style="font-size:15px;"> Lance Stanford raised his hand in farewell and the heavy vehicle turned and drove away. Tamsyn glanced back once as Joanna urged her inside, into the warmth and light of the polished hallway, and then gave her attention to her immediate surroundings.
She awoke reluctantly next morning, feeling the rays of the sun as it played upon her eyelids. She rolled on to her stomach, burying her face in the pillows, not wanting to remember where she was, or think of the prospect of the days and weeks ahead of her.
Her room was small but compact, with a single, spring-interior divan and oak furniture. Used to fitted carpets, Tamsyn had found the linoleum-covered floor rather chilling to her feet, but there was a soft rug beside her bed where she had undressed the night before.
The night before …
She sighed. She had not made a good impression and she knew it. She thought perhaps her father had been disappointed in her attitude, but she couldn’t be sure. Her own feelings were easier to assimilate. She had found her father the same gentle man he had always seemed to her, but she felt no real emotion towards him. And Joanna it was difficult to see in any other light than that of the woman who had broken up her parents’ marriage. It might be true that Laura had not been the ideal wife for a man like Lance, but nevertheless, that didn’t alter the fact that it had been her father who had left her mother, not the other way around. She had expected it to be difficult, coming here, but not half as difficult as it was going to be now that she had found that Joanna was pregnant.
She ought not to be shocked, she had told herself over and over again, but she was. And why? Her father was still a young man, after all, barely forty, and it was only natural that he and Joanna should want children. But if only they had not chosen this particular time when Tamsyn had to be there, to see it. She had made no comment about Joanna’s condition the night before, and nor had they. But sooner or later she would have to, and she dreaded it. She didn’t know much about pregnancies, but judging by Joanna’s size it could surely not be much longer before she had the child. And where would she have it? In hospital? It seemed unlikely when her father was a doctor. So she would have it here, quite possibly while Tamsyn was staying.
Tamsyn slid abruptly out of bed. Such thoughts were not conducive to a peaceful frame of mind at this hour of the day and she determinedly walked to the window and looked out on the scene that spread out before her.
The landscape was green and rolling, and somewhere she could hear the sound of running water. But what amazed her most was its emptiness, acres and acres of rolling moorland without a house or village spire to be seen. Away to the left, in a fold of the hills, she knew the village of Trefallath nestled, but here there was nothing but the tree-strewn marches populated by sheep and goats and the lonely cry of the curlew.
She drew away from the window and glanced at her watch. It was a little after eight, and she wondered what she should do. Go downstairs, she supposed. After all, she could hardly expect Joanna to run after her, and nor did she want her to. But she wondered where her father was. Where did he have his surgery? Surely not here, some distance from the village. How on earth did Joanna stand the loneliness?
She washed in the bathroom with its disturbingly noisy geyser gurgling away beside her and then dressed in jeans and a sleeveless sweater. She didn’t bother with make-up, but combed her thick hair into some kind of order before leaving her room.
As she descended the staircase she could hear Joanna singing in the kitchen, and she sighed. There was no point in maintaining a kind of armed truce with someone with whom one was going to have to spend a great deal of time, she decided reasonably, with a pang of remorse for her mother. But her mother was not here, she was, and nothing she said would alter the inevitable. With determined brightness, she turned the handle of the kitchen door and entered the room.
Joanna was at the stove, her face shiny from the heat of the pans. ‘Oh, good morning,’ she said, in surprise. ‘You’re up, then! I was going to bring your breakfast up to you.’
Tamsyn bit her lip. ‘There’s no need for that, really. I’m perfectly capable of getting up and making my own breakfast. Besides, in—in your condition, you should be resting, shouldn’t you?’
Joanna stopped what she was doing and looked squarely at her stepdaughter. ‘You noticed, then.’
Tamsyn coloured. ‘Yes. Where’s my father?’
‘He’s gone to see Mrs. Evans. She had a seizure in the night.’ Joanna frowned. ‘You didn’t say anything to your father last night.’
‘No.’ Tamsyn moved her shoulders defensively. ‘Look, Joanna, I’ll be honest with you. I didn’t want to come here, but my mother wanted me to, so I came.’ She sighed. ‘Last night I was tired. It was quite an ordeal coming here—alone. I—well, needed time to think.’
‘And now you’ve thought,’ said Joanna.
‘Yes.’
‘You didn’t think that your father might be hurt by your not mentioning it sooner?’
Tamsyn moved her head. ‘Look—it’s difficult for me, too, Joanna.’
‘And from your expression last night it wasn’t just difficult, it was unacceptable, wasn’t it?’
Tamsyn scuffed her toe, her hands tucked into the belt of her jeans. ‘I guess so.’
‘Why? What’s so unacceptable about two married people loving one another enough to want children? Wasn’t that what your mother and father did when they had you?’
‘That was different!’ Tamsyn felt uncomfortable. ‘Well, no, I guess it wasn’t. But just give me time. I—I’ll get over it.’
‘And in the meantime your father has to worry about you, eh?’ Joanna turned back to the stove.
‘It’s not like that,’ exclaimed Tamsyn indignantly. ‘Good heavens, he surely didn’t expect me to behave as though everything was as it should be! I mean—I scarcely know him! Let alone feel at home with him!’
‘Whose fault is that?’
‘Why, no one’s, I guess.’
‘You blame your father for everything, don’t you?’ Joanna ladled scrambled eggs on to a plate.
‘No—that is—no, I don’t.’ But she did, and Joanna knew it. ‘Look—can’t we start again? I know it’s difficult for you, too. But if I’m to stay here, we can’t go on like this.’
‘I agree.’ Joanna came to the scrubbed wooden table that dominated the kitchen. She rested her hands on the table and looked into Tamsyn’s flushed young face. ‘All right, Tamsyn. We’ll begin again. I won’t make things difficult for you, if you don’t make things difficult for me.’
‘What do you mean?’ Tamsyn frowned.
Joanna shook her head. ‘You really don’t know your father very well, do you? Do you honestly think that your attitude last night didn’t upset him? Don’t you realise that he thinks the world of you? He always has. He hasn’t seen much of you, but maybe that’s why he’s built you up in his mind into something—something marvellous, terrific! His daughter! His Tamsyn! That side of him hasn’t been easy to live with, believe me! And now you’re here, and if you think things can go on as before so long as you remain indifferent to him,
