Читать книгу: «Promise Of A Family»

CHAPTER ONE

THEY were in the kitchen of the large, rambling old house when, sensing her niece’s eyes on her—her half-niece, to be exact—Leyne looked up from the school uniform shirt she was ironing.

‘What?’ she asked, looking into Pip’s direct gaze.

Pip stared at her for a few more seconds and then, reddening slightly, said in a rush, ‘Leyne—do you know who my father is?’

The question was so totally unexpected that Leyne felt winded by it and was not sure that her jaw did not drop a fraction. Pip had never shown any curiosity about her father before, and now of all times, with her mother out of the country, was not the best time for her to start asking questions on that subject.

‘Er—no, love, I don’t,’ Leyne replied honestly.

‘Mmm.’ Pip accepted her answer and went on to ask a question in connection with the history project she was working on and needed for school in the morning.

Leyne hoped that the question of who Pip’s father was had been an idle, throw-away kind of question. But as she lay in her bed that night she could not get out of her mind that direct look of her half-sister’s eleven-and-a-half-year-old daughter.

In the normal way of things, and Leyne admitted she was biased, Pip was the most loveable and amenable child. But occasionally, only very occasionally, she would get that direct look in her gorgeous green eyes. Direct as well as stubborn, if she did not know the answer to why, or who, or whatever, she would chip away until she did have the answer she wanted.

Still hoping that her niece’s question the previous evening had been an idle one, Leyne dropped her and her friend Alice off at their school the next morning. From there she drove to her job as assistant management accountant, with her head in a jumble of thoughts.

Maxine, Pip’s mother, had gone off on an extended working trip less than a week ago. ‘Are you sure you’ll be able to cope?’ Max had only yesterday insisted when she had phoned from the airport in Madrid.

Max had at first decided against taking up the fantastic chance to accompany Ben Turnbull, one of the world’s leading photographers, when, recovering from a motor accident, he’d had to face the unpalatable fact that he would either have to take an assistant or cancel the six-month-long trip. But apparently there was no way he was prepared to cancel all his preparations, even if he had to take two assistants.

Max, given the set-backs that went with being a single parent, was, at thirty-five, something of a photographer in her own right, and her name must have reached the great Ben Turnbull’s ears. Because it was quite out of the blue that a letter had arrived addressed to Max Nicholson. And, her work speaking for itself, it seemed, Ben Turnbull, either still recovering or not condescending to interview her, had, without an interview, astonishingly offered her the job any photographer worthy of the name would give their eye-teeth for.

Leyne remembered the way Max’s eyes had lit up, recalled her yelp of joy when she’d read of the offer: six months, possibly longer, worldwide trip, expenses paid, salary paid, with the chance thrown in to photograph animals in their native surrounds, landscapes, wild flowers, indigenous tribespeople—Max had been near to drooling as she had read on.

It had not taken her long, however, to realise that there was no way that she could accept the awesome job offer. ‘No,’ she had decided as reality forced its ugly way in through what she had soon seen was just one huge, big fantastic dream. ‘It’s not on.’

‘Why isn’t it?’ Leyne had asked, feeling her half-sister’s disappointment as though it were her own.

‘You need to ask?’ Max had replied, her eyes going to the beautiful black-and-white portrait of her daughter Philippa she had taken only a few months ago.

‘You—um—wouldn’t trust Pip with me?’ Leyne had asked.

‘Trust you! Of course I would, silly! Why, you probably have more to do with her than I do! Especially when I’m off on one of my assignments.’

‘I’ve looked after Pip when you’ve been away before,’ Leyne agreed. ‘And you know it’s no problem for me to work from home if need be. In fact, with the move to larger premises still on hold, they’ll be glad of extra desk space if I need to be home for any reason. Couldn’t this be just another of your assignments?’

Max stared at her, and Leyne just knew that her sister was beginning to rethink. ‘But I’ve never had an assignment that lasted as long as six months before,’ she pointed out—weakening fast; this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity was unlikely to ever come her way again.

