Starting Over (16 page)

Hardly daring to believe what her body was telling her, she hurried to the bathroom. The proof that she was right and that her period had started made her feel giddy with joyous relief. She
wasn't
pregnant...she
wasn't
going to have a baby.

Automatically she did the things that were necessary whilst all the time the relief inside her expanded like a bubble. Once she was back in bed she didn't want to sleep. Hugging her arms around her body she savoured the pain washing through her, welcoming it.

She had prayed so desperately for this to happen and now that it had... Now that it had, she was never, ever going to have sex again she told herself fervently.

At least not unless she was one hundred percent sure that she was properly protected from
any
risk of pregnancy. A cold shudder ran through her as she allowed herself to acknowledge properly for the first time just what it would have meant if she
had
been pregnant.

Jack might have said that they would get married and that everything would be all right, but she knew it wouldn't have been so easy.

Jack... She would telephone him first thing in the morning to give him their good news, she decided tiredly as the painful cramps slowly started to ease and she drifted back to sleep.

JACK HAD JUST woken up when his mobile rang.

Reaching for it he answered the call, his heart pounding heavily as he heard Annalise's voice.

'What is it? What's wrong?' he demanded anxiously.

'Nothing,' Annalise responded, the happiness bubbling through her voice as she told him, 'nothing's wrong at all. In fact, everything is wonderfully, fab-ulously all right. I'm not going to have a baby, Jack...I'm not pregnant...we're safe....'

It took several seconds for her excited words to reach his brain.

'What?' he demanded. 'When...? How...?'

Quickly Annalise explained.

'Look, I've got to go,' she told him.

'I'll meet you after school,' Jack began. 'We can talk properly then....'

'I've got to go,' Annalise repeated. 'Jack...you won't tell
anyone
about any of this will you?' she begged him. 'I couldn't bear anyone else to know.'

Jack frowned. His first thought when he realised what Annalise was telling him had been one of relief that he could now honestly explain to his aunt and uncle just why he had come home, why he had no option
other
than to come home.

'Promise me, Jack,' Annalise was insisting. Jack could hear the tension in her voice and the anxiety.

Reluctantly he gave in.

'I promise,' he told her.

Annalise's hand shook as she put down her own mobile. All she wanted to do now was to forget how frightened she had been and why and for her life to go back to normal.

THE MOMENT Jenny saw Jack's face when he walked into the kitchen she could see how much happier he was. She knew that he had seen Annalise the previous day and she guessed that they had made up their quarrel. Even so...

'You look a lot happier this morning,' she commented.

'I am,' Jack agreed, going over to her and giving her a fierce hug as he told her in a muffled voice, 'I'm sorry, Aunt Jen, but I
had
to come home and see Annalise.... Please don't worry, though, everything's fine now and I'll be going back to uni tomorrow.'

'Everything's fine now,' Jenny repeated wryly. 'But what happens the next time you have a falling-out, Jack? This
mustn't
happen again,' she insisted firmly.

Jack released her, his eyes unhappy. He ached to be able to explain to her that it was no mere quarrel that had brought him home but something far more serious, but he had given his word to Annalise and he could not break it.

'It won't,' he assured her.

Jenny wished she could be as sure.

'How's Maddy?' Jack asked her.

'Improving,' Jenny replied.

Max had told her that he could manage without her help today, which meant that she could have a much needed day in her own home and the first thing she intended to do just as soon as she had stripped the beds and filled the washing machine was to go for a supermarket shop for both herself and Queensmead.

'DAVID,' Jon exclaimed in pleasure as his brother walked into his office. 'I wasn't expecting to see you today.'

'No,' David agreed. 'I was up at Fitzburgh Place earlier and Frederick asked me if I would drop some papers off with you.'

'Got time for a coffee?' Jon asked as he took the papers from him.

'Mmm...I wouldn't mind.'

'You look rather distracted. Is anything wrong?' Jon asked.

'Not
wrong
exactly,' David told him, taking a deep breath before saying hesitantly, 'The fact is—' a rueful almost boyish smile of pride and pleasure curled his mouth '—Honor's pregnant.'

