Restoring Grace (38 page)

Chapter Fifteen

 
Flynn
drove awfully fast, even faster than Edward. 'I'm
sure you don't need to drive quite so quickly,' Grace said,
holding her seatbelt and keeping her right foot
free so
she could press it to the floor as a virtual brake.

‘Sorry.' He slowed down. 'I've done so much
driving lately and always with less time than the journey takes.’

Partly to take her mind off Demi, Grace said,
'Any particular reason?’

He nodded. 'My
ex-mother-in-law is in a home and has
been
ill. My ex-wife isn't in the country, and the rest of
the family are so . . .' He paused, his lips pursed. '. . .
useless.’

Grace sensed the missing
expletive and wondered why
he didn't swear
when she felt sure he would have done
if he'd been with Ellie, or even Demi. 'What did you have
to do?'

‘Find another home. Get her put into it. Sort
out her house. Stuff like that.'

‘Did you get on particularly well with her when
you were married?' The thought of doing such things for Edward's mother, the
grandest of dames who managed to 'make even Edward appear a little gauche, gave
her a frisson of pure terror.

‘Not particularly, but I couldn't have left her
in that hell-hole. It was awful.' He grinned suddenly. 'I thought for a while
I'd have to have her living with me, but fortunately she rebelled.'

‘
It does sound as if it would have been a bit of
a
nightmare,' said Grace, whose palms were still
sweating at the thought of Edward's mother.

‘
You have
no idea what an understatement that is.' He
laughed softly, giving Grace
the impression that, nightmare or not, he would have coped quite well.

‘Well, I hope your ex-wife is grateful to you
for looking after her mother.'

‘
I expect
she's pleased her mother is settled, but I don't
know about the grateful
part. I'm not sure it's a concept she's quite got to grips with.'

‘I think she ought to be grateful. Why should
you deal with it, after all?'

‘I couldn't just let the poor woman rot, now
could I?' He smiled again. 'Besides, the neighbour who went in to
visit her had my number for some reason, probably
from
when I was still married. She
put the hard word on me.
I had no choice.’

Grace didn't reply. She
was wondering if Edward, who
was a kind man, would have done such
a thing for her
mother, if they hadn't got
on. She decided probably not and
sighed. She had clung on to the idea
that Edward was a kind man in the face of all evidence to the contrary.
Although he
had
been kind to her, she insisted to herself,
and you can only judge people by how they behave to you. Then she sighed
again, knowing this was not true. He had
not been
particularly sensitive to his daughter's needs.

Her sighs must have been
audible because Flynn said,
'Are you worrying about Demi? I
shouldn't think it's as bad as your imagining.’

Guilty, because she'd forgotten the state Demi
was in
for a few seconds, Grace said, 'Rick
sounded awful but
at least he could speak. Why didn't Demi?'

‘
She may just be really drunk, didn't want to
slur her words and so didn't want to speak to you directly. I'm
sure she'll be fine.' He tried to sound soothing.
 
'I do hope so.'

‘
It's odd that she rang you and not her parents.'
Grace
sighed. 'No, it's not. She lives with me and she knows I won't blast her from
here until next week about this. It's perfectly understandable. And for all we
know,
she did ring her parents but they
couldn't come for some
reason.'

‘
I'm sure if they knew they'd have dropped everything and
gone. Any parent would.'

‘I'm sure you're right,' said Grace, hoping
that were indeed the case. She could almost hear Demi's mother saying, 'You got
yourself into this, you have to get yourself out.'

‘You will have to tell them if it's really bad,
you know that,' went on Flynn.

‘
Yes,' Grace
agreed. 'But I'll check it out myself first.
It's going to reflect
really badly on me, anyway. I should have looked after her better.'

‘
Oh come on!
It's hardly your fault she got involved
with this Rick person, is it?’

He changed gear and Grace
shut her eyes as he
prepared to pass the car in front. She knew she
would have to die sometime, but she didn't want to see death
coming. When she opened them a few seconds later,
they
were safely past.

‘Hmm?' Flynn prompted her.

‘
I know it's
not really my fault, but I can't help blaming
myself. I should have rung the mother of the girl she said
she
was staying with, but I didn't want Demi to think I didn't trust her. And I
shouldn't have trusted her! God! Children are such a worry, and Demi isn't even
mine.'

‘Would you like to have children of your own?'

‘Oh yes,' she answered, before she could
consider whether it was a question Flynn should have asked her. 'Definitely. It
was the main reason Edward and I broke
up.'
She hesitated slightly. It seemed that tonight she was
^c
ompelled
to tell the truth and that Demi was not the only person who'd taken mysterious
substances. She seemed to have ingested a truth drug somewhere along the line.
'That and the fact that he found someone else.’

It seemed completely
understandable to leave someone
because your feelings about children
were different. The
fact that he'd gone off
with a beautiful and sophisticated
woman felt somehow less acceptable.

‘Those problems combined would probably be
beyond the scope of most agony aunts,' said Flynn seriously.

