The Accidental Family (17 page)

“He still has memories of feelings for her,” Cal said. “That’s a different thing entirely, that’s nostalgia, not love. Anyway, tell me more about the love child. He looks just like Louis, you say?” Cal mused. “Is he straight?”

“I’m not dignifying that with an answer,” Sophie said tartly, smiling at Grace, whose attention had briefly wandered from the TV. “The point is, I’m already marrying my dead best friend’s husband who I’ve known for barely a year. And now it turns out the countryside is littered with his progeny. Cal—what am I thinking?”

“‘Littered’ is a bit of an exaggeration—at least as far as we know,” Cal told her. “And what do you mean, what are you thinking? Are you getting cold feet, Miss Mills? Has the love child put you off?”

“No!” Sophie protested. “Well, not exactly but …Cal, what
do
I think about it? Why do I feel as if things have changed between Louis and me? Why do I feel that I’ve somehow ruined everything for us?”

“Things have changed between you and Louis,” Cal said simply. “The honest truth is, you don’t know that much about him …which doesn’t mean you don’t love him. I’m just saying, you haven’t known him for long. You’ve found out something about him, a part of him you hadn’t seen before, and it’s bound to change your perception of him slightly.”

“But it’s not as if this was last year or even five years ago, this happened when he was a kid,” Sophie said. “He made a mistake, so why should that bother me?”

“Everything else shouldn’t bother you, not if you’re sure about Louis. All you should be worrying about is helping him get through
this and getting on with marrying him. And you are sure about him, aren’t you? You said so.”

Sophie paused for a long moment. She knew what Cal was waiting for her to say. She knew that as soon as she uttered even one word of uncertainty, he’d pounce on it like Artemis on an injured bird. She glanced sideways at Mrs. Tregowan, who seemed immersed in the story of a mother who sold her daughter’s baby to pay for drugs.

“I am sure,” she whispered. “I couldn’t wait to marry him before all this happened, and I still can’t. I’m just worried, worried that somehow this is going to ruin things between us.”

“You know what you need to help take your mind off things, don’t you?”

“Vodka?” Sophie asked hopefully.

“A hen night. A massive full-on London-based hen night organized by the nearest thing you’ve got to a best friend.”

“And how on earth will your taking me to a string of gay clubs help take my mind off things in a way that won’t mean I will require psychiatric help?”

“Because we won’t go to only gay clubs and because once you’re back in the Big Smoke, you’ll feel like yourself again. You’ll have perspective, distance, decent shoes on, and, most important, vodka on tap. You could be here by the weekend.”

“Bizarrely enough, that does sound quite tempting, but we’re going to confront Wendy today,” Sophie informed him. “Louis is coming by to pick me up any minute. I can’t just say, ‘By the way, darling, I’m clearing off up to London for a drinking binge because the skeletons in your closet are freaking me out.’ ”

“Well, you could, but since you won’t …I’ll bring the hen night to you. Well, I’ll bring me to you anyway, you drum up some hens. I’m coming down and I won’t take no for an answer. Line me up some fishermen! I’ll see you Friday night.”

“Cal, I’m just not sure that now is the time—”

“Oh come on, Sophie, I need to get away from London and forget that the woman I depend on for an income hates me. I want to be with you, miserable, bitter, dysfunctional, and doomed-to-romantic-failure you, because you always make me feel better.”

“It’s tempting when you put it like that but—”

“Book me a room with Mrs. A., I’m on my way, darling!” Cal said and hung up.

Sophie stared at her silent handset and wondered why her life was populated by a whole lot of people who thought they knew more about what she needed than she did herself. She concluded that it was probably a statistical inevitability given that most of the time she felt as if she knew nothing at all.

“So today’s the big day with the love child then?” Grace asked her.

“Well, the love child’s mother,” Sophie said. She should have known that nothing got past her fellow guest. Besides, Mrs. Alexander had been polishing the occasional table on the landing outside her room for quite some time while she’d been making arrangements with Louis about going to see Wendy.

“All set?” Mrs. Alexander asked Louis as she opened the door for him. He looked tense, his face tight and drawn, an expression Sophie was not familiar with. He hadn’t even looked that way when he’d first come to claim his daughters. Her own stomach was in a tangle of knots, but she was determined not to let her anxiety feed Louis’s. She was going to be the calm one, the one who was strong for him even if she did feel like running a million miles in the opposite direction.

