went to bed in a happier frame of mind. Max, with the portrait of her daughter packed in her luggage, had taken off from Madrid en route to Brazil, and must have landed in Rio by now. And Pip had not pursued her question of who her father was.
Max phoned the next night. Everything was well, she said, adding that she and Ben Turnbull were tolerating each other.
‘Tolerating?’ Leyne queried, and only then learned that Ben Turnbull had apparently been expecting a male Max Nicholson, and had been staggered to find himself stuck with a very feminine Maxine Nicholson, and with no time to find a replacement who’d had all the necessary vaccinations for foreign parts. Realising that he would have dumped her had he been able, had caused Max to metaphorically dig her heels in. While she might not like the wretched man, and given the tons of photography equipment she had to carry, she was determined to show him that she could do the job required of her every bit as well as some male counterpart. Her excitement at the prospect of the work and adventure before her was undiminished. Leyne handed the phone over to Pip so she should chat with her mother, with every confidence that Max, with the bit between her teeth, so to speak, would do exactly that.
Leyne was not feeling so happy the following evening, though. Dianne Gardner had collected Pip from school with her daughter Alice. Leyne collected Pip on her way home from her office, and, ‘Leyne?’ Pip began seriously the moment they were indoors.
‘Pip?’ Leyne enquired, her mind more on what they were going to have for supper than what was on her niece’s mind.
‘Do you know why my father has never been to see me?’
Oh, sweetheart, Leyne mourned, even as her spirits plummeted. ‘I don’t, Pip, I’m sorry,’ she apologised. ‘Perhaps he and your mother had a bad falling-out.’
Her niece was silent for a while as she considered Leyne’s reply, but was soon giving Leyne more cause for disquiet when she went on to solemnly ask, ‘Leyne, if you truly don’t know who my father is, do you think you could find out?’
Oh, heavens—how did she handle this? Leyne looked at her, looked into those lovely green eyes. ‘It’s—um—important, is it, chick?’ she returned lightly. ‘I mean, do you think you could wait until your mum comes home?’
Pip did not need to think about it for very long. ‘No. I don’t think I could,’ she answered gravely. ‘I’ve wanted to know who he is for some while, but—well, Mum was always so busy, and I rather think I was a bit embarrassed too to ask. And, well, I don’t think I could wait endless months until Mum gets back.’
Leyne studied her niece’s earnest little face, and just had to go to her and give her a hug. ‘It might take me some little while,’ she hedged. ‘But can you leave it with me, and I’ll see what I can do?’
‘I knew you would,’ Pip responded trustingly—and Leyne felt her heart would break. How long had this been fidgeting away in the dear child’s head?
Leyne wondered what could she do? Goodness knew when Max would be in touch again. Should she try to contact her on her cellphone? Why not? Max, after all, was the only person to tell her, and also to tell her how she wanted her to handle this delicate situation.
Leyne waited until Pip had been in bed an hour before, calculating that it would be around seven in the evening in Brazil, she rang her sister’s mobile phone number.
Her hope, however, that she would not be ringing Max in the middle of something extremely important was not required. Her sister’s phone was on voicemail, and Leyne realised Max must have switched it off.
Over the next few days, very much aware of how frequently Pip would give her that serious-eyed look, Leyne tried to contact her sister. But each time she met with the same result. Max’s phone was never switched on.
With Pip’s silently questioning eyes starting to haunt her, Leyne gave serious thought to calling the emergency contact number Max had left. But would Max or, by the sound of it, grumpy Ben Turnbull appreciate some runner chasing after them in some dense jungle—or wherever they might be—with the domestic question of who was Max’s child’s father?
It was a dilemma that caused Leyne to have some very fitful nights. But, whatever she did, she knew that she must not panic. She must deal with this as she had so glibly told Max that she could deal with anything that cropped up. She must deal with it calmly and without fuss. But where the Dickens did she start if she was to try not to send someone racing after Max when she had barely just left on her six-month-long assignment?
‘I suppose you’re busy tomorrow?’ Keith Collins asked when he stopped by Leyne’s desk on Friday.
Pip was having a sleepover at Alice Gardner’s home tomorrow. ‘Depends why?’ Leyne replied with a smile.
‘I was thinking dinner—and then coffee at my place?’
Leyne wasn’t so very sure about the coffee offer. While she did not doubt that Keith was quite capable of making them coffee, it was what went with the coffee that she was wary of. She liked Keith, but was only starting to get to know him.
‘Dinner sounds lovely,’ she accepted.
‘I’ll call for you at seven,’ he replied, with a wolfish kind of grin, and went on his way.
Leyne supposed she was still half hoping that Pip was not truly serious about wanting to know the identity of her father. But, on picking her up from Dianne Gardner’s house after work, Leyne soon realised that her niece was far from ready to let go.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve any news for me yet?’ Pip asked, within five minutes of seeing her.
Leyne did not pretend not to know what she was talking about. ‘It’s a bit early yet, love. Er—it may take weeks rather than days,’ she replied. With Max more or less incommunicado, she had not the first idea where to look. And supposing she were to find out. Did she have the right to tell Pip? Conversely, did she have the right to withhold that information from her? ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’
‘I know you will,’ Pip said trustingly—and at the little girl’s faith in her, so Leyne knew that she could just not ignore her need to know who her father was.
The trouble was, where to start? Pip was safely tucked up in bed that night when Leyne acknowledged that it had seemed no problem whatsoever to be appointed her niece’s guardian. But Leyne could not help but feel like some petty criminal when, biting the bullet as it were, she that night quietly entered her sister’s bedroom in search of Pip’s birth certificate.
She supposed when she had located it that it had been too much to hope that the birth certificate of Philippa Catherine Leyne might reveal who her father was. Leyne had been pretty certain, since her niece went by her mother’s surname of Nicholson, that it would not show her father’s name anyway. Even so, to see a short straight line in the space for ‘Father’ still came as a bit of a disappointment. All too clearly, Max did not want anyone to know the name of the father of her child.
Max had never spoken of him, and although Leyne supposed she must have had a natural curiosity at some stage, she was sensitive that some things were very private and were to be respected as such.
She put Pip’s birth certificate away. It seemed Max’s cellphone was permanently switched off, because all her attempts to reach her had come to nothing. Leyne briefly toyed again with the idea of using that emergency number
