Alison Fraser - Her Sister's Baby

There, she’d said it. It was out in the open. He had no power over her now.

A silence followed, as if she’d shocked him, but he came right back at her with, ‘Don’t worry, you and your sister shattered any illusions I might have had in that direction.’

The illusions had been hers as Cass remembered. She’d been a fool and Pen had wised her up.

‘Still, I suppose I should be flattered you even recall our tryst—’ he used the word in a purely mocking vein ‘—considering the many that have undoubtedly followed.’

Many? Cass could have challenged with ample justification. There’d been only one. A student doctor and he’d been another unmitigated disaster. But did she want him knowing just how limited her private life was?

‘I keep a record,’ she claimed instead. ‘You’re under D…for Disappointing.’

It was a put-down, so why did he laugh?

‘Are you sure it wasn’t D for Devastating?’ he suggested with his usual drawling arrogance, then cut the ground from beneath her by murmuring, ‘That’s what I have you under.’

Cass’s face flamed once more, as a shutter flickered briefly open on a picture of two bodies intimately entwined, and she wondered why she’d ever started this game of truth.

She stopped it abruptly by saying, ‘Well, now we’ve completed that trip down memory lane, do you think we could get back to the matter in hand? Burying my sister, that is,’ she added for both their benefits.

‘Of course.’ He didn’t argue with the change of subjects. Perhaps he regretted the deviation, too. ‘Phone me later with the train times and I’ll send a car to the station… I’m ordering the wreaths tomorrow. I can arrange one from you, if you wish.’

‘No, I’ll do that.’ She didn’t want any favours from him.

‘All right… Is there any song you wish to suggest for the service?’ he added with surprising generosity.

Cass knew her sister’s favourites but none was appropriate for the solemnity of the occasion and she said, ‘Not really. None you could play at a funeral.’

‘Right, I’ll just pick a couple of traditional hymns,’ he concluded.

Dirges would have been Pen’s comment and Cass was prompted to say, ‘Why don’t you ask Tom if he can think of anything she’d have liked?’

There was some hesitation before he answered obliquely, ‘Tom’s attention is focused on the baby at the moment.’

The baby. Her niece. Cass could have asked how she was. It would have been the natural thing to do. But any details and the baby would begin to be real for her.

He was clearly waiting for her to ask. When she didn’t, he volunteered. ‘She’s out of the incubator and doing well.’

‘Good.’ Cass sounded detached, and was determined to remain so.

He asked outright, ‘Would you wish to visit her while you’re up?’

‘There won’t be time,’ she replied, avoiding point-blank refusal.

But he heard it in her tone, anyway, and remarked, ‘I’d forgotten. Pen said babies weren’t your thing.’

Cass frowned. Why had Pen said that? It wasn’t true at all.

‘I don’t imagine they’re yours, either,’ she countered rather than deny it, then, feeling the conversation was becoming too personal once more, switched to saying, ‘That’s my pager just gone. I have to use the telephone, so if there’s nothing else…’

‘Your pager?’ He was obviously wondering why she needed such a thing.

Cass, having found the article still clipped onto the waistband of her trousers, put it on to test, then held it against the receiver so he could have a quick blast in his eardrum.

‘My pager,’ she repeated heavily, before muttering a terse, ‘Bye.’

She put the telephone back on its hook, then took it off again just in case he redialled. If he did, he’d get the busy signal, supporting her story.

Not her story, her lie, she corrected herself. Just one more to add to the series she’d told the Carlisles, if only tacitly. How she wished now she’d pressed Pen to be honest with Tom, to admit that she’d had that first baby. If she had, perhaps her sister might yet be alive.

But Pen had convinced Cass that, if she let her secret slip, there would be no marriage and, though, at a month short of eighteen, her sister had been ridiculously young to wed, it had seemed a better option than her vamping around on the nightclub scene. When Pen had finally brought Thomson Carlisle home to meet her, Cass had played her part beautifully, being warm and welcoming to a young man who had seemed naive compared to his brother, and doing her best to pretend along with Pen that she’d been the sweet innocent she’d appeared. It hadn’t been so hard because Cass had believed Pen had been at heart.

There had still been an eleventh-hour crisis. Her last night of freedom, Pen had spent with Cass in an exclusive hotel, courtesy of the Carlisles. At first Pen had been in high spirits but by bedtime she’d been tearful. She hadn’t been sure she’d loved Tom Carlisle the way she should have done. He’d been very good to her and kind and had bought her anything she’d wanted, but had that been enough?

Cass’s heart had plummeted. She’d almost come round to being pleased at the idea of the marriage and now this bombshell.

‘No, it’s not enough,’ she had to agree with Pen.

But it wasn’t what Pen wanted to hear, as she wailed back, ‘What would you know? You’ve never been in my position. No one’s ever wanted to marry you!’

Typical of Pen in crisis; Cass was too used to such remarks to let them hurt.

‘I’m not going to argue with you, Pen,’ she responded softly. ‘You’re right. I’m probably sitting on the shelf already, but I’d sooner be on my own than live, day in, day out, with a man I didn’t love or respect.’

‘Who says I don’t love him?’ Pen protested mournfully. ‘Just what I expected—you’re trying to talk me out of it!’

‘No, I’m not.’ Cass gazed steadily at her sister. ‘I want what’s best for you, that’s all. It’s what I’ve always wanted.’

Cass’s tone was so gentle Pen looked briefly ashamed. ‘I know that really. I suppose I’m being a cow.’

Cass pulled a face. ‘A little bit of one—a calf, maybe.’

It wasn’t much of a joke but they both laughed and it eased the tension slightly.

Then Pen said simply, ‘Tell me what to do, sis.’

But Cass had no magic answers. ‘I can’t, Pen. I wish I could. Only you know how you feel about Tom—’

‘I do love him,’ Pen insisted, ‘but, well…next to Dray, he seems such a lightweight.’

‘Oh, Pen,’ Cass groaned aloud. ‘You don’t really have your eye on his big brother, do you?’

‘Of course not.’ The denial was slow in coming and didn’t quite ring true, especially when Pen ran on, ‘But he did fancy me at first. I know he did. If only I hadn’t told him I was sixteen—’

‘Hold on,’ Cass cut in, calculating as she did so, ‘you must have been seventeen and a half by then.’

Pen nodded. ‘But I thought the younger, the better. Most older guys get off on that.’

Cass made no comment, but shuddered inwardly. What kind of men had Pen been dating?

‘Not him,’ Pen continued, rolling her eyes, ‘You know what he said? “Come back when you’re twenty-one!” Then he kissed me on the forehead as if I were a three-year-old and sent me home in a taxi.’

‘Awful man,’ Cass mused, straight-faced, while secretly applauding this show of decency.

‘Bloody bossy, as well—’ Pen pouted in agreement ‘—and boring about work. He wouldn’t let Tom take more than three weeks for his honeymoon.’

‘Really.’ Cass managed to sound sympathetic. Three weeks seemed more than generous but letting Pen run down Dray Carlisle had to be a good idea.