A Perfect Night (10 page)

I intend to commission a desk specifically to house my computer and files. Oh, and I shall need a proper bed in the master bedroom, so please make sure it's both large and comfortable.'

'What are you planning to do in there?' Charlotte had teased him. 'Hold orgies?'

'Believe it or not
...sleep,'
Seb had corrected her dryly.

Predictably Charlotte had had her own opinions about how she thought
her
room should be furnished, explaining to the designer just what she wanted and then pausing breathlessly to ask Seb if he approved of her choice.

'I don't mind, just so long as you don't have it Barbie-doll pink...' Seb told her truthfully.

Charlotte had flashed him an indignant look.

'I grew out of
that
years ago, Dad.'

Now, as they left his parked car, Seb surveyed the excited throng of people milling around and reflected that it was just as well that it had turned out to be a warm sunny day.

'Oh look Dad, over there, that must be Katie's twin sister and her husband,' Charlotte told him tugging on his arm and directing his attention to where a girl who was quite definitely Katie's twin was standing, or rather leaning against the impressively tall man standing with her.

Yes, she was quite definitely Katie's twin, Seb recognised, and yet at the same time he knew that he would have known instantly that she
wasn't
Katie, even without the difference in their hairstyles.

'I wonder where Katie is?' Charlotte mused. 'Perhaps we could go over and ask her sister.'

Seb raised his eyebrows. 'I don't think that's a good idea. Katie will probably be very busy,' he warned her.

Ten minutes later as they walked past the informal crfcche, which had been organised for the children, Seb realised that he had been right.

Katie was in the middle of a large circle of children reading them a story oblivious to their presence until Charlotte waved to her.

Although her voice faltered and her face changed colour slightly, she continued with what she was doing causing Seb to suggest to Charlotte that they should move on and leave her in peace.

'No, she's almost finished, but
you
don't have to stay if you want to walk round. I'll catch up with you at the tea stall in half an hour or so,' Charlotte told him.

Shrugging his shoulders Seb left her where she was and walked away to talk with Saul who he had spotted standing several yards away with his family.

'Charlotte,' Katie smiled, as her story finished.

Charlotte came hurrying towards her.

'I've just seen your twin sister,' Charlotte told her warmly. 'She was over past the bouncy castle with her husband and the most gorgeous little boy.'

"Their son, Nick,' Katie agreed.

'I think what you're all doing here is wonderful,'

Charlotte told her. 'My mother always says how lucky she was that after she and Dad decided their marriage wasn't working out, Dad always made sure that he provided for me financially and then, of course, Mum met George and they fell in love.' She gave Katie a rueful grin.

'Dad tends to beat himself about the chest with guilt a bit because he wasn't there for me when I was growing up, but to tell the truth, George was such a wonderful loving step-father that I didn't even realise for ages that he
wasn't
my birth father, and then once I did... I was curious about Dad of course, but once Ma had explained that she had felt that it would only confuse me and make me feel torn between them both if she encouraged Dad to be there more for me, I felt she'd made the right decision.'

'It was actually
George
who encouraged me to go for it when Dad did contact me. I was apprehensive about how he would react but when Dad explained to me how much he regretted the break-up of his and Mum's marriage and how bad he felt about it and me, how much he'd wanted to make contact with me but hadn't felt that he had the right to do so...

'He and Mum have both said separately to me that they never should have married... They confused lust with love. Have you ever been in love?' she asked Katie curiously.

Too taken aback to feel offended by the intimacy of her curiosity Katie didn't know what to say, but fortunately Charlotte didn't seem to notice her hesitancy, continuing instead,

'I wish that Dad could find someone to love... I think part of the reason he buried himself in his work when I was a baby was because it was so hard for him to face up to the fact that he and Ma had married for the wrong reasons and that they didn't really love one another,' she told Katie wisely. 'I'd hate to get to Dad's age without ever having loved anyone properly and being loved back by them,' she added abruptly.