‘Neither can you ignore this wonderful chance,’ Leyne urged, not forgetting the thrilled light of excitement that had shone in Max’s eyes when she had first read her letter. ‘And, aside from this splendid chance, your name would be even more well known when you get back.’

‘If only I could take Pip with me,’ Max fretted.

‘I’d hate it if you did,’ Leyne said quietly.

‘You’re a second mum to her.’ Max smiled.

‘Who could help but love her?’ Leyne commented simply, and was silent for a few moments as she recalled how, shortly after her father had died, Pip had been born. She had been the most adorable baby, and for Leyne it had been love at first sight. Having just lost her father, and being the same eleven and a half years old that Pip now was, Leyne had loved, worried and fretted over the baby’s smallest tummy ache from day one. If Miss Philippa Nicholson had been sent to help Leyne over the death of her much-loved father, her arrival could not have been more timely.

‘Pip has settled well into her new school.’ Max talked through the plus points. Her daughter, eleven last April, had moved to senior school a month ago, at the start of the September term. ‘And she seems to be growing out of her asthma. But—oh, I don’t know, Leyne. It seems an awful nerve to leave her with you while I go globetrotting, not to say the wrench it will be to leave her, to leave you both.’

Looking at her dear half-sister, Leyne could see that Max was being torn in two with indecision. Life had not been easy for her, could not have been, bringing up Pip on her own. For all Leyne, and their mother, initially, had been there to help, the burden of responsibility for the jewel in all their lives ultimately still belonged with Max.

‘Look at it from the other angle,’ Leyne suggested. ‘What will it mean to your career if you do go?’

Max considered the question, and then answered, ‘Well, aside from the invaluable experience I should gain working with Ben Turnbull, and the professional feather in my cap it would be to be able to say I worked with him for months on end, I’d be able to do my own stuff if I went, photograph in places I’ve only ever imagined, and…’ Her eyes went dreamy again before, making a determined effort, Max brought herself back to the practicalities. ‘And I should start reaping some financial rewards. Pip, even at her tender age, has started taking an interest in clothes, and I should like the chance to indulge her rather than have to tell her she can’t have something because we simply can’t afford it.’

Over coffee they talked about it, around it, and of it, and it was oh, so clear to Leyne that her sister must go, that she must not turn down this superb opportunity. But in the end it was Leyne who suggested, ‘While not putting the onus on Pip, why not casually mention it to her and see how she would feel about you going?’

‘I’d hate you to go,’ was Pip’s reaction. But, like the darling she was, ‘But I’d hate it much, much more if you didn’t go because of me.’

‘I’ve always said you’re the best daughter a mother ever had,’ Max responded fondly.

Pip grinned. ‘I’d come with you if I could, but someone has to stay home and look out for Leyne.’

The decision, it seemed, was made. Yet, still the same, the last time the two half-sisters were alone together Max repeated her question of, ‘Are you sure you’re all right about me going and leaving Pip with you?’

‘Stop worrying. She’ll be fine. We’ll both be fine.’

‘What if she starts going through that stroppy stage?’

‘Stroppy? Pip? You’re looking for problems.’

‘I’m not, honestly. I was talking to Dianne Gardner only the other day, and she was telling me that Alice has started to be something of a little madam since she and Pip started at their new school.’

‘I can’t see it, but if it happens I’ll deal with it,’ Leyne had promised. And, in an attempt to reassure, ‘And anything else that might or might not crop up.’

But now, as she parked her car at Paget and Company, Leyne could not help wondering if she could deal with anything that cropped up. Crossing her fingers that Pip’s ‘Do you know who my father is?’ question had been nothing more than a passing notion of a question, Leyne went into her office. Pip’s friend’s parents were divorced, and Alice had spent last weekend with her father—perhaps the two girls had been discussing fathers that day. Or perhaps they were having more adult lessons now they had moved to the senior school, and something in class had triggered the question.

