kiss like that. Her heart hammered painfully against her chest and her skin tingled where his hand touched. She heard the soft guttural sound of triumph he made as he pulled her in closer and felt her own spirit soar in response.
Then he tensed. Lydia wanted to cry out in protest as he started to pull back … and then she remembered Rosie. Probably a fraction after he had.
Rosie.
Lydia looked across at Rosie, wondering how much she’d seen. Her dark head was bent over her game, her concentration totally focused on what she was doing. It seemed she’d seen nothing, but that could so easily not have been the case.
She cast a glance up at Nick. What had they been thinking of?
Nick’s eyes travelled back from Rosie to her. ‘I’m sorry.’
She shrugged, trying to convey an easy unconcern. It was just a kiss, she reminded herself, not a lifelong commitment. Lydia gathered her hair together in a long coil and twisted it back up.
Why had he said he was sorry? She didn’t want him to be sorry. Sorry implied that he thought kissing her had been a mistake, and it hadn’t felt like a mistake. It had felt … inevitable.
It was terrifying to look into his dark eyes and feel herself falling deeper and deeper into them. She’d never experienced anything quite like this in her entire life.
She was thirty years old, for crying out loud. She’d been in several reasonably serious relationships over the past ten years. She’d even, on two occasions, wondered whether she might have been in love. A simple kiss should have meant nothing, but this … intensity was outside her experience.
Lydia picked up her wine. It was the feeling of being out of control. Never before had she felt so vulnerable. This felt like walking out on a tightrope knowing the safety net had been removed.
When Nick looked at her he made her feel so many conflicting things at the same time. Part of her felt breathless and afraid, another part felt invincible, as though she could achieve anything.
And when she looked into his dark eyes she knew he wasn’t sorry he’d kissed her, whatever he said to the contrary. She believed he hadn’t intended to, any more than she’d intended to kiss him. But sorry? No, he wasn’t sorry.
He’d pulled back only when he’d remembered Rosie. As had she. So now what?
‘More wine?’
‘I still have some.’ Lydia put her cup down on the grass.
‘Something to eat?’
Lydia accepted the plate Nick handed her and opened out a packet of crisps on to it. Every movement seemed as if it needed thought; even breathing had become unusually difficult.
She was aware when Nick looked at her. Equally aware when he looked away. And it was mutual, she was sure of it. The frisson between them crackled like a live thing.
Had Izzy felt like that about Steven Daly? The disquieting thought slid into her head with the same potency as the snake into the Garden of Eden.
It was a relief when Rosie noticed that the food had started to be unpacked and left her game to join them. Blissfully unaware of any undercurrents, Rosie concentrated on decimating a small fairy cake which had been filled with butter-cream.
Nick reached out and touched his daughter’s hand, shaking his head when she looked up.
‘Why do children do that?’ Lydia asked, momentarily distracted by Rosie’s uninhibited excavation of the butter-cream with her forefinger. ‘I always used to eat the jam out of a jam tart first and Izzy used to lick the chocolate off a chocolate biscuit.’ She reached out and took a large crisp and snapped it in half. ‘I’d forgotten we used to do that. What was your childhood fetish?’
‘I didn’t have one.’
Lydia tucked her skirt around her legs. ‘You must have.’
He shook his head before she’d finished speaking. ‘I wasn’t allowed any. My father paid for very expensive nannies whose primary role was to instil rigid discipline in me.’
Lydia gave silent thanks for her own childhood. There’d been times when she’d been ashamed of her parents, wished they’d not stood out from other parents—but she’d had no idea how lucky she’d been.
‘That’s sad,’ she said, thinking of how much her parents had simply enjoyed Izzy and her. It made her ashamed she’d ever been ashamed. Grateful for the heritage she had without ever knowing she possessed it.
‘The only subversive influence in my life is Wendy.’
Lydia looked up and smiled. ‘She must have done her best.’
