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‘You’re just jealous!’ she accused in return.
He smiled thinly. ‘Don’t flatter yourself. You might be beautiful, but schoolgirls aren’t my thing.’
Hope glared, sure he’d deliberately misunderstood. ‘Jealous of Jack, I meant. His talent. His fame. His—-’
‘Money?’ he suggested wryly.
Hope went from glaring to fuming. Guy Delacroix obviously had her written off as a gold-digger and wasn’t about to change his mind.
He continued at her furious silence, ‘No, I can’t say I’ve ever been jealous of Jack. I have sufficient money for my own needs. Talent…Well, admittedly writing love-songs is hardly my forte.’ He made a slight face, dismissing such a skill as unimportant. ‘And fame, well, that’s a dubious privilege at the best of times…But I suppose it all seems very glamorous to you.’
‘I’m not that naive.’ Hope was well aware of the price of fame. Her father had once been famous as a record producer—and rich. But he’d paid for it. When the popularity of his music had waned he’d felt a failure, and sought solace in a whisky bottle.
‘No, I suppose not,’ Guy Delacroix conceded. ‘You must have met many famous people through your father.’
‘When I was little,’ Hope replied, ‘but not lately…People in show business don’t like to associate with failures. They think it’s catching,’ she commented cynically.
He raised a brow, surprised by her astuteness. ‘What did he die from?’ he asked bluntly.
‘Cancer—not catching either,’ she said on a bitter note, ‘but it still kept them away…Apart from his funeral-they returned in droves for that. It’s a pity he missed it. He would have appreciated seeing his ex-wives sobbing their little hearts out at the loss of their alimony.’
‘How many?’ he enquired.
‘Ex-wives? Three, but only two attended the funeral,’ Hope recounted.
He pulled a wry face at the number. ‘Does that total include your mother?’
‘No, she was never an ex,’ Hope declared stiffly, but didn’t expand on it.
She knew, for her father had told her often enough, that her mother had been the great love in his life. It had sounded sentimental, but it had also been true. It was a fact that each wife, in turn, had come to face.
‘Is that where you met Jack again? At the funeral?’ ‘No, he came before, in the last week or two when Dad became really ill. Then later he offered to help with the arrangements.’ Hope’s voice revealed how grateful she’d been to Jack. He’d been a true friend to them both, and her love for him had developed even as she’d struggled with the pain of grief.
“That was good of him.’ Guy’s tone was flat, but there was a look of scepticism in his eye.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Hope demanded in return.
‘Nothing, just…’ He hesitated for the first time, then switched to saying, ‘Look, we got off on the wrong foot. My fault, I admit. I misunderstood the situation.’
‘That’s all right.’ Hope was ready to forgive him. She didn’t want to be enemies with Jack’s family.
‘However,’ he continued in a serious vein, ‘I still feel you really should consider what you’re doing. You’re only seventeen. You’ve just lost your father. You’re vulnerable…’
‘I can take care of myself,’ Hope claimed, but not quite convincingly, as her fingers plucked agitatedly at the tablecloth.
‘Fine, take care of yourself,’ he echoed, stilling her hand with his. ‘Just don’t let Jack do it for you.’
He spoke with such force that Hope’s eyes flew to his. She met their steady grey gaze and for a moment saw the man behind the dispassionate mask. She sensed his strength, and was scared by his certainty. For a moment she almost listened to him, then Jack suddenly returned to the table.
‘Holding hands?’ Jack enquired, not quite casually, as he tried to assess the situation.
Hope flushed although she had nothing to feel guilty about. Not then. She hastily pulled her fingers from Guy’s grip.
He was unflustered, drawling to his brother, ‘Not exactly. I was just trying to persuade Hope that she was about to make the biggest mistake of her young life.’
‘By marrying me?’ Jack concluded, and laughed out loud when his brother nodded. ‘That’s what I love about my little brother. You can always trust him to be totally up front about things…Well, you’re wrong this time, Guy. Hope and I are going to make the distance. Just watch…’
‘Just watch.’ Hope shut her eyes as she recalled Jack’s words all those years ago. Guy had watched all right. He’d watched his words come true. He’d watched their marriage disintegrate. He’d…more than watched.
Hope caught the direction of her thoughts and put a brake on them. She wasn’t going down that road again.
She looked at her watch, and, realising she’d lost almost an hour, got up quickly to fix her face.
She’d just finished washing when Maxine announced her presence with the usual banging doors. She hadn’t time to put on make-up before her daughter tracked her down to the bathroom. For once Hope wished she’d taken a less liberal attitude on privacy.
Maxine walked in, took one look at her face and demanded, ‘What’s wrong? You’ve been crying.’
It sounded like an accusation, but then everything did at the moment with Maxine.
‘No…Well, actually, yes.’ Hope wished she’d rehearsed this speech. ‘It’s…it’s your father.’
