‘I saw all the vans parked outside when I drove past yesterday,’ Brianna nodded. ‘Looks like you’ve got every tradesman in Penhally on the job.’ She glanced down at the packet of sandwiches in her hand. ‘Oh, help. I’d better eat or my break will be over. Nice seeing you again, Megan. You’re looking a lot better than when you arrived. I think being home must be agreeing with you.’
Being home? Was that how everybody was seeing this visit?
If she was honest with herself, it was how it felt. Breathing in the sea air every morning. Working in a hospital that was as familiar to her as her own home. Being with people she knew so well. People she respected and liked.
Being close to Josh...
She couldn’t really call it a comfort zone with the kind of undercurrents she’d been so aware of just a few minutes ago but she couldn’t deny the attraction of the familiarity. The feeling of home. A huge part of who she was belonged here and it was going to be a terrible wrench when she left again.
Megan could feel Josh watching her.
‘You’re not living back in the cottage again, are you? With all that work still going on?’
She nodded. ‘I felt a bit in the way after Luke got back from New Zealand. It’s not so bad. I can navigate through all the ladders and paint pots. I have hot water and electricity again. I’m going to start on the garden this weekend.’
Oh...help. Should she tell Josh that Charles was planning a visit to come and help? But then she might feel obliged to tell him more about why they’d become engaged and that might lead to a conversation that would take her in the opposite direction from that she needed to go. Bridges might well get burned behind her if that happened and right now those bridges were an insurance policy.
This was the easiest way through it all, wasn’t it? She was getting married to someone else and moving away and that would be an end to it all. For good.
But Josh was making a face that suggested even working in her garden was a bad idea.
‘I was supposed to tell you,’ he groaned. ‘And Mum will have my guts for garters if you don’t say yes.’
‘About talking to her? The toy drive thing? I’ll pop in after work.’
Josh shook his head. ‘About Saturday. It’s the twins’ second birthday party. She’s decided that you have to be the guest of honour.’
‘Oh...I don’t think that’s...’ A good idea? Of course it wasn’t. It was a family occasion. A celebration of exactly why she and Josh could never be together.
It was a horrific idea, in fact. No way could she put herself through that.
Except that she made the mistake of meeting Josh’s gaze and it was clear that he knew precisely how hard it would be. And not only for her.
‘There’s going to be lots of people there,’ Josh told her quietly. ‘And as far as Mum and everybody else is concerned, you saved the lives of Max and Brenna when they were born. Just before...before you left Penhally. And you saved the life of their grandmother virtually the minute you got back. They want to thank you and they’ve decided that the birthday party is the perfect venue. They’d be very disappointed if you couldn’t come.’
Megan swallowed. Hard.
‘You don’t need to stay long. It’s a lunchtime party. You could just come for a cup of tea or something. Please?’
He cared so much, Megan realised. He didn’t want his mother to be disappointed. He was quite prepared to do something that was probably going to be as difficult and uncomfortable for him as it would be for her, for the sake of someone else he cared about. How could she not be caught by that plea when that ability to care about others was one of the things she loved so much about this man?
‘OK.’ The word was a whisper. ‘I’ll come. I’ll talk to Claire about what time and things when I see her later.’
* * *
The warmth of the smile Josh gave her stayed with Megan for some time. Well after they’d left the cafeteria and gone back to finish their day’s work. The evidence of how Josh could put the needs of others over his own needs stayed alongside the memory of that smile and they were both on her mind as she drove home.
And then it happened. Not in a blinding flash but bit by bit. Random thoughts that came out of nowhere like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and floated until she began slotting them into place. When the final picture came into view, it was enough of a revelation to make her pull off the road. Not that there was a patch of beach to walk on here but it was a parking area designed to let people appreciate the wilder parts of the Cornish coastline. Even in the dark, the white foam of the surf as it boiled over the rocks at the bottom of the cliff was spectacular and the sound of the sea loud enough to make coherent thought too hard.
The picture was still there, though.
Josh...unable to prevent himself from doing what someone else wanted him to do so badly.
A marriage that had been in tatters. A marriage that Josh had felt guilty about having embarked on in the first place simply because he’d been lonely.
A woman who had been bitterly disappointed in how it had turned out. Who had been obsessed by her need to have a baby.
Josh had said that she’d done it on purpose. Because she’d wanted a baby. It had been her way of trying to keep them together.
Had it been a desperate, last-ditch attempt to save her marriage or to try and at least get pregnant?
Had Rebecca planned some kind of seduction and empowered it by playing on her husband’s guilt? Megan remembered what Tasha had tried to tell her but she had been too desperately unhappy to listen. The marriage had been over for a long time, she’d said. Rebecca had probably been lying in wait on the bed in a skimpy set of underwear or something.
She’d been playing games.
Just this one more time...
How could Josh have been cruel enough to refuse? If he had, it wouldn’t have been the action of a man who cared as much as she knew he was capable of caring.
