Liz Fielding - The Bride's Baby

Then, unable to keep up the self-mocking pretence another minute, he reached for a log, using it to stir the fire into life before tossing it into the heart of the flames, giving himself a moment or two to recover. He added a second log, then, his smile firmly in place, he risked another glance.

‘You’d have defied your father, even when he threatened to chase me off with his shotgun.’

Charmed by this imagined image of a family gathered around the fire at teatime, he’d meant only to tease, but in an instant her smile faded to a look of such sadness that if he’d had a heart to break it would have shattered at her feet.

‘You’d have been quite safe from my father, Tom. He was never at home on Sunday afternoon. It was always tea for two.’

Beneath her calm delivery he sensed pain and, remembering how swiftly she’d cut her father out of his role at her wedding this morning, a world of betrayal. A little girl should be able to count on her father. Look up to him. That she hadn’t, she didn’t, could only mean one thing.

‘He was having an affair?’

‘My mother must have known, realised the truth very soon after the big society wedding, but she protected me. Protected him.’ She looked away, into the depths of the fire. ‘She loved him, you see.’

It took him a minute, but he got there. ‘Your father was gay?’

‘Still is,’ she said. ‘A fact that I only learned when his own father died, at which point he stopped pretending to be the perfect husband and father and went with his lover to live on one of the Greek islands, despite the fact that my mother had just been diagnosed with breast cancer. He didn’t care what anyone else thought. It was only his father whose feelings he cared about.’

‘If she loved him, Sylvie, I’m sure your mother was glad that he was finally able to be himself.’

‘She said that, but she needed him. It was cruel to leave her.’

‘Are you sure it wasn’t actually a relief for her too? When you’re sick you need all your energy just to survive.’

She swallowed. Just shook her head.

‘Do you ever see him?’ he persisted. And when silence answered that question, ‘Does he want to see you?’

She gave an awkward little shrug. ‘He sends birthday and Christmas cards through the family solicitor. I return them unopened.’

‘No…’

Touched on the raw, the word escaped him. She did that to him. Loosed emotions, stirred memories. Now she was looking at him, her beautiful forehead puckered in a tiny frown, waiting for him to continue, and he closed out the bleak memories-this was not about him.

‘He doesn’t know he’s going to be a grandfather in a few months?’ he asked. ‘Are you waiting for him to read an announcement in The Times? To Sylvie Duchamp Smith…’ he couldn’t bring himself to say Hillyer ‘…a son.’

Or had he, too, read about it in Celebrity? He remembered the shock of it. The unexpected pain…

There had been a moment then, when the idea of coming home had seemed so utterly pointless that he couldn’t move. An emptiness that he hadn’t experienced since the day he’d realised that his mother was never coming back and he was completely alone…

‘A daughter,’ she said, laying a protective hand over the curve of her abdomen. ‘The scan showed that it’s a girl.’

‘…a daughter,’ he said softly.

A little girl who’d have blonde curls and blue eyes and a smile to break a father’s heart.

‘I wonder how he’ll feel when he hears,’ he said, but only because he wanted her to think about it.

He already knew.

Cut out, shut off from something he could never be a part of.

‘You care?’ she demanded, astonished. Looking at him as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘You’re actually concerned?’

‘Yes, Sylvie, I’m concerned. He’s your father. His heart will break.’

Under the flush of heat from the fire, she went white.

‘How dare you?’ she said, gathering herself, pushing herself out of the chair, swaying slightly.

‘Sylvie, I’m sorry…’ He scrambled to his feet, reaching out to steady her, aware that he’d strayed into a minefield but too late to do more than apologise. This was all strange to him. He’d wanted, just for a moment, to share her happy childhood memories, not drag up bad ones.

It had never occurred to him that she could have had anything but the perfect childhood.

‘Sorry? Is that it?’ she said, shaking him off. ‘You’ve got some kind of nerve, Tom McFarlane.’ And she was striding to the door while he was still trying to work out what he’d done that was so awful.

Abandoning him to his foolish fantasies of happy families.

‘Sylvie, please…’ He was at the door before she reached it, blocking her way.

She refused to look at him, to speak to him. Just waited for him to recall his manners and let her pass, but he couldn’t do that. Not until he’d said the words that were sitting like a lump in his throat.

He’d already apologised for the helpless, angry insult that had spilled from his lips earlier that morning-rare enough-but now he found himself apologising again, even though he didn’t know why. Would have said anything if only she’d look at him, talk to him, stay…

‘I’m sorry. It’s none of my business…’

She looked up at the ceiling, determinedly ignoring him, but her eyes were suspiciously bright and he wanted to take her, sweep her into his arms, hold her, reassure her. Protect her from making what seemed to him to be the biggest mistake of her life.

Marrying Jeremy Hillyer had to be a mistake. He’d let her down once and he’d do it again.

She didn’t have to marry him just because she was having his baby.

Or was that it?

Was she so desperate to give her baby something that she felt she’d been denied? If so, she was wrong. Her father may not have been the ideal ‘daddy’; her childhood may not have been quite the picture book perfect life that he’d imagined. To go with this picture book house. But she did have a father and he knew exactly how the man must feel every time one of his letters or cards came back marked ‘Return to Sender’.

‘You lost your mother, Sylvie. You can’t bring her back, but you still have a father. Don’t let anger and pride keep you from him.’

‘Don’t!’ She turned on him, eyes blazing, and he took a step back in the face of an anger so palpable that it felt like a punch on the jaw.

For a moment he thought she was going to say more, but she just shook her head and he said, ‘What?’

‘Just don’t!’ And now the tears were threatening to spill over, but even as he reached for her, determined to take her back to the fire where he could hold her so that she could cry, get it out of her system, she took a step back and said, ‘Don’t be such a damn hypocrite.’

She didn’t wait for a response, but wrenched open the door and was gone from him, running up the stairs, leaving him to try and work out what he’d said that had made her so angry.

Hypocrite? Where had that come from?

All he’d done was encourage her to get in touch with her father. The birth of a baby was a time for new beginnings, a good time to bury old quarrels. She might not want to hear that, but how did saying it make him a hypocrite?

He was halfway up the stairs, determined to demand an answer, before reality brought him crashing to a halt.

She might have responded to his kiss, be anything but immune to the hot wire that seemed to run between them, but she was still pregnant with Jeremy Hillyer’s child.

Was still going to marry the boy next door.

Sylvie gained the sanctuary of her bedroom and leaned against the door, breathing heavily, tears stinging against lids blocking out the fast fading light.