know.’ She put the pills in her pocket, knowing she wouldn’t take them. She didn’t want to go to sleep because when she woke she knew there would be a moment when she’d think it was just another day.
Then she’d remember and have to live through the loss all over again.
But she didn’t say any of that. Instead, she hugged her and said, ‘Thank you.’
‘We’re here, Mr Kingsley.’
Josh glanced up at the façade of the tall Georgian town house that Michael had bought when he had married Phoebe McAllister. It was a proper family home with a basement and an attic and three floors in between. Endless rooms that they’d planned to fill with children.
Instead, they’d got him and Grace. A seventeen-year-old youth whose parents had split up and who, wrapped up in their own concerns with new partners, didn’t want a moody cuckoo in the nest. And a fourteen-year-old girl for whom the only alternative was to be taken into the care of the local authority.
Exactly what every newly-wed couple needed.
They’d taken on each other’s damaged siblings without a murmur. Had given him his own space in the basement, had decorated a room especially for Grace. Her first ever room of her own.
She’d been such a pathetic little scrap. A skinny rake of a kid, all straight lines when other girls her age had been testing out the power of their emerging attraction on impressionable youths. Only her eyes, a sparkling green and gold mix that could flash or melt with her mood, warned that she had hidden depths.
Like her nose and mouth, they’d been too big for her face. And, until she’d learned to control them, they’d betrayed her every thought.
Eyes like that should carry a health warning.
‘Is there anything I can do, Mr Kingsley?’
Josh realised that the chauffeur—a regular who his PA had arranged to pick him up from the airport—was regarding him with concern.
He managed a smile. ‘You can tell me what day it is, Jack. And whether it’s seven o’clock in the morning or seven o’clock at night.’
‘It was Tuesday when I got up this morning. And it’s the evening. But I’m sure you knew that.’
‘Just testing,’ he said, managing a smile.
He’d counted every one of the last twenty-four hours as he’d travelled halfway round the world, coming to terms with the loss of his brother. And of Phoebe, who’d been the nearest thing to a big sister he’d ever had. By turns motherly, bossy, supportive. Everything that he’d needed.
Knowing that he would have to live with a world of regrets for the hard words he’d said. Words that could never be taken back. For holding on to his righteous anger, a cover for something darker that he could never admit to…,
But the hair shirt would have to wait. Grace needed him. The baby would need them both.
He climbed from the car. Grace’s brightly painted ‘Baubles and Beads’ van was parked in its usual place but the space where he expected to see his brother’s car was occupied by a small red hatchback that underlined, in the most shocking way, the reality of the situation.
Realising that Jack was waiting until he was inside, he pulled himself together, walked up the steps to the front door as he had done times without number to a house that had always felt as if it were opening its arms to him. Today, though, even in the spring sunshine, with tubs of bright yellow tulips on either side of the front door, it seemed subdued, in mourning.
The last time he’d been here he’d tossed the keys to both the house and his basement flat on his brother’s desk—his declaration that he would never return. For the first time since he’d moved in here as a seventeen-year-old, he would have to knock at the door but, as he lifted his hand to the antique knocker, it was flung open.
For a moment he thought it was Grace, watching out for him, racing to fling her arms around him, but it wasn’t her. Why would it be? She had Toby Makepeace to fling her arms around, to offer her comfort. At least she had the last time he’d come home on a visit. He hadn’t been in evidence on the day he’d turned up without warning, but then discovering his girlfriend was pregnant with someone else’s baby must have put a crimp in his ardour.
The woman who opened the door was older, familiar—a friend of Phoebe’s. Elizabeth? Eleanor? She put her finger to her lips. ‘Grace is in the kitchen but she’s just dropped off. Try not to wake her. She hasn’t been sleeping and she’s exhausted.’
He nodded.
‘You must be, too,’ she said, putting her hand on his arm. ‘It’s a terrible homecoming for you. I’m so sorry about Michael. He was a lovely man.’ She didn’t wait for him to answer, just said, ‘I’ll go now you’re here, but tell Grace to ring me if she needs anything. I’ll call in tomorrow.’
‘Yes. Thank you…’ Elspeth. ‘Thank you, Elspeth.’
He watched her until she was in her car, then picked up the bags that Jack had left on the top step, placed them inside and shut the door as quietly as he could. Each movement slow, deliberate, as if he could somehow steady the sudden wild beating of a heart that was loud enough to wake Grace all by itself.
He told himself that he should wait.
Go down to the basement flat, take a shower. But to do that, he’d need the key and the key cupboard was in the kitchen.
For the first time for as long as he could remember, he was frozen in indecision, unable to move. Staring down at the hall table where a pile of post—cards, some addressed to Grace, some to him—waited to be opened. Read.
He frowned. Cards?
He opened one, saw the lilies. In sympathy…
He dropped it as if burned, stepped back, dragged his hands over his face, through his hair as he looked down the hall. Then, because there was nothing else to do, he turned and walked slowly towards the kitchen.
He pushed the door very gently. It still squeaked. How many times had he heard Michael promise Phoebe that he’d do something about it?
He’d offered to do it himself, but Phoebe had just smiled. She liked the warning squeak, she’d told him. Liked to have something to complain about once in a while. It wasn’t good for a man to believe he was perfect.
He could have told her that Michael didn’t believe that. On the contrary. But that had been a secret between the two of them and, somehow, he’d managed to smile back.
He paused, holding his breath, but there was no sound and he stepped into the room that had always been the hub of the house. Warm, roomy, with a big table for everyone to gather around. An old armchair by the Aga that the fourteen-year-old Grace had taken to like a security blanket, homing in on it when she’d arrived clutching a plastic bag that contained everything she possessed under one arm, a small scruffy terrier under the other.
The pair of them had practically lived in it. And it was the first place she’d taken the puppy he’d given her when old Harry had died a few months later and he’d been afraid her heart was going to break.
The
