Her Sister's Baby

by Alison Fraser

  The minutes ticked by and the ringing of the phone finally disrupted her solitude. She left him to pick up on a bedroom extension, but it kept ringing and ringing until she had to answer or risk waking Ellie.

  ‘Cass?’ enquired a familiar voice and, for a mad moment, she imagined he was ringing from upstairs, checking if she’d gone.

  ‘Yes,’ she said at length.

  ‘It’s Dray,’ he added, unnecessarily.

  ‘Yes,’ she repeated.

  A deep sigh was drawn on the other end of the line before he asked, ‘Did you get my note?’

  ‘Note?’ she echoed.

  ‘You didn’t,’ he concluded. ‘I put it under your door.’

  When? Cass wondered, closely followed by, Why? Did he dread the idea of another meeting so much?

  ‘Where are you?’ she finally thought to ask.

  ‘Work,’ he answered succinctly. ‘I had an eight a.m. meeting I couldn’t cancel.’

  Forget the fact he’d been up till two. Or the fact he’d just flown back from America. Or the fact he’d dumped her with a baby that wasn’t her responsibility.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he went on, reading her mind, ‘relief is on its way. The agency is supplying emergency cover.’

  ‘What agency?’

  ‘Nannies UK. They’re sending a girl over immediately.’

  ‘R-r-r-ight.’ It was a drawn-out right, one that clearly meant the opposite. ‘And you expect me to interview her.’

  ‘What?’ He’d clearly never considered such an idea. ‘No, of course not. The agency has already checked her references. All you have to do is hand Ellie over.’

  Like a parcel, Cass thought as she muttered back, ‘Should I get the girl to sign for her, perhaps?’

  ‘Sign for her?’ Irritation crept into his voice. ‘If you want; though I’d hardly say it was necessary. Look, I’ll speak to you later. I have to go and—’

  ‘Well, don’t let me keep you!’ she cut in and replaced the receiver abruptly.

  She was walking away from the phone when it rang again. This time she ignored it which wasn’t perhaps the most sensible thing as it rang and rang until Ellie woke, crying. She still ignored it and, picking up the baby, went for a walk round the house.

  North Dean Hall had been in the Carlisle family for four generations but dated further back than that. Its large, high-ceilinged rooms spoke of an era when there would have been an army of servants waiting on one family, rich enough to have as many children as nature allowed. There would have been soirées and parties and dancing, the sound of laughter chasing down the corridors.

  Now it was so empty she felt that if she laughed, it would echo off the walls and crack in the oppressive silence. Dray Carlisle chose this splendid isolation but what about Ellie? Would she be lonely in these endless rooms? Would she feel unloved, forgotten? Or would wealth make up for it all?

  Cass didn’t have any answers. She just knew that when the nanny arrived—a young nervous girl suffering from a very heavy cold—this life wasn’t good enough for her niece. She sent the nanny away, made a phone call, went upstairs, packed some essentials in a holdall and prepared two milk feeds for the journey. By the time the taxi arrived, she was ready.

  She didn’t allow herself to think about what she was doing until she was on the train to London and by then it was too late. She didn’t examine her actions too closely but concentrated on taking care of Ellie. She hadn’t realised the hard work involved in coping with a very young baby, public transport and all the paraphernalia required.

  When she finally reached her local station, she was exhausted from folding and unfolding a pushchair while juggling a baby and a holdall. She felt a measure of relief when a fretful Ellie fell asleep on the way to the house.

  She let herself in with her key and carefully manoeuvred the pushchair over the front step and into the hall. She left her there while she emptied the holdall’s contents—nappies, wipes, and a change of clothes, milk powder and a compact sterilising unit—on the kitchen table.

  She had no cot, of course, or toys, or mobile or any spare money to buy such things. She looked round the shabby house that had never really felt like a home and had to remind herself why she had rescued Ellie in order to take her to this. She had to visualise the sniffing nanny, a girl scarcely out of school, and the utter indifference of Dray Carlisle, a man who spent his life scrupulously avoiding marriage and babies.

