A Daughter For Christmas

by Cathy Williams

  Hadn’t she been worried about that happening? Hadn’t she imagined boarding schools and finishing schools and an end product which bore no resemblance to the child Leigh wanted Amy to be?

  Shouldn’t she be thrilled?

  She didn’t feel thrilled. She felt vaguely relieved that certain areas of stress had been removed, but beyond that she felt numb inside.

  It was only as she was beginning, finally, to drift into sleep that thoughts which had been lying at the back of her mind began to stir into life and take shape.

  He wasn’t interested in marriage. He didn’t want commitment. He wasn’t particularly bothered whether she was right for him or wrong for him or neither because all he wanted out of her was sex. He had said as much to Fiona.

  But I want more than that!

  That grim realisation beckoned maliciously to her. Leigh had never contemplated anything with Mick, whose memory now seemed so distant that it was almost like trying to remember a long ago dream, but with Nicholas it was different.

  And she had no idea when it had started to get different, no idea when things had subtly changed—when the stimulation she felt in his company had become need, when awareness had turned into attraction and attraction had turned into love.

  When had that happened? How could it have happened, without her even realising it at the time?

  She opened her eyes and accepted the horrifying truth. She had somehow fallen in love with Nicholas Kendall. She couldn’t imagine a less suitable candidate for her love.

  Was it a surprise that she had found it impossible to visualise life without him? The times when she had told herself that Amy would get older, would accept Nicholas as her father, would no longer need her around and that she, Leigh, would once more have her freedom to do as she liked had filled her with stomach-churning nausea, and now she understood why. She didn’t want her freedom.

  So, what now? Love and marriage was not an option, and she could hardly walk out of the house, leaving Amy behind.

  Her head was spinning with unanswered questions by the time she finally got to sleep. It seemed like five minutes later that she felt herself being shaken, and she opened one eye to see Amy, fully dressed and raring to go, standing by the bed.

  Eight-thirty. She hadn’t even finished packing! Clothes into the suitcase, toothbrushes, make-up, shoes, a book for Amy to read on the journey.

  It was after nine by the time she made it downstairs, to find Nicholas ready and waiting for them.

  ‘I had to wake her up!’ Amy said incredulously, as though sleeping in on such a day was beyond the realms of human understanding.

  ‘I was exhausted.’ Leigh looked directly at Nicholas when she said this, and he returned her look, without blinking.

  ‘It was an exhausting evening.’

  She felt as though they were circling each other, trying to gauge what sort of emotions were lying at the surface after Fiona’s intrusion the night before.

  ‘Absolutely.’ How can I give him up? I need him with every ounce of my body, and when it’s all over and done with then I shall move on, but I can’t walk away now. She smiled hesitantly. ‘I hope I never have an evening like that again.’

  ‘I think,’ he said, bending to pick up her suitcase then ushering them out of the front door, ‘that can be arranged.’

  ‘How long will it take us to get there?’ Amy looked up at them.

  ‘Oh, a couple of hours,’ Nicholas said, opening the passenger door for Amy to slide in, ‘if we don’t get stuck in snow.’

  ‘Snow!’

  ‘Yes,’ he said gravely. ‘That white stuff that Londoners only really glimpse on Christmas cards.’

  He deposited the suitcase in the boot and they set off. He continued to thrill Amy with accounts of blizzards and snowstorms, which made it sound as though they were setting off on an expedition to the Antarctic.

  ‘I hope for your sake that it snows at least once while we’re there,’ Leigh told him when Amy had drifted into a light doze in the back seat, ‘or your credibility will be at an all-time low.’

  ‘Yes, well.’ He looked sideways at her and smiled. ‘I’ll just have to see what I can do.’

  Leigh relaxed and told herself that there was nothing more she could expect, and that she should be happy with what she had—Amy, contented in the back seat, the man she loved sitting next to her and, at least for the moment, a certain joy in an ongoing relationship.

  She could feel herself beginning to nod off when he said quietly, ‘About last night...’

