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“I’m hanging onto it because it’s mine. She has no right to any part of it.”
“That’s not what the title deeds say.”
“The title deeds are a formality for tax purposes, and Liz knew that perfectly well.”
“If all your wife meant to you was a tax dodge, I’m not surprised she left you. She should have left you years ago.”
“Another glib judgment made in ignorance.”
“It’s not my judgment, it’s hers. Why don’t you just let her go? Let my father buy you out.”
“He couldn’t do it in a million years. He only offers to buy me out because he knows there’s no fear of my taking him up on it. He knew a good thing when he met Liz, didn’t he? A rich woman who could walk away from her husband with a lot of property.”
She paled. “How dare you speak about my father like that? He’s an honorable man, and he loves Liz.”
“Does he? Or does he love what she can bring him?”
“You’ve got no right to say that. You don’t know him.”
“I know he stole my wife, my house and my son. What else do I need to know?”
“He didn’t steal your wife. He won her by offering her the love you couldn’t, the only currency that counts, only nobody ever told you that, did they? If you’d known about love you might still have your wife, your house and your son.”
“Don’t tell me I don’t love my son. I’ll be damned if I’ll let him be brought up by Tony Ackroyd.”
“He’ll be lucky if he is. There isn’t a better father in the world.”
“The best father is his own father.”
“He’s four years old, for pity’s sake. How can you try to snatch a child so young away from his mother?”
Through the confused mass of pain and bewilderment that possessed him, he couldn’t find the words that would express his true feelings. All he could manage to do was cry out, “Because he’s mine.”
It was the wrong thing to say. He wasn’t so insensitive that he couldn’t realize that. But no other words would come.
He saw her looking at him in contemptuous disbelief. “The house is your. Liz is yours. Peter is yours. It’s all property to you, isn’t it?”
“No, it isn’t,” he snapped. “Peter and I…” He stopped. It would have been hard enough to speak of his bittersweet love for his son with a sympathetic listener. With this judgmental young woman it was impossible. “Never mind,” he said, unaware of how plainly his thoughts had been revealed on his face. “Just tell me where I can find my wife and son,” he said.
Her eyes were fixed on his face, and they had a new look, as though she’d seen something that had startled her. Her manner softened. “They’re inside,” she said. “I’ll tell them you’re here.”
She thrust her spade into the earth with a strong movement and ran back to the house. Gavin felt shaken and drained by the interview. He began to look around him and realized that the destruction extended much further than digging up a lawn. Tony Ackroyd evidently had big plans for the grounds, if the huge rolls of wire lying about were anything to go by.
“Daddy.”
He turned to see his little son scampering across the lawn toward him. For a moment delight blotted out all other thought, and he opened his arms to scoop him up. The little boy’s warmth sent a sensation of joy flowing through him. “Have you missed me?” he asked.
Peter nodded, smiling.
Gavin looked around. There was nobody about. Soon the angry young woman would rouse the house, but for the moment the coast was clear. He could escape now, taking Peter with him. “Peter,” he asked in a low, urgent voice, “would you like to come home with me?”
His anxious eyes noted how the child brightened, and his heart began to beat with hope. “We’ve got so much to do together,” he said. “We can go to the zoo and see the lions and tigers and—”
“Uncle Tony says it’s wrong to keep lions and tigers behind bars,” Peter said, frowning. “He says it’s cruel.”
Gavin took a deep breath. “All right, never mind the zoo. You can have that computer game you wanted. And we’ll—”
“Can I have a puppy all of my own?”
“Well, that’s not going to be easy, because our flat doesn’t have a garden.”
“But Uncle Tony says—”
“All right, you can have a puppy,” Gavin said hastily. “Shall we go now?”
“Is Mommy coming, too?” Peter asked.
“No, just the two of us.”
“But I want Mommy. I want Mommy.”
In the silence that followed, he knew he’d lost. He was a hard man, but not hard enough to force a four-year-old child to leave his mother against his will. He sighed. “I guess that’s that, then,” he said.
“Are you going to stay with us?” Peter asked hopefully.
“No, I—I just came to see how you were.”
“But I want you to stay.”
“And I’d like to be with you but—Mommy and I can’t be together any more—”
“Why not?”
It would have been so easy to say, “Because she’s a faithless wife who walked out and she’s the one keeping us apart.” Put the blame on Liz, where it belonged. Teach her son to blame her. See what she made of that.