  At the same time, a voice was muttering in her ear, listing the things she’d cost her niece—the twenty-room mansion in Berkshire, the private education, the toys and clothes and presents, all compensation, surely, for her motherless state.

  ‘Those things aren’t what’s important,’ she said aloud but could hear the lack of conviction in her tone.

  For what had she to offer this baby? Love? She’d never been very good at that. Family? There was just her left and what if she died? A future? She could barely see past the next hours.

  What had she done? Cass looked at her sleeping niece and it began to dawn on her. She hadn’t thought it through. She had merely reacted, as she always did when Dray Carlisle was around. Now she would have to live with the consequences.

  As distraction, she opened the mail she’d found lying on her mat but it only served to underline how far-reaching these consequences could be. Among the bills was a notification of the current state of her student loan and a letter from the general practice she was joining, detailing arrangements. The debt told her she had to work and the letter left her wondering how she could start, Monday week, in Slough, with a baby in tow.

  She saw no easy way out. She’d worked hard to become a doctor but it was virtually impossible to be one and a single mother. It seemed it came down to a choice, the baby or her career.

  She’d still not made that choice when dusk fell and there was an anticipated ring on the doorbell. She knew it was Dray before she pulled back the curtain. He’d already made an appointment of sorts.

  He’d rung her at five and the briefest of conversations had ensued.

  ‘Cass?’ he’d said when she’d picked up the phone without speaking.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is she there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Right.’

  The receiver had been replaced, as if he hadn’t trusted himself to say more. Cass was left to interpret that incisive ‘right’. It was either ‘right, that’s fine, you keep her’ or ‘right, I’m coming to get her’.

  There was no point in running. With infinitely more resources, he would catch her. So she sat waiting to see which it would be. She sat waiting, unsure which outcome she preferred until he arrived and she realised she’d been holding her breath.

  She faced the truth. In a fit of conscience or madness she’d taken Ellie home with her. But did she really want to bring her up? All those years studying, struggling—and failing—to look after Pen, working in dead-end jobs just to get by. It had been no life. Did she want to repeat it—inflict it on somebody else?

  No.

  She scarcely reached the door when Dray rang the bell again. She opened it wide and allowed him to enter. He seemed taken aback. Perhaps he’d imagined he’d have to batter the door down. ‘You’ve come for her?’ she asked without preamble.

  The scowl on his face deepened. ‘What else?’

  ‘She’s through the back.’ Cass went to fetch her.

  A hand shot out to stop her. ‘Hold on a moment.’

  He gave her no choice. His fingers dug into her upper arm and betrayed barely controlled temper.

  Cass remained cool in response. ‘I don’t want a fight.’

  ‘You think I care what you want,’ he grated back. ‘It takes you two months to come see your sister’s baby, then you turn up out of the blue and start behaving like you’re Mary Poppins… Only it’s all show with you and no substance, isn’t it, because one short day and you’ve had enough?’

  Colour filled Cass’s high cheek-bones as she tried to explain
herself. ‘I know I acted rashly and perhaps you have the right to be annoyed—’

  ‘Annoyed?’ he rasped at her. ‘Annoyed doesn’t cover it! Annoyed doesn’t even remotely touch it! What the hell were you playing at, sending that girl away—?’

  ‘She wasn’t suitable,’ Cass interjected with a little of her normal spirit.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ he resumed, ‘she didn’t know how to perform a tracheotomy, did she? Or was it her inability to do cardiac massage?’

  Sarcasm dripped from his voice as he put his own slant on her brief interview with the temporary nanny.

  ‘I asked her what she’d do if Ellie was choking or stopped breathing, that’s all,’ Cass retorted in kind, ‘and I think both are quite acceptable questions. The girl was also suffering from a very heavy cold and, in case you don’t know, young babies are very susceptible to respiratory infections.’

  ‘You sound like a walking textbook,’ he accused, ‘but then that’s pretty much the extent of your knowledge of babies, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, actually it’s not.’ Cass had babysat for pocket money all through her teenage years.

  His eyes narrowed on her face, suddenly suspicious. ‘Was it true, then?’

  ‘Was what true?’

  ‘Your sister once implied you’d had a baby when you were a teenager.’