Outside Jon's half-open office door Tullah, who had just been on her way into Jon's office to ask him something, came to an abrupt halt.

'Pregnant... You mean with a
baby?'
Jon demanded in bemusement.

'Pregnant...with a baby,' David confirmed straight-faced. 'It wasn't something we'd planned,' he confessed, 'but I have to say that as accidents go,
this
one
is
pretty wonderful. We're going to organise a family get-together to make an official announcement.'

A new love, a second family, a whole new role and purpose in life. Jon couldn't help but be pleased for his twin, whose happiness he now felt was set fair to match his own.

Embracing him warmly he told him, 'Congratula-tions.'

But then he frowned. 'I take it that neither Livvy nor Jack know as yet?'

'No,' David confirmed soberly. 'God, Jon, I hope I make a better father this time around than I did for them. I've tried to talk to Jack about it, to explain to him. He listened to me like an adult listening to a child, politely but unconvinced. But then, why should either he or Livvy care about my guilt? From their point of view, I haven't done much caring about them.'

Outside Jon's office door Tullah suddenly realised that she was eavesdropping. Quickly she hurried away.

She felt as shocked as Jon had sounded by David's news.

'How
is
Livvy?' David asked Jon anxiously. 'I wish there was something I could do to help her.'

'Well, she's obviously very unhappy,' Jon acknowledged. 'Although what with Maddy being so ill and Jack coming home unexpectedly from university, there hasn't been the opportunity to talk in any depth to Livvy about anything.'

'Jack's home?' David questioned sharply.

'Yes, but he's going back tomorrow,' Jon reassured him. 'He and Annalise had a falling-out apparently but everything's okay now.'

As David listened to him, his feeling of guilt increased. His daughter was battling on her own with the trauma of her broken marriage. His son had had a row, serious enough, with his girlfriend, to bring him home from university and yet neither of them had made any attempt to turn to him for help or comfort.

But then, when had
he
ever indicated to them that they
could
do, when had he
ever
made time for them or their problems? When had he
ever
let them see that he cared...that he loved them?

Heavy-hearted, David acknowledged the extent of his own failings. He ached to make amends, to build a closer relationship with Jack and Olivia, to be a proper grandfather to Olivia's girls and to Jack's children when he should have them, but he couldn't blame Jack and Olivia for holding him at a distance.

He had changed so much since his cowardly flight from Haslewich, grown so much, but proving that to himself was not enough where his children were concerned. They needed, especially Olivia, to have it proved to
them.
But how could he do that, he wondered in wry frustration, when Olivia wouldn't allow him anywhere near her?

'What about Maddy? How is she?' he asked Jon, momentarily putting his anxiety for Olivia to one side.

'Getting better—slowly,' Jon told him. The news that Honor and David were expecting a child had brought a problem to the forefront of his mind that needed to be addressed.

'Dad is giving Max and Maddy a hard time at the moment,' he confided. 'We're all anxious about Maddy with this pre-eclampsia problem. She's home now but only on the strict understanding that she doesn't overdo things, but the fact that Dad keeps threatening to leave Queensmead to someone else isn't exactly helping.'

'To me, you mean,' David responded. 'Look, Jon, I've already told you, so far as I'm concerned I have no right whatsoever to Queensmead...I don't even want the place.'

'Mmm...I know that, but Dad...'

'Do you want me to have a word with him?' David offered.

'Well, you could try but once he knows that you and Honor are having a child it will probably make him worse than ever. Jenny is furious with him. No one could have looked after him better than Maddy.'

'No, Honor was saying that he's lucky to be in the position he is in,' David agreed.

OLIVIA LOOKED at the baguette she had just bought.

She wasn't really hungry even though she hadn't had a proper breakfast and the small quiet garden overlooking Haslewich's churchyard was hardly the place to sit and eat at this time of year. Huddling deeper into her coat she started to re-wrap her unwanted lunch.

She could have taken it back to her office to eat, of course, but she had felt in need of some fresh air—

and an escape from the distracting and unwanted images of Caspar that had been coming between her and her work all morning.

