RUBBING HER EYES, Lottie Dawson drew the curtain back and gazed out of her bedroom window. The garden was in darkness, but she could hear the steady patter of the rain, and in the glow of the night light the glass was speckled with fat blobs of water.
Yawning, she glanced over at the clock beside her bed.
It was only five-thirty a.m., an unpleasant hour at most times of the year, but particularly so on a cold, wet November day in rural Suffolk. But for once her eleven-month-old daughter’s early-morning routine was an advantage. Today they were going to London, and she actually needed to get up.
Turning round, she glanced over to where Sóley was standing in her cot, her blonde curls flattened against her head, her mouth clamped around the edge of her teddy bear.
As Lottie walked towards her she held up her fat little arms and began dancing on the spot.
‘Hi.’ Leaning forward, she lifted her daughter up, pressing her body close.
Her heart swelled. She was so beautiful, so perfect. Born in December, on the shortest day of the year, she had been as golden and welcome as the unseasonal sun that had come out to celebrate her birth and inadvertently suggested her name.
‘Let’s go get you some milk,’ she murmured, inhaling the clean, sweet smell of her daughter’s skin.
Downstairs, she switched the light on in the kitchen and frowned. A frying pan sat in the sink and the remains of a bacon sandwich were congealing on a plate on the crumb-strewn table. Beside it stood an open tool box and a tattoo gun.
Lottie gritted her teeth. She loved living with her brother Lucas, and he was brilliant with Sóley, but he was six foot four, and it sometimes felt that their tiny cottage wasn’t big enough for him—especially as his idea of domesticity was taking his boots off to sleep.
Tutting under her breath, she shifted Sóley’s weight to her hip. ‘Look at all this mess Uncle Lucas has made,’ she said softly, gazing down into her daughter’s wide blue eyes.
There was no time to deal with it now. Not if she was going to get herself and Sóley dressed and up to London by eleven o’clock. As she filled the kettle her pulse skipped forward. The gallery in Islington was tiny, but it was hosting her first solo show since giving birth.
Incredibly, some of the pieces had already sold and it was great to know that her work had an audience but, more importantly, the Barker Foundation wanted to talk to her about a commission. Getting funding was a huge step up. Not only would it allow her to continue working without having to teach in the evenings, but she might also be able to extend her workshop.
Glancing into the living room at the dark shape on her sofa, she imagined her brother’s eye-rolling reaction to her pragmatism.
Ever since she’d bought the cottage he’d been teasing her about selling out, joking that getting a mortgage was the first step towards the dark side. As far as he and their mother Izzy knew the money had come from a private commission, and Lucas had a very dim view of private clients believing they were only interested in buying art as an investment rather than out of aesthetic appreciation.
She bit her lip. She hated lying to them, but telling the truth—that the deposit for the cottage had been given to her by her biological father, a man who up until two years ago hadn’t even known she existed—was just not an option.
Having tested the milk on her tongue, she handed the bottle to Sóley and they both retreated upstairs. Pulling open drawers, she thought back to the moment when she had finally met Alistair Bannon in a motorway service station.
Her stomach clenched. She’d spent so many hours as a child staring into a mirror, trying to work out which of her features came from that man, but even before he had opened his mouth it had been obvious that he was not looking to reconnect with a fully-grown daughter. It wasn’t that he didn’t accept her as his child—just that he felt no urgency to know her, and their meeting had been strange and strained and short.
From downstairs, she heard the clump of boots hitting the floor. Lucas was up.
She wondered how her brother would react if she showed him the letter her father had sent afterwards. It was polite, carefully worded to offer no obvious rejection but no hope either, basically saying she was a remarkable young woman and he wished her well. Enclosed with the letter had been a cheque for an amount that he hoped would cover his financial contributions for the years he had missed.
Staring at his signature on the cheque, she had felt sick, stunned that she could be reduced to a four-digit sum, and she’d been tempted to tear it up. Only then she’d got pregnant.
Stripping off, she gazed down at her naked body, at the silvery stretch marks that were still faintly visible on her stomach.
Becoming a mother had been so far away in her future plans that she hadn’t even suspected she was pregnant but, having been unable to shift a persistent stomach upset she had gone to the doctor, and three days and one urine sample later she had officially been having a baby.
A baby who, like her, was going to grow up never knowing her father. She still wasn’t entirely sure how it had happened. They had used protection, but that first time had been so frantic, so urgent, somehow it must have failed.
Shivering, she pulled on her clothes, trying to ignore the sudden thumping of her heart.
She could still remember the night her daughter was conceived. She doubted she would ever forget it. It was like a fever in her blood. The heat and the frenzy had faded, but the memory remained in her bones and on her skin, so that sometimes she’d catch sight of the back of a blond head and a pair of wide shoulders and would have to stop and close her eyes against the urgency of wanting him.
Ragnar Steinn.
She would never forget him either.
It would be impossible.
It would be like trying to forget the sun.
But, despite having the muscular body and clean-cut profile of a Norse god, he had shown himself to be depressingly human in his behaviour. Not only had he lied about where he was staying, and about wanting to spend the day with her, he’d sneaked off before she’d woken up.
And yet together they had made Sóley, and no amount of lies or hardship or loneliness would ever make her regret her beautiful daughter.
‘Looks like we’ve got snow coming,’ Lucas said as she walked into the tiny sitting room, holding Sóley on her hip and munching a piece of toast.
He had switched on the ancient television and was wolfing down the remains of his bacon sandwich.
Catching sight of her expression, he grinned