Lucy Gordon: Daniel and Daughter

'Let's go to the bar,' he said abruptly. 'I can't hold you without wanting to kiss you.'

She followed him into the bar and they found a small table in the corner. When they were settled with their drinks she said, 'I think you are, without doubt, the most unscrupulous, dishonest-'

'Devious?' he offered with a slight smile.

'Devious, Machiavellian-'

'Desperate?'

'Hmm!'

'I was desperate,' he insisted. 'It was clear that you weren't going to give in, although at first I'd been so sure that you would. Call me a conceited oaf if you like, but I didn't think you could have affected me so powerfully if it was all one-way. I still believe that. Am I kidding myself?'

She shook her head. 'No, I can't pretend that,' she said. 'There was something there for me, too, but…' She finished on a sigh. There was so much she couldn't put into words.

'Thank you anyway for not saying I was kidding myself,' he said quietly. 'It was so fast that I tried to tell myself that I'd imagined it. But it was like refusing to believe in lightning. When it strikes, it strikes, and there's no use arguing.'

Lee had a helpless feeling that she was being swept away like a twig in a flood. Daniel was determined to make her acknowledge what had happened to them, and not allow her to draw back into safety. But she made one final attempt.

'We're not children to believe in romantic notions like love at first sight,' she began.

'Mostly, children don't believe in love at first sight,' he said. 'If these youngsters knew I'd fallen in love with you in the first five minutes they'd fall about laughing. Do you know who believes in love at first sight, Lee? Scientists. According to them it's something to do with chemicals.'

'But I don't want to feel as though I'm in a test tube,' she objected.

'Neither do I.I just thought it might make you take me seriously. I prefer to believe that what happened to us in your studio was mysterious and inexplicable-except perhaps as something that was ordained by fate.'

'You believe in fate?' she asked, wondering.

'Why not? Sometimes it's the only possible explanation. As soon as I saw you that day in the studio I knew you were going to complete my life. Lee, for God's sake, tell me you felt the same, because I-'

He looked up to find a group of young people edging closer to them, nudging and pointing as they recognised him. One of them shyly asked for his autograph. Daniel gave it and spoke a few words to the others. He was charming, but Lee had to acquit him of basking in their adulation. If anything he seemed embarrassed by it.

'This place is too public,' he said distractedly when he'd managed to get rid of them. 'There's a tiny restaurant, not far from here, where we can talk in peace.'

'But what about the others?'

'I'll tell them where we're going.'

He vanished but returned in five minutes, saying, 'OK. Let's go.'

They slipped out of the back of the building. To get to the restaurant they had to go through a short avenue of trees. Dusk was falling fast and in the shade of the trees it was almost dark. As soon as they were beneath the branches Daniel stopped and pulled her into his arms.

'Someone will see us,' she protested faintly.

'Let them. I've loved you for weeks without kissing you, and it's time that was remedied.'

She too had wanted this kiss. After the first hesitant moment she gave herself up to it and embraced him back. The sensation of his mouth moving slowly against hers was just as she'd dreamed of it, and she wondered how she'd survived the long, empty hours without him. It had been such a waste to keep apart from this man when she might have been in his arms.

When he spoke his voice was unsteady. 'I should have known better than to kiss you in the darkness.' He released her with slow, reluctant hands, and drew her out again to where the light was better.

They walked to the restaurant, two streets away. Lee was glad of the cool evening air on her face, restoring some feeling of normality. Perhaps at any moment she would awaken out of a dream, and her quiet, untroubled life could continue.

But then she looked up at Daniel walking beside her, and knew that nothing would ever be the same again.

The restaurant was almost full when they arrived, but the head waiter found a table for them downstairs, tucked away in a corner. There was almost no light, except for the little flames from the three branched candlesticks on the table.

Lee was entranced. This was the kind of romantic evening out that she'd never had. When she'd first known Jimmy there had been hurried meetings in coffee-bars; that had seemed the height of romance. But at an age when other girls had been enjoying the pleasures of courtship she'd been hanging up nappies in a tiny flat and wondering when her husband would get home from the pub.

Later, when Jimmy had left her, there'd been men who'd wanted to take her out. But Lee had had a daughter to raise and a business to attend to. If she thought hard, there were always good reasons for refusing.

Daniel glanced at her and spoke fondly. 'You look like a little kid let loose in Aladdin's cave,' he said. 'How old are you? Five? Six?'

She laughed at his teasing tone and shook her head, unaware that the dancing movement of her hair about her face was making Daniel's heart thump.

'Tell me,' he insisted. 'I've been trying to work it out. Even in broad daylight you don't look old enough for Sonya to be your daughter. By this light you could be twenty.'

'I'm twenty-nine.'

'But-Sonya-?'

'I was sixteen when she was born,' Lee said. ' married three weeks after my sixteenth birthday. We eloped to Gretna Green.'

He stared at her. 'And married over the anvil?'

'Yes and no. Anvil marriages are only valid if they're conducted by a minister. Most people do what we did, have a legal ceremony in the register office then an unofficial smithy wedding.'

'I've never quite understood about Gretna Green, Daniel said. 'Why there rather than anywhere else?'

'Young couples have always eloped to Scotland because they can marry without their parents' consent earlier than in England. Gretna Green was simply the first place they came to across the border. At one time they didn't even need a minister. They could get married by claiming each other in the presence of wit-nesses. Any witness would do. So they used to jump down from the carriage and hurry through the first door, which was the smithy.

'Now the old reputation clings. People still think of Gretna Green as a terribly romantic place, where lovers can find refuge from tyrannical parents.'

'I wonder if you know what dreadful, bitter irony there was in your voice just then?' Daniel said.

Lee sighed. 'You can probably guess the rest. My parents weren't tyrannical. They'd seen through Jimmy and warned me against him. I wouldn't listen. I thought I was madly in love. Mum and Dad chased us to Scotland, but they didn't find us until the last minute, when we were in the smithy. We'd already been married in the register office, and Jimmy waved the certificate in their faces. My mother burst into tears, and Jimmy laughed.

'I think I began to understand then what an awful mistake I'd made. But it was too late. So we went through the anvil ceremony "for fun", Jimmy said, although I wasn't feeling much like fun by that time. We clasped hands over the anvil and declared that we were husband and wife. Then the blacksmith banged his hammer on the anvil and cried, "So be it!"

'I tried to believe everything would be all right, but I couldn't shut out the memory of Jimmy laughing while my mother cried.'

She fell silent. She'd already told Daniel more than she'd ever confided in any other human being, but there were things that she couldn't tell, even to him. The accusations of frigidity when Jimmy's clumsy, selfish lovemaking failed to move her, the frightful rows when he discovered that her father wasn't going to support him in the manner to which he wanted to become accustomed, the early realisation that Jimmy had never really loved her, and the infinitely more painful discovery that her love for him was dead- these would remain her secrets until the last moment of her life.