It had only been that one time. Josh had told her that, too. A mistake, he’d said, and his voice had been agonised enough that she knew he’d been telling the truth.
And it had been weeks before he’d come to her bed that night. Had it been the final point of his marriage? One that had been definitive enough for Josh to know he had to leave it behind and move to where he really wanted to be?
How could she have been so judgmental?
She’d made it all about herself, hadn’t she? She’d been so hurt by the idea that he’d slept with Rebecca even on a single occasion when they’d both been caught by the pull of the irresistible tide that had drawn them back together.
Megan had thrown up an impenetrable barrier right there, on the spot. A barrier that had made it unthinkable that she could ever be with this man she’d loved so much because he’d slept with his wife.
Once.
She’d seen the twins as evidence of his infidelity, for heaven’s sake. Those gorgeous children who were the only children of his own Josh would ever have. Children he could never have had if he had been with her. They had his genes. His looks. His personality, probably, judging from the little she’d seen of them.
They were half-Josh. How could she not love them, if she let herself?
But she’d run away. Put thousands and thousands of miles between herself and those tiny babies. Between herself and Josh when he must have needed all the support he could get.
And right now, with tears coursing down her face, Megan could see it for what it had been.
A mistake.
They’d both made them. The difference was that Josh had known instantly about the mistake he’d made. It had taken two years and being forced to come home for her to recognise hers.
And the saddest thing of all was that there was nothing she could do about it. It was far too late. She’d run and she’d been away long enough for Josh to put his new life together. A life that he was determined to protect for the sake of the people he loved most.
His children.
A life th
at didn’t—couldn’t—include her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A BIRTHDAY PARTY for two-year-olds was bound to be an emotional roller-coaster. Shrieks of delight and peals of laughter were punctuated by the odd bout of tears and even a tantrum or two.
Beneath a sea of balloons and streamers, the furniture in the O’Hara house had been pushed back to give more space both for the children to play and for the small crowd of accompanying adults to supervise as well as enjoy a social gathering of their own.
Claire’s fellow grannies from the play group were there, including Rita who had brought her granddaughter Nicola Hallet and her great-grandson Colin. Brianna was there with her twin daughters Aisling and Rhianna. Anna and Luke had brought Crash.
‘On request.’ Anna laughed. ‘But he’s our fur child and he fits the age group.’
The look that passed between Anna and Luke at that point had more than just Megan wondering if a less furry child was a not-so-distant prospect but there was no chance to ask her friend whether she was keeping a secret.
The party was full on. Timed for the middle of the day so that the young participants could go home for a sleep when it all got a bit much, there were gifts to open and games to play before the food was served.
Megan had offered to help in the kitchen where Claire and her friends were setting out tiny sandwiches cut into the shapes of animals and heating small pizza squares and chicken nuggets, but Claire shooed her back into the living area to have fun. On her way out of the kitchen Megan saw the dessert platters of bite-sized pieces of fresh fruit and two cakes. One a pink pony-shaped creation and the other an impressively green dinosaur with lurid, candy-covered chocolate buttons for spots. She was smiling as she joined the main gathering. Saving the bright food colouring for just before the toddlers were taken home was smart thinking.
Fun was the last thing Megan had expected to have when she’d steeled herself to follow up her promise to attend this party. She had spent the last few days in a state of confusion that had bordered on unbearable. Charles was driving down from London today and he had every right to expect that she would have achieved her purpose for staying on here by now. That she would have come to terms with her past and would be able to face her new future with confidence.
But, if anything, after the startling insight of how much she could blame herself for this whole, sad, star-crossed-lovers’ story that she and Josh had created, it had only become harder to untangle the web of memories and emotions. It was much, much easier to let herself become distracted. To be drawn into the moment by concentrating on her work or the new project of collecting donations for the clinic or...amazingly...having fun.
Her trepidation had vanished only seconds after she’d walked in, carrying her gifts. It had evaporated the moment the twins had spotted her and come running.
‘Meggy.’
That they’d been more interested in receiving cuddles than the brightly wrapped gifts was testament to how they were being brought up, Megan decided. She was the one to use the gifts as an excuse to call time from the tangle of warm little limbs wrapping themselves around her body.
Around her heart.
Josh was right there, a proud smile on his face, when his children remembered to say thank you for their gifts.
And then the children had wriggled back into the festivities and it was just Josh so close. Before Megan had had a chance to centre herself. She could still feel the overwhelming pull of those cuddles. The unconditional love...
‘Great choice.’ Josh was still smiling but there was a question in his eyes. ‘Well done.’
Megan ducked her head. It was almost too much, receiving praise from Josh on top of the emotions his children had just stirred in her. And she didn’t want to answer that question. The one about how she felt about these children. Maybe she didn’t even want to think about it.
‘The assistant in the toy shop has to get the credit,’ she said. ‘She told me that dress-ups were always a winner at this age.’