Leyne’s morning was interrupted when Keith Collins, one of the accountants newly arrived at Paget and Company a few months previously, and a man she had started dating some weeks ago, came in to see her.

‘Fancy joining me for a sumptuous dinner this evening?’ he enquired.

His invitation was a touch unfair, Leyne considered. He must know that too—they had barely started going out when she’d had to put a few spokes in the smooth running of the dating wheel. She and Dianne Gardner, Alice’s mother, had a mutually satisfactory arrangement when it came to having a social life and organising child welfare. To go out that evening would mean leaving Pip with Dianne. But Leyne did not care for Pip’s bedtime routine to be interrupted when there was school the next day.

‘The idea is lovely, the practicalities a touch unmanageable,’ she declined as nicely as she could. ‘You could come and have supper with Pip and me, though, if you like.’

Keith did not like.

‘His loss.’ Pip grinned over a salmon en croûte supper that night, when Leyne mentioned she had invited Keith Collins to share their meal but how he ‘hadn’t been free’.

Leyne went to bed in a happier frame of mind. Max, with the portrait of her daughter packed in her luggage, had taken off from Madrid en route to Brazil, and must have landed in Rio by now. And Pip had not pursued her question of who her father was.

Max phoned the next night. Everything was well, she said, adding that she and Ben Turnbull were tolerating each other.

‘Tolerating?’ Leyne queried, and only then learned that Ben Turnbull had apparently been expecting a male Max Nicholson, and had been staggered to find himself stuck with a very feminine Maxine Nicholson, and with no time to find a replacement who’d had all the necessary vaccinations for foreign parts. Realising that he would have dumped her had he been able, had caused Max to metaphorically dig her heels in. While she might not like the wretched man, and given the tons of photography equipment she had to carry, she was determined to show him that she could do the job required of her every bit as well as some male counterpart. Her excitement at the prospect of the work and adventure before her was undiminished. Leyne handed the phone over to Pip so she should chat with her mother, with every confidence that Max, with the bit between her teeth, so to speak, would do exactly that.

Leyne was not feeling so happy the following evening, though. Dianne Gardner had collected Pip from school with her daughter Alice. Leyne collected Pip on her way home from her office, and, ‘Leyne?’ Pip began seriously the moment they were indoors.

‘Pip?’ Leyne enquired, her mind more on what they were going to have for supper than what was on her niece’s mind.

‘Do you know why my father has never been to see me?’

Oh, sweetheart, Leyne mourned, even as her spirits plummeted. ‘I don’t, Pip, I’m sorry,’ she apologised. ‘Perhaps he and your mother had a bad falling-out.’

Her niece was silent for a while as she considered Leyne’s reply, but was soon giving Leyne more cause for disquiet when she went on to solemnly ask, ‘Leyne, if you truly don’t know who my father is, do you think you could find out?’

Oh, heavens—how did she handle this? Leyne looked at her, looked into those lovely green eyes. ‘It’s—um—important, is it, chick?’ she returned lightly. ‘I mean, do you think you could wait until your mum comes home?’

Pip did not need to think about it for very long. ‘No. I don’t think I could,’ she answered gravely. ‘I’ve wanted to know who he is for some while, but—well, Mum was always so busy, and I rather think I was a bit embarrassed too to ask. And, well, I don’t think I could wait endless months until Mum gets back.’

Leyne studied her niece’s earnest little face, and just had to go to her and give her a hug. ‘It might take me some little while,’ she hedged. ‘But can you leave it with me, and I’ll see what I can do?’

‘I knew you would,’ Pip responded trustingly—and Leyne felt her heart would break. How long had this been fidgeting away in the dear child’s head?

Leyne wondered what could she do? Goodness knew when Max would be in touch again. Should she try to contact her on her cellphone? Why not? Max, after all, was the only person to tell her, and also to tell her how she wanted her to handle this delicate situation.

Leyne waited until Pip had been in bed an hour before, calculating that it would be around seven in the evening in Brazil, she rang her sister’s mobile phone number.

