Alison Fraser - The Mother And The Millionaire

The Beetroot, that was another of Arabella’s names for her. How she would cringe when Arabella called her that in company. In fact, she had cringed her way through a lot of her childhood and had been more than happy to grow up and grow out of these afflictions.

Now here she was, reverting at the rate of knots just because a ghost from the past had suddenly returned to haunt her.

Well, that was it. No more. She wasn’t going to stand here like a spare part, waiting for Mr Jack Doyle to make some oblique crack that would complete her journey back in time.

She retreated to the house, leaving him to his own devices. She entered the kitchen and, in pressing need of a cooling drink, opened the fridge. It was bare except for a few bottles of white wine, some tonic water and a tray of ice in the freezer compartment.

She’d been hoping for orange juice but the tonic was to be expected. It went with the gin bottle she took out of hiding from behind a food processor. She pursed her lips. Gin and tonic, her mother’s favourite tipple. At one time more than a tipple, and, even now, her mother didn’t seem to go through a day without at least a couple of stiff drinks.

Esme splashed some of the tonic in the bottom of a glass, added some ice but gave the gin a miss, having no inclination to follow her mother’s example.

She picked up the glass, resting its chill against her forehead for a moment to cool herself down, before taking a swig just as Jack Doyle reappeared.

He walked quietly for a big man, coming to a halt in the kitchen doorway; his eyes switched from her face to the gin bottle on the worktop and back again.

Esme could almost hear his thoughts as he jumped to the wrong conclusions.

She decided to brazen it out. ‘Do you want a drink?’

‘Bit early for me,’ he answered, ‘but don’t let me stop you.’

‘I won’t,’ Esme muttered, rather than go into a denial that probably wouldn’t be believed.

A long-drawn-out pause followed before he asked, ‘How long have you been drinking?’

Esme, who had been studying the tonic in her glass, glanced up in time to catch his expression, a condescending blend of pity and disapproval. She wouldn’t have liked it even if she’d had a drink problem.

She made a show of looking at her watch. ‘About three minutes and twenty-five seconds.’

‘I meant in the longer term.’

‘I know.’

Esme pulled a face. He ignored it, his eyes resting on her with patient forbearance.

‘Well?’

She wondered what he was expecting. A full and frank confession: My name is Esme and I’m an alcoholic.

‘For the record, this is just tonic water.’ The sheer nerve of him made her reckless. ‘However, I had my first real drink at sixteen. Whisky, it was. Can’t quite remember who supplied it.’

Except she remembered only too well who’d supplied the whisky. She wondered if he did, though.

She rather thought he did as the pitying look in his eyes became something else. Guilt? Distaste? Whichever, it served him right for coming over all sanctimonious.

But if she assumed he’d dropped the whole subject, she was mistaken.

‘You were seventeen, as I recall,’ he said instead.

For a moment she thought he was being pedantic, then she realised from his tone that her age was important to him. It had been at the time, too. That’s why she’d lied.

No need to now. No need to tell him, either, only some devil inside her wanted to. Probably something to do with him attempting to take the moral high ground.

‘A couple of weeks over sixteen, actually,’ she corrected.

His eyes met hers, trying to sort out fact and fiction. ‘You said—’

‘Does it matter?’ She saw it did to him, but the whole incident had suddenly lost its embarrassment factor—and romantic haze—for her. ‘You were drunk, I was drunk, we both wanted to stick it to my mother. End of story.’

Esme knew she sounded a little crude, but that was better than blushing like a ninny. Anyway, as a version of events, it was close enough.

Jack gave a brief laugh. Out of relief, he suspected. He’d always felt guilty about the way he’d used Arabella’s little sister but it seemed he’d underestimated her.

‘Nothing like telling it how it is,’ he commented at length. ‘Still, you were always the most honest of the bunch… So no hard feelings?’

He approached her, hand outstretched.

Esme stared at this token of—of friendship, reconciliation, what exactly? She shrank from him in obvious distaste.

Unused to this reaction from women, Jack was more puzzled than anything else. She was treating him like a pariah but nothing he remembered in their past relationship warranted that. Sure, she’d been young—too young perhaps—when they’d made love that time, but she’d been willing. Very, as he recalled now.

He dropped his hand away. ‘Isn’t it rather late to treat me as untouchable?’ he drawled with slight overtones of the American accent he’d picked up from years spent in California.

‘Better late than never,’ Esme retorted rather tritely and, almost hemmed into a corner, tried to brush past him.

He caught her bare arm, detaining her. ‘If it’s an apology you want, then you can have one. I was sorry, I am sorry, for the way I treated you.’

He sounded sincere and Esme was slightly disarmed by the fact. Easiest to reply in kind but she couldn’t. Her stomach was clenching and unclenching at the touch of his hand on her skin. She put it down to revulsion and wondered when love had turned to hate. Some time over the last ten years? Or just today, when reality had caught up with her?

‘I don’t want anything from you,’ she stated scornfully, ‘so if you let my arm go, I’ll show you out.’

Jack’s eyes narrowed on her, analytical in their intent. She’d dismissed his apology and discounted their brief liaison as a moment of drunkenness, yet she was so angry her body was shaking with it.

‘Let me go!’ An order this time as she tried to wrest her arm away.

Jack held her fast. ‘Not yet. Explain first.’

‘Explain?’ she echoed.

‘Ten years ago,’ he recalled, ‘we parted on a more intimate note. OK, possibly assisted by some rather potent whisky. In the interim we have had no communication apart from one unanswered letter yet somehow I’ve become beneath contempt in your eyes… Well, call me slow, but I feel I’ve missed something.’

So had Esme. What unanswered letter?

‘Or is it just the old class thing,’ he continued at her silence, ‘and us stable boys are fine for a quick session in the hayloft but not welcome up at the big house?’

‘That’s ridiculous!’ Esme found the voice to protest at this absurdity. She hadn’t been a snob at sixteen and she wasn’t one now.

‘Is it?’ he challenged.

‘Yes!’ she almost spat back. ‘For a start you were never a stable boy. All right, you mucked out occasionally to earn some pocket money but as often as not you got me to do it. Shovelling horse manure was far too menial for Mr Brainbox Doyle.’

‘OK, maybe I wasn’t in the literal sense,’ he conceded, ‘but I was low enough on the social ladder for you to look down your nose.’

‘I didn’t!’ she could claim with angry conviction. ‘In fact, if anything, you condescended to me. Poor, stupid, plain Midge, let’s pat her on the head once in a while, be kind to her—that’s when we’re not treating her as invisible, of course.’

‘I don’t remember it being like that.’

‘You wouldn’t!’

Jack was surprised to find himself now on the defensive. ‘I certainly never suggested you were plain or stupid.’

‘You didn’t have to,’ she accused, ‘it was bloody obvious. And, anyway, maybe I was plain and stupid!’