After the Honeymoon (38 page)

‘Hah! I wish.’ She smoothed down her jacket self-consciously. ‘Wait till this is off and then you’ll see what three children do to your waistline – not to mention another one on the way.’

‘How are you feeling?’ asked Rosie excitedly, stopping Gemma from picking up her bags.

‘Great, thanks.’ She took in Rosie approvingly. ‘Love your tan! Right. Ready, everyone? I can’t wait for you to see the boys. They’re in the car now with Joe, but I warn you, they’re all high as kites with excitement about meeting “Mummy’s special friend and big grown-up boy”. And they’ve got half-term fever too!’

Of course! How well she remembered this lovely time of year with the trees turning into a blaze of burnished copper and yellow ochre. She and Gemma used to go for long walks as teenagers, crunching through the leaves or ambling along the beach with her friend’s old dog, wondering if either of them would ever, ever find a boyfriend!

‘Have you seen my dad?’ Rosie asked quietly as they reached the car park.

Gemma’s beaming smile faltered. ‘I caught a glimpse of him the other day, coming back from the surgery when I was staying with Mum.’

Rosie felt another prickle of unease. Sensing her anxiety, her old friend laid a comforting hand on her arm. ‘Look, there’s no point in worrying. You’ll be there soon enough. There they are!’ Gemma waved her hand. ‘We’re here!’

Immediately, two little boys flew out of the car towards her, their apple-red cheeks reminding Rosie of Gemma when she’d been younger.

‘Auntie Rosie, Auntie Rosie!’ called out one, reaching out for her hands and swinging round her legs. ‘Is Greece called Greece cos it’s greasy? My brother says it is, but I think he’s wrong!’

Rosie laughed but before she could reply, Jack had stepped in. ‘It can be greasy if there’s an oil slick in the water.’

‘What’s an oil shlick?’ asked the second little boy, who was just a bit smaller than the first.

‘Slick,’ corrected Jack kindly. ‘It’s when oil gets into the water, usually from a boat.’

Arm in arm, the two women watched their children carry on their animated conversation as they shepherded them into the enormous people carrier. ‘They get on so well,’ Gemma whispered excitedly. ‘You’re right. We should have brought them out to see you, but to be honest, there’s never been the right time.’ She laughed. ‘I always seem to be pregnant, don’t I, Joe?’

Rosie took in the stocky, dark, good-looking man at the wheel. Of course, she recognised him from photographs, including the wedding pictures (an occasion she hadn’t attended in case she bumped into her father), but now she could see, from the looks they exchanged and the way they lightly touched each other, that they really were as suited as Gemma had said.

For a second, she felt a touch of envy. No. That wasn’t fair. Didn’t she have Greco? Yet they didn’t have the shared background that Gemma and Joe had. And, more important, she and Greco didn’t have a child together. A quick picture of Winston shot into her head. There was something about that which bound you together, whether you liked it or not.

Carefully, Rosie climbed into the seat next to a sleeping toddler, thumb in mouth. Gemma turned round, beaming, from the front. ‘Heaven knows how we’re going to manage with four!’

Joe gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. ‘We will. Now, let’s get on, shall we? Sally will have dinner ready and I know she can’t wait to see you.’

Rosie adjusted her watch as Joe drove through the suburbs and then open countryside. It was getting darker. Too late, she told herself, to call on an old man whom she hadn’t seen for sixteen years and who didn’t know she was coming. Far more sensible, surely, to wait until the morning.

‘It’s
so
lovely to see you again, dear,’ enthused Sally for the millionth time. ‘Although you’ll have to excuse me for calling you Rosemary, still. I just can’t get used to the Rosie bit.’

They were having breakfast in the large, airy kitchen that overlooked the sea. As a child, Rosie had loved coming here. Her parents’ little bungalow, with its view of the street outside, wasn’t nearly as exciting. It didn’t have the nooks and crannies of Gemma’s house where you could play hide and seek. And more importantly, after Mum had died, it didn’t have the laughter.

‘It’s so lovely to have my grandchildren down for half-term as well as my children,’ Sally added, glancing fondly at Joe, who was trying to encourage the youngest to eat a mouthful of boiled egg. ‘My son-in-law is so good with the children.’ She dropped her voice. ‘Gemma tells me you have a handsome Greek boyfriend.’

Rosie flushed, hoping Jack hadn’t heard. Of course he knew about Greco, but every now and then she got the feeling that he was rather embarrassed about Mum ‘dating’. It couldn’t be easy.

