They had been killed in a road accident shortly after her eighteenth birthday. She had lost everything then—parents, security—everything.
It had been their intention that she would go on to university after school, but her father’s pension had died with him, and the small house they lived in had had to be sold to pay off their small debts. There hadn’t been much left. Certainly not enough for her to go to university, even if that had still been possible, but an eighteen-year-old girl struggling with the knowledge that she was an orphan and pregnant doesn’t have much time or energy to expend on studying.
Of course she could have had an abortion. That was the first thing the doctor had told her after he had got the truth from her. She had wanted to agree—had intended to—but somehow, when it came to it, she couldn’t.
And she had never once regretted her decision to bear and then keep Lucy. Of course, pressure had been put on her to give her up, but she had withstood it. In those early days she had still had some money left from the sale of the house, but that hadn’t lasted longer than the first twelve months of Lucy’s life.
The council flat they had been given, its walls running with damp, its reputation for violence and vandalism so frightening that some days Claire had barely dared to go out—these were all in the past now. She felt as though she had stepped out from darkness into light, and perhaps it was her own awareness of what suffering could be that made her so sensitive to the misery of the little girl standing at her side.
The three of them walked to the end of the village, Heather hesitating noticeably once they had left the main road behind.
‘Heather lives in that big house with the white gates,’ Lucy informed her mother importantly.
Claire knew which one Lucy meant. They had walked past it on Sunday afternoons when they explored their new environment. It was a lovely house, Tudor in part with tiny mullioned windows and an air of peace and sanctuary. One glance into Heather’s shuttered, tight face told her that the little girl obviously didn’t find those qualities there.
They walked up the drive together, but once they were standing outside the rose-gold front of the house, Heather tugged on Claire’s sleeve and whispered uncertainly, ‘We have to go round the back. Mrs Roberts doesn’t let me use the front door.’
There could be any number of reasons for that, but even so, Claire frowned slightly. It was, after all, the child’s home.
They had to skirt well-tended, traditional flower borders and walk along a pretty flagged path to reach the back door.
There was a bell which Claire rang. They waited several minutes before it was answered by a frowning, grey-haired woman, her lips pursed into a grimace of disapproval as she opened the door.
‘Mrs Roberts?’ Claire began before the other woman could speak. ‘I’m Claire Richards. I’ve come to ask if it would be all right for Heather to come home with us and stay for tea.’
The frown relaxed slightly. ‘I suppose it will be all right,’ she agreed grudgingly, summing up Claire’s appearance. Her faded jeans and well-worn tee-shirt didn’t make her look very motherly, Claire thought wryly. She had been working in their small garden this morning, and she suspected that some of the dirt still clung to her jeans. ‘Mind you, her father’s expected back this evening, so she mustn’t be late.’
‘Oh no … of course not. He’ll want her to be here when he gets home.’
‘Oh, it isn’t that,’ the housekeeper contradicted with what Claire thought was an appallingly callous lack of regard for Heather’s feelings. ‘No, he’ll be bound to be busy when he gets back and he won’t want to be bothered with her …’ her head jerked in the direction of Heather. ‘Course, her mother should have taken her really, but her new husband didn’t want her it seems, so Mr Fraser got lumbered with her. I’ve told him more than once that she’s too much for me to cope with, what with the house as well. He should get married again, that’s what he should do. He needs a wife, a man like him. All that money …’ she sniffed and glowered at Heather. ‘Still, I suppose it’s a case of once bitten, twice shy. Nuts about that wife of his, he was. Neither of them had much time for her …’ Again she jerked her head in Heather’s direction, and Claire, who had been too appalled by her revelations to silence her before, placed an arm protectively around each child and stepped back from the door.
‘I’ll bring her back after tea. If her father returns before then I live at number five, the New Cottages.’
She was shaking slightly as she bustled the girls away. Both of them were subdued. Claire glanced briefly at Heather. The little girl’s head was turned away from her, but Claire was sure she could see tears in her eyes.
Of all the thoughtless, cruel women! And by all accounts Heather’s father was no better. Oh, she could imagine that it was hard for a man to be left alone to bring up his child, but that did not excuse his apparent lack of love for her. Mrs Roberts had described him as wealthy, and certainly Heather’s home had borne out that assertion. If that was the case, why on earth didn’t he hire someone who was properly qualified to look after the child?
They were half way back towards the village when Heather said suddenly in a wobbly little voice, ‘It isn’t true what Mrs Roberts said. My daddy does love me. She only says that because she doesn’t like me. My mummy didn’t love me, though. She left me.’
Claire had absolutely no idea what to say. All she could do was to squeeze the small hand comfortingly and say bracingly, ‘Well, you and Lucy are in the same boat, aren’t you? You don’t have a mummy and she doesn’t have a daddy.’
She had little idea, when she made the comforting remark, of the repercussions it was to have, and if she had she would have recalled it instantly. Instead, she saw to her relief that Heather seemed to have taken comfort from her words, and by the time they had reached the cottage both little girls were chattering away so enthusiastically that she couldn’t get so much as a single word in.
She let them play in the pretty back garden while she watched from inside. A bank statement which had arrived that morning lay opened on the kitchen table, and she frowned as she glanced at it. Her inheritance meant that she was no longer eligible for state benefits, and her small income barely stretched to cover their day-to-day living requirements. Next year she would have rates to pay, and the old stone cottage needed new window frames; there was also, according to her next-door neighbour, a problem with the roof. If only she could get a part-time job? But doing what exactly? She was not trained for anything, and even if she had been, there were no jobs locally; she would have to travel to Bath.
Pushing her worries to one side, she started preparing the girls’ meal. Her small garden boasted several fruit trees, and she had spent the weekend preserving as much of it as she could. Now, when she had least expected it, she was finding a use for the old-fashioned homely skills her mother had taught her. Her mother. Claire stilled and stared unseeingly out of the window. What would she think if she could see her now?
Claire had not arrived until her mother was in her early forties and her father even older. They had surrounded her in their love, and then with one blow fate had robbed her of that love. When the police came to tell her about her parents’ accident she had hardly been able to take it in. They had been going out to dinner with some friends and the car which ran into them and caused the accident had been driven by a drunken driver.
She thought that she had endured as much pain as life could sustain, but six months later she had learned better.
‘Mum, we’re hungry …’
Lucy’s imperious little