A Daughter For Christmas

by Cathy Williams

  ‘Because it happens to be the truth.’

  ‘And now are you going to tell me why you’ve been overwhelmed by the sudden desire to fill me in?’

  Temporary insanity, Leigh thought, staring at her coffee-cup, a moment of sheer madness. Frankly, you’re the last person in the world I would want to confront with this dilemma.

  ‘Because circumstances have changed, Mr Kendall,’ she said awkwardly.

  ‘In other words, you’re broke. I wondered when we would arrive at the financial angle. Never mind the ethics of letting me know of this mysterious daughter’s existence.’

  He nodded imperceptibly in the direction of the door, and George wafted into the room to remove their cups and saucers. The sleeping man in the armchair was beginning to stir. Leigh could feel Nicholas drawing away from her, signalling the end of her allotted time, and she was filled with a sudden panicky desperation. As far as he was concerned, it all boiled down to money in the end after all.

  ‘You have a daughter, Mr Kendall, like it or not You can pretend to yourself that I’m nothing more than a cheap gold-digger and you can walk out of here and never look back, but that won’t change the fact that you fathered a child. I hope that knowledge bums a hole in your conscience for the rest of your life.’ Damn him if he thought that he would simply walk away and forget every word she’d said. Things were crashing down around her. She had swallowed quite a mouthful of humble pie, coming to this man. She would make sure that he knew it.

  ‘Don’t moralise to me, Miss Walker.’

  ‘I’ll damn well do as I please, Mr Kendall.’ She leaned forward and urgency lent her a desperate sort of courage. ‘Roy and Jenny left behind them a cartload of debt. I’ve spent the past few months lying awake every night, worrying about where the money was going to come from. I’ve struggled in a job that barely pays, I’ve struggled to be the emotional support system my niece needs and I feel as though I’ve worn myself to the bone.

  ‘I’ve come to you, yes, for help because I have nowhere else to go. The bank has foreclosed on the house. I don’t care about me, but there’s Amy to consider. She’s a child. She’s your child!’ She was trembling and every nerve in her body felt stretched to breaking point. She no longer cared what sort of impression she made. If she had to crawl on all fours she would do it, provided it went some way to ensuring some kind of future for Amy.

  It occurred to her that there might be someone in the room who had overheard her, and she looked around surreptitiously.

  ‘No need,’ he told her, with less hostility in his voice than she would have expected. ‘That’s the beauty of this place. No one pays the slightest bit of attention to other people’s conversations. Even if something sensitive was screamed out to all four corners you would still be guaranteed that it would remain within these walls.’ He paused. ‘Not that I give a jot what opinion the rest of the world has of me.’

  ‘That must give you a great sense of freedom,’ Leigh said, distracted as much by what he had said as by his unruffled response to her slightly raised voice.

  He looked at her curiously, as though trying to weigh her up.

  ‘You’ll understand that I will want a blood test to establish paternity.’

  ‘So you do agree that it’s possible that I’m telling you the truth. That I’m not some avid little gold-digger who’s shown up on your doorstep eager to see what I can cream off you.’

  ‘All things are possible.’ He shrugged.

  ‘You can have a million blood tests. They’ll back me up.’ She smiled for the first time, a secret, amused smile, and he frowned as though she had suddenly retreated to a place from which he was excluded.

  ‘But...?’ he asked, frowning.

  ‘But nothing...’ But, she thought, you won’t need one. His physical resemblance to Amy was almost scary. ‘Will you just meet her, Mr Kendall? If you choose to wash your hands of the whole matter after that, then so be it.’

  She heard the supplication in her voice with mortification. It was true that she would have told Amy about her natural father in time, and would have supported her in whatever choice she made as to whether to seek him out or not. But to be reduced to presenting this man with this dilemma, forced to beg, made her cringe.

  ‘I’ll meet...the child,’ he said heavily.

  ‘When?’

