LYNNE GRAHAM - Second-Time Bride

Janet’s house was only round the corner from her flat. Daisy headed for her aunt like a homing pigeon, praying that Tara was still at her friend’s house, wondering if some sixth sense this morning had prompted her to give in to her daughter’s pleas for a little more freedom.

Janet was on the phone when she came through the back door. ‘Put on the kettle,’ she mouthed, and went back to her call.

Daisy took off her suit jacket, caught a glimpse of herself in the little mirror on the kitchen wall and stared in horror. She rubbed at her cheeks, bit at her lips for colour but could still only focus on the stricken look in her eyes. She hoped she hadn’t looked stricken to Alessio and then questioned why it should matter to her. Pride, she supposed. Why hadn’t she managed to be cool and distant? Why had she had to rave at him the way she had?

‘You’re quiet. Tough morning?’ Janet was drawing mugs out of a cupboard.

‘I bumped into Alessio today—’

A mug hit the tiled floor and smashed into about twenty pieces.

‘It affected me like that too,’ Daisy confided unsteadily.

‘Let’s go into the lounge,’ her aunt suggested tautly. ‘We’ll be more comfortable in there.’

Daisy couldn’t stay still in any case. Her nerves seemed to be leaping up and down with jumping-bean energy. She folded her arms, paced the small room and briefly outlined the bare bones of that meeting. ‘And just wait until you hear this bit... His lousy father told him I took the money he offered me!’

Her aunt’s angular face was unusually tense. ‘Alessio mentioned the money?’

‘He wouldn’t believe me when I said that I’d refused it!’

Janet’s bright blue eyes were troubled, her sallow cheeks flushed. ‘Because I accepted it on your behalf.’

Daisy stopped dead in her tracks. ‘You did...what?’

Her aunt walked over to her desk and withdrew a slim file from a drawer. She handed it to Daisy. ‘Try to understand. You weren’t thinking about the future. I was worried sick about how you would manage with a baby if anything happened to me.’

Daisy studied the older woman in a complete daze.

‘It’s all in the file. A financial consultant helped me to set it up. Not a penny of that money has ever been brought into this country or touched. It’s in a Swiss bank account,’ Janet explained. ‘But it’s there for you and Tara should you ever need it.’

‘Alessio was telling the truth?’ Daisy mumbled thickly.

Her aunt sighed. ‘His father came to see me while you were in hospital. He practically begged me to accept the money. He felt terrible about the way things had turned out—’

‘Like heck he did!’

Janet’s face set in stern lines. ‘Vittorio was sincere, Daisy. He said that you were miserable and Alessio was equally miserable and that he had felt forced to interfere—’

‘He couldn’t wait to interfere!’

‘I found it very hard not to tell him that he still had a grandchild on the way,’ the older woman confessed wryly. ‘But, just as his loyalties ultimately lay with his son, mine lay with you. I respected your wishes.’

‘But to take the money...’ Daisy was shattered by that revelation.

‘I still believe I made the most sensible decision. You were very young at the time. You needed financial security—’

‘I’ve managed fine all these years without Leopardi conscience money!’

‘But you mightn’t have done. A lot of things could have gone wrong,’ Janet pointed out. ‘And what about Tara? Don’t you think that she is entitled to have something from her father’s family?’

‘I’ll give it back!’ Daisy swore, too upset to listen.

‘Wait and ask your daughter how she feels about that when she’s eighteen. I doubt very much that Tara will feel as you feel now. She does, after all, have Leopardi blood in her veins—’

‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ Daisy asked defensively. ‘Tara knows exactly who she is—’

‘No, she knows who you want her to be. She’s insatiably curious about her father.’

Daisy was finding herself under a surprise attack from a woman she both respected and loved and it was a deeply disturbing experience. ‘Since when?’

‘The older she gets, the more often she mentions him. She talks about him to me. She won’t ask you about him because she doesn’t want to upset you.’

‘I have never ducked any of her questions. I’ve been totally honest with her.’

Janet grimaced. ‘It’s going to be very difficult for you but I think it’s time for you to tell Alessio that he has a daughter—’

‘Are you out of your mind?’ Daisy gasped, thunderstruck.

‘Some day Tara is likely to march into his office in the City and announce herself...and for her sake Alessio ought to be forewarned.’

‘I can’t believe you’re saying this to me.’

‘Do you intend to tell Tara that you met Alessio today?’

There was a sharp little sound from behind them. Both women jerked round. Tara was standing in the hall, wideeyed and apparently frozen to the spot by what she had overheard. Then she surged forward, her pretty face suddenly full of wild excitement. ‘You met my father... Mum, you were speaking to him? Really...genuinely...speaking to him? Did you tell him about me?’ she demanded, as if that revelation might have just popped out in casual conversation.

Daisy was stunned by Tara’s naked excitement, by the crucifying look of hope and expectation glowing in her eyes. She was being faced with a disorientatingly different side of the daughter she had believed she knew inside out. And, shorn of the world-weary teenage front, the innocence of the child had never shone through more clearly. Icy fingers clutched at Daisy’s heart. Janet had been right. Tara was desperate to be acknowledged by Alessio but she had carefully hidden that uncomfortable truth from her mother. Only this morning she had carelessly referred to her father as a ‘major creep’.

‘No... I’m afraid I didn’t,’ Daisy said woodenly, traumatised by what she had seen in her daughter’s face.

‘Your mother didn’t get the opportunity,’ Janet chipped in heavily.

Tara’s face shuttered as if she realised how much she had betrayed and then raw resentment flared in her painfilled eyes. ‘Just because he didn’t want you doesn’t mean he mightn’t want to know me!’ she condemned with a choked sob.

Daisy went white. Her daughter stared at her in appalled silence and then took off. The kitchen door slammed on her hurtling exit.

‘Lord, all I’ve ever done,’ Daisy whispered wretchedly, ‘is try to protect her from being hurt.’

‘As you were?’ Janet squeezed her shoulder comfortingly. ‘Doesn’t it ever occur to you that Alessio could ave changed as much as you have? That the teenager who couldn’t cope with the prospect of fatherhood is now an adult male of thirty-two? Are you telling me that he couldn’t scrape through a single meeting with Tara? That could well be enough to satisfy her and if he won’t even agree to that...well, Tara will have to accept it. You can’t protect her by avoiding the issue.’

‘I guess not...’ Daisy’s shaken voice trailed away altogether.

Two sleepless nights had done nothing to,improve Daisy’s outlook on life. All she could think about as she walked into the Leopardi Merchant Bank was that in the space of one morning Alessio had brought her whole world down round her ears. And the pieces were still falling. Tara was still very upset about what she had flung at her mother in her distress. Quick-tempered and passionate, Tara was also fiercely loyal and protective. Nothing Daisy had so far said had eased her daughter’s regret at having hurled those angry, hurtful words.