She giggled, confiding, 'Dad thinks that every boy I date is going to seduce me, but I'm not ready for that kind of relationship yet. I've got too much to do, but one day soon I
shall
be. Dad has this bit of a thing about the reputation of the Cooke men as wicked seducers.

Although he never really talks about it, I think that's why he insisted on marrying Mum instead of just going to bed with her. Of course, I know things were different when they were young but I don't think there's anything wrong in someone wanting to explore their sexuality. It's part of growing up, isn't it?

'When I
do
commit myself to a man, a relationship, I want it to be because I know beyond any kind of doubt that I love him, so I want to make sure that I've got the sex thing sorted out first. I mean for both sexes, losing one's virginity is kind of a very major rite of passage, isn't it, and of course I want it to be with the right person.

'I expect you felt the same when you lost yours,' she added questioningly.

Katie could feel herself floundering, lost in a sticky morass of conflicting emotions and thoughts. Was Charlotte trying to seek her advice or was she simply using her as a sounding board? The age gap between them wasn't huge, but it was enough for Katie to know that in Charlotte's eyes they stood on opposite sides of the chasm that was experience. If only Charlotte knew the truth. From what she had just said Katie felt that Charlotte's outlook and attitude towards sex was far more mature than her own, but then Charlotte wasn't in love with a man she could never have.

Charlotte's comments about her father had been equally enlightening, although after the way he had behaved towards her, Katie was finding it extremely hard to reconcile the man who was so moralistic that he had married a woman he didn't love with the one who had behaved so sexually demandingly towards her.

'Hi... I've come to relieve you.'

Katie looked up and smiled as Tullah, Saul's wife, came up to join them.

'Oh good, that means you can come with me and help me find Dad,' Charlotte informed Katie as she slipped her arm through hers.

Find
Seb\
That was the
last
thing Katie wanted to do, but Charlotte obviously wasn't going to take 'no' for an answer and so reluctantly Katie found herself walking beside her as Charlotte led the way to the spot where she had arranged to meet Seb.

'LOOK who I've brought with me,' Charlotte told Seb as she gaily wriggled her way through the crowds to his side, tugging Katie after her.

'I'll bet you're dying for something to drink after all that story-telling,' she teased Katie as she slipped her free arm through her father's so that she was standing between them.

'Dad...' she began, but Katie, guessing what was coming and knowing that Seb would have as little ap-petite for her company as she did for his forestalled Charlotte, telling her quickly, 'No Charlotte, it's alright.

My mother has brought a family picnic and she'll be expecting me to join them.'

Oddly as she looked at him, instead of seeming relieved at the prospect of being freed from her company Seb was actually frowning. She was just on the point of disengaging herself from Charlotte when a small boy suddenly dashed towards her carrying a sharp pointed stick which must at one stage have had a balloon attached to it from the strips of brightly coloured plastic dangling from it It wasn't the burst balloon that caused Katie to dart forward anxiously snatching him up as he started to fall, however, but the knowledge that the sharp end of the stick was potentially dangerous to him.

As she grabbed him he gave a loud wail of protest that quickly turned to a broad beaming smile as Katie deftly distracted his attention by cuddling him and asking him who he was.

'Me Joey,' he told her flashing her an impishly dev-ilish Cooke smile so like Seb's that her heart suddenly lurched against her ribs causing her to miss a breath.

'Joey...there you are...'

Katie turned round as a plump dark-headed woman came hurrying towards them. Immediately Joey stretched out his arms wriggling to be handed over as he cried eagerly,

'Mum...'

'He was going to fall,' Katie told the young woman as she handed him over, not wanting her to think that she had had any ulterior motive in picking him up.

'Yes, I know... I saw you,' the other woman told her.

As she cuddled her son her eyes studied Katie; their velvety dark gaze so intense and hypnotic that Katie couldn't drag her own gaze away.

'Here,' the woman added meaningfully as she touched her forehead. 'I sensed he was in clanger and then I saw you reaching for him...' Her eyes flashed with pride and hauteur as she saw Katie's expression.