But he couldn’t make himself tear the child apart. He despised himself for a sentimental weakling, but he couldn’t do it. “Because that’s the way it has to be,” he said with a sigh. “You and I will still see each other sometimes. As often as I can manage. I promise. Be a good boy for your Mommy and—”
Before he got the next words out a whirlwind seemed to descend on him, Peter was snatched from his arms and Liz was standing there before him, her face blazing. “I might have known you’d try something like this,” she said furiously. “Another moment and you’d have spirited him away. Oh, thank God I got here in time!”
“Spare me the dramatics,” he said coldly. “I was saying goodbye.”
“It’s a lie,” she cried. “I know you. You were trying to steal him.”
The angry young woman had hurried up behind Liz and was watching the little scene with a frown. “Liz—” she said.
“Did you see what he was trying to do?” Liz demanded. “If you hadn’t come and warned us, he’d have got away with it.”
“Liz, I don’t think he was trying to—”
“Nonsense, of course he was. That’s what he came here for.”
“Whatever I came here for, it was plainly a wasted journey,” Gavin said, tight-lipped. “I had hoped that we could talk reasonably, but you won’t listen, so I may as well leave. Take good care of my son. Goodbye, Peter.” He reached out to pat his son’s shoulder, but Liz stepped back, taking him out of reach and began to run toward the house. Gavin tightened his lips against the pain and walked away to his car.
As he was getting into it he stopped for one look back. Liz had gone, but the young woman was still there, watching him and frowning as if something had puzzled her. He got in, slamming the door, and drove off. His mind was in too much of a whirl to think straight. It was only when he was miles away that he realized she had actually defended him.
After that visit things became more difficult. Liz had called her lawyer to report that he’d tried to abduct Peter, and although he still had access to his son it became very limited. On the rare occasions when they met Peter’s manner toward him was awkward, and Gavin could only guess at how they’d tried to turn him against his father. As six years passed and the boy grew up, Gavin had felt with despair that he was losing something he could never regain.
But now everything would be different. Now there was nothing to stop him from reclaiming his son. Peter had suffered from divided loyalties, but that was over, and soon he would be close to his father again.
As dawn broke he could hear the sound of the sea in the distance, and his heart quickened at the thought that he would soon be there. He thought of how Peter would run to him as the only safe point in a world that had suddenly become chaotic. He wondered who would be with him. Probably Ackroyd’s daughter. He knew now that her name was Norah, but she’d lived in his mind as the angry young woman. He wondered if she would try to stop him from claiming his child. If so, she wouldn’t succeed. As he drove the last stretch he rehearsed the words he would say to her, strong words that would leave her in no doubt that he wasn’t to be trifled with.
At last the house came in sight, pale and beautiful in the dawn light. He felt a surge of love for the place. His thoughts had been all of Peter, but now it occurred to him that the house too would revert to him, in a sense. Liz’s share would pass to Peter, and as Peter’s guardian he would hold his son’s inheritance in trust. They would own Strand House together. He liked the sound of that.
There was no sign of life as he drove up the drive and stopped in front of the house. The light was already growing strong, but it was six in the morning. He got out of the car and looked up at the windows which showed no sign of life. He began to walk around the house to reach the extensive grounds that stretched away at the rear. He wanted to groan when he saw what had become of them. The perfect lawns that would have been the golf course had been dug up and now housed what appeared to be a small zoo.
He made his way between wire cages until at last he saw a figure sitting on a wooden bench. She was dressed in an old sweater and dark jeans, and she sat hugging her arms across her chest, staring into space.
A black-and-white dog who’d settled at her feet looked up at Gavin’s approach and gave a soft, “Wuff.” She glanced up at him without speaking and he recognized Norah. She was different. Her face was deadly pale and full of despair and she looked as if all the fight had been drained out of her. Suddenly the firm words he’d rehearsed vanished from his head, leaving only one thought.
He said gently, “I’m so very, very sorry. It must be dreadful for you.”
Chapter Two
“It’s you,” she said, as if dazed.
“Weren’t you expecting me after—what’s happened?”
“I don’t know—I haven’t taken it in yet. It seems only yesterday that I waved them off….” She gave a little shudder. “It was only yesterday. And now the whole world has changed.”
He sat beside her on the bench. “How is Peter? Does he know?”
“He knew before anyone else,” she said huskily. “The worst possible thing happened. He was watching the news, and he saw it first. Nobody had called to warn us. It was a dreadful shock for him. He came and told me. At first I didn’t believe him. I thought he’d misunderstood. He kept crying and saying, ‘It’s true, it’s true.’ Then we cried together for most of the night.”
“It’s a terrible burden for you,” he said sympathetically. “But I’m here now.”
