Magnolia Square (9 page)

‘Oh, do get a move on, Daniel!’ Miriam Jennings called out in exasperation. ‘You’re takin’ a wedding photograph, not paintin’ the bloomin’ Sistine
Chapel!’

Daniel took the photograph. Charlie swung Matthew down to the ground, and Carrie released her hold on Luke. With Matthew grasping tight hold of Leon’s hand, Luke holding on to
Kate’s, Daisy in front of them and Carrie to one side of them, another photograph was laboriously taken. Then Daniel wanted to take a photograph of Kate and her father. And then one of Kate
and Carrie and Daisy.

‘Hey up,’ Charlie said in a whispered aside to Harriet, his eyes not on the happy couple but on the exceedingly flash car he had just spied parked at the top end of the Square, and
on the elderly, bulldog-jawed, expensively suited figure standing beside it, ‘but I fink Kate’s got trouble, ’Arriet.’

Harriet turned her head, saw what he had seen, and sucked her breath in sharply.

‘Do you fink I should ’ave a word with ’im?’ Charlie asked, deeply troubled. ‘Do you fink I should tell ’im it will spoil ’er day if she sees him
standin’ there, watchin’?’

Harriet immediately laid a restraining hand on his arm. ‘No, Charlie. It would only make matters worse. With a little luck, he’ll have gone by the time Daniel has finished taking
photographs.’

Charlie looked towards the menacing figure of old Joss Harvey, of Harvey Construction Ltd, the man who was little Matthew’s paternal great-grandfather, and hoped she was right. And if she
wasn’t? What could he, or anyone else, do about it? Old man Harvey was little Matthew’s great-grandfather. He had as much right taking a look at Matthew’s mother on her wedding
day, as anyone else. But Kate wouldn’t want him there. Not after all the trouble he had caused her. Not after he had tried to take Matthew away from her.

‘For the Lord’s sake, Daniel, ’ave done with the photos and let’s throw the confetti!’ Miriam called out, voicing her own, and everyone else’s,
impatience.

With difficulty, Charlie and Harriet returned their attention to the bride and groom. Carrie’s daughter, Rose, presented Kate with a lucky horseshoe. Billy Lomax attempted to present her
with a handful of coal so sooty that his hands and face were already as streaked as a miner’s, and he was only prevented from doing so by being speedily hauled away by his grandmother.

‘Yer stupid little bugger!’ Miriam said irately as his cargo scattered far and wide. ‘Yer supposed to give the bride a small piece of coal for luck, not half drown ’er in
a ton of nutty slack!’

At last, to everyone’s satisfaction, the bride and groom prepared to make a run for it through a traditional shower of confetti.

‘But first the bouquet!’ Pru Sharkey called out, much to her mother’s consternation and her father’s visible displeasure.

‘Throw it this way, luv,’ Nellie Miller shouted gamely. ‘I could do with anuvver ’usband, just as long as ’e’s an improvement on the last one!’

Amid shouts of encouragement and laughter, Kate tossed her bouquet high and in Pru’s direction. With pink-cheeked eagerness Pru jumped high, catching it adroitly.

There was a storm of cheers, and Daniel could be heard demanding cheekily, ‘So who’s the lucky man going to be, Pru?’

‘I don’t suppose she knows,’ Miriam said in an undertone to Hettie, ‘just as long as it ain’t the insurance man!’

Kate’s fingers intertwined tightly with Leon’s. Their reception was going to take place in the church hall, and for every step of the way they would be bombarded with confetti and
flower petals. It was a moment so perfect, so joyous, she felt as if her heart would burst.

‘Ready?’ Leon asked, his smile of happiness nearly splitting his face.

‘Yes,’ she said and then, as their friends and neighbours lined the church path, she looked over their milling heads and saw the car and the figure beside it.

Her face froze. The car was a Bentley, and only one Bentley had ever nosed into Magnolia Square. When it had done so, four years ago, it had been because its owner wished to remove Matthew from
her care. He had succeeded in doing so, but only temporarily. And now he was back, standing pugnaciously beside his chauffeured car, exuding wealth and power and menace.

