pizza. The second one.’
‘That’s pizza with pepperoni and olives,’ she announced.
It elicited a boyish, ‘Yuk. I’ve changed my mind. I’ll have pizza, the first one.’
‘Anchovies.’
‘Double yuk.’
‘Ham and mushroom?’
‘Yeah, suppose that’ll do.’
‘But no picking off the mushroom,’ she warned as she got the ready-made meal out of the freezer, ‘and you’ll have it with orange juice so at least something healthy passes your lips today.’
He pulled a face. ‘I had chips for lunch. That’s a vegetable.’
‘Potatoes are a vegetable,’ she corrected. ‘Fry them and we’re talking a whole new ballgame.’
‘Like the difference between football and pinball,’ he suggested wryly.
‘Quite,’ she agreed, wrestling with an oven shelf that refused to pull out.
The cooker was ancient. It had been here in the time of the Doyles and must have been antiquated then. A poor tool for a woman like Mary Doyle, who had been a wonderful cook.
A lovely person, too. Kind and thoughtful and endlessly patient. That was how Esme remembered her, anyway.
She’d died that same year, before Harry had been conceived, so she’d never seen her little grandson.
It was sad, really. Though her own mother wouldn’t even let Harry call her grandmother, she imagined Mary Doyle would have been different.
Would she have told her? Esme suspected there would have been no need. She would have seen. The smile was Jack’s, as was the temperament. Maybe it was elemental, a recognition of genes shared.
Thank God it hadn’t been put to the test that afternoon. But what if Jack actually bought Highfield? Wouldn’t a meeting of man and boy be inevitable?
She shook her head. Yes, it would, but it wasn’t going to happen. It couldn’t.
Esme had no logical reason for this certainty, just blind faith and the fact she couldn’t allow herself to believe otherwise.
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