  ‘She what?’

  ‘You heard.’

  Cass had heard all right. She just didn’t credit it.

  ‘Pen claimed I’d had a baby?’

  ‘Not in so many words. It was a remark she made after you ended our affair.’

  Cass wasn’t going to let that pass. ‘I didn’t end it!’

  ‘No, you weren’t that brave,’ he threw back. ‘It was Pen who explained that experience had given you a cynical view of men: that they have their fun, and the woman’s left holding the baby.’

  Cass frowned. She had said something like that to Pen years ago, but when and why had Pen relayed it to Dray?

  ‘I didn’t know if she meant firsthand experience,’ he continued. ‘By that time I didn’t want to know.’

  Because it had suited him, Cass assumed. He’d been ready to move on and had used a few careless words from Pen to give himself an excuse.

  ‘I was never your sort, was I?’ she accused now.

  ‘Maybe not.’ A shrug dismissed it as past and so irrelevant, yet he asked, ‘Was there a baby?’

  Cass’s face suffused with colour, as she was torn between the truth and the promise she’d made to Tom, not to disclose Pen’s earlier pregnancy.

  ‘I’ll read your silence as yes,’ he answered for himself. ‘So what happened to it?’

  ‘Him. He died.’

  She aimed for matter-of-fact but her voice betrayed her. She still felt grief for that first baby.

  Dray heard it, too, surprising her with a genuine, ‘I’m sorry.’

  She shook her head. She didn’t want his sympathy. It would be under false pretences.

  ‘That’s Ellie.’ She was almost relieved to hear a demanding cry coming from the kitchen.

  He was still holding her arm, but gently now, the thumb brushing absently against her skin. When she tried to pull away, he tightened his grip for a brief moment, as if he didn’t wish her to go, but Ellie’s cries rose, forcing the issue.

  Released, Cass stood a moment longer, flustered by his steady gaze, then she turned and hurried towards the kitchen.

  It was small surprise Ellie had woken. Cass had made a makeshift bed for her with a folded sheet in an open kitchen drawer, but it was hardly the soft luxurious cot to which she was accustomed.

  Cass picked the baby up but she continued to cry, working herself into a state.

  Dray Carlisle watched from the doorway. It was scarcely helpful. Cass was tempted to hand him the crying baby but she had little confidence he would do better.

  Instead she trained herself to ignore him, and, cradling the baby’s soft downy head in her hand, she rocked her gently until she eventually quietened.

  ‘You make it seem easy,’ Dray Carlisle remarked.

  It could have been a compliment but Cass didn’t want to take it that way. ‘Have you brought a car seat for her?’

  His brows drew together before he nodded. ‘Why did you take her, Cass?’

  He clearly meant why take her, then give her back so easily.

  ‘I thought I could care for her,’ she admitted, ‘but I wasn’t being realistic. I have a student debt to repay and, a week next Monday, I start my GP training. I can’t look after her and work, and, if I don’t work, would she thank me for taking her away from all the things you can give her?’

  Dray’s eyes rested on the baby, curved into her arm, now the picture of contentment.

  ‘It’s difficult to say what’s best, long term,’ he replied evenly.

  ‘Well, in the short term, you’ll have to get a nanny,’ Cass advised. ‘One who’ll stay with her for her first years. She needs some permanency.’

  ‘Granted—’ he nodded ‘—but I’ve been holding off until Tom sorts himself out.’

  ‘Tom?’ echoed Cass. ‘I thought he was out of the picture.’

  His lips held the vestige of a smile. ‘You preferred me as the villain of the piece, did you? Well, sorry to disappoint, but Tom is Ellie’s father.’

  ‘It’s certain?’

  ‘Absolutely—I have the DNA tests to prove it.’

  Cass would like to believe it. She’d never wanted Ellie to be Dray Carlisle’s.

  ‘I thought Tom was refusing to be tested.’

  ‘I persuaded him.’

  His flat tone hid more than he was saying. Cass was left to wonder what persuasion techniques he’d used.

  ‘Is he going to look after Ellie, then?’