‘What’s the matter, sweetheart?’ Leon asked, immediately sensing the change in her.

‘Nothing.’ She flashed him a brilliant smile, refusing to let Joss Harvey spoil the most magical day of her life. When he had done his damnedest to permanently remove Matthew from
her care, Leon had been a prisoner of war, and it had been a battle she had had to fight alone. She was alone no longer, and any future battles would be battles they would fight together.

She laughed up at her handsome, caring husband. ‘There’s nothing wrong at all, my darling,’ she said, her voice thick with joy and love. ‘Shall we make a run for it now?
I think we’ve kept everyone waiting long enough, don’t you?’

As they plunged into what, within seconds, was a maelstrom of confetti and flower petals, the silver-haired, bull-necked figure standing by the Bentley yanked open a rear door and barked an
order at his uniformed chauffeur.

Seconds later, when a laughing, breathless Kate snatched a glance at where it had been parked, there was no sign of it. She knew, however, that it would return. And she knew that when it did
return, she and Leon would need all their strength in order to keep their family intact and inviolate.

‘Tell me what happened between you and Mr Harvey,’ Leon said grimly. ‘Tell me everything that went on between the two of you during the years I was
away.’

They were lying in the blissful comfort and privacy of their big, creaky double bed. It was an hour or so before dawn, and the curtains were pulled back, allowing moonlight to spill milkily into
the room. From the next bedroom Carl Voigt’s snores could be heard faintly and rhythmically. In the room across the landing, Luke and Matthew were cosily tucked into the same downy bed, a
nightlight offering comfort in case they should wake. In the room at the far end of the landing, Daisy was asleep, a battered teddy bear in her arms.

Kate lay, her cheek resting against the naked warmth of Leon’s chest, as his arm circled round her. ‘Things came to a head between us the same week your ship was torpedoed and you
were reported missing;’ she said, her voice husky with remembered grief and pain. ‘Matthew was still with his grandfather . . . yes, I know he’s really Matthew’s
great
-grandfather, but he’s still only in his late sixties and he’s so aggressive and forceful, I find it impossible to refer to him as a great-grandfather. Great-grandfathers
should be feeble and as old as Father Time.’

Despite his apprehension at whatever it was she was about to tell him, a smile tugged the corners of his mouth.

‘And?’ he prompted, his arm tightening lovingly around her. ‘What happened that week? Matthew was presumably still with Mr Harvey at his country home in Somerset?’

Kate moved her head in a nod, her unbraided hair brushing silkily against his flesh. ‘Yes. Mr Harvey took him to Somerset, with a nursery nurse, during the first few weeks of the Blitz. I
didn’t want him to go . . . he was only a few months old . . . but I knew he would be safe there, and I had Mr Harvey’s promise that the minute London was out of danger he would return
Matthew to me.’

Leon remained silent. It hadn’t only been servicemen like himself who had suffered during the war. It had been civilians, too, especially civilians living in bomb-blitzed towns such as
Plymouth and Coventry and London.

‘What happened, sweetheart?’ he asked at last, tenderly. Whatever it was, he would make it up to her. From now on, as long as he had breath in his body, he would never let anyone or
anything distress or harm her.

She moved slightly against him, splaying a hand against the broad comfort of his chest. ‘Hitler began directing all his energies against Russia, and the bombing was over. Or at least it
was over for a time. I told Mr Harvey I would be travelling down to Somerset to collect Matthew and to bring him home with me.’ She paused, reliving again the nightmarish moment when she had
entered the nursery only to find it empty. ‘And he wasn’t there,’ she said simply. ‘Mr Harvey had spirited him away, and he vowed he would never return him to me.’

‘Sweet Jesus!’
The words were uttered softly, so as not to wake the sleeping children, but with such fierce intensity that Kate felt a tingle ripple down her spine. If Leon
had been home, Joss Harvey would have paid dear for his high-handed, unspeakable behaviour.

‘The next few days were a nightmare.’ Her voice was unsteady, and though her head was buried on his shoulder he knew there were tears glinting on her eyelashes. ‘I didn’t
know if you were dead or alive. I didn’t know where Matthew was. And no-one would help me. Or at least no-one in authority would help me,’ she added hurriedly as he made a swift, angry
movement of disbelief.

