He was wasting his breath, of course. He didn’t need to look at her face to know that. Georgia was bound to feel guilty. She always had felt guilty about Becca, and Becca dying wasn’t going to change that.
‘I’m sorry about Becca, Georgia,’ he said sincerely. ‘It must have been a shock for you.’
‘Yes.’ Georgia remembered that terrible phone call, more than a year ago now. Her mother’s distress had been so acute that it had taken ages before Georgia could understand what had happened and, when she had finally grasped what her mother was trying to tell her, she had known at once that her life would never be the same again.
‘Yes, it was,’ she said. ‘It was terrible, but not as terrible as it was for Toby. He was only seven, and he’d lost his whole world. Becca might have been irresponsible, but she did love him, and she was his mother. No one else will ever be able to take her place.’
‘But you’re trying?’
Georgia looked up at that. ‘I’m doing the best I can,’ she said quietly. ‘But it’s never going to be enough.’
‘Why you?’ asked Mac after a moment. ‘Where’s Toby’s father?’
‘Who knows?’ Georgia lifted her shoulders helplessly. ‘I don’t think Becca did. He took off before Toby was born, and she never tried to find him. Even if it were possible to somehow track him down, I couldn’t hand Toby over to a perfect stranger. That’s why I adopted him.’
Mac shifted restlessly in his chair. He wanted to get up and prowl around, but the office was simply too small, so he was stuck there, struggling to assimilate what she had told him. It was totally unreasonable to resent Georgia for doing the right thing by her nephew, but he still did. He didn’t like the fact that she had gone ahead and changed her life for her sister’s child when she hadn’t been prepared to change it for a child of his.
He didn’t like himself for not liking it. He knew he was being unfair and unkind and unreasonable.
But that was how he felt.
‘What about your mother?’ he said. ‘Couldn’t she have taken Toby?’
‘She couldn’t cope, Mac. She used to babysit him when Becca went out, but he was really too much for her. And anyway—’ Georgia stopped as she felt her voice wobble treacherously.
Damn Mac. There was something about him that brought all her emotions to the surface and left her feeling raw and vulnerable. She hadn’t cried for ages, and she wasn’t about to start again in front of him.
Fiercely swallowing down the tears, she cleared her throat. ‘Anyway,’ she said again, more strongly this time, ‘Mum never got over the shock of Becca’s accident. She had a fatal stroke three months later.’
‘Oh, Georgia.’ Mac half rose out of the chair, then checked himself. Her father had died before they were married, and it was Georgia who had supported her mother and sister ever since.
He looked at her sitting behind her desk, her chin lifted defensively as if to ward off any attempts at sympathy for the fact that she had recently lost all her family. And he hadn’t been there to help her through any of it.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said inadequately.
Georgia gave a brief smile of acknowledgement, and then went on. ‘Mum did her best with Toby, and I came down every weekend, but it wasn’t really working, and the social services were suggesting that they tried to find him a foster family when she died. I was due to have a meeting with them after the funeral, but I just looked at Toby that morning and realised I couldn’t go through with it. I was the only family he had—and he was the only family I had.’
Her eyes darkened with the memory of those dreadful days. ‘I told them that I would take him.’
‘So that’s why you’re here in Askerby?’ said Mac after a moment.
She nodded. ‘I tried taking Toby to London, but he hated it. I had a super-cool loft apartment by the Thames, but no garden and there were no other children there. He was miserable at school and childcare arrangements were a nightmare…
‘Toby just closed down,’ she told him, shuddering at the very memory. ‘He stopped talking, and I realised I was either going to have to give up on him or give up on my career.’
She mustered a smile and looked at Mac. ‘I didn’t really have a choice. He’s been better ever since I brought him back. I’d sold Mum’s house, but I’ve bought a new one, and he’s back at his old school. I thought I might have to try freelancing, but then I got this job…and look at me now.’ She waved grandly around her tiny office, her expression ironic. ‘I always did want to be an editor.’
Of a national newspaper, maybe. Georgia’s plans had never included a dusty little local rag like this, Mac knew. She had given up a lot for Toby.
‘It can’t have been easy for you,’ he offered. ‘We all thought you were going far and that you would be editor of The Times at least by now!’
‘Oh, come now, why would I want The Times when I can have all this?’ said Georgia with a wry smile. Through the glass wall she could see the shabby newsroom whose only occupant, Kevin, the sports reporter, was leaning back in his chair reading a tabloid. God only knew where the others were. They seemed to drift in and out at will, as far as Georgia could make out.
The sense of torpor that hung over the place depressed her anew, and Mac’s presence only made the contrast with her previous life the crueller. He sat there exuding recklessness and an exotic mix of danger and glamour that belonged with breaking news and rush of adrenalin, the sense of being where important things were happening and news was being made, not just reported.
Mac looked as out of place in this dull, provincial office as she felt. He didn’t have to be here, though, and she did. It wasn’t about what she wanted any more. Toby came first now, she reminded herself fiercely.
But, oh, there were times when she longed to wake up and find that it was all a bad dream and that she was back at the newsdesk in London, two phones at each ear and emails from around the world bombarding her inbox, with the clock ticking towards the deadline and the whole office buzzing with excitement.
Georgia suppressed a sigh and focused on Mac once more. ‘This is my life now,’ she said, wishing she could sound more excited and positive about it. ‘I’ve accepted that I need to make a new life here in Askerby, and I can’t do that as long as I’m legally married to you.’
‘You’ve met someone else.’ It was a statement rather than a question.
She hesitated, although she couldn’t think why. ‘Yes,’ she said after the tiniest of pauses.
‘And you want to get married again?’ he asked in an abrasive voice.
‘No.’ She shook her head firmly, surprised at the way she had instinctively recoiled at the very idea of marrying anyone else.
Although, if she was honest, marriage was probably what Geoffrey had in mind. Georgia wasn’t prepared to go that far just yet, though.
‘There’s no question of marriage at the moment,’ she said. ‘It’s true that I’ve met someone…a nice man who cares for me and who I think can offer me what I need, but it doesn’t seem fair to embark on a serious relationship with him until I’ve resolved things with you. He’s made me realise that by always putting off the idea of divorce I’ve never really moved on, and that’s what I think I need to do now.’
Mac began to feel a little better. It didn’t sound as if this so-called ‘serious relationship’ had got very far. It was typical of Georgia to want to play fair and start a new relationship uncluttered by baggage from the old one—she always did like things tidy—but this man, whoever he was, couldn’t be that keen if he