‘My father? Don’t tell me—he’s dead,’ Maxine said, but purely for dramatic effect.
While Hope searched futilely for the right words, her face gave away the truth.
Maxine shook her head as if denying it, then started to back away from her.
‘I’m sorry, darling.’ Hope made to reach out a hand but her daughter kept backing away. ‘A car accident. I don’t know the details. It was on the radio. I’m sorry—-’
‘Well, I’m not!’ Maxine almost shouted at her. ‘And don’t expect me to cry! Just don’t…’
With that, Maxine turned and ran from the room.
Hope followed her daughter to her room. She found her face down on the bed, crying like a baby.
Hope sat down beside her and put a comforting hand on her shoulder.
Maxine stiffened, then, turning on her back, sobbed out, ‘I don’t care. I hate him! I hate him!’
‘I know. I know. It’s all right,’ Hope said in comforting tones, and stroked strands of hair from her daughter’s tear-soaked face.
Maxine looked at her in utter misery, then accused, ‘It was your fault, all your fault!’
It hurt. Of course it hurt, but Hope did not retaliate. Maxine was right. The whole mess was her fault.
Hope contained her own feelings, but Maxine read the pain in her mother’s eyes, and hesitated between attack and remorse. In the end she sat up and threw her arms round Hope’s neck, and began crying again.
‘I didn’t mean it! I didn’t mean it!’ she cried into her mother’s neck.
‘No, I know.’ Hope held her daughter and rocked her gently, as she had when Maxine was a baby.
But her thoughts were elsewhere. With another baby. A baby held briefly in her arms, all those years ago.
She remembered how much she’d wanted children, how she’d imagined being a mother would make her complete. She hadn’t questioned why she’d felt incomplete.
She’d also imagined Jack would be happy, too, but, of course, she’d been quite wrong…
‘You’re what?’ he had almost shouted at her when she’d told him.
The joy had drained from her face as she’d repeated, ‘I’m pregnant. Three months.’
She’d waited and waited. For a smile. A flicker of happiness. A gesture of concern. Anything other than Jack’s expression of utter dismay.
He’d recovered himself eventually, saying, ‘It’s a shock. I thought we’d have some time together. We agreed…’
‘I know.’ Hope nodded. They had agreed to take precautions, but something had gone wrong. ‘I didn’t plan it. I didn’t realise you’d mind so much.
‘It’s not that,’ Jack denied, although his lack of enthusiasm was almost palpable. He strode across to the drinks cabinet and fixed himself a stiff drink, before running on, ‘It just doesn’t fit in very well with our plans. My world tour starts in three months and won’t finish before the baby would be born…Perhaps we should wait.’
‘Wait?’ Hope echoed, confused. ‘Wait before you go on tour, you mean?’
‘No, that’s impossible. The tour can’t be cancelled,’ he told her firmly. ‘I just thought…Well, if you’re only three months along…’ He left the idea hanging there.
Hope caught it and her heart sank. ‘You think we should cancel the baby.’ She finally said the words aloud. They were like stones in her heart.
‘I’d hardly term it that,’ Jack said, ‘but, yes, I feel we should consider the alternatives…’
Perhaps Maxine was right. It really was her fault. If she’d listened to Jack, terminated that baby and waited for another, their marriage might have survived. But that baby had been real to her, a person even in the early stages of pregnancy. To terminate on a matter of convenience had been abhorrent to her.
‘Look, Maxine.’ She spoke quietly to her daughter now. ‘I realise you haven’t seen much of your father over the years, but, as I’ve explained before, it was never personal to you.’
‘I know—he didn’t like children.’ Maxine grossly simplified what Hope had actually told her over the years. “Then why did he come those times? Why did he bother?’
Hope had asked herself the same question many times. After ten years’ silence, Jack had turned up on impulse on her doorstep one afternoon, and been all charm to a daughter who, at ten, was already promising to be beautiful. With Hope’s blue eyes and wide, smiling mouth, Maxine still managed to look quite different, her features more defined and her hair a mass of thick black waves.
‘It would have been better if he’d never come,’ Maxine said now, her tears turned to anger as she scrambled off the bed and went to wash in the basin in her room.
Hope agreed with her, but at the time she’d been unable to control the situation. Jack had wanted a daughter, for a while at least, and Maxine had wanted a father. But Jack’s interest hadn’t, of course, lasted.
‘I’m sorry about the way things turned out, Maxine,’ Hope said gently, when her daughter finished drying her face.
She realised the inadequacy of her words even before Maxine looked at her with accusing eyes. ‘Are you? You never wanted me to go places with him.’
Hope remained silent. It was true enough. In fact, after a year of Jack letting Maxine down with a string of broken promises, Hope had deliberately put an end to the relationship.
