Secretary on Demand (17 page)

It wasn't yet six o'clock and she knew that he wouldn't be back for at least another hour, probably a bit more.

Shannon picked up the telephone and after a shaky phone call to Carrie, who wasn't best pleased at the favour being asked of her, she went downstairs and explained to Eleanor that she had to leave on important family business. When she said that she would be back as soon as she could, she made sure to superstitiously cross her fingers behind her back. Carrie, she said, was on her way over.

Eleanor listened and then said, ‘Are you feeling all right? You don't look very well. You're not ill, are you?'

The smile Shannon offered Eleanor in response to this question was glassy and unfocused.

‘No! No, of course not! It's just…' she mumbled. ‘Mum, actually. Bit of an accident around the house. Vacuuming. Broken ankle. Fell over the, um, vacuum.'

Eleanor looked perplexed at this explanation but let it go. ‘What shall I tell Dad?'

‘I'll call him. You just tell him that I'll be in touch.'

S
HANNON
lay on her bed and stared up at the ceiling. It was something she had been doing quite a bit of over the past three days. Her mother had given up asking her what was wrong since the standard answer Shannon supplied was, ‘nothing, Mum.' She had also, thankfully, stopped asking how ‘that nice young man of yours' was. If she was disturbed at her daughter's vague responses as to how long she intended to stay in Ireland, she kept her unease to herself.

But Shannon knew that her mother was worrying. And she thought that she would have plenty more to worry about if she only knew the full extent of the situation. One pregnant daughter, one ‘nice young man' who would promptly turn into a monster the minute she knew that he was the father and one job in London which would be no more.

She sighed heavily and felt her eyes begin to well up again. Crying was also high on her list of sudden idiosyncrasies. If it weren't for the fact that she had to maintain a cheerful façade whenever she was with her family, she seriously reckoned that she would be crying all the time. Her bedroom would become a swimming pool. And she still hadn't managed to work out what she was going to do.

Returning to London wasn't an option. Naturally, she would have to tell Kane about her condition, but when she thought too hard about that she could feel herself braking violently at the prospect and cravenly telling
herself that there was no need for immediate revelations. She would get a job first, find somewhere to live because living under her mother's roof would be impossible and then present him with a
fait accompli
. Except, what job? She couldn't think offhand of any employers who would hire a pregnant woman with open arms. Not unless they were mad. Which would mean temp work. Which would mean no money. Which would mean no independence. The sigh became a groan of despair.

From downstairs she became aware of her mother calling her and Shannon heaved herself up from the comfort of her bed and reluctantly went to her door and shouted.

‘I'll be down in a minute, Mum! I'm just…' What was she just doing? Meditating? ‘Cleaning up my bedroom!' She looked around her and decided that she would really get her act together very soon and actually do something about the state of it. Her bed was unmade and her brother, who had been ousted amid much protest, had not seen fit to tidy up his clothes and neither had she.

‘Well, come down now!'

The voice had come nearer. In a minute, knowing her mother, she would come and fetch her down. Shannon grudgingly went downstairs and trailed limply in the direction of the kitchen, bypassing the small lounge which the family used as a television room and from which came boisterous noises of her brothers who seemed to spend most of their free time playing weird games on the television with their friends.

‘You have a visitor.' Her mother appeared in front of her with a rolling-pin in one hand and a bowl in the other.

‘Who?' At six-thirty in the evening, she couldn't think
of anyone who might be visiting her. No one knew she was around, apart from her family.

‘You haven't been sleeping again, have you?' her mother asked suspiciously, and Shannon went pink.

‘Why would I be sleeping at this ridiculous hour, Mum? I told you, I was cleaning the bedroom. It's a tip. You have to tell Brian to move his clothes out. I can't find anything.'

‘There seems no point to that, Shannon, when you haven't deigned to tell us how long you're going to be here.' She looked as though she might say more, but she had already said it. On a number of occasions. Usually with a level of concern in her voice that brought on an instant attack of crippling guilt.

‘Well, who's my surprise visitor? Can't you tell them that I'm not well?' She hung back from the kitchen door, alarmed at the prospect of having to be sociable when all she wanted to do was curl up like a ball and hide.

‘No, I can't. You do your own dirty work, Shannon.' With which she strode away, with her daughter following miserably in her wake. ‘And let me tell you right off that I'm sick to death of you moping around this house as though the sky's fallen in. You put a smile on your face, my girl!'

