Three Weddings and a Baby (16 page)

‘I…I can’t find her. We were at the park and she ran off.’

There was an ominous silence on the other
end of the line. Alex must be furious with her. Two days and she’d failed at being a mother. It made her pitiful attempt at being a good wife look stellar in comparison.

‘Where have you looked? ‘

She banged her head against the glass. ‘Everywhere! I don’t know what to do.’

Why? Why had Mollie run away? Why today? Was there something Jennie had missed? Something she’d done wrong?

Suddenly, an image of another girl popped into her mind. A little blonde girl with a blue suitcase clutched in her hand, scurrying away from her house, looking over her shoulder to see if anyone was following her.

Wow. Where had that memory come from?

Running away had been a favourite game of Jennie’s when she’d been a child. She’d pack her bunny and her favourite book and a bag of toffees, just in case, in the little blue case she kept her ballet kit in, and she’d hide herself away somewhere in the vast gardens of her father’s house. Usually, the pool house. Maybe the gazebo in summer.

Okay, it hadn’t exactly been a
game
. She truly had been unhappy in those moments. But the running away had been more about wanting to be found again, knowing that someone cared enough to notice she was missing, cared
enough to come and find her. A silly, childish tactic to demand her father prove his love.

She knew now that her father had loved her the best he could, that he’d struggled with his own grief after her mother’s death, just hadn’t known what to do with a wilful little tearaway who wanted everything he had to give and more. He’d tried. But it had been easier for him to spoil her with
things
rather than attention, something she’d loved and hated at the same time. Maybe it had been easier for him to do that than spend time with the person who reminded him the most of everything he’d lost.

A single tear slid down her face. More often than not, she’d had a long wait out in the pool house. Many times she’d crept back in the house at nightfall, tired and hungry, and had crawled under her duvet and lay there, shivering.

She pulled her forehead off the window and straightened. A blob in the dark garden suddenly became recognisable—the tree house. Well, not so much a tree house as a play house on stilts, built up against a large horse chestnut tree, with a small veranda at the front with wooden steps leading down to the lawn. There was one place she hadn’t checked. Somewhere
Mollie might have gone if all the doors were locked.

‘Hold on, Alex. I’ve had an idea.’

Jennie was at the top of the stairs by the time she finished talking. She didn’t know where the key to the French windows in the lounge was, so she ran out of the back door and round the side of the house. The lawn was soft and muddy, but she didn’t slow until she was standing at the bottom of the steps that led up to the little wooden house.

‘Jennie?’ Alex’s voice was harsh in her ear.

Was she kidding herself? Was this just wishful thinking? She stood still, listening for any creak, trying to decipher any movement in the shadows inside the tree house.

‘Jennie!’

She couldn’t seem to answer him, her voice stolen by sheer panic. The wind rustled the bare branches up above her head and cooled her cheeks. In the distance, a car rumbled along the road to the village centre. Her heart thumped.

And then…

The shades of grey inside the tree house shifted. Or had she just been standing here, staring at that little Perspex window for too long? She ran up the five low steps to the veranda. She stooped to open the half-sized door
and stuck her head inside. There was a scrabbling noise—please, don’t let it be a rat!—and then silence.

She was too nervous to do much more than croak. ‘Mollie?’

More scrabbling. ‘Go away!’

A flood of endorphins hit Jennie so hard she almost fell over. She compromised by crumpling onto the floor and edging a little closer to where she
thought
the shuffling had come from.

‘It’s okay,’ she said to Alex. ‘I’ve found her.’ And then she slid her phone closed, too intent on finding out if her stepdaughter was all right to worry about Alex. He’d have plenty of time to shout at her later.

‘I was worried about you,’ she said softly.

The only answer she got was a sniff.

‘What are you doing out here?’

‘Looking for Mummy.’

The answer cracked Jennie’s heart wide open. ‘Oh, darling. Why did you think she’d be in here?’

‘Auntie Toni said I lost Mummy. And she said Mummy would always be with me. So I ‘cided to look in here, just in case. I found Daddy’s torch but it not work.’