‘
Are you
laughing? My marriage broke up and you
think it's funny?' Grace didn't
quite know how to react. She was so accustomed to sympathy, to the 'all men are
bastards' line, she didn't know how to
respond to Flynn,
who seemed to take it as a bit of a joke.

‘
I'm not
really laughing,' said Flynn, who was, 'but there is a certain irony in it. You
see, I've just spent the last fort
night
looking after my ex-mother-in-law, you're making a mercy dash across the
country for your ex-stepdaughter, and our marriages both broke up for the same
reasons.'

‘
Oh?'

‘
Mm. Annette
was very into her career. I wanted a
family
but there was never a good time. I even offered
to be the main carer—'

‘Big of you. Why shouldn't you, after all?'

‘No reason! But I did offer. I wasn't asking
her to give
up her career, but she seemed
more interested in keeping
her figure. And she found someone else, too.
They have no children, don't ever intend to, and are very rich and successful.'

‘Are you bitter about it?' Grace wanted to know
and
couldn't tell from the matter-of-fact
way he was speaking.

‘
Not any
more. After all, having a baby does have a huge impact on a woman's life.
However much the man
does, it's still her
body that has to go through all the pain
and change.'

‘You've obviously thought a lot about it.'

‘
We rowed a
lot about it. I learnt all the arguments, on
both sides. Didn't you?'

‘
We didn't
actually argue, no. I didn't argue with
Edward ever, really. Looking back, I was terribly passive.'

‘
You
don't strike me as passive now. In fact I've found you quite spiky.'

‘I think I've grown up a lot recently. About
time too.’

Flynn laughed and slowed
for the approaching junction.
He was, Grace forced herself to
acknowledge, not for the first time, really quite attractive. And as they had
discovered their marriages had broken up for similar reasons,
they should have lots in common. But this was not
a Lonely
Hearts column, where people
matched themselves up: likes
and
dislikes; non-smokers and smokers; the possessors of
good senses of
humour and those without (although no
one
ever advertised themselves as tall, affluent, own car,
no sense of humour whatsoever, when it probably
applied
to ,so many people). Just because she and Flynn both wanted
children did not make them a good match.

‘
The sad
thing for me,' said Flynn, 'was my house. I told you I made my living out of
property. Well, in the
past I always did up houses, sold them and moved
on. But the house I'm in now is the one I did for us, for the family we're
never going to have. It has the best quality workmanship, the materials I
actually wanted, not a
cheaper version, and
there I am, living in it all by myself.'

‘
That's something else we've got in common,' said
Grace.
'Beautiful houses, no babies to put in them.'

‘And no partners either,' said Flynn.

‘Yes, but I don't mind about that,' said Grace
firmly, wondering if it was still true.

Flynn
laughed. 'Well, it looks as if you'll have Ellie's
baby to keep you going until you have babies of your own.
And you
have got Ellie and Demi to keep you company.' Yes,' she said on a sigh. 'I just
hope Demi's all right!’

‘We're
nearly there now,' said Flynn. 'I think I've got
quite
good directions. Would you like to have a look and keep us on the right road?
Have you ever been to Ellie's old house?'

‘No. And if I had, I might have seen this
coming. Oh, why did Demi have to meet bloody Rick!'

‘
You don't
know that, and at least we know where Rick
lives and a bit about him.
She could have fallen in love with anyone. They do, at that age.’

Grace took the paper and
struggled to read it under
the streetlights. 'And you know all
about it, I suppose.'

‘
About falling in love? I've done it a couple of
times. Now, where do we go at this roundabout?’

*

'Where's that nice man gone?'
asked the women with the
cleavage when Ellie appeared with
the pâté.

‘
He asked the
way to the loo,' said Ellie. 'Perhaps he
ate something that upset him.'
Then she wished she
hadn't said that, as it
made everyone look slightly uncom
fortable. 'He told me he'd had a burger
just before he
came, so he wouldn't be
drinking on an empty stomach,'
she improvised hastily.

‘
No chance
of that,' said Sara Cavendish. 'You're a mar
vellous cook! I don't
suppose you'd come to our house and do it, would you? I'm crap – sorry –
hopeless at it.'

‘I'm sure we could arrange something,' said
Ellie, glad
to think there was something
she could do successfully.

‘
Shall we
get on?' said Mr Rose. 'We've got a few wines left to go through.'

‘I'll get back and fetch the other plates,'
said Ellie, wishing that Ran really was helping her in the kitchen, and not
taking a screwdriver to a lost art treasure.

Ran joined her in the kitchen while she was
boiling kettles for coffee. She had served the rest of the dinner, for all
those people, on her own and was not in a good
mood. True, she could have accepted help – both
Margaret and Sara
Cavendish had offered – but she hadn't wanted them in her kitchen to see the
mess, the lack of facilities, or the primitive cooking arrangements.
Mostly, she admitted, she didn't want Ran coming
in and
saying something indiscreet if anyone else was there.