From the next bedroom, her father’s snores reached a crescendo and then, as he turned over in sleep, subsided.

‘What did you do?’ Leon asked quietly, controlling his inner fury with difficulty. He had known, on his last leave at home with her, that Joss Harvey wanted to adopt Matthew. Why,
then, hadn’t he realized how dangerous Joss Harvey could be? Why hadn’t he realized that a man like Joss Harvey was a man who would never take ‘no’ for an answer?

‘I went to the police. I went to a solicitor. Both were unhelpful. As far as they were concerned, Joss Harvey was respectability personified. And I, very obviously, wasn’t.’
Her gentle voice held a note of bitterness that, because it was so alien to her warm, compassionate nature, shocked him inexpressibly. ‘Not only was Matthew illegitimate, but I was expecting
another baby outside of wedlock. In their eyes, if Joss Harvey had removed his great-grandson from my care, he had done so for good reasons.’

He said gently, ‘And so what did you do when you received no joy from the police or the solicitor you had consulted?’

‘I realized that the most obvious thing was to capitalize on my friendship with Matthew’s nanny. I’d always got on well with Ruth Fairbairn and I knew that, thanks to Joss
Harvey’s lies, she wouldn’t be aware that I no longer knew where she or Matthew were. So I put a message in the personal column of
The Lady
, which is a magazine all nannies read,
and five days later Ruth was on the doorstep, Matthew in her arms.’

‘And now she’s about to marry the Vicar!’ Leon said, humour re-entering his voice again. ‘Which is a nice, happy ending.’

Kate smiled to herself in the moonlit darkness. Ruth’s visit to Magnolia Square, with Matthew in her arms, had certainly had far-reaching and happy consequences for her. She had met Bob
Giles when he was paying a parochial visit to the Jenningses, and the attraction between the two of them had been instant and mutual.

She kissed Leon’s dark, velvet-smooth flesh and said, ‘The happy ending came when Nellie Miller introduced me to her niece, Ruby. Ruby is a solicitor and she served Joss Harvey with
so many writs, he must have thought he was drowning under them! Since then he’s left both Matthew and me very much alone.’

‘Until yesterday?’

‘Until yesterday,’ she agreed quietly and he felt her tremble in his arms.

He raised himself up on his elbow and looked down at her. ‘There’s nothing to be frightened of, sweetheart,’ he said fiercely. ‘Matthew is
your
child. Soon, when
the adoption goes through, he’ll legally be
my
child as well. Joss Harvey is never going to take him from us. Not now. Not ever.’

As he lowered his head to hers, she hoped with all her heart that his words would prove to be prophetic. But she wasn’t convinced. She knew Joss Harvey far better than Leon did. He had
lost his son in the First World War and his grandson at Dunkirk. And he wanted his illegitimate great-grandson to take the place his son and his grandson would have filled. He wanted Matthew to be
raised by him as his heir. And he was ruthless enough to let nothing stand in the way of that ambition.

‘Leon is sure he can handle Joss Harvey, but he hasn’t experienced Joss Harvey’s ruthlessness at first hand,’ Kate said to Carrie next morning, when she
stopped by the Jennings’s market stall in Lewisham High Street to have a few words with her.

Carrie expertly tipped half a stone of potatoes into a carrier bag the customer would be collecting when he came out of the nearby bookies and said, ‘The trouble with old man Harvey is
that he doesn’t only have endless money for legal fees, he has a lifetime’s experience of besting people. Harvey’s is one of the biggest construction companies in the country, and
it didn’t get that way without there being a lot of sharp practice at the helm.’

‘Don’t I know it,’ Kate said, not disguising her apprehension. Yesterday had been her wedding day, and she had refused to have it blighted by dwelling on thoughts of what Joss
Harvey might or might not do in order to obtain custody of Matthew. Last night, in bed with Leon, she had felt that nothing on earth could harm her family. Now, in the garish brightness of day, she
was not so sure. Joss Harvey was an astute businessman, and he had the power that came with wealth and influence.