  ‘The sooner the better, I suppose.’ He rose, and as Leigh joined him she was aware, more forcibly this time, of his height, his muscularity, the way he towered over her and made her feel small, even though she was a respectable enough height.

  ‘I would appreciate it,’ she said, following him out of the building into the bracing cold outside, ‘if you could—’

  ‘Not let the child know my relationship to her?’

  Leigh nodded and pulled her jacket tightly around her. The wind whipped her skirt around her legs like clambering vines. She would have been more comfortable in her usual out-of-work attire of jeans.

  ‘I think we should wait and see what develops from here,’ he said, looking down at her.

  He wasn’t, she realised, about to assume anything. This potentially life-changing situation with which he had been confronted did not exist, as far as he was concerned, until it was proven.

  ‘When would you like me to introduce you to her?’ Leigh asked shortly.

  ‘What about the weekend? Sunday. I’ll meet you for lunch somewhere. Where do children of that age like to eat?’ It sounded as though children were a species foreign to him.

  ‘Any fast-food chain,’ she told him quickly, before he could change his mind, and he frowned, as though trying to identify the name of a fast-food chain. Any fast-food chain.

  ‘Conversation might be a little difficult in one of those places. I know a hamburger restaurant in the Covent Garden area. I believe they serve all the usual childfriendly things, milkshakes and ice cream. She does eat...stuff like that, doesn’t she?’

  ‘Adores it’ Leigh smiled.

  ‘And who should I introduce myself as? Old friend of the family?’ His mouth twisted. ‘Distant relative?’

  ‘I’ll tell her that you’re a friend.’ Thank heavens, Leigh thought, that she’s only seven. Much older than that and she would be hard pressed to believe that Nicholas Kendall could be anything but a relative, so perfectly did his face mirror hers.

  ‘Fine.’ He continued to look at her. ‘And don’t forget what I said,’ he murmured with a warning in his voice, bending slightly so that his breath was on her face, warm and disorienting. ‘I’m no fool. Child or no child, I won’t be taken for a ride.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of it, Mr Kendall.’

  ‘Nicholas.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Nicholas. You might just as well call me by my first name. Mr Kendall might just be a little formal, considering I’m a long-lost family friend.’ He glanced at his watch, quickly reeled off the name of the restaurant he had in mind and the address, and with mixed feelings Leigh watched him depart in long, easy strides.

  Step one, at any rate, had been accomplished. The only problem was that she had no idea what step two would entail.

  She turned on her heel and on the journey back to the house she tried to work out what the options were because, whether he knew it or not, he would have no difficulty in accepting that Amy was his.

  Money, of course, was the issue. She could repay him as much as she could month by month—a bit like taking out a loan with the bank. She didn’t need much to look after Amy. They would have to find a roof over their heads, something small and sensible. It hardly mattered whether it was in a fashionable district or not, just so long as wherever they lived was safe. She might at least be granted the breathing space to look for a better job, something that would make her more financially solvent.

  His contribution, if he decided to help, would be a drop in the ocean to him, no doubt about it, but it could be the lifeline she and Amy so desperately needed.

  It was only as she was letting
herself into the house that a thought suddenly occurred to her. A very unpleasant thought. What if he decided to fight for custody of his daughter? He was wealthy and powerful, a man with quite a few guns in his armoury. What if he took one look at his offspring and decided that he would plunge into fatherhood, having been denied it for seven years?

  Leigh removed her jacket and made herself a cup of tea, her body on autopilot as her mind wrestled this unforeseen possibility.

  No, she told herself. Look at things in a logical manner. Nicholas Kendall was not married. He had no experience of children and, from what she had seen, he was probably the last man on the face of the earth to want any experience of them.

  She had no real idea what he did for a living but, whatever it was, it doubtless ate up his time. People rarely acquired huge sums of money working in part-time jobs. No, he was probably one of those odious men who lived for their work. He probably rented a bachelor penthouse suite somewhere in Belgravia, an exquisite two-bedroom affair with a daily cleaning service. The sort of place where children and pets were banned.