  ‘That remains to be seen. Tom associates Ellie with your sister and he’s still convinced she was being unfaithful to him right up until the point she died.’

  ‘And was she?’ Cass willed him to tell the truth.

  He was slow in answering. ‘It’s possible.’

  Cass read it as a ‘yes’ and discovered that the truth really did hurt. She struggled to keep her emotions in check.

  ‘Is there anything else you want to ask me—like who was the man, for instance?’

  He was mocking her. They both knew the man’s identity. He just wanted to twist the knife. Payback, perhaps, for the past.

  She shook her head. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  His mouth thinned into a line. Had she spoiled his sport?

  ‘Know it all, do you?’

  ‘As much as I need to.’

  Cass didn’t want to hear details of his affair with her sister. The fact of it was already painful enough.

  ‘I’ve packed all Ellie’s stuff,’ she ran on. ‘It’s on the kitchen table.’

  It was clearly a hint to speed up his departure but he seemed in no hurry to leave.

  ‘And yours?’

  ‘Mine?’

  ‘Your things. You’ll require some clothes, I imagine.’

  ‘Sorry?’ Cass felt she’d lost the place in this conversation.

  ‘You’ll be coming back to North Dean Hall,’ he said in cool tones.

  It was a statement, not a question. Did he really think he could dictate to her?

  ‘Relax,’ he added at her indignant look, ‘it’s to cater for Ellie’s needs, not mine. Just until I can recruit another nanny. Assuming we can find one that meets your approval, of course.’

  ‘I can’t go with you,’ Cass said at length.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, for a start, I have to pack up this place and move before I begin my new job.’

  She also had to find a house to rent, a car to buy and some clothes to wear because, as a GP, she could no longer hide behind a white coat.

  ‘Where is the practice?’

  ‘In Slough.’

  ‘That’s commutable from North Dean. I have a little sports car you could use.’

&
nbsp; Cass gave a dry laugh. Did he really think she wanted to turn up at her new work in a sports car? Wouldn’t that go down well in the practice she was joining!

  His motives eluded her, too. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you’d want me back in your house.’

  ‘What I want is irrelevant,’ he drawled back. ‘What I’ve got is a small baby, no nanny and only the vaguest idea how to feed, bathe or change it.’

  ‘Her,’ she corrected, ‘not it!’

  ‘Okay, her—’ he bowed to the criticism ‘—but the facts are the same.’

  ‘What about Mrs Henderson?’ she suggested the housekeeper.

  ‘On leave till further notice,’ he relayed succinctly, ‘so, while you pack your bag, I’ll take the baby’s things out to the car and return with the car seat.’

  Cass trailed him through to the kitchen where he collapsed the pushchair and shouldered the rucksack before returning to the hall.

  Cass followed him back as far as the front door, Ellie still in her arms, and was waiting there when he returned with the baby seat.

  ‘There’s Camilla Carlisle,’ she proposed with some desperation.

  ‘There was Camilla,’ he amended, ‘until someone ruffled her feathers.’

  ‘She was very rude to me,’ Cass protested, ‘although I don’t suppose you’ll believe that.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I do,’ he declared to her surprise. ‘Camilla had reasons to feel enmity towards your sister and I can imagine that feeling spilled over on to you.’

  ‘I see.’ Cass wasn’t going to risk delving into these reasons.

  ‘I doubt it,’ he echoed dryly. ‘However, if you’d like to accept the inevitable and go pack, I’ll hold the baby.’

  Cass could refuse. What could he do to her, after all? Nothing. But then it was what he couldn’t do for Ellie that was at issue.

  ‘I’ll pack an overnight bag and stay for a day or two.’ She offered the baby to him. ‘Make sure you support her head.’

  ‘I know that much, at least,’ he replied, taking her.

  One large hand cradled her head and neck, the other her body, but he kept her at arm’s length, as if he was frightened of dirtying his clothes. It was not encouraging.

  Cass hesitated only briefly before taking the stairs two at a time and hurriedly throwing some essentials in a bag. She heard Ellie begin to cry and the muffled sounds of a male voice, then silence. She sped back downstairs to find Dray pulling interesting faces for Ellie’s entertainment.