‘Well at first I was too…too upset…too…’
‘Devastated,’ Jessica supplied for her. ‘I know he was my father, but how he could have done that to you…?’
‘It wasn’t really his fault, Jess. He fell out of love with me. It happens.’
‘And you were never tempted to tell him about me. I mean…’
‘Yes…yes, I was tempted,’ Lacey admitted honestly. ‘But he’d already made it clear to me that he didn’t love me any longer; that he wanted our marriage to end. I didn’t know until after he’d left that I was expecting you; perhaps I should have.’
‘No…no, Ma. You did the right thing…the only thing,’ Jessica assured her quickly, putting her hand over her mother’s and giving her a warm smile. ‘Don’t you ever think you didn’t. I know people whose parents stuck it out supposedly for their sakes. It must be awful to be brought up in that kind of atmosphere, never really knowing if both your parents are going to be there when you get home from school, feeling they’re only together because of you. No, I might only have had you but I’ve never, never doubted that you loved me and wanted me.’
For a moment the two women exchanged looks of shared love and respect and then Jessica reminded her mother slyly, ‘But you still haven’t answered my original question.’
‘No. Well, as I said at first, it was the last thing on my mind, and then as you grew older…Well, to be honest with you, Jess, there just never seemed to be the time, or at least it’s probably more honest to say that there never was a man for whom I wanted to make the time.’
‘Perhaps you were afraid…afraid of allowing anyone to get too close to you in case they hurt you the way he…the way my father hurt you,’ Jessica suggested shrewdly.
‘Perhaps,’ Lacey agreed.
‘Well, it can’t have been because you didn’t have the opportunity,’ Jessica added forthrightly.
She laughed when Lacey flushed again.
‘Oh, Ma…sometimes you make me feel as though you’re the little girl. Look at you! I’ve seen the way men give you a second look, the way they watch you. And it’s not just because you look sexy.’
When Lacey started to object, she overruled her and went on firmly.
‘No, I don’t care how much you try to deny it, you are; but it’s not just that…it’s something else. Something to do with the fact that you’re so small and…and vulnerable-looking.’
‘Well I may be short on inches, but that does not make me vulnerable,’Lacey told her quickly.
It was a sensitive issue, this obvious vulnerability she knew she possessed and yet seemed unable to do anything about. Others had commented on it, women friends…men. She knew that it was, like Jessica herself, something that had come with her marriage, or rather with the ending of it. But the last thing she wanted to do this evening was to think about the past.
Even now there were still times when she dreamed about it…about him…and in those dreams still remembered. When she woke up her response to the remembered hand against her skin was so acute, so sharp that the realisation that it was just a dream seemed impossible to accept. And there were other dreams…dreams when she cried out her shock, her disbelief, her anguish, and woke up with her face wet with tears.
Oddly enough those dreams had intensified since Jessica had gone to university. It was almost as though her subconscious self had tried to restrain them while Jessica was there, knowing how much she would hate her daughter to be upset…to know how very intensely she still remembered events which were over months before her daughter’s birth.
At first she had put it down to the fact that she was missing Jess…the fact that she was, for the first time in twenty years, really alone; and yet her life was busy and fulfilled. She had a good job…good friends…and, since she had got herself involved in the fund-raising for little Michael, she scarcely seemed to have had a moment to call her own.
Tonight was the culmination of many months of hard work, bringing Michael’s plight to the attention of the country via the media, raising money through all manner of events for research into ways of alleviating the distressing physical and mental deterioration suffered by children like Michael, children who rarely survived to adulthood—although there were varying degrees of severity and admittedly there had been very rare instances in which male children born to female carriers of the gene seemed to have escaped unscathed but these instances were far too rare to form the basis for any kind of detailed research.
Their small country town was lucky in having a very good local hospital, and now, with the money they had raised, further research could be done. It couldn’t bring back the two sons the Sullivans had already lost, of course, Lacey acknowledged sadly as she parked her car outside the civic hall.
They were halfway across the car park when Jessica, who had been walking a couple of yards behind her, suddenly caught up with her, taking hold of her arm and giving her a small shake as she told her with a soft laugh, ‘There—see—it’s happened again: A man just getting out of the smoothest-looking car you’ve ever seen was really giving you the eye.’
‘Jessica!’ Lacey protested. ‘Honestly. I—’
‘OK, OK, but it seems so wrong that you should be on your own like this, Mum. You’re only thirty-eight. You should marry again…I hate the thought of you spending the rest of your life on your own. One of our tutors was saying the other day that there are women now, career women, who are marrying for the first time in their late thirties and having children…that the mature older woman with young children will soon be more the norm…that people won’t feel so isolated when they get older because they will still have children at home…and—’
‘Ah, I see where this is all leading: you’re worried that I’m going to become a burden to you in my old age. Well, I’ve got news for you, my darling daughter: I don’t need a husband to produce children.’
‘No, but you do need a man,’ Jessica told her bluntly. ‘And it isn’t that. You know that. It’s just that I’m beginning to realise how much you missed out on, and if you want the truth I feel guilty, Ma. If it hadn’t been for me, you could—’
‘Stop right there,’ Lacey told her firmly. ‘If it hadn’t been for you I’d probably have given up and…and done something very, very silly indeed,’ she said quietly and truthfully, watching the shock register in her daughter’s eyes. ‘You were my lifeline, Jess. You were my reason for going on living. Without you—’
‘You really loved him that much?’ Jessica shivered. ‘Oh, God, Ma, I’m never, ever going to let myself be vulnerable to a man like that.’
Lacey felt her heart sink. She had been afraid of this. Afraid that in her honesty she might have warped Jessica’s own attitude to love.
‘Loving someone always makes you vulnerable, Jess, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad.’ She pushed Jessica’s long hair off her face and smiled at her. ‘You will fall in love, you know,’ she told her softly. ‘And, when you do, you’ll wonder how you can ever have believed you wouldn’t, I promise you.’
She prayed that she was right, and that Jessica wouldn’t cut herself off from the happiness that loving someone would bring her just because of her experience.
After all, it was quite true. Lacey could have gone on to form another relationship, to have married a second time. The fact that she had chosen not to was…Well, as she had already told Jessica, there had simply never been a man who had made her feel that she wanted to.
Or was it that she had never allowed there to be a man who might have made her feel that way?
Uncomfortably she pushed away the thought. What was the matter with her? She had far more important