The Accidental Family (33 page)

“Are you really proud of me?” Sophie asked, surprised.

“Of course I am,” Iris told her, draping her arms around her
daughter’s shoulders. “I didn’t understand you when you were working all those hours at McCarthy Hughes, never taking a breath to enjoy life, but I was always proud of you. And now I’ve seen how very brave you were in taking on those girls and how much you fought for them. And how you risked everything to be happy …I thought it would be impossible for me to be more proud of you, but here you are about to give me my first grandchild. Things couldn’t get much better.”

Sophie nodded. “I know,” she said. “It’s just that I’m pregnant. And it probably really hurts having a baby, and if I couldn’t work out I was pregnant in the first place, how in god’s name am I going to deal with it when it arrives?”

“You did know you were pregnant, you just didn’t know you knew,” Iris told her. “You went off alcohol and caffeine, you put on a little weight. Your body was protecting your baby even if it took your brain a little while to catch up with the signs. And it will be the same when the baby’s here. You’ll be amazed by what you know without knowing you knew it. You’ll learn the rest and you’ll cope and you will be brilliant at it. Look at how you coped when you took in Bella and Izzy. Look at how much love you gave them and how they trusted and respected and loved you back, and you’d had nothing to do with any children before then.” Iris kissed the top of Sophie’s head. “Look, darling, you won’t be a perfect mother because there’s no such thing. But you’ll be a brilliant, loyal, loving, fun, and fair mother, and do you know how I know that?”

Sophie shook her head. “Is it because you’ve been on the dog tranquilizers again?”

“Because you already are, you already are a mother to those two little girls.”

Suddenly Sophie pictured Carrie, with Bella in her arms, her lips pressed lightly to her firstborn’s forehead, the look in her eyes one of shining contentment and joy. Sophie knew that whatever
she had learned about love and trust from Carrie’s daughters had been at her best friend’s and Bella and Izzy’s expense. Precious stolen minutes, memories that the three of them would never be able to share together, snuffed out in a few minutes of arbitrary destruction. And as she thought about the tiny spark of life that had begun to burn inside her, she felt overwhelmed with all that Carrie and her children had lost.

“I’m not their mother,” she said. “I never will be.”

“But you’re the next best thing, and you love them every bit as much as you will love your own. And if Carrie could be here now she’d thank you for giving them the love she can’t any longer.”

Suddenly weary and indescribably sad, Sophie rested her head on the table and wept.

“That’s it,” Iris said, rubbing Sophie’s back the way she used to when Sophie was a little girl. “You let it out, you’ll feel better for it. And you wait and see; once you’ve told Louis, you’ll feel so much better. I bet you he’ll be overjoyed.”

“I am very pleased to see you, Aunty Sophie!” Izzy said into Sophie’s hair as she flung her arms around Sophie, who was attempting to fend off a small pack of overexcited dogs as she bent to embrace the four-year-old. Louis must have stopped at some point on the way to change them into their pajamas. Izzy was wearing her favorite pink fluffy pony pajamas with feet and Bella had on the dark red flannel she’d chosen herself, all bundled up underneath a red-and-green-tartan dressing gown that somehow succeeded in giving her the air of a Victorian amateur detective rather than a seven-year-old girl.

“Come here, Bella,” Sophie said, kissing her a little haphazardly on the bangs as Scooby shouldered Bella to one side hoping it was him Sophie was inviting for a hug rather than the child. “Oh, I’ve missed you two!”

“This is Wendy,” Bella said to Iris, screwing up her eyes as Scooby gave her an inquisitive lick on the cheek, pointing at Wendy, who was standing in the living room doorway peering over Louis’s shoulder as if she were using him as a human shield. Louis looked a little awkward standing in the hallway; he had never been to Iris’s house before. And he looked as if he didn’t know what to do or where to stand. “Wendy is Daddy’s friend who used to go to school with him. They did do kissing once but not anymore because now Daddy loves Aunty Sophie. Wendy has a grown-up son who has run away, although he is grown up, so …” Bella shrugged, as if to say “What’s the big deal?” “Daddy has brought us to London because he is going to help Wendy look for Seth. So that is why we are here. And to see you, Aunty Sophie, not to visit you, because you only visit people you don’t see very often, but we are still going to see you very often, aren’t we? Because you are only visiting your mummy, aren’t you? And then you are coming back to St. Ives to be with us.”