Jennie closed her eyes, despite the dark. She remembered this. The way grown-ups
talked to you about death. Some of her relatives had said some very confusing things after her mother had died, and it had taken her quite a while to come to grips with everything. However, she’d been eight when her mother had died. Mollie was only three. She probably didn’t even understand what it meant, how final it was. And having adults talking in hushed voices and vague terms was only making matters worse.

‘Mollie, do you have Daddy’s torch there? Can I have a look at it?’

She heard more shuffling and then heard something roll along the wooden floor before it hit her ankle. She fumbled with the rubber casing until she found the button. The torch was old and it took a push harder than a three-year-old’s thumb would manage. A pale yellow circle lit the floor. Jennie put the torch in her lap, facing away from both their faces and looked at Mollie. She was huddled up in the corner, her lashes thick with tears and her nose slimy.

‘Are you cold? Do you want to sit on my lap?’

Mollie shook her head, but she inched a little closer.

Jennie took a deep breath. She might be doing totally the wrong thing here, but there
wasn’t time to rush inside and thumb through her parenting book. She was just going to have to go with her gut. All she’d wanted when her own mother had died was for someone to sit down and talk to her about it. But nobody had. They’d pretended nothing had happened and tried to be happy around her. They’d clothed everything in euphemisms rather than giving her facts. And it had made her sad that no one would let her talk about her mummy, about how much she missed her and how sad she was.

Without warning, her eyes filled with tears. She blinked them away.

She looked Mollie in the eye. ‘When I was a little girl my mummy died, too,’ she said, watching her stepdaughter’s face and trying to gauge her reaction. Mollie went very still and looked at her with wide eyes.

‘Did you ever find your mummy ‘gain? Did you lose her, too?’

Jennie swallowed. ‘No, sweetheart. I didn’t.’ And she went on to explain, with simple words and plain facts, why she wouldn’t see her mother again—not on this earth, anyway.

Mollie’s lips began to wobble. Jennie saw the look of hope in Mollie’s eyes, begging her to tell her what she’d just pieced together wasn’t true, and it took all her willpower not
to hide that truth in platitudes, the way everyone else had done for Mollie. The little girl’s whole face crumpled up. ‘Don’t want Mummy to be dead,’ she whispered.

I don’t want mine to be dead either, Jennie thought. And I miss her so much. One of the tears she thought she’d dealt with escaped and rolled down her cheek. She saw Mollie watch it, a look of surprise on her little round features.

‘Why are you crying?’ she said, sniffing, tears falling fast down her own cheeks.

Jennie found she needed to sniff, too. ‘Because I’m sad my mummy’s gone, too,’ she said. ‘And sometimes I get angry. But it’s okay to feel like that. It’s okay to be angry or sad or happy or fed up, and it’s okay to cry if you need to.’

Mollie crawled towards her and inspected her tears with chubby, inquisitive fingers.

‘Are you sure you’re not cold? ‘ Jennie said, trying to smile. ‘Because I am, and my lap desperately needs warming up.’

Mollie blinked and then she climbed into Jennie’s lap and put her arms around her. And then she rubbed Jennie’s back with a tiny hand in a way Becky must have done to soothe her when she was upset. That just made Jennie cry all the harder. All of Mollie’s defences
crumbled and she clutched on to Jennie and sobbed. Jennie wasn’t in much of a position to do anything but join her.

After a short while she felt Mollie relax in her arms. Jennie wiped her own cheeks with her fingers, not even bothering to avoid her mascara.

‘I don’t know about you, but I need a tissue.’

A little head nodded against her chest, and Jennie decided not to think about what kind of smears were now on her rather expensive designer jumper.

‘And I’m hungry, too,’ she added. ‘How about we go inside and find something to eat?’

Another nod.

She carefully lifted Mollie off her lap and scrambled to her feet. ‘Why don’t you use the torch?’ she said to Mollie, who brightened instantly. As she stood up and brushed the dust off her rear end, Jennie thought of yesterday’s attempt at tea—burnt toast, lukewarm baked beans.

She backed out of the tree house door, stooping to avoid whacking her head on the top of the frame. ‘Stuff it,’ she mumbled to herself. ‘I’m getting takeaway.’

Her boot squelched in the mud at the bot
tom of the steps as a little voice called out from behind her, ‘Can we have pizza?’

She smiled and held out a hand. ‘Of course.’

