What She Wants (69 page)

But that was the one sticking point: she understood why Matt had stormed off, but she was still upset that their love wasn’t strong enough for him to have given her the benefit of the doubt. The old pattern had repeated itself again when he hadn’t waited for her explanation.

Hope turned into the long drive to the hotel and felt her heart bleed. She couldn’t abase herself before Matt, because he’d been to blame too. He should have known that

she wouldn’t betray him. If she crawled on her hands and knees again, it would be like the old days. Him, in charge; her, the devoted, prostrate servant. And Hope knew she’d gone too far to go back to that. If they got back together, it had to be because they both wanted it and had both said sorry for what had gone before. The rules had to change. Matt was waiting outside the hotel for them. She saw him standing with one long canvas-jeaned leg resting on the rails beside the ponies’ paddock at the front of the hotel. He wore a white T-shirt that made his dark hair look even darker than usual and Hope’s heart swooped at the sight of him. ‘Daddy!’ squealed the children in unison and Hope did her best to smile. She stopped the Metro, got out and smiled hello shyly. Matt didn’t move forward to kiss her or even touch her. Instead, he pulled open the car door and leaned in to hug the children in a flurry of squeals and cries and delighted giggles. Hope had to stand away from this touching tableau. When the children and their baggage had been removed, she waited briefly, longing for Matt to make the first move. All she needed was one ‘would you like to come in and have a coffee?’ and it would be fine. She could throw her arms around him and say yes! ‘What time are you coming back tomorrow?’ It took a moment before Hope could drag herself back from dreams of joyous reconciliation to the harsh reality of . life. ‘Five?’ she whispered. ‘See you then,’ Matt said politely. Then, he hoisted Toby onto his shoulders, picked up all the luggage in one strong arm, and taking Millie’s eager little hand with the other, he walked off to the hotel. Sadly, Hope got back into the Metro and drove home, with only one stop in order to find a tissue to wipe the tears from her streaming eyes. Until today, she’d had hope. Now

she had none. How could she tell Matt about the baby now? He’d think she was trying to trap him. That was if he didn’t assume it was Christy’s.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Nicole dumped her suitcase in the hall and wandered into the sitting room. She half-expected it to look like a bombsite because she’d been away for so long. Normally, unless she tidied up all the old papers and magazines, nobody else did. But the room was pristine, with no mugs left on the coffee table and no copies of Hello or OK! scattered across the couch. Weird. In the kitchen, it was the same story. The counters were spotless, there wasn’t so much as a teaspoon lying in the sink and the scent of lemon cleanser was in the air.

Gran, decided Nicole. Gran had been round scrubbing and cleaning, probably as the result of an argument with Sandra about tidiness. Normally the ‘honestly, Sandra, you’re as untidy as a teenager!’ comment produced a row and it was up to Nicole to restore order to the chaos. But Gran must have done it this time.

She dragged her case upstairs but didn’t bother unpacking. She hated unpacking and despite being a tidy soul in most areas of her life, this wasn’t one of them. The house was unusually quiet, it was strange, in fact. Nicole went into Pammy’s pink room and sat on the bed, idly picking up a cuddly toy and stroking it. Even this room was tidy, with Pammy’s collection of Disney characters lined up on a dust free shelf.

Nicole’s favourite was Tigger. She had an elderly Tigger of her own and had taken it with her on the tour, where it sat on her hotel bed and comforted her many nights. The night she and Darius had ended up cuddling for hours,

talking and kissing, Tigger had stared disapprovingly at them from the dressing table.

‘Tigger is shocked,’ Darius had said the following morning, turning the cuddly toy away from them before they kissed goodbye.

‘He shouldn’t be shocked,’ Nicole replied softly, ‘nothing happened.’

But she wanted something to happen, all right. It was a matter of timing. She wanted the timing to be right. And the place.

She’d thought of nothing else since that night with Darius. During the final few days of the tour, she’d imagined finally having her own flat. Not one with Darius, no matter how much she liked him. No. A place of her own, a place he could visit but which would still belong to her, where she could keep the kitchen spotless and never see so much as a cup out of place anywhere.

The idea was so seductive that Nicole was constantly waking up after delicious daydreams where she’d been merrily shopping for duvet covers and lampshades, whizzing along with Pammy and her mum, picking out bits and pieces, laughing over silly shower curtains decorated with goldfishes. And then her eyes would open and reality would reassert itself, making her realize that she couldn’t possibly leave them. For the first time in her life she had the financial security to have her own place to live, but her sense of responsibility meant she couldn’t take advantage of it.

The sound of a key turning in the front door made Nicole race downstairs happily. She couldn’t wait to see her mum and darling Pammy.