  I can’t let myself get embroiled in complications before they arise, she told herself. I can’t think ahead beyond what happens at the next meeting. I can’t let myself.

  I just have to think of Amy.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘I DON’T want to wear a dress.’ Amy looked at the blue and white polka-dotted dress neatly laid out on the bed and folded her arms.

  ‘It’s a lovely dress, Ames.’ Leigh was reduced to pleading.

  ‘I want to wear my jeans and a jumper.’

  ‘But that’s what you stay around the house in!’

  ‘We’re only going out for a burger,’ Amy said, with a little too much logic for Leigh’s liking. ‘No one dresses up for a burger.’ There had been a time when she would willingly have donned any item of clothing Leigh put in front of her, but recently she had developed strong preferences, something Leigh had found charming, the sign of a strong and independent mind. Until now. Now she just wanted Amy to look right, like the beautiful little girl that she was.

  ‘Anyway,’ Amy said stubbornly. ‘I’m much too old for that dress.’

  ‘It’s a very pretty dress.’ Leigh could sense defeat in the air and she waved the dress around despairingly. ‘OK, a compromise. You can wear the jeans but not that jumper. You can wear the jeans with the orange jumper.’

  Amy looked as though she would throw that out as well, but eventually she nodded. ‘And my lace-up boots?’

  ‘Why not?’

  Did all mothers have to go through this? Leigh wondered. Parental responsibility had been thrust on her, and now she wished she had paid closer attention to how Jenny had handled her daughter. She vaguely recalled that the strict approach had not been used, but would she have given in in these circumstances?

  She remained where she was, kneeling on the floor, while her niece got into her jeans, a blue denim polo shirt and the orange jumper, and decided that Amy looked very fetching after all. Not quite The Little House on the Prairie style, but cute. Cute and trendy. And Nicholas Kendall would probably have no one to compare her to, anyway. She doubted if he knew anyone under four feet and ten years of age.

  ‘Hat?’ Amy asked, pulling out a black, fake-fur-lined number from the darkest corners of her wardrobe. Leigh shrugged and nodded and gave up the battle completely.

  ‘You look sweet,’ she said, rising to her feet then almost falling over again because of the sudden attack of pins and needles in her legs. She stamped her feet to get rid of them.

  ‘Thanks.’ Amy smiled and made a face which was supposed to resemble sweet but looked more like a grimace. ‘Your friend must be someone special,’ she said. ‘You’re wearing a skirt again.’

  ‘He’s not my friend,’ Leigh said hastily, glancing in the mirror and deciding that ‘sweet’ was probably the best she could hope for as well in her swinging green and brown skirt and her baggy brown jumper. She had tried to add on a few years by sticking on a string of pearls, her only concession to jewellery, but she still only managed to look like a teenager. ‘He used to know your mum,’ she said, playing with the truth rather than resorting to an out and out lie.

  Amy didn’t say anything. She was getting better when it came to any mention of Jenny. For months her eyes had filled up when her mother had been mentioned, but now the present was gradually forming its own layers over memories of the past. Children were resilient, Leigh had been told at the time. In many ways they handled grief far better than adults because they never tried to hide their mourning or to put on a brave face.

  ‘She never mentioned him to me,’ Amy said, following Leigh out of the bedroom and conversing with her back.

  She could be surprisingly grown-up in some of her responses. Leigh supposed that was a function of being an only child.

  ‘Maybe she did and you forgot,’ Leigh answered, without turning around. ‘It doesn’t matter anyway. It was very nice of him to ask us out.’ Nice? Ha. If only. Nicholas Kendall couldn’t be nice if he spent ten years studying it at university.

  They went to Covent Garden on the Underground, and reached the restaurant with time to spare. It was busy. The background music was loud, and people seemed to be on the move constantly—waiters and waitresses with huge trays, which they held expertly with one hand, people coming and going and generally paying no heed to the idea that Sunday was a day of rest.