It had been spotting his fishing basket that had done it, made her remember and see them as a loving couple again through the surely far-too-rosy-tinted lenses of the early days of their relationship.

Jenny was crossing the church's small garden on her way back from visiting the grave of her first child.

The sharp sadness of his long-ago death was gone now and she found it comforting to sit and talk to him, updating him with their family news as she tidied his grave. Then she saw Olivia, seated on one of the benches, apparently staring sightlessly into space.

Immediately she started to hurry towards her.

'Jenny!' Olivia couldn't keep the shock or the guilt out of her voice when she felt her aunt's hand on her shoulder. 'I didn't see you coming.'

'No. You were miles away,' Jenny agreed.

Olivia bit her lip as Jenny sat down next to her.

'I feel dreadful about the way I behaved...and what I said,' Olivia confessed. 'I had no idea about Maddy, but that doesn't...' She stopped and shook her head, her voice suddenly thickening with tears.

'Livvy, it's all right,' Jenny reassured her. 'I can imagine how you must have been feeling. I felt dreadful myself that I didn't explain properly.'

'I've been meaning—'

'I wanted—'

Both of them started to speak at once and then stopped.

'I was going to get in touch,' Oh via began, 'But I was afraid...I wouldn't have blamed you if you'd refused to accept my apology. My behaviour was unfor—'

'Livvy, Livvy, I would
never
do that,' Jenny protested, so plainly distressed by what Olivia had said that the younger woman felt some of her weary tension start to ease away.

'I think we can all appreciate what a difficult time you've been having,' Jenny continued gently. 'The break-up of any relationship is traumatic.'

As she heard the loving compassion in Jenny's voice Olivia's eyes began to smart.

'Oh, Aunt Jenny...'

As she saw the way Olivia's body was shaking Jenny reacted instinctively, putting her arms around her and holding her close.

'It's all right, Livvy, it's all right....' She soothed her, much as she would have done had Olivia still been a little girl who had so often come to her with her problems. Wisely Jenny let her cry, sensing that Olivia needed the release.

'Are you having second thoughts about separating from Caspar?' she asked her forthrightly when Olivia had eventually pulled back from her and accepted the tissue Jenny had proffered.

'It's too late for that,' Olivia responded. Not even to Jenny could she bring herself to admit to the chaotic turmoil of her feelings or the grief that was threatening to overwhelm her. But grief from what? Not for the sterile hostile territory their marriage had become. No, her grief was for what their relationship had once been and for the love they had once shared but had now lost.

'Livvy,' Jenny said as Olivia got herself back under control. 'I wish I could do something to help you with the girls but at the moment...'

'It's all right. I
do
understand,' Olivia assured her immediately—and meant it.

'I've got them into an after-school creche for now but that can only be a temporary measure. Do you think it's worth asking Chrissie Cooke if she knows of anyone? Her husband is related to more than half the town one way or another.'

'I'll ask her for you, if you like,' Jenny offered immediately. She hesitated. She held no brief for David but her conscience forced her to point out quietly,

'Have you thought of asking David and Honor, Livvy?

I'm not trying to lecture you, but David
is
the girls'

grandfather and I know from what Jon's said that he desperately wants to be able to get to know them properly.'

'My
father...'
Livvy's face had gone white with angry rejection. 'Do you
really
think I'd do that, no matter how desperate I was?' She gave her aunt a small tight bitter smile.

Jenny knew just how Olivia would react but she had felt duty bound to make the suggestion.

'Oh, Jenny,' Olivia began, abruptly burying her head in her hands.

'Why
did he have to come back?
Why
couldn't he have stayed where he was? Just knowing he's here in Haslewich makes me feel...makes me want...' Olivia turned her face away. How could she explain the feelings of alienation and anger that had possessed her since her father's return when she couldn't fully understand them herself?

'I'm so sorry, I've got to go,' Jenny told her with regret. 'I've got my own supermarket shop to do and Queensmead's, and I want to get Jack's things ironed before he goes back to university tomorrow.'