told me...’ he began, then cleared his throat. ‘She told me...’ He stared at the top of her head as she suddenly became totally engrossed in her trainers. ‘She told me about sports day,’ he said, finally. ‘Did you forget, or didn’t you want me to come?’
She flung her head up. ‘No! You mustn’t! You mustn’t come!’
‘Why?’ Her reaction startled him but he tried not to show it, tried to hide his concern beneath a grin. ‘Are you going to come last in everything?’
For a moment he saw her struggle with a lie, with the temptation to tell him that she was going to be terrible. But maybe she realised he didn’t give a hoot where she came in the fifty metres, or whether she fell over her feet in the high jump, that he would come because he loved to see her having fun. ‘No. But if you come it will spoil—’ She stopped.
‘Spoil what, sweetheart?’
‘I...I...’ She reddened, swallowed. ‘I’ve done something that’s going to make you really angry. Daddy.’
He was almost afraid to ask, but he had to know, so he pulled her towards him, picked her up and settled her against his chest. ‘Let me decide about that. I don’t suppose it’s as bad as you think.’
The words were a long time coming and when they did come they were mumbled into his chest. ‘I—wrote—to—my...’ His heart seemed to stop beating during an endless pause.
‘Who did you write to, sweetheart?’ he prompted, when be could no longer bear it.
‘My mother. I wrote to my mother and asked her to come to sports day.’ And then the words tumbled out, unstoppable. ‘I asked her to come because they said I was lying, they wouldn’t believe me, but it’s true, isn’t it?’ She sat back and looked up at him, every cell in her body appealing to him to tell her it was so. ‘Brooke Lawrence is my mother.’
His throat was tight, a lump the size of a tennis ball blocking the words. But he had to say them. ‘Yes, Lucy. Your mother is Brooke Lawrence.’
If he’d expected anything, it would have been reproach that he hadn’t told her before. Her triumphant, ‘Yes!’ was like a knife to his heart. ‘And she’ll come to sports day and everyone will know—’ She slid from his lap and twirled giddily across the living room floor.
‘Look out!’ His warning came too late as she swept a small china spaniel from the top of the television. It hit the carpet and bounced and would have been safe but before she could stop herself Lucy trod on it and there was an ominous crunching noise.
Fitz caught her by the arms as she catapulted back towards him, holding her still, his arms about her in a protective vice, a safe place he had made for her, a place where nothing could hurt her...or so he had thought.
He eased away and bent to pick up the china dog. ‘Just a little chip here,’ he said, rubbing his thumb over the dog’s nose. Then, ‘And we can stick his ear back on.’ He picked up the ear and it crumbled in his fingers. It was a sensation that was rapidly becoming familiar.
When he finally looked up, dared to face her, Lucy was standing exactly where he had left her. He had never seen her so still.
‘I took the key to your desk from your dressing table,’ she said. ‘We were doing a project about family history and Josie brought in her birth certificate. It had her mother’s name on it and I realised...’ She stopped. ‘I’m sorry, Daddy.’
Oh, no. He was the one who was sorry. She should never have been reduced to taking keys, hunting in drawers to find out what she should always have known. ‘You saw the photographs, the custody papers?’ She frowned, not understanding the word, but of course she had found them. How else would she have known where to write?
‘She will come, won’t she, Daddy?’ She looked so desperate, so needy. How long had she been feeling this way? Why hadn’t he noticed? ‘I told her you wouldn’t be there, that she wouldn’t have to meet you.’
‘Did you?’ He almost smiled at her bluntness. Almost. ‘In that case I’m sure she will. If she can. But she might be abroad, making one of her films.’ Please, God... ‘Had you thought of that?’
Lucy’s face fell momentarily, then immediately brightened. ‘No, she can’t be. I saw her on television last week.’
Yes. He’d seen her too, trailing a new series that was starting next month. But they were clips from the series and meant nothing. Except of course that a new series meant a book tie-in, the endless round of the chat shows, breakfast television, the whole publicity circuit.
He would have to find out, because Fitz, despite a cast-iron certainty that Brooke wouldn’t want to come within a country mile of her daughter, found himself making a silent promise to the child that if it was humanly possible, even if he had to hog-tie the woman and bring her in the boot of his Range Rover, she would put in an appearance at sports day.
CHAPTER TWO
SHE couldn’t put it off any longer. Bron bit into her toast, putting it off. She would have to call Lucy’s father and tell him about the letter.
The idea was sufficient to dull her appetite and she abandoned the toast. If only she hadn’t opened the letter. If only she could forget she’d ever seen it. It hadn’t been meant for her, after all. If it hadn’t been for the coincidence of their initials, if her mother’s first gift to her father hadn’t been a hand tooled leather bound edition of the complete works of Rupert Brooke and if he hadn’t responded with an equally beautiful copy of Wuthering Heights, she would never have opened it...
She’d drink her coffee first. She reached for her mug, sent the jar of marmalade flying, flinched as it hit the quarry-tiled floor and smashed. She spent the next few minutes carefully picking out the glass, cleaning up the sticky mess. It had to be done, she told herself, but she knew she was simply prevaricating. Putting off the moment.
The important thing was that she had opened the letter; whatever the truth, Lucy Fitzpatrick was a child who needed help and maybe she was the only person in the world who knew that
She’d spent the long wakeful hours of the night—still unable to get used to the silence, the fact that no one needed her—telling herself that getting involved in other people’s domestic problems was simply asking for trouble. Telling herself was one thing, however, convincing herself something else.
At first light she’d given up the struggle for sleep and taken herself into the cool, early-morning garden and tried to forget about Lucy in a furious blitz on the weeds that seemed to leap out of the ground in full flower at this time of year. She had her own problems. Like what was she going to do with the rest of her life?
She had no job skills: all she knew was caring for her mother. The thought had led her back to Lucy, to wonder who was caring for her. A housekeeper or nanny, perhaps? Or did she go home to an empty house after school while her father worked?
Eventually hunger had kicked in, reminding her that she had had no breakfast and she straightened, easing her back, dead-heading the roses as she walked slowly back towards the empty house, she finally acknowledged that nothing was going to drive Lucy from her mind. The need to do something was at war with common sense and common sense didn’t stand a chance. She could not possibly ignore the letter.
But
