SARA WOOD - Temporary Parents

Max gave her a look of lazy curiosity and she hardened her eyes in case he got the wrong idea. ‘I’ve had to cancel two meetings.’

He moved lithely on to the mantelpiece, nonchalant and loose-limbed. Casually he began to examine a china herring-gull her mother had sent her. Laura wriggled, uncomfortable with the way he delicately traced the smooth curves of the beautiful bird.

‘Must be important news, then,’ she encouraged him.

‘You can say that again. One of these days, your sister will go too far!’

‘I thought she already had,’ Laura retaliated, wishing he wouldn’t prowl so. It made her feel restless. And it set off his long, sinewy legs and lean thighs too well.

He was already on the other side of the room, his hands thrust in his pockets, shoulders hunched as he brooded at her. Such an electric force field surrounded him that, by moving around, he was filling her tiny bedsit with his energy. If he carried on much longer she’d begin to feel suffocated by it.

‘Daniel rang me,’ Max said sternly.

‘I thought you and your brother hadn’t spoken since the day he married my sister,’ she remarked, lacing her voice with asperity.

Family feuds were so stupid in her view, and Max was small-minded where Fay was concerned. He owed her sister more courtesy than a flat rejection of her existence.

But then, Fay had said he was carrying a torch for her. Max wouldn’t have liked being superseded by his less prepossessing brother.

Max grunted. ‘I’ve been funding Daniel for the last few years.’

‘Oh. That’s very brotherly of you.’ She waited while Max did his best to wear out her cheap carpet.

‘I did it for the kids.’

She stiffened. Was he going to say more? ‘So you should—’

‘But,’ he went on, snapping out the word and glaring at her for interrupting, ‘it seems I was funding something else.’ He came to a halt in front of her, his face unnervingly grim.

‘Wh-what do you mean?’ she asked, prompted by his air of utter disgust.

Her sister had done some stupid things in her time. She and Daniel acted like flower-children, wandering around the country with travellers in battered old vans and defying authority.

‘Daniel and Fay have been arrested,’ Max said starkly.

Her heart sank. ‘Trespass? Again?’ she ventured, remembering she’d had to bail Fay out last time for refusing to leave some farmer’s land.

‘You don’t understand.’ Max’s mouth tightened as if he didn’t want to continue. His shoulders lifted and stayed high while she stared at him anxiously, then he said, punching out the words with barely contained anger, ‘They’re in jail in Marrakesh.’

Her eyes widened and her mouth fell open in sheer astonishment as his rage became clear. She knew how much he hated Daniel’s way of life. He was furious with his brother for blotting the family name. It was all right to get village girls pregnant and dump them, that was what the squirearchy did for kicks, but jail was unthinkable.

‘For... what?’ she asked breathlessly, her whole attention on his narrowed, glittering eyes.

‘Possession of drugs.’

‘Oh, God!’

She slumped heavily into the chair, staring into space, appalled.

‘There’s no time for histrionics—’ he began testily.

‘What histrionics? Did you see histrionics?’ she seethed through tightly clenched teeth. ‘I was thinking about the children. What’s happened to them? And what can we do about getting Fay and Daniel out—?’

‘Nothing,’ he said brutally.

‘Nothing? But—’

He silenced her with a scowl and a wipe-out gesture of his expressive hands. ‘The kids are the first priority.’

‘Of course, but—’

‘Listen, will you?’ he snapped tetchily.

‘You’ve had time to get used to this!’ she protested.

‘I’m just trying to get my head around what’s happened. OK. So who’s looking after Perran and Kerenza now?’

‘A traveller friend who’s now got tired of playing mothers and fathers.’

Her mind reeled. ‘In Marrakesh?’

‘No. Port Gaverne.’

Laura’s mouth fell open again. ‘But that’s in Cornwall!’ He gave her a slow, mocking hand-clap, making her feel stupid. ‘I don’t understand...are you telling me...Fay’s in Marrakesh and she left her children in Cornwall? How could she go away when Kerenza’s only a few months old?’

‘She’s not noted for her devotion to domesticity,’ Max said in a grim and disapproving voice.

Laura secretly agreed. She loved Fay, but her sister’s behaviour was beyond her. They’d always been chalk and cheese. If she had a four-year-old and a baby she’d have to be torn away from them. But then, if something came easy you didn’t value it—and Fay had always bemoaned the ease with which she fell pregnant and how the kids hampered her freedom. Laura lowered her eyes to hide the pain. She’d love her freedom to be hampered.

‘Well, thanks for telling me,’ she said woodenly.

‘Someone had to.’

‘Presumably the children are at your parents’ house right now?’

Max gave her an odd look. ‘My mother and father don’t live in the manor any more. They’ve moved to Scotland. The kids are staying in the cottage my father gave Daniel.’ He began quartering the floor again, clearly impatient to impart all the details and then go. ‘Not that he’s ever used it much. It’s been rented out most of the time, so goodness knows what kind of state it’s in.’

She remembered it. A tiny white stone building set into the side of a cliff. A narrow road ran down from it to the narrow inlet which formed Port Gaverne Bay, the less populated community next to the more bustling Port Isaac, where she’d been brought up, the child of a fisherman.

Fay loathed the cottage. She said it wasn’t big enough for a rat—and couldn’t the old man have done better than that. The Pendennis family had lived in Pendennis Manor then, further up Port Gaverne Valley. Fay had been hoping for something similar.

‘I’m sure it’s fine,’ Laura said, not sure at all.

She studied a slender leg, thoughtfully. This was a different kind of news from the sort she’d been expecting. Her face grew dreamy. Images came to her: sunny blue skies, glittering waves, dark cliffs. The smell of the sea was so real that she could almost taste the salt on her lips. For a moment she felt the spring of sea pinks beneath her feet, and then there was nothing other than the thin, worn lino.

She smiled faintly, wistfully. ‘Perran is probably having a great time on the beach every day—’

‘He’ll be there on his own by tomorrow morning,’ Max informed her sourly. ‘The friend is off to some music festival.’ He seemed as edgy as she was about the situation.

‘Well, that’s out! She can’t leave the children!’ Laura protested, bristling with indignation.

He shrugged. ‘The woman wasn’t paid to babysit. Why should she stay?’

‘Because they’re in need!’ she spluttered, amazed at people’s lack of responsibility.

‘She’s adamant about going. I don’t blame her. Fay promised they’d only be gone two days on a trip to London, and it’s now two weeks. She deliberately lied. Your sister isn’t too familiar with the truth, is she?’

Laura wished she could defend Fay. Her sister was wonderful fun to be with, but not very grounded in the real world. ‘I’m sure there’s a good reason—’

‘There is. Fay’s not cut out to be a mother and the children hinder her activities,’ Max said drily.

She winced. ‘What’s to be done?’ she asked, concentrating on the practical.

Max paused and lifted a black eyebrow. He seemed to be fixated on her softly parted mouth. She closed it and swallowed, bringing his gaze to her throat. Warmth stole over her skin and she knew she was flushing like a stupid schoolgirl. Angry with herself, she set her teeth and fixed her gaze somewhere in the mid-distance.