‘Jack is very good with little ones, isn’t he?’ Sally carried on, dabbing her mouth with a napkin. Rosie had forgotten how Gemma’s mum could talk for England. It was probably to make up for her friend’s father, who had always been a rather stern, forbidding figure, keeping mainly to himself in his study.

They both looked down the table to where Jack was helping the older two boys make a boat out of the empty cereal packet. ‘I’m worried about how Dad is going to react,’ Rosie whispered.

‘Nonsense!’ said Sally, sounding rather less assured. ‘If he’s any sense, he’ll be thrilled to see you. At his age, you have to let bygones be bygones.’

But Dad had been older than Mum and Gemma’s parents. That generation could, as she knew from Cara, be very stubborn, not to mention narrow-minded when it came to babies born out of wedlock. ‘When are you going to go round?’ Sally asked, sensing her hesitation.

Rosie glanced at her watch. Ironically, now she was here, she wanted to put it off. ‘The curtains are usually drawn mid-morning,’ Sally added. ‘I reckon he has a nap then. You might as well go now rather than later. Don’t wait to say goodbye to Gemma. She’s still feeling nauseous in the morning, poor thing.’

The palms of Rosie’s hands began to sweat. ‘Go on,’ she could hear Greco and Cara saying. She couldn’t come all this way and then chicken out.

‘You know,’ said Sally softly, ‘you’ve done a great job with your son.’

‘Really!’ Rosie flushed at the praise. ‘It’s not easy being a single mum.’

Sally put her head to one side sympathetically. ‘I’m sure it’s not.’

‘And I’m always trying to stop him making the mistakes that I did.’

Sally reached across for her hand. ‘We all do that. But when you get to my age, dear, you realise that you don’t do them any favours that way. They have to make those mistakes themselves in order to learn. In fact, as your dad would probably hate to admit, we keep on making them. That’s why we have to learn to forgive others …’

‘What if Grandad doesn’t want to see us?’ demanded Jack as they walked along the front towards her old home. The tide was out and someone was throwing a red ball to a black dog along the wet sand. There were some boats there too, stacked up after the summer season. They reminded her of the boat where she and Winston had found privacy, sixteen years ago.

‘I don’t know,’ she said truthfully. ‘I suppose we can at least say we’ve tried.’

Jack shrugged, pulling up the collar of the warm jacket that Joe had lent him against the wind. ‘Loads of people have kids nowadays without being married.’

His words might sound mature but his voice was tinged with hurt. Had she been right to tell him the truth about her father’s likely reaction? Maybe. Maybe not.

‘Attitudes were different in his day,’ she added tentatively.

Jack began texting furiously as though he didn’t care. ‘My philosophy teacher says that. But I think it’s stupid. No one should judge anyone else.’

Rosie gave him a brief hug. ‘Does that include you and me?’

To her relief, instead of moving away, he hugged her back. ‘Yes. Sorry, Mum. I didn’t mean to be mean to you over the last few weeks. It’s just that it’s been …’

His voice tailed away. ‘Too much to handle?’ she suggested. He nodded. Then she stopped outside a small black gate. The path beyond it was lined with neatly planted wallflowers. In front of them stood a brick bungalow with lace curtains and a white front door with a brass knocker in the shape of a mermaid.

For a moment, Rosie was unable to speak. It was as familiar as if she’d been here last week. Nothing had changed. Dad might not be well but somehow he had continued to keep things exactly as he had when Mum had been alive. As they went round the side, she half-expected the smell of a newly baked Victoria sponge to come floating out of the back kitchen door.

Mum would be opening it now with her cheery smile and saying …

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing here?’

Both Rosie and Jack stopped in their tracks as an old man with thin white hair and stretchy blue braces over a moth-eaten green jumper stood on the doorstep, waving his stick at them. ‘Get out before I call the police!’

He jabbed his stick in the direction of the sticker by the door. ‘Can’t you read? It says
No cold callers.
’

Rosie felt for Jack’s hand and squeezed it reassuringly. ‘It’s all right, Dad. It’s us. Rosie. Rosie and Jack. Your grandson,’ she added, just in case he was too confused to remember. He certainly looked frail enough. Her heart contracted as she took in his thin legs and hunched-up shoulders.

