No. That wasn’t right. She’d been clean for years…
Or was he still kidding himself?
A friend smuggled us out of France but I can’t hide with a baby so I’m leaving her with you…
Smuggled her out of France. Ignored a court order. Deprived a father of access to his child. Just how many felonies did that involve? All of which he was now an accessory to.
Terrific.
One minute he’d been sitting in his boardroom, discussing the final touches to the biggest deal in his career, the next he was having his life sabotaged—not for the first time—by his family.
I’m going to disappear for a while…
No surprise there. His little sister had made a career of running away and leaving someone else to pick up the pieces. She’d dropped out, run away, used drugs and alcohol in a desperate attempt to shut out all the bad stuff. Following the example of their useless parents. Making a bad situation worse.
He’d thought his sister had finally got herself together, was enjoying some small success as a model. Or maybe that was what he’d wanted to believe.
Don’t, whatever you do, call a nanny agency. They’ll want all kinds of information and, once it’s on record, Nancie’s daddy will be able to trace her…
Good grief, who was the father of this child? Was his sister in danger?
Guilt overwhelmed those first feelings of anger, frustration. He had to find her, somehow make this right, but, as the baby stirred, whimpered, he had a more urgent problem.
Saffy had managed to get her into his office without anyone noticing her—time for a shake-up in security—but that would have to wait. His first priority was to get the baby out of the building before she started screaming and his family history became the subject of the kind of gossip that had made his—and Saffy’s—youth a misery.
‘Do you want me to call an agency?’ Jake asked.
‘An agency?’
‘For a nanny?’
‘Yes…No…’
Even if Saffy’s fears were nothing but unfounded neurosis, he didn’t have anywhere to put a nanny. He didn’t even have a separate bedroom in his apartment, only a sleeping gallery reached by a spiral staircase.
It was no place for a baby, he thought as he stared at the PS Saffy had scribbled at the end of the crumpled and tear-stained note.
Ask May. She’ll help.
She’d underlined the words twice.
May. May Coleridge.
He crushed the letter in his hand.
He hadn’t spoken to May Coleridge since he was eighteen. She and Saffy had been in the same class at school and, while they hadn’t been friends—the likes of the Wavells had not been welcome at Coleridge House, as he’d discovered to his cost—at least not in the giggly girls, shopping, clubbing sense of the word, there had been some connection between them that he’d never been able to fathom.
But then that was probably what people had thought about him and May.
But while the thought of the untouchable Miss Coleridge changing the nappy of a Wavell baby might put a shine on his day, the woman had made an art form of treating him as if he were invisible.
Even on those social occasions when they found themselves face to face, there was no eye contact. Only icy civility.
‘Is there anything I can do?’
He shook his head. There was nothing anyone could do. His family was, always had been, his problem, but it was a mess he wanted out of his office. Now.
‘Follow up on the points raised at the meeting, Jake.’ He looked at the crumpled sheet of paper in his hand, then folded it and stuffed it in his shirt pocket. Unhooked his jacket from the back of his chair. ‘Keep me posted about any problems. I’m going home.’
It took a kitten to drag May out of her dark thoughts.
Her first reaction to the news that she was about to lose her home had been to rush back to its shabby comfort—no matter how illusory that comfort might be—while she came to terms with the fact that, having lost the last surviving member of her family, she was now going to lose everything else. Her home. Her business. Her future.
Once home, however, there would be no time for such indulgence. She had little enough time to unravel the life she’d made for herself. To wind down a business she’d fallen into almost by accident and, over the last few years, built into something that had given her something of her own, something to live for.
Worst of all, she’d have to tell Robbie.
Give notice to Patsy and the other women who worked for a few hours a week helping with the cleaning, the cooking and who relied on that small amount of money to help them pay their bills.
There’d be no time to spare for the luxury of grieving for the loss of their support, friendship. Her birthday was less than a month away. The birthday. The one with a big fat zero on the end.
Yesterday that hadn’t bothered her. She’d never understood why anyone would want to stop the clock at ‘twenty-nine’.
Today, if some fairy godmother were to appear and offer her three wishes, that would be number one on the list. Well, maybe not number one…
But, while fairy godmothers were pure fantasy, her date of birth was a fact that she could not deny and, by the time she’d reached the last park bench before home, the one overlooking the lake that had once been part of the parkland surrounding Coleridge House, her legs had been shaking so much that she’d been forced to stop.
Once there, she’d been unable to find the will to move again. It was a sheltered spot, a sun trap and, despite the fact that it was the first week in November, pleasantly warm. And while she sat on this park bench she was still Miss Mary Louise Coleridge of Coleridge House. Someone to be respected.
Her place in the town, the invitations to sit on charitable committees were part of her life. Looked at in the cold light of day, it was obvious that it wasn’t her they wanted, it was the Coleridge name to lend lustre to their endeavours. And Coleridge House.
No one would come knocking when she didn’t have a grand room where they could hold their meetings, with a good lunch thrown in. An elegant, if fading house with a large garden in which to hold their ‘events’.
It was the plaintive mewing of a kitten in distress that finally broke through these dark thoughts. It took her a moment to locate the scrap of orange fur clinging to the branch of a huge old beech tree set well back from the path.
‘Oh, sweetie, how on earth did you get up there?’
Since the only reply was an even more desperate mew, she got to her feet and went closer.
‘Come on. You can do it,’ she cooed, standing beneath it, hoping to coax it back down the long sloping branch that came nearly to the ground. It edged further up the branch.
She looked around, hoping for someone tall enough to reach up and grab it but there wasn’t a soul in sight. Finally, when it became clear that there wasn’t anything else for it, she took off her jacket, kicked off her shoes and, skirting a muddy puddle, she caught hold of the branch, found a firm foothold and pulled herself up.
Bitterly regretting that he’d taken advantage of the unseasonably fine weather to walk in to the office, Adam escaped the building via his private lift to the car park. He’d hoped to pick up a taxi at the rank on the corner but there were none waiting and he crossed the road to the park. It was a slightly longer way home, but there was less chance of being