‘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,