Her hope, however, that she would not be ringing Max in the middle of something extremely important was not required. Her sister’s phone was on voicemail, and Leyne realised Max must have switched it off.

Over the next few days, very much aware of how frequently Pip would give her that serious-eyed look, Leyne tried to contact her sister. But each time she met with the same result. Max’s phone was never switched on.

With Pip’s silently questioning eyes starting to haunt her, Leyne gave serious thought to calling the emergency contact number Max had left. But would Max or, by the sound of it, grumpy Ben Turnbull appreciate some runner chasing after them in some dense jungle—or wherever they might be—with the domestic question of who was Max’s child’s father?

It was a dilemma that caused Leyne to have some very fitful nights. But, whatever she did, she knew that she must not panic. She must deal with this as she had so glibly told Max that she could deal with anything that cropped up. She must deal with it calmly and without fuss. But where the Dickens did she start if she was to try not to send someone racing after Max when she had barely just left on her six-month-long assignment?

‘I suppose you’re busy tomorrow?’ Keith Collins asked when he stopped by Leyne’s desk on Friday.

Pip was having a sleepover at Alice Gardner’s home tomorrow. ‘Depends why?’ Leyne replied with a smile.

‘I was thinking dinner—and then coffee at my place?’

Leyne wasn’t so very sure about the coffee offer. While she did not doubt that Keith was quite capable of making them coffee, it was what went with the coffee that she was wary of. She liked Keith, but was only starting to get to know him.

‘Dinner sounds lovely,’ she accepted.

‘I’ll call for you at seven,’ he replied, with a wolfish kind of grin, and went on his way.

Leyne supposed she was still half hoping that Pip was not truly serious about wanting to know the identity of her father. But, on picking her up from Dianne Gardner’s house after work, Leyne soon realised that her niece was far from ready to let go.

‘I don’t suppose you’ve any news for me yet?’ Pip asked, within five minutes of seeing her.

Leyne did not pretend not to know what she was talking about. ‘It’s a bit early yet, love. Er—it may take weeks rather than days,’ she replied. With Max more or less incommunicado, she had not the first idea where to look. And supposing she were to find out. Did she have the right to tell Pip? Conversely, did she have the right to withhold that information from her? ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’

‘I know you will,’ Pip said trustingly—and at the little girl’s faith in her, so Leyne knew that she could just not ignore her need to know who her father was.

The trouble was, where to start? Pip was safely tucked up in bed that night when Leyne acknowledged that it had seemed no problem whatsoever to be appointed her niece’s guardian. But Leyne could not help but feel like some petty criminal when, biting the bullet as it were, she that night quietly entered her sister’s bedroom in search of Pip’s birth certificate.

She supposed when she had located it that it had been too much to hope that the birth certificate of Philippa Catherine Leyne might reveal who her father was. Leyne had been pretty certain, since her niece went by her mother’s surname of Nicholson, that it would not show her father’s name anyway. Even so, to see a short straight line in the space for ‘Father’ still came as a bit of a disappointment. All too clearly, Max did not want anyone to know the name of the father of her child.

Max had never spoken of him, and although Leyne supposed she must have had a natural curiosity at some stage, she was sensitive that some things were very private and were to be respected as such.

She put Pip’s birth certificate away. It seemed Max’s cellphone was permanently switched off, because all her attempts to reach her had come to nothing. Leyne briefly toyed again with the idea of using that emergency number and have someone try to find her in that vast country of Brazil.

But, in the end, she abandoned the notion. She had assured Max that she could cope with whatever cropped up. It would be like throwing in the towel at the first hurdle. It suddenly came to her that she must think not of what Max would want, but must think of what was best for Pip.

Leyne thought back to eleven and a half years ago, when Max had given birth to her precious child: Pip, with her astonishing mop of jet-black hair. Max had been living at home then, and in fact she had never lived anywhere else. So…

Suddenly Leyne saw a chink of light, saw what was now blindingly obvious. If Max had been going out with someone, and she was too choosy to give herself to just anybody, then of course he must have called at the house for her. Which meant her mother, their mother, must know him! Their mother must know the name of Pip’s father, and all about him.