‘That’s Katie,’ Maxine added as the doorbell downstairs rang. ‘We’re going to do our homework together. I’d better let her in.’
‘Yes, OK.’ Hope blinked a little as her daughter disappeared downstairs to greet her best friend. She heard them laughing in the hallway. From utter misery to girlish giggles in one short move.
How wonderful it would be to be twelve again. To forget so easily. To live in the present. To be free of the past.
Hope had never quite managed it. She was thirty-two next birthday, and had spent twelve years on her own, yet she was still haunted by the past, still tortured by a sense of failure…
She was six months pregnant and miserable. She had read that women bloomed in similar circumstances but she seemed to have wilted. Jack was fed up with her. She didn’t blame him. She was fed up with herself.
“There’s no choice,’ Jack said for the hundredth time as they drove down to Cornwall. ‘It would have been different if your pregnancy was straightforward, but, with your iron-levels, you’d be fainting all over the place. You can’t come on tour with me and you can’t stay at home.’
‘I could have stayed with Vicki,’ Hope lamented, still hoping that Jack might change his mind.
‘Vicki,’ Jack repeated her best friend’s name, ‘is a nice kid, but, be honest, how much use would she be in a crisis? She is the original dizzy blonde.’
Hope bristled silently, but couldn’t deny the truth of it. Vicki had been enormous fun at boarding-school and a good friend since. Catering for the needs of a pregnant woman, however, wasn’t one of her talents.
‘Anyway, Vicki’s asked if she can come on the tour,’ Jack reminded her. ‘I don’t know if she’ll be much help, but, as a favour to you, I’ve agreed.’
‘All right,’ Hope sighed, resigned to her fate.
Three months staying in the wilds of Cornwall with Jack’s mother. That she didn’t mind. It was the fact that the lady also happened to be brother Guy’s mother. Did this mean she might have regular contact with him?
She had not seen Guy Delacroix since their first meeting. He had been as good as his word and not attended their wedding, although his mother had.
In her late fifties, Caroline Delacroix had seemed younger. Her hair was silvery-blonde and her face, despite signs of aging, still had an English-rose bloom to it. She was a sharp, intelligent woman, without being an intellectual, and she spoke her mind.
‘I don’t suppose you’re going to listen to me, but I think you’re probably too young and certainly too good for my son,’ she’d finally announced, after they’d taken tea together.
Already liking the woman, Hope hadn’t been too upset by her comments. ‘Your other son’s already said the same. Well, the too young part, anyway.’
‘Yes, I understand Guy tried to warn you,’ Caroline had confirmed, ‘and that you and he didn’t exactly hit it off.’
‘Not so you’d notice.’ Hope had made a slight face. ‘What did he say?’
‘Nothing much. Just that you were “bloody impossible”,’ his mother had confided, but with an amused air that softened any offence. ‘With Guy, that could be a compliment. He doesn’t like women who fall over themselves to please him. Unfortunately, most do.’
‘Well, this one won’t,’ Hope had vowed then to Caroline Delacroix, and vowed now, as she travelled down to the Delacroix family home in Cornwall.
It was actually her first visit. Jack’s mother had come to London to meet her before the wedding, and, almost straight after it, had disappeared on a two-month tour of China. On her return, she’d stopped over briefly in London, issuing an invitation for Hope to come down to Cornwall any time she liked. But Jack’s work schedule had precluded even a weekend trip, and Hope’s only recent contact with her mother-in-law had been over the telephone. The older woman had been pleased at the prospect of being a grandmother, and had willingly agreed to her spending the final months of her pregnancy in Cornwall, but Hope still felt she was intruding when they finally drove up to the Delacroix family home.
It was called Heron’s View, and Hope could immediately see why. It sat on a clifftop overlooking the Atlantic and was the most wonderful house she had ever seen. It was a house from a fairy-story, with turrets and towers, walled gardens and secret places. It was large and imposing without being grandiose or ostentatious. It suggested a bygone era, of the years before the First World War, when large families were the norm, and Hope could imagine voices of children echoing through the twists and turns of the many stone passages.
‘It belonged to my father’s family. There were seven of them, and he inherited as the eldest,’ Caroline relayed as they stood in the hall which was at the centre of the house, with rooms leading off and a wide staircase leading up. ‘He, in turn, gave it to my eldest sister who never married. She died a couple of years ago.’
‘Is that when you moved in?’ Hope quizzed.
‘Oh, no, I’ve always lived here—’ Caroline smiled round the shabby hall with pleasure ‘—apart from the ten years I spent in France. I returned with the boys here. My father gave it to Hetty because he felt I was secure financially, but it was always a family house. Hetty helped me bring the boys up, too, although she was rather more interested in her dogs.’
‘She had six,’ Jack put in. ‘Red setters. She dedicated her life to breeding a Cruft’s champion.’
‘Did she manage?’ Hope asked, interested.