  Her eyes flew open. ‘What about last night?’ she asked cautiously. She decided that she had better get accustomed to this—to the chill that ran through her whenever his voice seemed to herald bad news, to her defences coming into operation at the slightest hint that the axe was about to fall. Wasn’t this what unrequited love was all about? Weren’t these the classic symptoms?

  ‘Fiona was out of line,’ he began, and Leigh hurriedly brushed his explanation aside.

  ‘She was disappointed,’ Leigh said. ‘She had hoped for something more. It’s not unnatural.’ She paused, then continued quickly, before he could read anything into that statement, ‘I mean, some women set their hearts, I guess, on marrying someone, or at least on having a long-term relationship with them, and it’s a blow when things don’t work out along those lines.’

  Nicholas didn’t reply to that immediately, and Leigh peered behind her to make sure that Amy was asleep and not listening in to what was being said. She was.

  ‘And that’s never happened to you?’ he asked conversationally, and she laughed.

  ‘Thank heavens!’ She hoped the timbre of her voice carried the right note.

  He didn’t say anything. Busy concentrating on the roads, she assumed.

  ‘I suppose,’ he said, in the same casual voice, ‘you’re still too young to be planning ahead to things like marriage, settling down.’

  ‘I suppose so!’

  ‘The right man will come along,’ he told her, with a certain amount of paternalistic amusement, which got on her nerves, even though she refused to let him see it. ‘Sweep you off your feet.’

  ‘Who knows?’

  ‘Love works that way,’ he mused, ‘so I’ve heard.’

  Since there seemed nowhere to go from there, she allowed a little silence to fall between them, then she said curiously, ‘Was Fiona right? When she said that you haven’t told your parents about...you know...A?’

  ‘I haven’t told them, no.’

  ‘Why not?’ Leigh asked bluntly, suddenly aware that she was spoiling for an argument. Whenever she thought about how she felt towards him, and how he felt towards her, she wanted to rant and rave. She wanted to lash out at him, all the more so because him not loving her was not something over which he had any control.

  Strangely enough, from the set line of his mouth he appeared to be in a similarly foul mood. ‘I’ll tell them when I’m ready.’

  ‘And when will that be? You make a great song and dance about me getting my schedules right and yet you apparently don’t see fit to do the same.’

  ‘Drop it, Leigh.’

  ‘No.’ She allowed a polite pause. ‘No, I don’t think I will. Do you communicate with them at all?’

  ‘Of course I communicate with them!’

  ‘Could you try and keep it down?’ she whispered. ‘Amy’s sleeping!’

  He shot her a look of pure frustration.

  ‘Now, you were saying?’ she said.

  ‘Domineering woman,’ he muttered under his breath, and, without thinking, Leigh said, ‘Well, someone has to be, with you!’

  A slow flush crept into her face and she waited for him to tell her, in that cold voice which he could summon up on occasion, the he took orders from no one, but instead he said grudgingly, ‘We don’t have a particularly close relationship, as it happens. We’re friends, I suppose, but we only see each other three times a year or so, and then we’re always on our best behaviour.’

 
‘Why is that?’

  ‘Are you cross-examining me?’ he asked, with a hint of boyish petulance in his voice, of which, she was certain, he wasn’t aware.

  ‘I am, as a matter of fact. Why don’t you have a close relationship with your parents?’

  ‘Boarding school. I was sent away at seven.’

  ‘Poor thing. I can’t imagine Amy—’

  ‘Absolutely not. I would never do the same with any...offspring of mine...’

  ‘It’ll come as a shock,’ she told him.

  ‘Which is why I’ve been putting it off, I suppose. Also, it’s only fair that...’ he glanced over into the back seat ‘...knows the full situation first...’

  ‘Yes, I guess so.’ She wondered what his parents were like. He wasn’t close to them and they approved of Fiona as a suitable wife. The two things did not endear them to her.

  What, she wondered, would they make of her? The wrong side of the tracks would take on a whole new meaning, that was for sure. But she had nothing to fear, as far as meeting them was concerned, because there would never be an introduction.