Feeling very much like telephoning her mother straight away, Leyne made herself go downstairs and think about it.

Perhaps, on second thoughts, with her quest so delicate, a personal visit to her mother would be a better idea. While Leyne knew that she was very much loved by their mother, she was also aware of the special bond between her mother and Max that had probably begun when, widowed young, Catherine Nicholson—as she had then been—had cleaved to her toddler daughter.

Yes, definitely her mother would know, Leyne decided, and got out of bed on Saturday morning reflecting that she would again try to phone Max, but if she could still not contact her that she would contact her parent.

While Leyne still felt very undecided, not sure if she should be doing what she was contemplating, her imagination took off as she pondered if there was some dark reason why Max had never mentioned Pip’s father. Was he some kind of villain, some jailbird, some monster, that Max had never breathed a word of who he was? Perhaps, Leyne fretted, she would be doing Max a disservice if her sister did not want Pip to know the name of her father because he was a felon?

From what she knew of Max, though, and how, while occasionally dating, she had always been most circumspect about who she went out with, Leyne could not see her being involved with anyone who was not upright and honest.

More often than not Leyne took Pip and Alice swimming on a Saturday morning. Leyne decided not to alter that morning’s arrangement. She would leave it until Pip went to Alice’s for her sleepover and would then ring her mother in St Albans and ask if it was convenient if she drove up to see her.

The best-laid plans…she discovered, when Dianne Gardner rang to say she had been called away unexpectedly to an elderly aunt who had been taken ill.

‘Would you mind very much if we put off the sleepover until next Saturday?’ Dianne asked.

‘Not at all,’ Leyne replied, and offered, ‘If it will help I can have Alice here with me until you get back. She can stay the night here to save you rushing back.’

Silence for a moment as Dianne thought it over before, ‘Would you mind?’ she asked gratefully. ‘I wouldn’t…’

‘It will be a pleasure,’ Leyne assured her.

She was having a coffee, watching while Pip and Alice outraced each other in the swimming pool, when she belatedly remembered she was supposed to be seeing Keith Collins that night.

Oh, grief! Taking out her phone, and hoping she had remembered his number correctly—this was not the first time she had cancelled their arrangements—she pressed out the digits—and waited.

‘Keith,’ she said, when she recognised his voice. ‘Leyne Rowberry.’

‘I shall never forgive you if you’re putting me off!’ he stated, in a voice that wasn’t over-brimming with good humour.

‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ she replied cheerfully. ‘The thing is—er—I wondered if you’d rather come to my place for coffee?’ And quickly, lest he got the wrong idea, ‘I can promise you one of your favourite sumptuous feasts first.’

‘You’re breaking our date!’ he exclaimed heavily, and for a moment Leyne wondered if she even liked him.

‘I’m offering an alternative,’ she answered, concentrating her thoughts on the nicer side of him that she had previously seen.

‘Too late now for me to make alternative arrangements,’ he said—as if she’d be gutted if he couldn’t come!

‘Your choice,’ she offered. If he wanted to try and find a date elsewhere, good luck to him.

The evening was not a success. The meal, if not exactly sumptuous, was good. But, since the girls had helped with the coconut and orange pudding, it seemed churlish not to let them stay and eat with them.

Keith appeared to be making an effort to be charming, but he was obviously not devastated when Pip asked if they could be excused and, armed with various nibbles, she and Alice raced off up the stairs.

Leyne went to the kitchen to make coffee and saw that Keith’s good humour was surfacing when, on her return, he joined her on the sitting room sofa. ‘Sugar?’ she asked, quite aware that he was sitting unnecessarily close. She poured him a coffee and put a few inches of space between them when she got up to reach to the table for the sugar bowl.