‘Always.’ His smile widened at some distant memory and then he said, ‘I was never sure whether she involved herself in my life because she knew how much it annoyed my father or whether she really felt her role as my godmother was a sacred trust.’
Lydia picked at the grass beside her. ‘Perhaps a bit of both,’ she said, thinking back to her conversation with Wendy earlier. ‘If your father didn’t like her, why was she asked to be your godmother?’
‘Money.’
‘I’m sorry?’ Lydia said, not quite sure she’d heard him correctly.
His eyes glinted with amusement. ‘The expressed reason, given at the time, was that Wendy was my mother’s second cousin. Wendy’s conviction, however, is my father had an eye to her money.’
Lydia immediately thought of Wendy’s cottage with its antiquated kitchen and tired decoration. What money? She’d thought Nick culpable for letting his godmother live in such a way. Even after she’d got to know Wendy better, understood her proud and indomitable spirit, she still thought he should have done something to help her. But if Wendy was rich …
Nick seemed to read her mind. ‘Don’t let the way she chooses to live fool you.’
‘But—’
Rosie’s knee knocked her plastic cup and sent orange juice spilling out across the rug. Lydia lifted her skirt out of the way and accepted the pieces of kitchen towel Nick passed her.
‘Has she got you?’
Lydia shook her head. ‘Just the rug and the boxes.’ She lifted one box up and carefully wiped the plastic bottom. Nick, meanwhile, refilled Rosie’s cup.
‘Now sit down this time,’ he said slowly, making sure his daughter was watching his mouth. ‘Careful.’
Rosie wasn’t in the slightest bit cowed. She smiled and curled up against him.
Lydia balled up the damp paper towels. ‘Have you got a bag to put these in?’ He reached behind him and produced a carrier bag and Lydia tossed them inside.
She then asked, ‘Why does Wendy chose to live in …?’ She waved her hand about rather than use the word which came to mind.
‘Genteel decay?’
Lydia nodded.
‘She likes it.’
‘But … Why would she …?’
Nick took pity on her. ‘I’ve tried to persuade her to make the cottage more comfortable, but it doesn’t interest her. She maintains she has considerably more than most of the world population—’
‘That’s true, I suppose.’
‘And she doesn’t care whether her decoration is this year’s fashion or last.’
Lydia could hear Wendy saying it. Her lips twitched and she couldn’t resist saying, ‘Or from the seventies.’
‘You haven’t seen the bedroom. It’s back in the forties.’ He took Rosie’s cup from where she’d precariously placed it and settled it in the middle of the rug. ‘Like the kitchen, which she tells me was cutting edge in its day.’
It seemed all her prejudices concerning Nick were falling like a pack of cards. All her prejudices except one. His daughter curled in even closer and rested her head on his lap.
‘She’s tired,’ Lydia observed.
Nick lightly stroked her curls. ‘I suppose it’s hot and she’s been running about most of the morning.’
Lydia longed to ask him about Rosie. Why had he had so little say over her upbringing, so little contact with her prior to her coming to live with him? She almost blurted out a question, but stopped short. One k
iss didn’t seem to give her the right to ask.
She watched the rhythmic movement of his fingers through Rosie’s curls and the sleepy way her dark fringed eyelids closed. ‘She’s going to sleep.’
His hand didn’t stop and gradually Rosie’s breathing slowed and her thumb found its way into her mouth. Lydia looked up at Nick. The love on his face squeezed her heart.
‘Has it been difficult organising your work so you can be with Rosie?’ Lydia asked softly.
‘Very.’ Nick’s fingers stilled, but stayed buried deep in Rosie’s riot of curls. It looked almost like a benediction. ‘I did it because it seemed like the right thing to do.’
Lydia nodded. She imagined Nick would be good on duty, which was why she found it so incredible he hadn’t maintained some kind of contact with his daughter even when his ex-wife had custody.