‘I know it’s you.’ Dad’s eyes narrowed. ‘You’re the spitting image of your mother. What do you mean by calling in like this, unannounced? Think you can turn back the years, do you?’

Then his gaze transferred itself to Jack. ‘And as for bringing along your coffee-coloured bastard …’

There was a gasp. Not just from Rosie but from Jack too. ‘Come back,’ she called. But it was too late. Her son had torn down the path, slamming the gate behind him.

‘How dare you!’ Rosie spluttered with rage. ‘You stupid, stupid old man! I’ve come all the way back because someone said you were ill. I thought you’d have changed your mind, but now I can see you’re as stubborn and nasty as ever!’

Her back was sweating so much now with the heat of her anger that she was almost dripping. ‘You don’t deserve me and you certainly don’t deserve a fine young grandson like my son! Mum would be ashamed of you, but luckily she’ll never have to face you, because frankly, when you die, you won’t end up in the same place as her!’

With that, she turned on her heel and ran down the path. ‘Jack,’ she called out. ‘Jack!’

Feverishly, she scanned the street. There was no sign of him. Running down to the beach, she couldn’t see him there either. Her chest grew tight with fear as she looked up at the cliffs. What if he had done something stupid?

Go back to Sally’s house first and get some help, said the voice in her head. Yes. Of course. That would be more sensible. Racing along the roads, she burned with fury, both towards her father and herself. She might have known. Some people never changed and she’d been a fool to expect her dad would.

‘You’ve just missed him.’ Gemma met her at the door, her sweet face creased with concern. ‘He came in, grabbed his bag and tore off. What happened?’

Rosie couldn’t help it. She burst into tears.

‘What’s wrong, Auntie Rosie?’ One of Gemma’s small boys tugged at her coat. ‘Do you need a plaster?’

She tried to smile to reassure the child but it was no good. ‘Did he say where he was going?’ she managed to blurt out.

There was a slow nod. ‘Corrywood.’

Corrywood?

Gemma bit her lip. ‘To see his dad.’

‘When we got back from our honeymoon, the photographer rang to say her hard drive had broken and all our wedding pictures were lost. I was distraught until my husband pointed out that no one could take away the memories in our heads.’

Alex

WINSTON

‘Morning, everyone!’

Winston smiled broadly at the motley class in front of him, with their assortment of shorts and tee-shirts. Inside, his heart was sinking. How was it possible to fall so far so fast?

Was it really only a few months ago that he’d been earning a lucrative living on television?
Work Out With Winston
had been the programme on everyone’s lips! The entire female population had followed his buttock- and breast-firming exercises, from grandmothers to teenagers.

Now he was running a local authority class in Corrywood village hall, a place he had never heard of before he’d met Melissa. And although he kept telling himself that a job was a job and that the glitz and trappings of his old life didn’t matter, he found, to his surprise, that he missed it.

‘They don’t want me any more,’ he’d told Melissa after making that grovelling phone call to the upmarket gym he used to work for in London before
Work Out With Winston
. ‘The manager was perfectly blunt. Said his clients wouldn’t want someone whose name had been sullied.’

He’d swallowed, hoping for an understanding word of comfort from his new bride. But she’d just given him a disappointed look. ‘You’ve got to see it from their point of view, Winston. They didn’t have the training you had. All they can see is a man who sent an innocent woman down a road that wasn’t safe instead of waiting to check it was clear.’

Winston winced. Only someone who’d been there could really understand.

Meanwhile, he had to support his new family somehow. Of course Melissa had maintenance for the children until they were twenty-one, but her personal allowance from Marvyn had stopped on her marriage to him. So she was far worse off than she would have been if she’d stayed on her own.

But on the plus side, he had Jack. Every now and then, Winston found himself saying the words ‘I have a son’ inside his head with a mixture of amazement and excitement.

‘Aren’t you even going to request a DNA test?’ Melissa had demanded, rather insensitively, he’d thought. But no. He wasn’t. Anyone could see Jack was his son. He looked like his mother in some ways, but in others, he had features that reminded Winston of himself at that age, and his much-missed, departed grandmother.

He and Jack had been been emailing, gradually getting to know each other a bit. Winston knew now that Jack loved skateboarding as well as riding his scooter. He learned that the boy loved languages but hated maths at school (just like him). The kid was clearly popular with girls (another similarity!) and kept asking him how Alice was. And he also discovered that the boy’s favourite food was pizza, which Yannis, the chef, had taught him to make.