‘You really have the most extraordinarily lovely hair,’ he murmured of her light-coloured hair, with its naturally lighter strands of blonde—sugar was all too plainly not his first priority.

‘Cream or milk?’ she offered.

‘Cream,’ he replied, and, looking into her large blue eyes, ‘To go with your lovely complexion,’ he said. And, taking the coffee from her, he placed it down on the low table in front of them and turned as though to take a hold of her. He got as far as, ‘Leyne, beautiful Leyne…’ when hoots of laughter wafted down through the floorboards overhead. ‘Oh, for—!’ he exclaimed impatiently. And, totally put off his stride, ‘Can’t those girls keep quiet?’

‘Not for more than five minutes, I shouldn’t wonder,’ she replied equably.

‘How long will they go on for?’ he asked, sounding hopeful and disgruntled at one and the same time.

‘I’d be very surprised if they settled down this side of midnight,’ Leyne answered. ‘It’s a sleepover,’ she added. She felt sorry for him, even though his hopes for the way the evening would end had never coincided with hers.

She guessed, when shortly afterwards Keith left, that he would not be asking her out again. It was a pity; she liked him a lot of the time. She was not, however, heartbroken.

Dianne Gardner called for Alice around mid-morning the next day, and ten minutes later Leyne rang her mother and asked if it was convenient for her and Pip to drive up to see them. Catherine Rowberry had remarried four years ago, and had generously allowed her two daughters and granddaughter to remain living in their old home when she had moved to Hertfordshire with her new husband.

‘I’d love to see you,’ Catherine answered warmly. ‘Roland has had a heavy cold, but he’s no longer infectious.’

‘Is he up to visitors?’ Leyne asked doubtfully. While sympathising with Roland, she was not wanting her niece to catch his cold, albeit Pip had not suffered an asthma attack in an absolute age.

‘You probably won’t see him. You know how it is—well, perhaps you don’t—but while women have colds, men, as dear as they are, have flu. Roland may say hello, then go and rest.’

‘Fancy going to see Nanna?’ Leyne asked Pip, and saw the lovely dark-haired child’s eyes light up.

‘It’s ages, simply ages, since I last saw Suzie!’ she exclaimed of Roland Webb’s Labrador dog.

Suzie came in handy, in as much as while Pip played in the large garden with the dog, it gave Leyne the chance to have a private conversation with her mother. Roland had heroically made it to his feet to greet them when they arrived, but, as her mother had hinted he might, had retired for a ‘lie-down’.

‘Er—Mum,’ Leyne said, after some minutes of wondering which way to bring up a subject that had an unspoken taboo attached.

Leyne’s pensive expression was not lost on Catherine Webb. ‘This sounds serious?’ she observed.

Leyne looked at her still beautiful fifty-six-year-old parent and knew that there was only one way to say this. ‘Pip wants to know who her father is,’ she stated, but the minute the words were out she saw her mother mentally strapping on armour to defend her firstborn.

‘Maxine intends to tell her when she’s old enough,’ her mother answered, a touch stiffly.

It heartened Leyne that her sister fully intended to tell her offspring of her father. But Leyne knew that she could not leave it there. ‘Pip wants to know now, Mum,’ she said, and insisted, ‘I think she’s old enough now.’

‘She’ll forget all about it soon. It’s only a whim,’ Catherine reasoned.

‘She’s been wanting to know for some while now.’

‘It will pass.’

Leyne did not want to badger her mother, who was already starting to show prickles in her protectiveness of her eldest daughter. ‘I don’t think she will,’ she pressed on. And, knowing her mother had lived in the same house until after Pip had celebrated her seventh birthday, ‘As tractable as Pip is, you know what she’s like once she has set her mind to something.’

Catherine Webb looked exasperated and worried all at the same time. ‘Maxine will want to tell her herself.’

‘Max isn’t here,’ Leyne reminded her mother quietly. ‘I’ve tried countless times to contact her, but her phone isn’t ringing out. And while I have an emergency number for—’