  She looked out of the window, wrapped up suddenly with her thoughts, and saw that they were leaving London behind them.

  By the time Amy woke up they were on the motorway, with the crowded streets of London way behind them.

  Nicholas, who had seemed as lost in his own thoughts as she had been in hers, began to chat to his daughter, describing his house in the country and smiling at her detailed questions. How many rooms? How big were they? Why were there two staircases when one would do?

  Intermittently Leigh joined in, slowly letting the tension out of her body. From his descriptions of this country house she had mentally revised her initial idea of what it would be like, but she was still shocked when, an hour and a half after they had set off, the car swept off the road and finally entered between two concrete pillars to draw up in front of a mansion. The place stretched away, as though unwilling to end. She struggled to imagine how many rooms there were behind the innumerable windows.

  Amy had spilled out of the car, and then any chance to appreciate the house was lost in the general chaos of bags being carried to the front door and introductions to his two live-in staff who had prepared the rooms, cooked a meal and made sure that the place was warm. There was lots of fussing over Amy, and although no remarks were made she saw them look at one another and she could read what was going through their minds.

  Then bags were taken up to the bedrooms—sumptuous bedrooms, colour co-ordinated from the curtains to the towels in the adjoining bathrooms.

  Somewhere along the line Nicholas said to her with a smile, ‘Well, what do you think?’

  ‘I think,’ Leigh replied tartly, ‘that a poor bumpkin like myself could get lost in here.’

  ‘I shall just have to make sure that that doesn’t happen, then, won’t I?’ The warmth of the suggestion behind his words sent a little thrill of pleasure racing down her spine.

  ‘Perhaps you could draw me a map,’ she suggested.

  He said with a chuckle, ‘With all passages leading to my bedroom.’

  Her feet didn’t seem to touch the ground until much later that evening when the three of them were in the sitting room, which was smaller and cosier than the formal drawing rooms—of which there were more than one—and in which the Christmas tree had been put up.

  It was a gigantic affair, stretching to the tall ceiling. Amy scurried around the bottom, attaching ornaments in a fairly random fashion, while Nicholas stood on a ladder and attached ones higher up in a similarly random fashion

  ‘You’re both putting too many on the right-hand side,’ Leigh complained from where she was sitting on the ground, having been relegated to the more lowly job of sticking hooks through the ornaments. ‘The tree’s beginning to look lopsided.’ Father and daughter looked at her with identical expressions of bewilderment.

  ‘And you’re not distributing the colours evenly enough. Too many ivory ones on that branch. And that angel at the top...’ She shook her head. ‘Is she all right? I mean, she’s leaning over as though she’s had too much to drink.’ Which Amy found hysterically funny.

  If only this could go on for ever, Leigh thought, the banter, the feeling of peaceful companionship. The illusion of perfection.

  And, of course, the setting was wonderful for illusions—the darkness outside, the beauty of the house, the open fireplace with a crackling fire.

  She had removed her shoes and she wriggled her toes inside her socks. She did, she thought, somewhat let the side down with her faded jeans and oversized shirt. Pearls and cashmere would have been far more suitable to the setting, but that didn’t bother her.

  Nicholas was now descending the ladder and he and Amy stood back to look at the tree.

  ‘Too many ornaments of the same colour on that branch,’ he said at last. He looked over his shoulder to where Leigh was sitting on the ground, and waved his finger in an admonishing fashion. ‘You could have told us!’

  ‘I hate repeating myself,’ Leigh said with a grin, ‘and, anyway, I’m getting accustomed to the top-heavy look. I think it’s a novel approach to decorating a tree.’

  ‘What about the presents?’ Amy asked hopefully.

  ‘Santa hasn’t come yet,’ Leigh said. She looked at her watch. ‘He’s not due down that chimney for a few hours yet.’

  ‘No, I don’t mean those presents. I mean the ones from my friends in London.’

  ‘OK, you can go fetch them,’ Leigh told her lazily,

  ‘but make it quick. It’s bedtime soon.’

