PENNY JORDAN - Coming Home

‘It isn’t,’ he agreed, ‘but Mike, my sister Frances’s boy, is a member of the group.’

‘Oh, yes, of course he is. So you’ll know Pete, then?’

‘Sort of. A tall, dark-haired lad with what I personally feel is just a little too much “attitude”,’ Guy returned wryly.

‘That’s the one,’ Didi sighed. ‘I mean in one way I doubt that Paul needs to be too worried. Pete is very self-aware and very sure of himself and what he wants from life. I doubt that normally he’d look very hard in Annalise’s direction. Not that she isn’t attractive, she is, and she’s going to be even more so, but right now she’s still very much a seventeen-year-old and a young seventeen-year-old at that.

‘From what I’ve heard, the girls Pete normally squires around are rather more streetwise and, dare I say it, bimboish, and if Paul hadn’t been silly enough to go storming round to Pete’s parents’ house and demand that Pete stay away from his daughter, I’m sure her crush would have died a natural and early death. Of course, Pete being the type of young man he is, Paul’s interference has had exactly the opposite effect from the one he wanted and now, apparently, Annalise has been seen in several clubs around the area where the band has been playing, very much a member of the band’s entourage.’

‘And does Paul know about this?’

‘I’m not sure, but once he does find out, as he’s bound to do … Annalise is at a very vulnerable age and if Paul starts trying to come the heavy father—’

‘Or if in his anxiety he panics and starts telling her she’s going to end up like her mother …’

‘Exactly,’ Didi agreed. ‘I’ve tried to talk to Paul, but he just doesn’t want to know. He can be so stubborn at times. I suspect whilst Annalise believes herself to be deeply in love with Pete, as only a young, idealistic girl can be, Pete is anything but in love with her. I hate to use such an ugly word, but my feeling is that he’s just using her and that once he’s bored he’s just going to push her to one side.

‘Normally, I’d say that that kind of experience is just a part of growing up. We all go through the pain of teenage heartache, but the disparity between Annalise and Pete makes me very anxious for her. Of course, I’m anxious for Paul, as well, especially since the whole thing is inevitably going to be conducted in public …’

‘Mmm … and of course it couldn’t come at a worse time for Annalise’s education, what with her A levels ahead of her,’ Guy added.

‘Exactly.’

‘Oh dear, the perils of a father of teenage daughters,’ Guy sighed. ‘Well, if there’s anything I can do to help …’

Since his marriage to Chrissie, who was seen to have tamed this wild Cooke, not quite knowing how or why it happened, Guy discovered that he had been elected to the role of paterfamilias within the Cooke clan and that inevitably, at some stage or another, various members of the family would bring their problems to him.

This was one problem where he suspected that Chrissie’s gentle touch would be much more beneficial than his own.

‘We’ve got a family gathering looming soon, haven’t we?’ he asked Didi. ‘I’ll see if Chrissie will have a tactful word with Paul, if you like.’

‘Would you?’ Didi smiled in relief. ‘I haven’t dared say anything to Paul, but I have heard a whisper that Annalise has been bunking off school to be with Pete. The band practises in an old barn out at—’

‘Laura and Rick’s farm, yes, I know,’ Guy said, nodding. ‘They used to use Frances’s garage, but she gave Mike an ultimatum and told him that there was no way she would continue to allow them to use it unless they agreed to keep the noise level down. Laura stepped into the breach and offered them the use of one of their barns.’

‘Well, as I said, it seems that Annalise has been sneaking off school to spend time with them there.’

‘Leave it with me. I’ll do what I can,’ Guy promised.

DAVID TENSED as he watched Maddy’s car come up the drive towards Queensmead. He had been watching the house ever since his arrival in England some days earlier, sleeping at night in unlocked garden sheds and open hay barns. After several weeks at sea sharing cramped quarters with the rest of the crew, the solitariness of his present existence was a relief. He missed Father Ignatius, of course; the two of them had become very close in the time they had worked together. As well as missing him, though, David was also concerned about him. Despite the priest’s vigour and positive attitude towards life, David had sensed recently that the older man was not quite as stalwart as he had once been.

Had he done the wrong thing in leaving him to come home? Had he made the selfish decision—again?

In the car with Maddy were her three children, the second youngest, Emma, with her solemn eyes and determined expression reminding him so much of his own daughter Olivia’s at the same age. It was odd the things that memory retained without one’s being aware of it. If asked, he would have been forced to admit that he had paid scandalously little attention to either of his children as they grew up. Olivia had spent more time with Jon and Jenny than she had done at home, getting from Jenny the loving mothering she had never received from Tiggy, his frighteningly fragile and vulnerable ex-wife. Given the number of years he had been away, David had assumed Tiggy would have divorced him by now and this had indeed been confirmed when he overheard a comment about her having moved away and established a new life for herself with another man. David was shamed to realise that he felt more relief than grief at this discovery. His ex-wife’s loss was one thing; seeing Emma in the garden with her brothers Leo and Jason and being reminded of Olivia was quite another.

But was it his nephew’s children David had really come to see, familiar to him now by name and expression as he watched them play and call out to one another? They tugged at his heartstrings in a way that reinforced how much he had changed.

The eldest child, Leo, who was physically so very much a Crighton, seemed fascinated by him. David had ached to talk to the children and to hold them, but he had restrained himself. Seeing them, though, reinforced just how much he had lost. Man and child had not spoken with one another, but David sensed that both he and Leo felt the tug of the blood bond that existed between them. ‘Grampy Man,’ Leo had wailed in protest as David made a hasty exit from the garden when Maddy had come to the garden door.

Was it, then, his own adult daughter and almost adult son who had brought him back home like a lodestar? Or had it been his need to see his father? He was an old man now, who spent most of his day in a chair apart from his twice daily walk around the garden with Maddy or Jenny, Jon’s wife, or sometimes with Max.

Max!

Max had surprised David. What had happened to the selfish, hedonistic young man who had looked up to him and on whose adulation David had often preened himself, whose envy of him had fed David’s own always vulnerable sense of self-esteem?

Only two days ago he had watched as Max walked in the garden with his younger brother Joss, the two heads close together as they talked earnestly. At one point they had stopped walking and Max had put his arm around the younger man’s shoulders in a gesture of comfort and very real affection. There had been no mistaking the closeness between them and no mistaking, either, the love and pride in Max’s eyes as he played with his own children.

Seeing Max with his wife and children and witnessing the total transformation of his character had left David with a sharp sense of pain and regret.

The day he walked out of the nursing home where he had been recuperating from his heart attack and out of his old life, he had done so because he could no longer tolerate the unbearable weight not just of his own guilt but of his father’s expectations.