'If you don't believe me ask him,' she told Katie with a small toss of her head looking at Seb. '
He's
one of us and he knows that some of us have the sight...the gift...'

Katie knew it too. The ability for certain female members of the Cooke clan to foretell future events was a well documented local fact, but this was the first time
she
personally had been the focus of witnessing it in action.

'I wasn't doubting you,' Katie reassured her, gently reaching out her hand to smooth the little boy's tangled curls. His hair was dark like his mother's—like Seb's—

and wonderfully soft to touch. Seb's child... Seb's son would have just such hair. For a moment she thought she must be falling under some extraordinary spell the gypsy woman had cast, for unbelievably she suddenly had a mental image of Seb's child, as potent and lifelike as though he actually already existed. But almost immediately her common sense reasserted itself and she told herself that she was simply being over-imaginative.

But then, just as they were about to walk away, the gypsy woman reached for Katie's arm and told her softly, nodding in Charlotte's direction,

'She is not a child you have made together but there
will
be one and very soon.'

Releasing Katie she turned to Seb who had listened to the entire exchange in silence.

'You
do not believe me, but it is true,' she told him fiercely. 'Give me your hand,' she instructed Katie, reaching for it and taking hold of it before she could draw back from her.

It was ridiculous of her to feel that she was in the presence of a mystical power as awesome and ancient as life itself Katie acknowledged, and yet that
was
how she felt as the girl pored over her hand and then pronounced firmly, 'It is written quite clearly here. You are one another's fates, although neither of you has recognised it yet, but before you can do so, you,' she told Seb, turning to him and addressing him almost sharply,

'must close the door on what you are using to deny yourself your future. There is no need for it, no place for it. And you,' she told Katie a little more gently, 'must close the door on that which you know can never right-fully belong to you...'

For a moment none of them spoke. A stillness—a silence—seemed to envelop them like an invisible cloak and then excitedly Charlotte was holding out her hand to the girl pleading, 'What about me? What can you see in
my
hand?'

The woman's expression lightened as she released Katie's hand and took hold of Charlotte's.

'I see that you still have a long journey to complete along the path of knowledge before you begin your life's work. And I see, too...' Very gently she closed Charlotte's fingers over her palm and then told her slowly, 'I see that you will be among those who will give to the world a very great deal of good.'

And then abruptly she released Charlotte's hand and was gone, disappearing into the swirling crowd leaving the three of them to stand in silence while they digested her predictions.

'Well...' Charlotte gasped. 'Wasn't that
extraordinary...
Did you notice her eyes? I felt almost as though she was hypnotising me.'

'She probably was, or at least attempting to do so,'

her father told her curtly, adding grimly, 'It's all rubbish, of course.'

'I really must go,' Katie told them both. There was absolutely no way she could bring herself to look at Seb, not after what the girl had said. Seb was right, it
had
all been rubbish, a piece of ineffective guesswork on the other woman's part based on the fact that they were together. She had probably assumed that they were already a couple and that Katie, who quite obviously couldn't be Charlotte's mother,
must
want to have Seb's child herself. It was silly for her to feel so hyper-sensitively aware of that mental image she had had of that small dark-haired boy so very, very like Seb. That had simply been a coincidence that was all.

'She obviously thought that the two of you were a couple,' Charlotte commented with a wide smile.

'No.'

'No way...'

Charlotte looked from her father to Katie and then back again as they both uttered their denials at the same time.

'Oh, but you heard what she said,' she teased. 'It's inevitable
...fate...'

'I'd say the explanation is much closer to hand and owes far more to a vivid imagination than any super-natural influence,' Seb announced dryly.

'Katie—there you are. Ma has sent us to look for you so that we can eat lunch.'

With the sudden appearance of Louise, with Gareth at her side and their son in his arms, it was tempting to tell Seb that he was wrong and that a certain mischievous and even malign unseen force appeared to enjoy wreak-ing havoc with her composure, but of course Katie knew she would do—could do—no such thing, not without revealing just
why
the arrival of her twin sister with her husband and baby should be so uncomfortable for her.