Shannon grimaced.

‘That's better. Not much, but better.'

Shannon was still sporting the sinister grimace on her face when she pushed open the kitchen and froze in her tracks. Her legs refused to propel her any further and her heart seemed to do something funny.

‘Your visitor,' her mother introduced triumphantly, doubtless, Shannon thought numbly, expecting her to be pleased, thrilled, over the moon. After all, hadn't the ‘nice young man' whose name Shannon had refused to
mention, followed her all the way from London to Ireland?

Kane was sitting at one end of the long, weathered kitchen table with a cup of tea in his hand, while her mother rolled pastry at the other end. A cosy scene. He looked perfectly at ease in a pair of black jeans and a thick, black jumper, the sleeves of which he had pushed up to the elbows to accommodate the warmth in the kitchen. Shannon felt her heart begin to do a panicky quickstep.

‘Well, aren't you going to say hello?' Her mother paused in her pastry-rolling to shoot Shannon a lethal look that spoke volumes.

‘Uh, hello,' Shannon said, hovering uncertainly by the door. Her hands began to stray guiltily to her stomach and she clasped them firmly behind her back. ‘How are you?'

‘Fine.' He spoke at last. It was bad enough seeing him but she dreaded hearing that deep voice.

‘Cup of tea, love?' her mother asked, and Shannon shuffled into the kitchen, managing to somehow walk sideways, like a crab, towards the kettle.

‘So, what are you doing here?'

‘I came to see how your mother was.'

‘How
I
was?'

‘Apparently,' Kane drawled, not taking his cool eyes off Shannon's flushed face, ‘you broke your ankle, tripping over the vacuum.'

The lie rebounded off the walls of the kitchen and then subsided into deafening silence.

‘Ah.' Shannon cleared her throat. ‘As you can see, Mum's fine.'

‘What's going on here?' Rose asked. She stopped rolling altogether and proceeded to dish out one of her spec
tacularly penetrating glares at Shannon. ‘What's all this nonsense about broken ankles and vacuum cleaners?'

‘Oh, dear,' Kane said in a voice dripping with false innocence, ‘have I put my foot in it?'

‘Shannon, you look at me. Have you been telling untruths?'

‘Sort of.' At which point the kettle began whistling furiously and she busied herself with making a cup of tea, taking her time, while two pairs of eyes were focused on her conscience-stricken back.

‘You seem to have a nasty habit of sort of telling untruths, don't you, reds?'

Shannon swung to look at him and found him standing right there beside her like a dark, avenging angel, which was crazy because he didn't know anything.
Go and sit back down,
she wanted to yell.
Go where I don't have to breathe you in.

‘You shouldn't have come here,' she whispered shakily.

‘Why should I leave you to crawl away? I've done you a favour, reds. There's guilt stamped all over your face. If I hadn't shown up, you would have been living with your guilt for ever.'

‘I have nothing to be guilty about!'

‘And is that another sort of untruth?' He removed the bottle of milk from her shaking hands and poured some into her cup.

She was temporarily saved from the necessity of having to enlarge on that explanation by the thundering sound of boisterous young boys who pelted into the kitchen and stopped in their tracks.

‘Oh, hi,' Brian said, looking at Kane with devouring curiosity. ‘Mum, when's tea? We're hungry.' His three
friends shuffled about in the kitchen, peering around for anything edible on offer. ‘And the computer's crashed.'

‘Who's the visitor?' Brian asked.

‘Kane Lindley.' Kane was looking at the assorted, badly dressed heap of fourteen-year-old boys with amusement. ‘Your sister's employer.'

‘When is she going back to London? She's in my room.'

‘No, Brian, I'm actually in
my
room.'

‘It's not your room any longer.'

His friends began hooting and jeering and making disgusting noises, and heaven only knew how long their juvenile antics would have carried on if Kane hadn't stood up and informed them that he would have a look at the computer.

All four pelted out of the kitchen in a reverse stampede, followed by Kane who paused only to say to Shannon, ‘I'll leave you to chat with your mother, shall I? You probably have one or two things to say by way of explanation.'

‘So,' her mother said, once the kitchen door was shut.

‘What's Kane doing here?'