“I guess,” Louis said, looking at Sophie.

“I looked her up on the Internet and I’ve printed off the address
of her workshop,” Sophie said. “All we do is go there and hope she’s in.”

“Right.” Louis nodded. Sophie was surprised by exactly how much the prospect of seeing Wendy again terrified him, even considering the circumstances. She had seen him in adversity and he had never been like this. No matter how hard it had been for him to come back and find that Bella hated him and Izzy didn’t know him, he never lost his optimism or his confidence that he would work things out. It had been one of the things about him that had infuriated and impressed Sophie the most. Sophie wondered if it was the prospect of meeting his son that was making Louis so nervous or if it was seeing the girl he’d once been so in love with.

“I’m sure it will be fine,” Mrs. Alexander said, rubbing Louis briskly on the back as if he had no more than a bad case of dyspepsia. “You just tell her you want to meet your son and there’s nothing she can do about it.”

“Right,” Louis said, pecking Mrs. Alexander on the cheek.

“Do I?” he asked Sophie as he was about to get into her car.

“Do you what?” she replied.

“Do I want to meet my son?”

The workshop was on an industrial estate outside Torquay, one of thirty or so identical-looking units.

“It’s unit thirty-seven,” Sophie said as she drove slowly down the concrete-covered road that ran between the tentlike buildings. “Can you see the number? Louis?”

She braked and looked over at him. He was sitting stock-still, staring straight ahead, his fingers twisted in his lap.

“Is this really that bad?” she asked him, regretting the impatience in her tone immediately, working hard to curb her own misgivings about what they were to do. “I mean yes, yes, it is bad, I know, and it’s a shock. But we’ll face it together and we’ll work out
how best to handle it. If this is what you want, then I’m here for you. Or we could always just turn around and go back—”

“No, you’re right,” Louis said, looking at her and reaching over to take her hand. He squeezed her fingers hard. “This is something I have to face. I’m so glad you’re here with me, Sophie. I haven’t had anyone in my corner since …well, since Carrie.”

“So,” Sophie said, trying not to feel regretful that Louis didn’t want to turn around and leave. “It’s not that bad, is it?”

“It’s just …what if Wendy hates me? I wouldn’t blame her. I got her pregnant and abandoned her when she was fifteen.”

“You didn’t abandon her, you didn’t know until a couple of days ago! She never gave you a chance to do the right thing, whatever that would have been at sixteen. But now you have a chance to do
something
at least. She won’t hate you, none of this is your fault.”

“You’re right,” Louis said. “I don’t know why I’m so nervous about seeing her again …” Louis trailed off and Sophie knew that in that moment he was thinking about the summer he had spent with Wendy all those years ago. She dragged him back into the present, where he belonged to her.

“Look, that’s unit thirty-three, so it must be …” Sophie put the car into first and crawled along a few more units. She turned to look at Louis. “We’re here.”

The radio had been playing when Sophie and Louis pushed open the door. There were a couple of girls in their late teens packing underwear into boxes, probably to fulfill online orders, after all, it was at
bridebodybeautiful.com
that Sophie had finally tracked down Wendy Churchill. She saw that Wendy guaranteed delivery within three to four working days for all orders made online. These girls must be in charge of delivering on that promise.

“Yeah?” one of the girls asked them as they came in.

“You can’t buy the stuff here,” another one said. “You have to go to a fair or buy online.”

“We’re not here to buy,” Sophie said. “We’re here to see Wendy.”

“Oh, right, out back,” the first girl said, nodding in the direction of a small office. “WENDY, VISITORS!” she yelled.

“We’ll go through,” Sophie said, pulling at Louis’s hand and then pulling again when she realized that he didn’t seem to be moving his feet.

Wendy’s smile froze on her face the second she saw who her visitors were.

“You told him,” she said to Sophie.

“I had to,” Sophie said calmly. “Surely you must see that.”

Wendy sat back in her chair and looked at Louis. Sophie waited for the hate and thinly veiled anger she had experienced from Wendy at the wedding fair to be unleashed on her fiancé, but instead Wendy smiled. It was a rueful, regretful smile. A pretty flirtatious smile.

