‘Then I can have a pretend puppy,’ Elsie replied, her stubborn streak as bold as ever.
Jim held up his hands. ‘Girls, it doesn’t matter whether Elsie has a puppy or a bird.’
‘But it’s my play,’ Daisy moaned. ‘And I’m the oldest, so they should do what I tell them.’
‘You’re a bossyboots, Daisy!’
‘No I’m not!’
Rolling her eyes, Guin stepped between her sisters. ‘Let’s do the song now.’
Pacified, the eldest and youngest Maynard sisters obediently fell into line, singing Tomorrow from Annie with breathless enthusiasm.
Jim relaxed back in his old striped deckchair, sipped a cup of chai and listened to his daughters’ voices mingling with the summer hum of bees from the flowerbeds surrounding the garden. This is what Sunday afternoons were made for, he mused to himself: fun and laughter and music and family. The warm July sun glinted in the windows of the three-storey family home, sparkling on the three tinsel crowns and golden blonde heads of his daughters. Like sunshine personified, his mother always said of the three little girls when they visited her cottage in Hove. You have a little cluster of sunbeams dancing round you, Jim. Never forget how blessed you are.
Grandma Flo was right, but then she had a knack of being right about most things. She had been right when he first brought nineteen-year-old Moira O’Shaughnessy to meet her, himself barely twenty and smitten with the blonde haired beauty he had met on his travels.
‘She’s a storm waiting to happen,’ his mother had warned, her sudden change in demeanour catching him off-guard when Moira had gone. ‘You watch that one, Jim, or else she’ll break your heart.’
But Moira Abigail O’Shaughnessy had stolen Jim Maynard’s heart and nothing – not even the warning words of his beloved mother – could dissuade him from his chosen path.
While Guin was the spitting image of him, Jim often caught glimpses of Moira in Elsie and Daisy – and even now it tore at his heart to see their mother’s likeness: a bittersweet, constant reminder of the only woman he had ever truly loved. Despite everything – despite the lies and the barrage of words hurled in anger, despite the sleepless nights and silent days – he knew he still loved her. The emptiness he had felt for so long in her company was now echoed in the emptiness of his life without her in it and, to his shame, he suspected that if she were to relent even now he would run back into her arms and forget it all.
‘Daddy, you’re not listening!’ Daisy’s voice by his ear made him start.
‘I’m sorry, my darling. What were you saying?’
Her sigh was laden with more exasperation than her years could contain. ‘I said that you have to be the King and grant us each a wish.’
‘Ah. Righto.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I am King James the fourth of Brightonshire and I will grant you each a wish.’
‘Daddy. Not like that.’
‘Oh.’
‘You have to say, “I am King Wishalot. What are your wishes?” Do you want me to write it down for you?’
Jim suppressed a grin. ‘No, I think I’ll manage, Daisy. I am King Wishalot. What are your wishes?’
‘Well done, Daddy!’ Elsie applauded him, the suddenness of it bringing unexpected tears to Jim’s eyes. He was glad he had decided to wear his sunglasses this afternoon. He gave a little bow, revelling in the beaming smiles of the three most precious people in his life.
*
Once, his daughters had brought joy to Moria, too. When Daisy was born, Moira’s every waking hour had been filled with the thrill of caring for her new baby. Even though they agreed to take turns for night feeds, Moira almost always appeared at her husband’s side in the small hours of the morning, her hand resting on his shoulder as they gazed at their firstborn child.
‘I can’t believe we made her,’ she would whisper, her breath warm as a summer zephyr setting his pulse racing despite the gnawing ache of tiredness in his body. This was all Jim had ever wanted from the first day he set eyes on the woman he would one day call his wife. In that moment, he had known without doubt that anything was possible when this woman was by his side.
Growing up with an absent father and a fiercely independent mother, Jim had promised himself that when his opportunity for fatherhood came, he would be the most committed, loving father he could be. All the things he had yearned so much for during his childhood he pursued as a father, first for Daisy, then Guin and, finally, Elsie. His initial fear that he may have inherited his own father’s lack of paternal instinct vanished the second he laid eyes on the tiny pink form of his first daughter; from then on, fatherhood fitted him perfectly.
‘You’re a natural,’ his mother marvelled, watching her son cradling his daughter on their first visit to her home. ‘Oh Jim, it makes me so proud to see it!’
Flo had been right about that, too. Being a father was what Jim Maynard was created for – of that he was convinced. He never once questioned the commitment, the long hours, the trials of teething and terrible twos. Nappies and snot and vomit were never insurmountable challenges; neither were long-running squabbles as three growing, headstrong girls vied for supremacy in the seaside townhouse. Because for each messy, headache-inducing negative there were a hundred positives: long weekend afternoons spent on Brighton beach, throwing stones into the sea and consuming ice creams with sticky enthusiasm; magical bedtime stories shared under makeshift Bedouin bedspread tents; feeding the ducks with bullet-hard chunks of bread made the day before by three pairs of little hands in the family kitchen; and the constant surprise of childlike creativity bursting out across the house – paintings and drawings pinned to the walls and stuck on the fridge, epic drama productions in the dining room and back garden, and snippets of song floating down the wooden staircases. Jim loved it all; but most of all he loved the free spirit of his girls – unfettered by convention, or expectation. He hoped they would always maintain this, always be free to be their own person in a world ruled by labels and boxes.
He understood the importance of their freedom because it was part of who he was. From an early age, Jim had dreamed of travelling the world – a dream encouraged by his mother despite the disapproving remarks of his maternal grandparents, who hailed from an era when every man knew his place and accepted it without question. Growing up in the brave new world of the early fifties, with a convention-defying mother who refused to remarry when her good-for-nothing first husband abandoned his family, Jim knew that his life would be lived differently – that anything was possible. His uncle Sidney, an officer in the merchant navy, presented him with an illuminated globe from one of his distant travels and Jim would lay awake late at night plotting imaginary expeditions to exotic locations. India was a favourite destination even then – and as he entered his teens and Britain entered the Swinging Sixties, he became increasingly drawn to the culture, music and mysticism of that great country.
Several of his friends were already there, and the brightly coloured postcards they sent back to him urged the young Jim to make haste and join them. They spoke of a land filled with colour and spectacle: where every shade was a hundred times brighter and every flavour magnified. While Jim worked extra hours in his father’s furniture store and gardened for older people in his street, he dreamed of walking India’s streets, taking in every experience the country could offer him. For as long as he could remember, India had signified adventure, promise and freedom: but more than that, he sensed that he would become a different person for having been there. India was to be the making of him. As soon as he had saved enough money, he had headed for Goa, staying for a month in Vasco da Gama before venturing further afield.
It was while travelling in Râjasthân that he first met Moira. He had arranged to meet an old school friend in Udaipur – a beautiful city surrounded by water, known as ‘the Venice of India’