‘I’ve been surprised at how effective I can be from home … and just how few days I’ve needed to be in London. Long term I’ll need to be there more than I’ve been there over the past couple of weeks, but I’ve learnt a lot about balance.’
Balance. She’d heard colleagues talk about a life/work balance, but it was a concept that was completely alien to her. For her, there was only work. It was her driving passion. The phone would ring, day or night, and she was ready to go.
She’d missed weddings, surprise parties, planned parties, even the presentation of her then-boyfriend’s OBE. She never accepted any invitation without adding the proviso that she might be called away. Nothing had ever got in the way of work.
Except, perhaps, Izzy’s overdose.
That event had sent a ripple through her life strong enough to send her off course—for a time. But there hadn’t been any major conflict of interest. Nothing she’d had any difficulty in refusing, and before long she’d been on the trail of Steven Daly’s insurance scam.
‘The biggest surprise—’ and Lydia could hear it in his voice ‘—is how much I’ve enjoyed it. I used to be on the motorway into London at around six and I’d never be home before seven on a normal working day. But being with Rosie …’he shook his head as though he couldn’t quite believe it ‘—is incredible. I don’t want to miss any more time with her than I have to.’
Lydia felt the same pang of envy she’d experienced watching them from the window. Seeing Nick, his hand buried in Rosie’s rampant curls, she felt she was missing out on something important.
‘What about you?’ Nick asked. ‘What’s your five-year plan?’
Lydia pleated the fine flame-coloured cotton of her skirt. It was an interesting question because she didn’t have a plan. She’d never had a plan and wasn’t sure how to answer. She hadn’t thought about doing anything different, within the next five years or beyond. She’d always go where there were stories to tell. It was her life. It defined who she was.
But why? She’d never thought about the why. Or even what she’d do if she allowed for the possibility of change.
‘My plan,’ she said slowly, ‘is to go with the opportunities. On some level, I suppose, I still want to change the world.’
‘And have a garden again one day?’
‘Perhaps.’ Lydia twisted the bangle at her wrist. ‘It would be nice to think I will one day, but it’s not very likely. I’m away from home far too much to make it practical.’
He nodded as though he understood what she was saying, had even expected it. She hated thinking he somehow thought less of her because of it. Why was it you had to sacrifice so much of one part of your life to make another part possible?
Would she, in the same position, have made the same choice Nick had?
She suddenly understood what it really meant not to have made any space in her life for the possibility of children—ever. It was a huge decision which, surely, warranted more thought than she’d given it? Was she really going to live her entire life without any emotional commitments?
At the core of every relationship she’d ever had was the knowledge that they would never hold each other back in their dreams. She’d absolutely bought one hundred per cent into the idea that relationships were secondary to careers.
She could honestly say she’d happily sent the men in her life off to report on war zones and to take photographs of Namibia—whatever had been their particular passion—without a qualm. And she’d demanded the same in return. It was what happened in mature twenty-first century relationships.
But …
Those relationships had floundered. The careers had pulled hard and eventually there had been nothing left to come back to. Ten years and there’d never been any sense of her being the centre of anyone’s universe. She’d never been the dream.
And she’d never found anyone who could be hers. Maybe she was more like Anastasia Wilson than she cared to think.
‘Will Rosie’s mother see much of her?’ Lydia asked.
‘I doubt it. She’ll come occasionally, probably bringing presents, but—’ his voice took on a possessive quality ‘—day-to-day, no.’
‘What did she say about Sophie leaving?’
Nick looked up. ‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Her mind was completely taken up by the late delivery of some silk.’ And then, as he saw her face, ‘Ana never wanted to be a mother. I always knew she would have preferred not to have to juggle her career with raising a child.’
‘But—’
‘Rosie wasn’t a planned pregnancy.’ Nick looked down at his little girl. He should have fought harder for a relationship with her. Other fathers did. He knew of men who drove hundreds of miles to see their children every other weekend.
Nick looked up at Lydia, watching her wide eyes for some glimmer of what she was thinking. He blamed himself. Did she blame him?