‘He said you vanished without notice and he came to find out if anything was wrong.'

‘You see what I mean!' Shannon cried out, clutching her mug. ‘Didn't I tell you that this would happen the minute I made the mistake of taking him up on his offer to live under his roof while I looked for somewhere else? Didn't I tell you?'

She thought of Eleanor, who had enjoyed every minute of her company, and the pleasure she had shared with Kane before circumstances had taken a turn for the worse, and felt herself flush with guilt. It was easier to deal with him, though, if she could work herself up to
a fury so she doggedly fanned the little spark of self-righteous anger until she was feeling suitably hard done by.

‘I don't need anyone chasing me up here to find out what's going on when nothing's going on! I was due to have some holiday leave anyway! I didn't choose to move to London so that I could end up in a situation with someone checking on my every movement!'

‘He said you disappeared without any explanation. Apart from this nonsense, presumably, about my broken ankle, tripping over a household gadget. Did something happen there that I should know about? Sit down, Shannon and stop hovering there by the counter. Sit down and talk to me.'

She finished putting the pastry over the chicken pie which she popped into the oven, then she wiped her floury hands on her apron and sat down.

‘The last time I spoke to you on the phone, you sounded very happy. So what happened to you in the space of one week?'

‘Nothing. I just…needed a bit of space…'

‘So you flew back here, where there's no peace and quiet to be found with those mad brothers of yours stamping through the house like elephants. Spin me another fairy-tale, Shannon.'

‘I felt homesick,' Shannon said.

Now was the perfect time to tell her mother everything. She would be shocked and disappointed at first, but she would also be supportive. There was nothing to fear in that respect. But she just couldn't. The conditions, she decided, were not optimum. She needed to have her mother to herself for her confession. It couldn't be done when Kane was outside and four adolescents were waiting to burst into the kitchen again in another feeding
frenzy. She would take her mother out for tea, perhaps tomorrow, when Kane had gone, and she would tell her everything then.

‘It gets lonely down in London,' she elaborated, playing loosely with the truth, ‘especially at Christmas. I mean, Mum, Christmas is special here at home. All of us together. I just gave in to a fit of nostalgia. You could say.'

‘Why didn't you tell Kane that? Instead of having the poor man rush up here, thinking you'd been taken ill?'

‘He thought I'd been taken ill?' Shannon asked anxiously. ‘Did he tell you that? That I was sick?'

He couldn't suspect anything, could he? No, she thought, men's minds didn't operate like that. And there had been no signs. No sudden bursts of unexplained nausea, no strange food cravings, nothing suspicious. Just as well she'd found out early, before she'd begun to put on weight. Just as well she hadn't gone on the Pill after all after that first time. Shannon considered the consequences of that and shuddered. She'd accepted the fact of the baby inside her from the very first moment of discovery, and what she felt wasn't a sense of despondency or of hopes shattered but, strangely, one of rapture that she would now have something to show for her love, a child she could treasure, a lasting memory of the only man she would ever love.

‘Not in so many words, but he was obviously concerned.'

‘I did contact him after I left,' Shannon said truthfully. Actually, she'd left a message on his answering machine at home when she'd known he would be at work, telling him that she was very busy but would be in touch as soon as Christmas was out of the way. ‘Did he say when he would be leaving?'

‘He didn't. And I didn't see fit to ask him. I wouldn't want him thinking that he was unwelcome here after all that he did for you.'

‘Well, it won't be overnight. He has to get back to Eleanor.'

‘Why don't
you
ask him, then?'

‘Ask me what?'

Typically, Kane had given no advance warning of his reappearance in the kitchen. He hadn't even knocked! So much for exquisite, gentlemanly good manners. Shannon looked at her mother to see whether she had noticed that oversight, but her mother was smiling. Lord, did this man know how to worm his way under people's skin!

‘Shannon was just wondering how long you were going to be here,' her mother said guilelessly, ‘because she wanted to take you to a new Italian restaurant that's opened just outside Dublin. Very near here, in fact. Give you two a chance to talk. There'll be no opportunity here, that's for sure.'

‘Oh, was she now?' Kane murmured. He shot her a telling look and smiled. ‘Well, you're in luck, Shannon, as it happens. I booked to stay overnight in a hotel and it would be my pleasure to be taken out for a meal.'

‘Well…I…' Shannon stalled.