imitation tree that stood forlornly in one corner. The need to know more about her had brought him all this way.
He tried to imagine her living in this house, but his thoughts turned to Jo, and it was she he pictured in his mind, maybe on a ladder, laughing as she tried to fix a star to the pathetic tree.
He closed his eyes, replacing Jo’s image with one of his mother that he had only formed from pictures, and the stories his father would tell. Would Dottie tell him more stories, the ones he’d come so far to hear? Stories of his mother as a child, her likes and dislikes, anything at all to turn her into a living person instead of a picture by his bed.
It had been close to Christmas back then, too, some annual event having brought his father to the tiny seaside town, and he knew it was a degree of silly sentimentality to have come now, to find out what he could before he married and settled down, taking some of the burden of official duties from his father.
Had his mother prowled the room as he now prowled, arguing with herself—or her parents—about leaving with the lying vagabond?
He knew that had to be his father, because neither of them had ever loved another. And a vagabond he might have been, only even then, Charles was sure, he’d have been called a backpacker. Travel had been something his father had been determined to do, the only time he’d ever argued with his parents. But although it had disturbed his relationship with them, he’d known he had to see something of the world, to mix with ordinary people, the kind of people he would one day rule.
He himself had done much the same, he realised, when he’d insisted on studying medicine in Edinburgh, with men and women from all layers of society. Eton had been all very well for an education, but he knew how his fellow students had thought and how that layer of society worked. He’d needed to know everyday people.
Even back home for holidays, he’d worked in bars and cafés in the summer, and been a ski instructor in the winter.
But getting back to his father...
A lying vagabond?
Jo returned before he had time to consider the word Dottie had used, bringing light into the gloomy room with her smile.
‘Been looking for memories of your mother?’ she said. ‘I’ve done the same, but sadly never found a thing.’
She paused, then added, ‘Though I don’t pry to the extent of going through drawers. I wouldn’t take advantage of Dottie that way, but I do shake out the books I borrow to read, just in case there’s a photo been left to mark a page.’
Charles looked at the wall of books at the back of the room and shook his head. It would take for ever...
‘Has she not spoken of her to you?’ he asked.
Jo shook her head.
‘Not a word, and apparently there’s enough solidarity in the village that no one else ever talks about her. I know there has to be a reason because although Dottie’s a bit eccentric—well, pretty eccentric—she’s not irrational.’
She sighed, shook her head, and bent over to pick up a glass bauble from a box of decorations that stood by the tree, hanging it on a low branch before turning back to Charles.
‘Dottie and I usually have grilled cheese on toast for supper, but if you haven’t had dinner and would like something more substantial, there are lamb cutlets and plenty of salad things.’
Charles shook his head.
‘Grilled cheese on toast sounds fantastic. Takes me back to student days when it was one of the few things I could cook—cheese on toast, beans on toast, eggs on toast!’
That won another smile, which was so open and honest and full of good humour that it caught at something in his chest—just a hitch, nothing more...
You cannot be attracted to a very pregnant stranger, he told himself as he followed her to the kitchen, narrowly missing the bucket in the entry.
But the sway of her hips mesmerised him...
It had to be abstinence. How long since he’d been with a woman? The experience of the match his father had promoted, with a young woman who had a very dubious family connection to the old Russian royalty, had been enough to put him off women for life.
Well, for several months at least!
She’d been nice enough, attractive enough, but her conversation began and ended with horses and although he quite liked horses and rode occasionally himself, as a conversational topic, they were way down his list of favourites.
He doubted the woman with the swaying hips would talk horses.
‘There’s the toaster, and the bread’s in the cupboard underneath it. You can do the toast while I grate the cheese. I think it melts better grated. Do you like relish or chutney under the cheese? My dad used to slice up pickles under his.’
Jo only just stopped herself from explaining how her mother had liked Vegemite, and she herself didn’t mind the pickles. After all, there was only so much conversational mileage you could get out of grilled cheese on toast. And it had all been a very long time ago.
The memory of that time made her shudder—so much sadness, so much despair and emptiness and loss.
Don’t think about it now—concentrate on toast but don’t babble on.
She was embarrassed, that was why she’d been talking so much and there were no points for guessing why!
This man’s presence—or perhaps her own hyper-awareness of him—was embarrassing her. For some peculiar reason, she’d felt his eyes on her as she’d walked to the kitchen. Not casually on her, but studying her, although that was ridiculous. She’d been imagining things. Why would a man like him be studying a slightly damp, very untidy, very pregnant woman like her?
For a start, being thirty-eight weeks pregnant would announce her as unavailable!
She hauled butter and cheese out of the refrigerator, then milk for Dottie’s cocoa, relish in case Charles wanted it, the bottle of pickled gherkins to slice for under her cheese, set it all on the scrubbed wooden table in the centre of the big kitchen, then turned to their guest.
He was waggling the handles on the doors of the toaster.
‘You realise I’m touching something my mother probably touched. This toaster has to be at least fifty years old.’
Jo grinned at him.
‘At least,’ she agreed, ‘and it doesn’t flip open when the toast is done so you have to stand there and watch it and open it before it burns then turn it to do the other side.’
He gave her a ‘can you believe it’ look and a shake of his head before turning to watch his toast.
Setting the grill in the oven—which was probably older than the toaster—to high, Jo grabbed the grater and a wooden board and began her job.
And if she glanced at their visitor from time to time it was only to see he wasn’t burning the toast.
Wasn’t
