Picture of Innocence (45 page)

There was very little point in standing on ceremony with Rachel, Judy thought. ‘ Yes,’ she said I do.’

Rachel smiled. ‘You got no call to worry,’ she said. ‘He don’t want no one but you.’

So she had put him to the test. Judy had known she would, as soon as they had met. She was used to Lloyd’s frank appreciation of other women, and had known he would fancy Rachel as soon as she had clapped eyes on her. It was when she had discovered that Rachel fancied him that she had begun to worry. Purely on a professional level, of course. Because that sort of thing didn’t mean anything, wasn’t important. But she was pleased she had no call to worry, all the same.

‘Tell me something,’ she said. She might as well, since they seemed to be on very intimate ground already.

It was when she had bought the pregnancy-testing kit that she had first wondered. Because she had been sneaking into the chemist, hoping no one saw her. And lying to Bernard Bailey about being pregnant would, she had thought, have been suicidal; she didn’t think Rachel was into suicide. Then Jack Melville had said that Bailey had told him he was going to have a son. He wouldn’t have said that just because Rachel had told him she was pregnant. He must have known she was, known the sex of the baby. But she had lied to him about being in the chemist, and Judy knew why.

‘You really are pregnant, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘You’d bought a pregnancy-testing kit in the chemist that day. You didn’t want Bailey to know that you might be.’

Rachel nodded. ‘Was goin’ to leave him if I was,’ she said. ‘But I still didn’t want to give up on the money, not if I didn’t have to. Not on what might’ve been just another false alarm. But ’fore I knew it, he was kickin’ me again. Had to tell him.’ She smiled. ‘You told your chief inspector yet?’

Judy stared at her.

She shrugged. ‘I’m a gypsy,’ she said.

‘You’re the eldest of seven children,’ Judy said. ‘If anyone knows the signs, you do.’

The long dimple appeared. ‘That too,’ she said. Then her face grew serious. ‘Just don’t do nothin’ you’ll regret,’ she said, and closed the door.

Judy walked slowly down the steps, and made her mind up. She got into her car to find Lloyd asleep in the passenger seat; he woke up as she got in, and rubbed his eyes, sitting up, putting on his seat belt. ‘What did he say?’ he asked.

‘He said he doesn’t think it would make any difference. That working parties don’t convene in smoke-filled rooms any more, except right at the start. Once it’s up and running, as he says, it’s all conducted through computer conference facilities and cyberspace, so they could fix me up with a computer and a modem at home, if I didn’t want to take the full maternity leave.’ She started the car, and set off down the farm road. ‘And I am going to have the baby,’ she added.

Because a gypsy told her she should have it? Maybe. She tried to push all the doubts to the back of her mind, because of the one certainty that Rachel Bailey had put there. She would feel guilty for the rest of her life if she didn’t have it, whatever her enlightened views about other people’s freedom of choice. Enlightened views were all very well, until they came up against reality. Like real babies. And real Rachel Baileys.

‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’ she asked, glancing at him, thinking he’d gone to sleep again, but he hadn’t.

‘This computer,’ he said. ‘
Are
you going to have it installed at home?’

That seemed an odd thing to be exercising his mind. ‘I should think so,’ she said.

‘And … where will home be, Judy?’

She didn’t answer. That was another problem, for another day. One that hadn’t started at half past four in the morning. Her selfish soul wanted to have its cake and eat it, wanted Lloyd to be around when she wanted him, and not when she didn’t, and she was going to have to wrestle with that some other time.

But she had made a start on trying to reform. She had spent what had possibly been the longest working day of her life walking round in shoes that clashed with her dress. And if that wasn’t an act of pure selflessness, then she didn’t know what was.

First published in 1998 by Macmillan

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