So now Max had a bright yellow Bob the Builder hard hat on, a tiny tool belt clipped around his waist and a miniature high-vis vest over his own clothes. And Brenna had pulled on the tutu skirt with the elasticised waist and put the sparkly tiara on her dark curls and was refusing to let go of her wand with the star on the top. She was waving it like a stern conductor as she danced to each burst of music for the game of musical cushions.
All the children followed her lead and were dancing with varying degrees of competence and balance. Josh’s smile was as misty as those of any of the watching adults. He was actually forgetting to stop the music so that the children could make a dash for available cushions.
Megan found herself watching Josh instead of the game, knowing that her own smile was also coming from a very tender place in her heart.
Something had changed in the last few days.
Something very fundamental.
The anger had gone, hadn’t it? That sense that Josh had betrayed her by sleeping with Rebecca.
And with it had gone the entire foundation on which she’d built her conviction that they could never be together. It seemed to have simply crumbled away.
Where did that leave her now?
Emotionally available?
Not really. There was Charles to consider now. And the pull of what she’d left behind in Africa.
Megan certainly couldn’t forget about Africa. It seemed like it was the only thing people here wanted to talk to her about.
Wendy, the grandmother of three-year-old Shannon, couldn’t wait to tell her about the bake sale planned for the next week.
‘We’re hoping to raise over a hundred pounds,’ she told Megan. ‘We’re going to spend it at the bookshop.’
Margaret, who was at the party with two grandchildren, four-year-old Liam and his younger brother Jackson, overheard Wendy and rushed to join the conversation.
‘Mr Prachett at the bookshop is giving us a great discount and he’s found a line of picture books that have no text but still tell stories. And he’s going to donate lots of pencils and paper, too.’
‘The school’s on board,’ Wendy added. ‘Every child has been given an exercise book and they’re decorating the covers in art class.’
Another granny, Miriam, offered Megan a cup of tea and a proud smile. ‘I’m in charge of clothing donations,’ she said. ‘I’ve got two huge crates in my sewing room and I’m washing and mending and ironing everything before it gets packed. We’re only accepting lightweight items like cotton dresses and shorts and T-shirts. Will that be all right, do you think?’
‘I’m sure it’ll be wonderful,’ Megan responded. It was impossible not to be touched by the enthusiasm and generosity of these women. ‘You’re all wonderful. I can’t believe how this project keeps growing and growing.’
‘It’s you who’s wonderful,’ Miriam said. ‘We’re having fun collecting things but we’re still in our own comfort zones, aren’t we? With our families safe and healthy around us. You’re the one who was prepared to go to the end of the earth to really help.’
Josh was supervising a bubble-blowing contest but was standing close enough to overhear Miriam’s words. When he looked towards them, his glance had none of the admiration of the women around her.
‘Megan’s an angel,’ he said crisply. ‘Just ask my mother.’
The tone was light enough to make the people around her smile. Maybe it was only Megan who could hear that the words covered something painful. They both knew the real reasons for her heading to Africa two years ago and it hadn’t been entirely altruistic, had it?
Would she do it again, knowing what she knew now?
Fortunately, Josh had turned back to the bubble blowing and there were much easier questions to answer.
‘What’s it like?’ Wendy asked. ‘In the camp?’
Megan deliberately censored the first impressions that always came to mind. The unbearable heat and filth. The suffering of so many people. ‘Huge. Like a fair-size
d city, really, with a hundred and thirty thousand people in the camp and another thirty thousand or so around the edges.’
‘It can’t be an easy place to live.’
Megan shook her head. ‘No. It’s hot and dirty and there are pockets of violence but it’s the disease that’s the worst of it. There are probably eight thousand children suffering from malnutrition and so many orphans who lose their parents to things like AIDS. And then there are other diseases like dysentery and malaria and dengue fever to cope with.’ She deliberately stopped herself going any further. A birthday celebration was no place to be telling things like they really were. She could do that somewhere else. At one of the fundraising events, maybe.
But the older women were hanging on every word. They tutted in sympathy.
‘And the clinic? Is it like a medical centre or a proper hospital? Do you have operating theatres and maternity wards and things?’
‘Oh, yes...it’s a proper hospital but very different from St Piran’s, of course. And we struggle to cope with what we have to work with.’
Megan’s attention was caught by what was happening behind Margaret. Brenna was having trouble with her bubbles because she wasn’t holding the loop anywhere near her mouth when she was blowing. Josh was crouched beside her. He closed her little fist over the handle of the loop and dipped it into the soapy water and then held it up in front of her mouth. She could see him miming what she needed to do with her lips and breath.
Brenna sucked in a big breath and whooshed it out and a stream of small bubbles exploded into the air. Her face lit up with a grin that went from ear to ear and Megan could see the way Josh’s eyes crinkled as he grinned back. Even if she hadn’t been able to read the love he had for his daughter on his face like that, she would have been able to feel the glow of it.
St. Piran's: The Wedding! Page 10