Apparently I’m hungrier than I thought.’
Oh, damn. Had she made enough for him?
He followed her through to the breakfast room and stopped. ‘Where are the other place settings?’
‘Oh—the children were starving, so I ate with them. Anyway, I wasn’t sure—’
She broke off, biting her lip, and he sighed softly.
‘I’m sorry. I was rude. I just walked out.’
‘No—no, why should you want to sit with us? It’s your house, we’re in your way. I feel so guilty—’
‘Don’t. Please, don’t. I don’t know the ins and outs of it, and I don’t need to, but it’s quite obvious that you’re doing your best to cope and life’s just gone pear-shaped recently. And, whatever the rights and wrongs of your being here, it’s nothing to do with the children. They’ve got every right to feel safe and secure, and wanted, and if I’ve given you the impression that they’re not welcome here, then I apologise. I don’t do kids—I have my reasons, which I don’t intend to go into, but—your kids have done nothing wrong and—well, tomorrow I’d like to fix it a bit, if you’ll let me.’
‘Fix it?’ she said, standing with the plate in her hand and her eyes searching his. ‘How?’ How on earth could he fix it? And why didn’t he do kids?
‘I’d like to give the children Christmas. I’d like to go shopping and buy food. I’ve already promised them sausages, but I’d like to get the works—a turkey and all the trimmings, satsumas, mince pies, Christmas cake, a Christmas pudding and cream, and something else if they don’t like the heavy fruit—perhaps a chocolate log or something? And a tree. They ought to have a tree, with real decorations on it.’
She felt her eyes fill with tears, and swallowed hard.
‘You don’t have to do that,’ she said, trying to firm her voice. ‘We don’t need all that.’
‘I know—but I’d like to. I don’t normally do Christmas, but the kids have done nothing to deserve this hideous uncertainty in their lives, and if I can help to make this time a little better for them, then maybe—’
He broke off and turned away, moving slowly to the table, his leg obviously troubling him.
She set the plate down in front of him with trembling hands. ‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘Then just say yes, and let me do it,’ he said gruffly, then tilted his head and gave her a wry look. ‘I don’t suppose I’m allowed a glass of wine?’
‘Of course you are.’
‘You wouldn’t let me have the whisky.’
She gave a little laugh, swallowing down the tears and shaking her head. ‘That was because of the painkillers. I thought you should drink water, especially as you’d been flying. But—sure, you can have a glass of wine.’
‘Will you join me?’
‘I thought you wanted to be alone?’ she said softly, and he smiled again, a little crookedly.
‘Amelia, just open the wine. There’s a gluggable Aussie Shiraz in the wine rack in the side of the island unit, and the glasses are in the cupboard next to the Aga.’
‘Corkscrew?’
‘It’s a screwtop.’
‘Right.’ She found the wine, found the glasses, poured his and a small one for herself and perched a little warily opposite him. ‘How’s the omelette?’
‘Good. Just right. What herbs did you use? Are they from the garden?’
‘Yes. Thyme and sage. And I found some pancetta—I hope it was OK to use it.’
‘Of course. It’s really tasty. Thanks.’
He turned his attention back to his food, and then pushed his plate away with a sigh when it was scraped clean. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any pud?’
She chuckled. ‘A budget yogurt?’
He wrinkled his nose. ‘Maybe not. There might be some ice cream in the freezer—top drawer.’
There was. Luxury Belgian chocolate that made her mouth water. ‘This one?’ she offered, and he nodded.
‘Brilliant. Will you join me?’
She gave in to the temptation because her omelette had only been tiny—elastic eggs, to make sure he had enough so she didn’t fall at the first hurdle—and she was still hungry. She dished up and took it through, feeling a pang of guilt because she could feed her children for a day on the cost of that ice cream and in the good old days it had been their favourite—
‘Stop it. We’ll get some for the children tomorrow,’ he chided, reading her mind with uncanny accuracy, and she laughed and sat down.
‘How did you know?’
His mouth quirked. ‘Your face is like an open book—every flicker of guilt registers on it. Stop beating yourself up, Amelia, and tell me about yourself. What do you do for a living?’
She tried to smile, but it felt pretty pathetic, really. ‘Nothing at the moment. I was working freelance as a technical translator for a firm that went into liquidation. They owed me for three months’ work.’
‘Ouch.’
‘Indeed. And David had just run off to Thailand with the receivers in hot pursuit after yet another failed business venture—’
‘David?’
‘My ex-husband. Self-styled entrepreneur and master of delusion, absent father of my children and what Kate describes as a waste of a good skin. He’d already declined to pay the maintenance when I left him for the second time when I was pregnant with Thomas, so I’d already had to find a way to survive for over a year while I waited for the courts to tell him to pay up. And then I lost my job, David wasn’t in a position to help by then even if he’d chosen to, and my landlord wanted out of the property business so the moment I couldn’t pay my overdue rent on the date he’d set, he asked me to leave. As in, “I want you out by the morning”.’
Jake winced. ‘So you went to your sister.’
‘Yes. We moved in on the tenth of December—and it lasted less than two weeks.’ She laughed softly and wrinkled her nose. ‘You know what they say about guests being like fish—they go off after three days. So twelve wasn’t bad. And the dog does smell.’
‘So why don’t you bath him?’
‘Because they wouldn’t let me. Not in their pristine house. I would have had to take him to the groomer, which I couldn’t afford, or do it outside under the hose.’
‘In December?’ he said with a frown.
She smiled wryly, remembering Andy’s blank incomprehension. ‘Quite. So he still smells, I’m afraid.’
