The woman who opened the door was older, familiar—a friend of Phoebe’s. Elizabeth? Eleanor? She put her finger to her lips. ‘Grace is in the kitchen but she’s just dropped off. Try not to wake her. She hasn’t been sleeping and she’s exhausted.’
He nodded.
‘You must be, too,’ she said, putting her hand on his arm. ‘It’s a terrible homecoming for you. I’m so sorry about Michael. He was a lovely man.’ She didn’t wait for him to answer, just said, ‘I’ll go now you’re here, but tell Grace to ring me if she needs anything. I’ll call in tomorrow.’
‘Yes. Thank you…’ Elspeth. ‘Thank you, Elspeth.’
He watched her until she was in her car, then picked up the bags that Jack had left on the top step, placed them inside and shut the door as quietly as he could. Each movement slow, deliberate, as if he could somehow steady the sudden wild beating of a heart that was loud enough to wake Grace all by itself.
He told himself that he should wait.
Go down to the basement flat, take a shower. But to do that, he’d need the key and the key cupboard was in the kitchen.
For the first time for as long as he could remember, he was frozen in indecision, unable to move. Staring down at the hall table where a pile of post—cards, some addressed to Grace, some to him—waited to be opened. Read.
He frowned. Cards?
He opened one, saw the lilies. In sympathy…
He dropped it as if burned, stepped back, dragged his hands over his face, through his hair as he looked down the hall. Then, because there was nothing else to do, he turned and walked slowly towards the kitchen.
He pushed the door very gently. It still squeaked. How many times had he heard Michael promise Phoebe that he’d do something about it?
He’d offered to do it himself, but Phoebe had just smiled. She liked the warning squeak, she’d told him. Liked to have something to complain about once in a while. It wasn’t good for a man to believe he was perfect.
He could have told her that Michael didn’t believe that. On the contrary. But that had been a secret between the two of them and, somehow, he’d managed to smile back.
He paused, holding his breath, but there was no sound and he stepped into the room that had always been the hub of the house. Warm, roomy, with a big table for everyone to gather around. An old armchair by the Aga that the fourteen-year-old Grace had taken to like a security blanket, homing in on it when she’d arrived clutching a plastic bag that contained everything she possessed under one arm, a small scruffy terrier under the other.
The pair of them had practically lived in it. And it was the first place she’d taken the puppy he’d given her when old Harry had died a few months later and he’d been afraid her heart was going to break.
The puppy, too, had finally died of old age, but now she had a new love. Posie. The baby she had borne with the purest heart as surrogate for the sister who had given her a home and who was now lying, boneless in sleep, against her shoulder.
Michael, hoping that if Josh saw the baby he would finally understand, forgive him even, had e-mailed him endless photographs of Posie, giving him a running commentary on her progress since the day she’d been born, refusing to be deterred by Josh’s lack of response.
There had been no photographs of Grace until the christening and then only in a group consisting of Grace, as godmother, holding Posie, flanked by Michael and Phoebe. A happy picture in which everyone had been smiling and sent, he suspected, with just a touch of defiance. A ‘see what you’re missing’ message.
He hadn’t cared about that. He’d only cared about Grace and he’d cropped the picture so that it was only of Grace and Posie. He’d had it enlarged and printed so that he could carry it with him.
Her face had been outwardly serene, but a photograph was just a two-dimensional image. It was without warmth, scent. You could touch it, but it gave nothing back. But then it had been a very long time since Grace had given anything back to him. Keeping her distance, her eyes always guarded on his visits home.
At least he’d had time to get over his shock that, some time in the last year, she’d cut her beautiful long hair into a short elfin style. He’d come to terms with the fact that her boyish figure had finally filled out in lush womanly curves.
But this scene was not a photograph.
This was an intimate view of motherhood as only a husband, a father would see it and he stood perfectly still, scarcely daring to breathe, wanting to hold the moment, freeze this timeless image in his memory. Then, almost in slow motion, he saw the empty feeding bottle that had dropped into her lap begin a slow slide to the floor.
He moved swiftly to catch it before it hit the tiles and woke her, but when he looked up he realised that his attempt to keep her from being disturbed had failed.
Or maybe not. Her eyes were open and she was looking at him, but she wasn’t truly awake. She wasn’t seeing him. He froze, holding his breath, willing her to close them again and drift back off to sleep.
She stirred. ‘Michael?’ she said.
Not quite seeing him, not yet remembering. Still he hoped…
She blinked, focused, frowned.
He saw the exact moment when it all came flooding back, and instinctively reached out to her as he had a year ago. As if he could somehow stop time, go back, save her from a world of pain. ‘Grace…’
‘Oh, Josh…’
In that unguarded moment, in those two little words, it was all there. All the loss, all the heartache and, sinking to his knees, this time he did not step back, but followed through, gathering her into his arms, holding her close.
For ten years he’d lived with a memory of her in his arms, the heavy silk of her hair trailing across his skin, her sweet mouth a torment of innocence and knowing eagerness as she’d taken him to a place that until then he hadn’t known he had wanted to go.
He’d lived with the memory of tearing himself away from her, fully aware that he’d done the unforgivable, then compounded his sin by leaving her asleep in his bed to wake alone.
He’d told himself that he’d had no choice.
Grace had needed security, a settled home, a man who would put her first while, for as long as he could remember, he’d had his eyes set on far horizons, on travelling light and fast. He’d needed total freedom to take risks as he built an empire of his own.
But nothing he had done, nothing he had achieved, not even a hastily conceived and swiftly regretted marriage, had ever dulled the memory of that one night they’d spent together and still, in his dreams, his younger self reached out for her.
It had been unbearably worse during the last twelve months. Sleep had been elusive and when he did manage an hour he woke with an almost desperate yearning for something precious, something that was lost for ever.
This. This woman clinging to him, this child…
He brushed his lips against her temple and then, his head full of the warm, milky scent of baby, he kissed Posie and for one perfect moment all the pain, all the agony of the last twenty-four hours fell away.
Grace floated towards consciousness in slow, confused stages. She had no idea where she was, or why there was a weight against her shoulder, pinning her down. Why Michael was there, watching her. Knowing on some untapped level of consciousness that it couldn’t be him.
Then, as she slowly, unwillingly surfaced, he said her name. Just that.
‘Grace…’
Exactly as he had once, years and years ago, before gathering her up in his arms. And she knew