Lily had always struggled to reconcile the misty-eyed romanticism with her childhood memories of angry raised voices, slamming doors and tears. Lily never voiced her thoughts, she felt disloyal for even thinking them, though she sometimes wondered if her mum really felt that way or if it was her way of dealing with being widowed so young. Had she been telling the stories for so long she believed them...?
‘I am happy, Mum.’ Why did no one believe her?
And even if she had been looking for romance, she had no time for it. Juggling her part-time job in the college drama department and the unpaid hours she put in at the hospice—where her mother fundraised so tirelessly—with caring for her two-year-old daughter left no time for anything except falling into bed exhausted at the end of the day.
Lily considered her life rich and fulfilling. Occasionally she thought what if...? But those thoughts were swiftly quashed. She still had ambitions; they just weren’t the same ones she’d had as a final-year drama student. Back then she’d had several small parts in TV dramas under her belt and the lead role in a new costume drama to walk into when she graduated—not bad for the invisible twin.
But her life had changed unexpectedly and she didn’t resent it. Now she wanted more than anything to be a role model for her daughter. Although she’d been an OK actress, she had discovered by accident she was a better than OK teacher. As soon as Emmy was in school she had plans to get the qualifications to enable her to lecture and not just be an assistant. She might never see her own name in lights, but she might be responsible for some other shy, awkward kid—as she’d been—discovering the liberation of becoming someone else on stage.
Lily’s thoughts were not on her future career as she wandered down the deserted beach, her feet sinking into the sand. She was replaying the conversation she’d had via the computer link with her daughter the previous evening. Well, conversation might be overstating it. Emmy had fallen asleep after five minutes on her grandmother’s knee saying loudly that she wanted a dog, a wiggy dog.
‘She means waggy, I think,’ Elizabeth had translated, stroking her granddaughter’s curly head. ‘She grabbed Robert’s poor old Lab by the tail and wouldn’t let go.’
Lily’s eyes misted as the longing to hold her daughter, smell her hair, brought an emotional lump to her throat.
Dropping her towel on the sand, she stared out to sea, the ache in her chest a mixture of pride and loneliness as she waded out into the warm, clear water.
* * *
Returning the painting had been a theatrical stunt. The big reveal had gone down like a lead balloon, but in his defence Ben had tried everything else. Nothing had worked. His grandfather had refused then, as he did now, to give an inch. He still refused to concede that selling off the odd heirloom or parcel of land was not a fiscally sound form of long-term financial planning.
This morning the argument had not gone on long before his grandfather had given his never darken my door again speech and Ben, knowing that if he stayed he’d say something he’d regret, had accepted the invite.
Striding through the corridors of the old house, he’d predictably felt his anger fade, leaving frustration and the realisation that he needed a change of tactics. Governments and financial institutions listened to his analyses, they valued his opinion, but he just had to accept that his grandfather didn’t even think of him as an adult, let alone someone qualified to offer advice.
He’d paused, responding to a text from his PA reminding him he had a meeting in Paris in two hours, when he heard the sound. Glancing through the deep stone-mullioned window at the helicopter he’d arrived in, which was sitting on the south lawn, Ben was tempted to pretend he hadn’t heard it. Then he heard it again—the sound of a child crying.
Curious, he slid his phone back into his pocket and followed the sound of the cries. The search led him to the kitchen, a room that, like the plumbing at Warren Court, would have made a Victorian feel right at home.
The door to the vast room was open, and as he stepped inside the source of the noise, a child held by his grandfather’s harassed-looking housekeeper, Elizabeth Gray, let out an ear-piercing screech, made even louder by the room’s tremendous acoustics.
‘Wow, that’s quite a set of lungs.’ And quite a head of hair. The wild red curls on the toddler’s head opened a memory he’d have preferred to stay locked inside the file marked move on.
And he had moved on; it was ancient history.
‘Benedict!’
Would Elizabeth’s smile have been so warm and welcoming had she known he’d slept with one of her daughters? The lazy speculation vanished as she advanced towards him holding the screaming child. Horror slid into the vacuum it left.
‘Your grandfather didn’t tell me you were coming...’
‘He didn’t know.’ Ben prided himself on the ability to extricate himself from uncomfortable situations, but for once his ingenuity failed him.
‘Are you staying for...? Never mind—hold her, will you?’
It was not a suggestion or a request, it was a plea, which he hadn’t responded to when he had found his arms filled with crying toddler. A new experience for him... He stood rigid, holding the wriggling, screaming child the same way he would an unexploded bomb—at arm’s length! He’d have felt more comfortable with a bomb; they were more predictable.
Ben had nothing against children, and he understood why people felt the urge to procreate, he just wondered why some did. People like his mother, who had never made any pretence of being maternal. His mother, who had done her level best to forget that she’d had a child after she’d given birth and had done so pretty successfully. She had never made any bones about what came first—her career. And as she’d pointed out, not having a mother coddling him had made him self-reliant.
He recognised similar character traits—some might call them faults—in himself. He was ambitious, ruthlessly focused on his work. Ben had no illusions about his character. Bottom line, he was selfish. That combined with razor-sharp instincts made him successful in his chosen career.
He didn’t need those instincts to tell him he’d have been a terrible parent. It was pretty obvious. Being a good parent required sacrifice and compromise, which he was simply not capable of. His decision not to have children was yet another bone of contention between him and his grandfather, who was fixated on the idea of the family name living on.
‘Is she ill?’ He struggled to hide his unease and eyed the child warily. She might be attractive, but right now, with her crumpled, tear-stained face as red as her hair, she wasn’t.
‘She bumped her head, slipped chasing the cat. Now let’s have a look...it’s not deep,’ Elizabeth said, brushing a mass of auburn curls from the squawking kid’s head. ‘But it simply won’t stop bleeding and Emmy doesn’t like the sight of blood. But she’s a brave girl, aren’t you, my darling?’ she crooned.
The brave girl gave another ear-splitting bawl. Was it normal for a kid to be that loud? Ben, who had been his parents’ only mistake, wasn’t sure.
‘I didn’t know Lara had a child,’ he said, struggling to make himself heard above the din. ‘Is she visiting, or have they moved back from the States?’ he asked, pretending a polite interest he didn’t feel. Though he’d felt mild surprise when the news of the wedding had reached his ears six months after the event.
Lara Gray was the last person he would have imagined marrying young, she’d been a bit of a wild child, but then what did he know? Her sister had always seemed like the last sort of person who’d spend the night with a man and leave before he woke.
But