“You poor bastard, you must have been going through hell,” she said warmly.

“It’s been a bit of a shock, I’ll admit,” Louis said, tentatively smiling back at her.

“Look, I’m sorry I got all stressy with your girlfriend at the fair.” Wendy gestured at the one empty chair in the room and Louis sat in it. “It was a bit of a shock for me too, having my deep, dark secret outed like that by some strange woman. I probably didn’t handle it as well as I should have.”

“We understand, don’t we, Soph?” Louis said, reaching up over his shoulder and taking Sophie’s hand.

“Yes we do,” Sophie said, trying, largely unsuccessfully, to repress the violent feelings of hate that Wendy effortlessly seemed to inspire in her.

“So—what do you want to do?” Wendy asked him pleasantly. Sophie wondered where her evil twin had gone, where the vicious threats and anger from the fair had gone and, more important, why? She told herself it was just childish jealousy and resentment that made her feel so negatively about the woman. After all, she had thrown a twenty-year-old, six-foot-two spanner in the works of what was supposed to be Sophie’s fairy-tale ending, but it wasn’t just that. There was something about Wendy that troubled her.

“I don’t know what I want to do, really,” Louis said, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. “I mean, first of all I want to say I’m sorry. I’m sorry I got you pregnant when we were kids. I was dumb, and drunk. I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Wendy said, raising a suggestive eyebrow; Sophie had to work hard to stop her mouth from dropping open in horror. “I have fond memories of that night, and besides, it wasn’t just your fault. I went to the same sex-education classes as you. We were both young and drunk …” Wendy shrugged in a way that suggested the last twenty years of single motherhood had been no trouble at all. “We both wanted each other so much.”

“But why didn’t you tell me?” Louis asked her. “I don’t know what I would have done about it. I was a bloody stupid kid with no parents to help me out. But I don’t know—I’d have done something, got a job maybe …”

“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know, not straightaway,” Wendy said. “When you made it clear you didn’t want to go out with me anymore—”

“When
I
made it clear?” Louis looked surprised. “You were the one who ignored
me
! I was heartbroken!”

“You were?” Wendy laughed. “No, you’ve got that wrong. After that party I was so excited about seeing you again, now that we were lovers—but you couldn’t even look at me.”

“No, you’ve got that wrong—
you
ignored
me
. I thought I’d disappointed
appointed you so much that you’d decided to chuck me on the spot.”

“Far from it!” Wendy actually fluttered her lashes, which made Sophie want to shove her fingers down her throat and vomit. This was not going at all the way she’d expected. For starters, the opportunities for her to be a supportive and understanding fiancée seemed to be negligible, particularly since Louis had carelessly let go of her hand. Plus, there was a distinct lack of shouting or angst. Instead there was flirting.
Flirting.

“I can’t believe that …,” Louis said, shaking his head as he smiled at Wendy. “I pined for you for weeks.”

“Same!” Wendy exclaimed. “Anyway, I didn’t notice I’d missed my first period. Mum and Dad announced that we were moving for Dad’s job, and I thought, why not? The only boy I’ll ever love has chucked me—I might as well move on. I was a skinny little thing back then, really petite—”

“You still are,” Louis assured her chivalrously.

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Wendy said coyly. “But when I started to get a bit of a tummy, Mum said it was my hormones. Puppy fat! We’d been in Oldham for a couple of months when I felt it kick. Of course I didn’t know it was a kick. I thought I had an alien life form inside me. He must have been moving around before then but I’d put it down to indigestion. But this—this was a really proper kick. I went running to my mum in tears, thinking it was cancer or worse. She put her hand on my belly and felt it and suddenly
she
was crying.

“‘You silly stupid bloody foolish girl,’ that’s what she said to me. I’ll never forget it. Or what she said next. ‘You’ve gone and got yourself pregnant.’ ”

Wendy shook her head, looking over Sophie’s shoulder and through the venetian blind. “But they were brilliant about it in the end.”

“Didn’t they want to know who the dad was?” Louis asked her.

“Yes,” Wendy said.

“And I told them.”

“And your dad didn’t come down here to kick my head in? Why not?” Louis asked her.