‘Nicole!’ roared Pammy, a small blonde princess in pink jeans and a tiny denim jacket.

‘Oh love, I’ve missed you,’ Nicole said, trying to bite back the tears as she held the small body to hers.

When she’d hugged her little sister, she turned her attention to Sandra.

‘It’s lovely to have you back,’ Sandra said. ‘We’ve missed

you.’

‘How’ve you been?’ asked Nicole, immediately putting the kettle on for a pot of tea.

‘We’ve been fine,’ Sandra said, opening her shopping and extracting some chicken breasts, a couple of onions and a tin of tomatoes. ‘Haven’t we, Pammy?’

The little girl nodded proudly. ‘We’ve had cooking every day, Mummy, haven’t we? Not just egg and chips, Nicole. Mum said you’d say that was all we had.’

Both Sandra and Nicole grinned at this.

‘I’ve learned how to do this lovely recipe with lamb and yoghurt,’ Sandra said. ‘It’s very easy and Pammy loves it.’

Pammy nodded at this. ‘Better than Barbie spaghetti,’ she said, which was high praise indeed.

‘And we had the boiled bacon that your Gran loves the other night. I did it all myself. Pammy wasn’t so wild about that, though, were you pet?’

Pammy shook her head.

Nicole had to sit down on a kitchen chair. This was all too bizarre. Her mother cooking? Sandra never cooked. When Nicole had been small, they lived on eggs, chips, pizzas and anything else frozen that could be easily reheated. Now her mother was turning into Nigella Lawson.

‘The place is looking good, Gran must have been spring cleaning,’ she added.

‘I was spring cleaning!’ said her mother indignantly. ‘Honestly, Nicole, you’d think I didn’t know which end of the vacuum cleaner was up.’

Nicole bit back the comment that for years her mother hadn’t taken much interest in being Mrs House Proud.

‘So tell us everything,’ Sandra said when all the shopping had been put away and chocolate biscuits had been produced to go with the tea. Pammy began colouring in at the kitchen table and Sandra started chopping onions for dinner. ‘You look great. I saw the latest article on you in the evening Paper. They called you “very talented”. I got six copies.’

Nicole grinned. ‘If the single flops, everyone will soon be saying I was talentless and they knew from the start that I’d fail.’

‘That’s newspapers for you,’ Sandra said, browning the onion in what looked suspiciously like a new skillet. ‘Paper won’t refuse ink, as I always say. We’re all proud of you, whatever they print.’

‘I’ve been thinking, Mum,’ Nicole began. She paused, got up and got another biscuit from the pack on the counter.

‘You’ve given up smoking, haven’t you?’ demanded her mother suddenly. ‘You never eat biscuits.’

Nicole blushed. ‘I’m doing my best,’ she said. ‘Dar…’ she corrected herself, ‘the company told me it was bad for my voice.’

‘Oh, did they?’ teased her mother. ‘Or was it that lovely Darius … ? Come on, tell me.’

Nicole couldn’t stop the silly, sentimental grin that crossed her face every time she thought of Darius.

‘Are you going out with him?’ asked Sandra, abandoning the onions to start work on some mushrooms.

‘Well… yes… well, that’s part of what I wanted to talk about,’ Nicole said anxiously. She got up to stand at the cooker and give the onions a stir. She didn’t want Pammy to hear what she had to say next.

‘I’m thinking of…’

‘.. . moving out,’ finished her mother. ‘Don’t look so shocked, love. I knew it’d happen. It makes more sense for you to have your own place, now that you’ll be working in town all the time. You’ve got a career now, you need your own space.’

Nicole stared at her mother, astonished and hurt. ‘But what will you do without me?’ she blurted out.

Sandra’s blue eyes crinkled up when she smiled warmly at her daughter. ‘Carry on, Nicole. You were going to have to go sometime, weren’t you? I knew I’d have to let you go. You’re my daughter, not my prisoner.’

‘But how will you cope?’