She gave him a strange look which he failed to interpret, and said, “Peter fell asleep about an hour ago. I came out here because it’s where I feel closest to Dad. We built all this up together. He loved it so much. He used to say all the money in the world didn’t mean as much as an animal’s trust.”
Gavin thought that a man who’d attached himself to a rich woman was free to be indifferent to money, but it would have been cruel to say it to her, so he kept silent.
“They all trusted him,” Norah said, looking around at the animals who were beginning to awake and appear. “How am I going to tell them?”
“Tell them what?” Gavin asked blankly.
“That he and Liz are dead,” she said simply.
He stared at her. Nothing in his experience had prepared him to cope with someone who talked like this. Trying to hide his exasperation he said, “Surely there’ll be no need to tell them.”
Her frown cleared. “You’re right. They’ll know by instinct. I should have remembered that.”
She looked at him with her head on one side, and he realized that she was wondering how he came to understand such a thing. He felt at an impasse. It irritated him to be misinterpreted, but he was touched by the grief so clearly evident on her face.
It was six years since he’d seen her and in that time she’d changed from an urchin into a woman. Her body had rounded out and her face had grown softer. It was pale now, and haggard and suffering, but some men would have found her attractive, he realized.
As he watched her he saw her expression change yet again, and she gave him a rueful look that was almost a smile. “I read you wrong, didn’t I?” she asked. “You didn’t mean that the animals would know. You meant, why bother to tell animals anything?”
Paradoxically he was even more disconcerted now than he’d been a moment ago. “Well,” he said awkwardly, “after all, they are only animals.”
She sighed. “Dad spent his life trying to open the eyes of people who thought like that.”
“I doubt he’d have converted me.”
“No, I don’t suppose he would. But that wouldn’t have stopped him trying. He said you should never give up on anyone, no matter how—” she stopped.
To divert her attention he asked, “If he felt like that, why did he keep a zoo?”
“It’s not a zoo, it’s a sanctuary. Most of the creatures here were brought in because they were sick or ill treated. We try to get—that is, the idea is to get them well enough to return to the wild.”
He felt relieved. He’d been wondering how to break it to her that she must close down the place and leave. Now he saw that it could be done gradually as the animals were released. He had no desire to be brutal.
“Let’s go inside,” she said. “I’ll make us some coffee.”
The dog rose at the exact moment she did and kept close to her as they walked. She led him up to the house and through the french doors that led into the big sun lounge at the back of the house. He stared at the change he found. The beautiful eighteenth-century furniture had all gone, replaced by functional pieces that looked as if they’d come from junk shops. Some of them were completely covered in sheets on which a variety of creatures lay snoozing. There were dogs and cats, a parrot and a monkey.
“The good furniture is stored at the top of the house,” Norah said, reading his look. “It would have been a pity to let it get dirty.”
“Quite,” he said wryly.
The animals were awakening and beginning to crowd around her. She scratched their heads and caressed their coats, seeming to take comfort in the very feel of them. “The sanctuary doesn’t officially take cats and dogs, because there are so many other places for them,” she said, “but they seem to arrive anyway. People bring them, and there are a couple who made their own way here. It’s almost as if they knew where to come.”
Gavin said nothing. Her approach seemed to him so outrageously whimsical that it was better to hold his tongue. He thought of his son being reared in this atmosphere, and thanked a merciful heaven that he’d been allowed to rescue him in time.
The kitchen had also altered beyond recognition. He’d last seen it when it was charming and old-fashioned. Now it closely resembled the deck of a spaceship, and in this he recognized Liz’s handiwork. She’d been an avid cook, complaining bitterly when he arrived home late and her creations were ruined.
“This was Liz’s dream,” Norah explained, apparently reading his thoughts again in a way that was becoming unsettling. “She loved having every modern gadget she could find.”
“But this looks like a hotel catering oven,” Gavin protested, regarding a shiny monster, all knobs and lights.
“It is. She got it because the animals need so much food. She used to do huge batches of cooking and store it in the freezer.”
“Liz cooked for animals?”
He thought of the elegant, sophisticated woman who’d once been his wife, thought of the Cordon Bleu dishes that had been her expression of artistry. But “they” had got to her. She’d fallen into the clutches of Tony Ackroyd and his daughter, and this was the result.
Norah put on the coffee, then turned her attention to a small hedgehog in a box in a corner. “She let you keep animals in her kitchen?” Gavin asked.
“It was Liz who brought Bert in here,” Norah said, setting down a saucer of milk for the hedgehog. “He’s very frail and he needs warmth. She loves—loved—the animals as much as Dad and me.”
“Hmm. I doubt that. She wasn’t exactly an ‘animal’ sort of person.”