Jennie stared at the open pizza box, having nothing better to do than watch the remaining slices get harder and curlier. Alex hadn’t said much when he’d come in. He’d just dropped his briefcase and coat in the hall and quietly climbed the stairs to Mollie’s bedroom. He’d been up there forty-five minutes now.

She decided she’d go crazy if she didn’t find something to do, so she started to clear the dishes. She was just putting the last one into the dishwasher when she heard Alex’s footsteps in the hall. Her mind filled with reasons why this wasn’t her fault, why he shouldn’t be angry with her. That also was stupid. Suddenly she felt Mollie’s age, scared with the same chilly fear that she’d had when her father had made one of his rare appearances in her bedroom. Scared of what he’d say. Because whenever there was trouble, she was sure to be the cause of it.

But Alex didn’t rant and rave. He didn’t say a thing. Didn’t look at her with that heavy disapproval in his eyes. And maybe that was worse. He collected a pair of wine glasses
from the cupboard, filled them with Merlot and gestured in the direction of the living room. Jennie followed him there.

They sat in different chairs—Jennie by the fire, Alex on the sofa—the cool awkwardness between them preventing them from doing anything else. So much for tonight being The Night. Jennie sipped her wine and stared into the fire while he collected his thoughts, found a way to let whatever difficult words were in him out. But it took a lot longer than she expected. Alex was so quiet, so still, it made her feel fidgety. Pretty soon she was screaming inside her head.

And then it all came spilling out of her. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I only took my eyes off her for a moment.’

He shot her words down with a look. A what-do-you-think-you-were-doing kind of look. She waited for him to say it—to tell her she was a failure and that he’d made a mistake when he’d asked her to stay.

‘Mollie was almost asleep when I got up there.’ A pained look crossed his face, and he looked as if he was going to say something. After a few seconds of silence, his jaw hardened.

‘Is she okay?’ Jennie asked quietly.

Alex nodded. ‘I just sat in the armchair and watched her until she fell asleep.’

Jennie pressed her lips together and tried to smile at him. It came out all wonky. What could she say? What could
anyone
say to make this right?

Alex looked deep into his wine glass. He hadn’t even touched it yet. ‘I don’t think I could bear it if we do the DNA test and the results come back negative.’

Jennie swallowed as Alex’s eyes shimmered in the firelight. So that was why he’d stalled on getting it done. She bit her lip. All the awkwardness was forgotten. She felt as if her heart was literally reaching out for Alex, straining against her ribcage.

Alex had stretched himself to his limit to keep going through all this mess. Maybe even before that. Maybe he’d been holding himself tight together ever since Becky had left him. She thought back to the first night she’d met him, how he’d had that undercurrent of power and intensity, how he’d seemed hyper-aware, edgy. It had been rather intoxicating. She hadn’t guessed just what it must have cost him to stay strong for everyone else, ignoring his own needs.

For a while he’d been fuelled by adrenalin, doing what needed to be done because that
was what Alex Dangerfield did. But the emergency was over now. They were supposed to be quietly getting on with their lives. The dullness in his eyes told her Alex’s adrenalin had drained away. Unfortunately, she suspected they still had a bumpy road ahead of the three of them so, in some ways, the struggle had only just begun. Just as Alex had reached the end of himself.

Jennie put her glass down. Although Alex would never admit to being anything less than omnipotent, right at this moment her husband needed someone to share his load. Unfortunately for the poor guy, she was the only candidate, so he was just going to have to put up with whatever haphazard help she could offer.

She unfolded herself from her chair, crossed the room, took his glass from him and placed it on the low coffee table. Then she knelt next to him on the long leather sofa, looked into his eyes and ran her fingertips softly across his shoulders. He shivered at her touch and closed his eyes.

She might not have a great scientific brain, able to provide DNA results to soothe his ridged brow. She might not be Supernanny, ready to transform any kid from monster to angel with a sticker chart and a naughty step.
Her only skills lay in guest lists, canapés and booking venues. And knowing how to help people have a great time, to feel good.

That much she could do for him.

Alex needed time out of his life, to feel something other than despair, to think about something other than the problems that consumed him. She had a sneaking suspicion that had been her attraction for him in the first place, so she might as well do her job. She could make him forget—at least until morning.