‘When Ana left …’ He cleared his throat, his hand moving against Rosie’s curls. ‘Ana left when Rosie was nine months old …’
‘I know. You told me,’ Lydia said softly.
It would be easy to stop there, tell her nothing more—but he wanted her to understand. There had been mitigating circumstances and he wanted Lydia to know them.
‘Ana left me for my best friend.’
There was some satisfaction in seeing her mouth part in shock.
His voice lowered. It was still difficult to put words on what had happened. ‘Gaston Girard. I’d known him since we were seven. His mother had married an Englishman and we went to the same boarding school … until tennis took over his life. But we remained friends.’
Lydia shook her head, part sympathy, part disbelief. ‘Nick, I’m … so sorry.’
‘It lasted a year.’ Nick swallowed. ‘Slightly over. Gaston was on the international tennis circuit then. I tried to make trips to see Rosie, but it was … difficult and she was only a baby. With long gaps in between visits I could have been anyone.’
He stopped speaking and Lydia leaned forward to touch him. Her fingers lightly brushed his forearm and Nick risked looking across into her eyes. So beautiful, they shone with unshed tears.
‘I’m so sorry. If I’d known … I would never have … It must have been so….’
Impossible. It had been impossible. For months he’d steeled himself to make those visits; each one had been harder than the last, until he’d found reasons why he couldn’t go.
The sense of betrayal had been so acute. Seeing Gaston … Just seeing the three of them together …
Nick swallowed painfully as he remembered how it had felt to see his best friend with Ana. Taking his place with Rosie. It had killed him.
Each visit had been harder than the last. Every time he’d seen it the reality had sunk in just that little bit deeper. It had been easier to pretend it wasn’t really happening. He’d poured himself into his business. Had tried to blot it out.
‘I tried again when Ana left Gaston and returned to England—’
Lydia’s beautiful eyes never left his face.
‘—but by then Rosie was two and hid behind Georgina’s skirt. Ge
orgina was Ana’s mother,’ he clarified.
Lydia nodded.
‘After three or four times like that I stopped visiting regularly. I sent money, presents … The usual kind of things people do which means they don’t have to invest too much of themselves.’
The hand on his arm tightened and he risked looking directly into Lydia’s stunning eyes.
Some part of him had braced himself for rejection, but all he saw was a compassionate understanding. ‘You have her now,’ she said softly.
‘Yes, I do.’
Unbelievably. Back then, when Ana had decided to leave with Gaston, that had seemed an impossibility. But he did. He had Rosie. He would be the ‘father’ she remembered and the person who had the privilege of guiding her future.
It was the nearest he’d come to forgiving himself. He’d refused to talk about that time, but telling Lydia … seeing her reaction … had been cathartic.
In his lap Rosie stirred. Her young body uncurled like a bud and she sat up, her eyes sleepy.
Above her head Nick met Lydia’s eyes. ‘We’d better get back. It’s late.’
‘Yes.’ Lydia’s response had been automatic, but she glanced down at her watch. It was late.
It was time for her to head home, but that seemed even less appealing now than it had earlier. Her flat would be empty. Quiet.
How had Nick endured that time? She ached for him. Couldn’t think of what to say—other than to apologise for her own self-righteous attitude towards him. She hadn’t had all the facts. She’d had no right to judge …
Lydia stood up and shook the crumbs off her skirt. She looked up and caught Rosie watching her, her face curious. Lydia smiled and signed that it was time to pack up and go home.
Rosie nodded happily and then walked over to slip her young hand trustingly inside Lydia’s. She led her towards her make-believe world at the foot of the tree and Lydia looked down at the intricate family groups. It seemed a shame to break it up and, for some reason, it made her feel tearful.
Carefully she helped Rosie fit the figures back in the box. She raked the ground so as not to leave behind a single piece, while behind her she could hear Nick packing up their picnic.