CATHY WILLIAMS - A Daughter For Christmas

Leigh shrugged, abandoning the impulse to give him a lecture on Men Of His Type. What was the point? He said that he didn’t fool around with married women. What was to be gained by debating the issue? Besides, maybe he was telling the truth, maybe he was loaded with moral virtue, maybe principles were coming out of his ears. If that were the case, then it was unfortunate for him that his looks seemed to tell a different story.

‘Well,’ she continued, ‘whatever. Your principles are your business and they have nothing to do with why I’m here.’ He looked as though he wanted to shake her into agreeing with him, and she ignored the look on his face. ‘Jenny was married at the time and...’ she scoured her brain for the right way of saying what she was about to say ’...things weren’t going too well. Or, rather, they were going very well, but—’

‘Perhaps you could get your facts straight...’

‘I would if you’d give me half a chance!’ She glared at him, pausing while George’s clone sidled towards their table and deposited a tray with percolated coffee, cups, saucers, sugar and milk.

‘She had just had some bad news,’ Leigh hissed, leaning forward and sloshing coffee and milk into her cup. Let him pour his own. If he found it so difficult to be civil to her she was damned if she was going to make an effort to show any civility towards him. This whole meeting was turning out to be a full-blown disaster, anyway.

‘Odd way to react to bad news, don’t you think?’ He poured his coffee—no milk—and sat back in the chair and regarded her coldly. ‘Leaving the country for a jaunt in a foreign hotel away from hearth and home and, now you tell me, husband.’

‘You don’t understand...’

‘If she was that blissfully married why didn’t she talk out with her husband whatever problems she was having? You haven’t exactly thought out this story logically, have you, Miss Walker? Or did you think that I’d fall for whatever you said to me, hook, line and sinker, with no questions asked?’

Two bright patches of colour appeared on her cheeks, and Leigh swallowed back the renewed temptation to storm out of the club.

‘Look, Mr Kendall,’ she said evenly, ‘I realise that you think yourself the world’s most eligible bachelor. You seem to think that no woman could possibly approach you unless her intentions were devious, which, incidentally, is a very sad state of affairs, but I assure you that I haven’t lain in bed, plotting and planning this meeting. I’m here because I’ve found myself in the position of having no other option.’

‘World’s most eligible bachelor...’ He linked his fingers together and a half-smile crossed his darkly cynical face, though not quite reaching his eyes which remained cool and shrewd. ‘Oh, I don’t think so.’ His eyes caught hers and held them fractionally too long for Leigh’s comfort.

‘No,’ she said politely, ‘I don’t think so either. Anyway, if I might be allowed to continue?’

‘Carry on.’

‘You have to understand that all of this...everything that I’m telling you now... I knew nothing about all this at the time. I only found out...’ She hated talking about Jenny, about the accident. At the time she had had to be brave for Amy’s sake, but the awful reality of it had been only a heartbeat away. Time made it easier to accept but right now she felt that if she dwelt too hard on her sister’s death she would find herself giving in to the temptation to bawl her eyes out.

She didn’t imagine that the man sitting opposite her would appreciate the outburst of emotion.

‘She and Roy—that was her husband—’

‘Who was also involved in this so-called accident—’

‘That’s right, and there’s nothing “so-called” about it.’

‘What happened?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Was she your only sibling?’

Leigh looked at him with frustration. Why wouldn’t he just let her finish her piece? Having jumped down her throat, why was he now dragging this information out of her? She didn’t like talking about it. In fact, she seldom did. She had wept at the funeral, but her thoughts she preferred to keep to herself. Circumstances had hardened her, forced her to become self-reliant.

‘Yes,’ she answered abruptly.

‘What about other relatives? Aunts, uncles? You haven’t mentioned your parents so I assume that they’re no longer on the scene.’

‘This is irrelevant,’ Leigh told him brusquely. ‘If I’d known you’d ask all these questions I would have come armed with a family tree.’

Nicholas looked at her carefully. ‘Why do you say that coming to me was the last resort? If there were relatives around, I assume—’

‘That I would have rushed to them for help first. Of course.’ Silly of me to assume that he might have been showing some kind of personal interest in her and, indirectly, in Amy. ‘There’s no one else, Mr Kendall. Jenny was all I had.’ Saying it out loud made it sound bleak and lonely. She remembered how it had been when her parents had died. She remembered that lost, exposed feeling, but she had been so much younger then and there had been Jenny to hold her hand and help her through. Now there was no one to shield her from the loneliness, waiting to strike.

‘Our parents passed away when I was twelve within months of one another. As for relatives, I think there’s an uncle somewhere in Australia and my father had a couple of cousins in Canada, but we never kept in touch. Is that sufficient background history, or would you like to know more? Maybe I could throw in my blood group for good measure?’ She was annoyed with him for prising information out of her which she had grown accustomed to keeping to herself.

‘To cut a long story short, there was no one else to turn to. And, anyway...’ She halted, unsure of what to say next.

‘And anyway?’

‘I happen to think that it’s important for Amy to eventually know who her father is,’ Leigh told him defiantly. ‘Even if it’s an intrusion on your lifestyle.’

‘Let’s just suppose that I give you the benefit of the doubt for a minute, that I actually believe what you’re telling me, don’t you find it a bit odd that you only suddenly thought it important nearly a year and a half after the event?’

‘She’s only seven...’

‘You were waiting until?’

She looked at him with deep dislike. Did he believe a word of what she was saying? Was he simply humouring her? Allowing her to have her say until his coffee was finished, whereupon he would coolly look her up and down and tell her to be on her way? She couldn’t even tell whether she was getting through to him at all because, whatever he said, his face remained unreadable.

‘Until she was a bit older.’ Leigh took a mouthful of her coffee, which was now tepid and quite disgusting. ‘Until she was more capable of...understanding...’

‘Thoughtful of you.’

What would it feel like to throw her tepid coffee all over him? she wondered. Would it wipe that expression of cynical self-assurance off his face?

‘Why did you say that you were willing to hear what I’ve got to say, Mr Kendall? You don’t want to hear a word I’ve got to say. You want to dig a hole, chuck me in, cover me with earth and then walk away, wiping your hands.’

‘What did your sister tell you?’

‘You were right,’ Leigh said eventually. ‘She was driven when you met her in Majorca. Not herself. I knew at the time. I vaguely recall that she was miserable, but she didn’t confide in me. I guess she had always been in the role of my protector so she felt that she had to protect me even from her own unhappiness. It turns out that...’ She sighed and ran her fingers through her short hair so that any attempt at neatness was instantly lost.