This time, her mother really did look surprised. ‘Cope? Well, we won’t have you running round after us, taking care of everything, Nicole, but we’ll manage. I’m not useless, you know. How did I cope when you were a baby? I just had to, didn’t I?’ ‘Yes, but Gran said she had to take over,’ interrupted Nicole. ‘Your gran is just like you, Nicole: she needs to be needed. She was the one who insisted I stay with her. I wanted my own place but you know your Gran, bossy boots from hell that she is,’ Sandra added fondly. Nicole wished she still smoked because she desperately needed a cigarette to help her cope. ‘You were such a funny little girl when you were small,’ Sandra went on. ‘Always wanting everything to be perfect, just like your gran. The two of you were like peas in a pod, but even your gran isn’t as much of a perfectionist as you, Nicole. She’s never been able to get the taps in the bathroom cleaned up the way you do. I did worry about you, you know,’ Sandra confided. ‘I talked to the doctor about getting you help because you were so obsessed with things being right. But she put my mind at rest. Said that was your way of coping with life. She said you obviously missed having a dad, although it would kill you to let on to me, and you wanted everything ship shape on the surface. Said I should let you get on with it, that it was what you needed.’ ‘But…’ Nicole didn’t know where to start. This wasn’t how she remembered things at all. ‘But Gran said I had to look after you… and I felt responsible for everything…’ ‘I know.’ Sandra’s soft eyes hardened briefly. ‘You were never responsible, my love. You and Pammy are the most precious gifts I’ve ever been given, you do know that, don’t you? I don’t regret a single moment of my life because I’ve got my two wonderful daughters. Your gran has her regrets and that’s her business, that’s why she’s so anti sex before marriage. Not for moral reasons but because she never

wanted you to be stuck with a child and no way of earning your living, like her and me.’

Too late, Sandra stopped stirring and stared horrorstruck at her daughter. ‘Oh Lord, Nicole, forget I said that.’

‘Like her.’ repeated Nicole parrot-fashion.

‘Please, Nicole, don’t say a word. Your gran would kill me. She never wanted you to know, she was sure you’d be ashamed of her. Just forget I said it.’

‘I can’t,’ Nicole gasped. ‘I’m not ashamed of Gran, how could I be? But tell me the truth.’

‘The truth about what?’ demanded Reenie Turner, appearing at the door with her keys in her hand.

The entire story took two more pots of tea and Nicole decided she’d have to pick another day to give up smoking. Once her grandmother started telling the story, the words flooded out, as if she’d longed to tell Nicole the truth despite everything. Reenie Turner had indeed been sixteen, going on seventeen, when she’d left Ireland for London. Except the bit of information Nicole had never been given included the fact that Reenie had fled her home after getting pregnant by a local lad, who had no intention in hell of marrying her. She’d lived in a small farm near Redlion, which Nicole remembered was the town where Sam Smith’s sister lived. Not that it surprised her: this entire tale was so unbelievable that one more startling coincidence wasn’t noticeable.

‘It wasn’t like now,’ Reenie recounted. ‘Being pregnant in those days was a mortal sin and a shame like nothing you can imagine, Nicole. My family didn’t know. Sure, I barely knew myself. There was no sex education or the like, we’d all grown up on a farm so we knew what was what, but as for people having babies, that was like another, mysterious world. If I’d been a heifer, I’d have had a better idea of what was going on than I did as a young woman.’

The three Turner women, sitting around the table, smiled. Even telling a sad story, Reenie couldn’t resist a bit of a joke.

‘My sister, Heather, God rest her, was going to London to train as a nurse. She was three years older than me and I told her one night. I knew I had to get away or the family would have been destroyed with the shame of it all.’ Nicole’s heart ached at the thought of a lonely young girl having to leave her family and her home all because she lived in an era where unmarried pregnancy was the ultimate taboo. ‘It was either leave or get sent to the nuns,’ Reenie said mistily. ‘They had homes then for fallen women or magdalens as they called the likes of me. Those places were nothing but workhouses for pregnant women and I say a prayer to Our Lord every day that I missed that. Your aunt Heather took me with her to London and took care of me.’ Sandra reached over and squeezed her mother’s hand softly. ‘When your mother was born, Heather and I got a place of our own and she told everyone I was widowed, that my husband had died in an accident on a building site. There were so many Irish builders, nobody thought much about it, or if they did, they said nothing. And when I met your grandfather, Charlie Turner, and he was your grandfather,’ she added fiercely, ‘because he loved Sandra like his own, we were a proper family.’ Nicole had only vague memories of a sweet, white-haired grandfather, who’d died when she was a small child. ‘Why did you never tell me, Gran?’ she asked now. ‘As if I’d disapprove of you!’ ‘I didn’t want to be washing our dirty linen in public,’ Reenie said firmly. ‘I did want to tell you, so many times, but it was never the right moment.’ ‘Nicole’s got her own bits of news, Mum,’ said Sandra, grinning. ‘She’s in love with that Darius Good. And she’s going to move out and get her own place.’ ‘Not with Darius, I hope?’ demanded Reenie fiercely. ‘No,’ said Nicole, stung. ‘I thought you liked him, anyway.’ Her grandmother smiled. ‘I do,’ she insisted, ‘I think he’s