  Leigh ordered soft drinks for both of them and then proceeded to take very small sips from hers, working on the theory that there was no point letting him see a nearly finished glass and assuming that she had rushed over with Amy, desperate and eager.

  Her stomach hurt. She could feel the tension curling and uncurling in it, and even though she made a tremendous effort to focus all her attention on Amy her eyes drifted relentlessly to the door of the restaurant, watching and waiting and watching and waiting.

  So she was surprised when she took a sip of her drink, bent to rescue Amy’s napkin from the floor and straightened to find him standing right there in front of their table.

  Amy was looking at him with blatant curiosity and he was staring back at her.

  He was transfixed. Leigh could see it on his face. And she could also see why. Together, like this, the physical resemblance between them was even more striking than she had expected.

  They both had precisely the same shade of hair, precisely the same colour and shape of eye, the same shaped mouth. Even their expressions seemed to mirror one another. It was uncanny.

  ‘Hi!’ Leigh broke the silence and Nicholas dragged his eyes away from his daughter and sat down. ‘Nice to see you, Nicholas!’ She hoped she sounded like someone greeting an old friend of the family, instead of a stranger greeting a possible threat to her well-being. ‘Nicholas, I’d like you to meet my niece, Amy.’

  ‘It’s nice to meet you, Amy,’ he said a little awkwardly. ‘I’ve brought you a little present.’ He reached into his trouser pocket and took out a small parcel. ‘I was sorry to learn about what happened to your... your parents.’

  ‘What is it?’ Amy neither acknowledged his condolences nor did she make any move to take the gift. After a while she looked at Leigh, asking permission with her eyes, and when Leigh nodded she took the box tentatively, as though fearful that contact with this stranger’s hand might result in third-degree burns. Leigh could sympathise with the sentiment.

  ‘Just a little something I picked up.’ Nicholas looked at Leigh and his expression was controlled, though she couldn’t see behind the veneer to the man beneath. Was he angry? Taken aback? Finally shocked at the proof of his one-night stand in the chair opposite him, carefully unwrapping the present?

  Amy opened the lid of the box and withdrew a gold charm bracelet from inside, which she turned over and over.

  ‘May I keep it?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Of course you can. It’s a present.’

  They answered at the same time and Leigh shot him a polit
e warning from under her lashes. Amy’s father he might well be, but this was a delicate situation, to be handled very carefully one step at a time. Barging his way in and assuming rights was not going to work, and she intended to make that very clear from the outset. Why had he come bearing gifts, anyway? she thought a little resentfully. This was supposed to be a first meeting, not an extravaganza of buying affection.

  The meal was a long, awkward business. Nicholas did his best to chat to Amy, who replied in uninformative monosyllables, bemused by the garrulousness of a man she had never laid eyes on in her life before.

  Every so often she opened the box with the bracelet, and looked at the sliver of gold coiled in the bottom.

  And, thought Leigh, I’m hardly any better at defusing the tension of the situation. Old family friends should have had a few anecdotes to fall back on but, of course, there was no such easy escape route for her so she had to strive uncomfortably between sounding way too hearty and downright ill at ease. It was a finely balanced act, made all the more difficult since Amy was an observant child, quick to spot nuances.

  Still, it was with some trepidation when, after the meal was finished, Amy announced that she needed to go to the toilet.

  ‘I can find it myself,’ she said, as Leigh began to rise to her feet.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘It’s downstairs. I came here ages ago with Mum and Dad.’

  An uncomfortable silence greeted this remark, which Amy, thankfully, didn’t notice. Leigh smiled and ignored the observation, but she didn’t look at Nicholas. She had spent the past hour and a half trying to read the expression on his face and failing. She just knew—some process of instinct at work—that he had not been terribly impressed either with her or with the situation. Maybe both. He certainly gave no inclination of being anything but interested in his daughter.

  ‘So...’ Leigh said, attempting to establish some control over the proceedings by speaking first, ‘your daughter... Now, I recall you said something about a paternity test—’