  ‘Already?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. Little girls need lots of sleep so that they’re nice and rested in the morning!’

  ‘But she could stay up a little later tonight,’ Nicholas said. ‘Couldn’t she?’

  Their combined charm was enough, Leigh thought, to produce an instant headache.

  ‘Well, maybe an extra half-hour can be tacked on!’

  So then came the presents, little parcels from Amy’s friends at school and two from family friends. She placed them carefully at the bottom of the tree, dispersing them so that they looked more substantial.

  Leigh thought that with very little effort she could fall asleep. In fact, her eyes were beginning to feel quite heavy when the door to the sitting room was pushed open and two people swept into the room, two people who stood in the middle of all the disarray, their eyes seeking out first Nicholas, then Amy.

  ‘Nicholas!’ The woman’s voice was sharp and well bred, and although she was breathing quickly, as though she’d been in a rush, she was still immaculately coiffeured. She was wearing a long-sleeved woollen dress in navy blue, and a pair of navy blue flat shoes with a thin white strip of leather piping in the middle. She was tall and well built, but not overweight.

  Leigh, who had shot to her feet the moment the couple had walked in, knew instantly who they were, and a flare of panic swept through her.

  She didn’t look at Nicholas. She looked at Amy, who caught her eye and nervously rushed to her.

  ‘Mother! Dad... What in God’s name are you two doing here?’

  For perhaps the first time since she had met him he looked utterly disconcerted, but only for an instant, then he moved towards his parents and kissed his mother on the cheek.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked, in a flatter, calmer voice.

  ‘Nicholas!’ His mother held him at arm’s length and looked at him critically. His father, who had adopted a less dramatic approach, stood behind his wife and placed his hands on her shoulders. He was as tall as his son, and as striking to look at—the older counterpart, with greying hair and an austere face.

  ‘I think we need to sit down,’ he said. ‘Come along, Hilary, the last thing we need now is a scene.’

  Amy clutched Leigh’s hands tightly in her own, well aware of the atmosphere but unable to decipher where it sprang from.

  ‘We had a rather mysterious telephone call from Fiona,’
Nicholas’s father was saying as they lowered themselves onto the sofa. They both looked at Amy when he said this.

  ‘Leigh, I think it would be wise if you take Amy upstairs now.’

  Leigh gripped her niece’s hand and nodded. No introductions had been made and she knew why. They both knew who Amy was and they knew who she was as well. Heaven only knew what Fiona had told them, but she would have bet her life that none of it had been complimentary.

  Well, she and Nicholas had been destined to a brief affair but, with his parents sitting there, looking at her, it appeared that stillborn would have been a better description.

  ‘Please come back down when Amy’s in bed,’ he told her as she walked past him, and she nodded again.

  ‘Are those Nicholas’s mum and dad?’ Amy asked as soon as they were out of the room. ‘What are they doing here? You never said that they would be coming.’

  ‘Perhaps they thought that they’d surprise us,’ Leigh said distractedly.

  ‘Nicholas didn’t seem very pleased.’

  ‘I’m sure he is.’ She wondered what he would be telling them, how they would be handling this unexpected situation. Well, Fiona had been true to her word. She hadn’t accepted her dismissal from Nicholas’s life, lying down. She had decided that if she had to go then she would create merry hell in the process.

  She must have also suspected that, faced with his parents’ disapproval, he would almost certainly dump Leigh, whom he had no intentions of marrying anyway. He would not put up a fight for a woman who only interested him as a sexual partner.

  She heard herself talking to her niece, answering her questions, but her mind was a thousand miles away. There was a dull feeling of resignation inside her.

  Given the choice, she would have remained in the bedroom and left them to get on with it, but she couldn’t. Apart from Nicholas’s request for her to return, she knew that she had to go back to find out what lay in store for Amy.

  His mother seemed somewhat calmer by the time Leigh returned. It was still an awkward situation, though. There was silence as she walked in and sat down, then Hilary Kendall said, with supreme politeness, ‘I gather you are the child’s aunt.’