“Yes I am,” Sophie said, looking up at Louis and hoping to catch his eye, but he seemed to be studying the floor. Taking a breath, Sophie smiled, hugging both girls to her chest amid a forest of wagging tails. “It’s been years since I’ve seen you!”

“It’s been a week,” Bella informed her, smiling all the same. Sophie dragged her bundle of girls onto the sofa, out of the worst attention of the dogs, and cuddled them to her. Apart from her need to know exactly where she stood with Sophie, Bella seemed quite calm about their unscheduled trip and Sophie knew that was because she thought she understood what was going on. Yet it was clear that Louis had still seen fit to give her only an edited version of the truth and that worried Sophie. Eventually he would have to tell his daughters exactly who Seth was, and Sophie knew that Bella would feel hurt and betrayed, and Sophie was afraid of how she would react. If only she could have a chance to tell Louis all her worries and fears.

“Hello, you two.” Iris appeared with a plate of pink-iced cookies that immediately attracted the attention of all the dogs and the children in the room, so much so that she had to hold them above her head.

“Now I know it’s late, but I thought just this once it would be okay for you to have a cookie and some hot chocolate before bed. Not you, Scooby.” The girls giggled as Scooby made an attempt to balance on his back legs to reach the cookies and Iris smiled sweetly at Louis. “That’s okay, isn’t it, Louis?”

“Of course, Iris.” Louis advanced into the room for the first time, stepping over dogs to reach Sophie’s mother and plant a kiss on her cheek. Sophie tried not to notice that he had kissed her mother before he’d come anywhere near her, but his apparent disinterest in her stung as badly as if he’d slapped her in the face. She dipped her head, burying her face in Izzy’s hair and closing her eyes until the threat of tears had passed. “Thanks so much for having them to stay. They’d much rather be here with Soph and you than anywhere else.”

“It’s no trouble,” Iris said, smiling fondly at the girls. “You know I think of you as family, and you two lovelies are the best little girls I know, yes you are!” Iris chucked Izzy under the chin as if she were one of her pet dogs, which in fairness she did bear a striking resemblance to because as soon as the cookies had appeared, she climbed down from the sofa and stood perfectly still at Scooby’s side, her head not quite level with his, both pairs of eyes fixed firmly on the prize.

“Well, you come with me then,” Iris said. “And you, Bella. We’ll go in the kitchen and let Daddy and Sophie have a few words.” She looked at Wendy and sniffed.

“Come through and have some tea, Wendy,” she all but commanded.

Sophie looked at Louis’s companion. She looked like she hadn’t slept much, as did Louis. His stubble had grown halfway to a beard
and he looked a little lost, like he had the first time Sophie met him, on the night he’d flown back from Peru after finding out that Carrie had been killed. He’d been waiting for her outside her flat because he’d been desperate to find the children he had abandoned, one of whom hadn’t even been born when he’d left, and make amends. That night Sophie had mistaken him for a tramp. Tonight though, no matter how disheveled and tired he looked, there was no doubt that he was the man she loved; suddenly she was exhausted by all the thinking and the striving to be certain. All she knew was that she loved him and wanted to do whatever it took to make him happy. And if that meant waiting for him to resolve things with Wendy and Seth, then she would.

“We haven’t got long,” Wendy said, glancing at Louis as she followed Iris toward the kitchen. “I really want to try and see Seth tonight.”

“Won’t be long,” Louis said, smiling reassuringly at Wendy as Sophie herded the last of the dogs out behind the other woman, shutting the door behind her. Finally they were alone.

“I’ve missed you,” Sophie said, standing an awkward three feet from him.

“Really?” Louis asked her. “I wasn’t sure if you would.”

“Yes.” Sophie smiled cautiously. “I know I shouldn’t have just rushed off like that, I was tired and Wendy really did make things difficult and well …Louis, it turns out I was very hormonal.” She paused, desperate to ask him if he had missed her too, but terrified by what he might say.

“It’s okay,” Louis said, shrugging, directing his attention to the mantelpiece where her mother kept an array of her school photos, from cute and ponytailed five-year-old to awkward teen. “It’s all right that you want some space to think about us. I didn’t want you to go, but I’ve had a chance to think about it and maybe it’s the right thing.”

“The right thing?” Sophie felt a cool wash of fear sweep through her. “What’s the right thing?”

“That we take a breather, have some time apart. Put the engagement on hold.”

“On hold?” Sophie asked him.

“Yes.” Louis redirected his gaze to the ceiling, and then to the toes of his boots, seeming to prefer looking anywhere but at her. “It’s like Wendy said, the timing’s not great. I need to get things sorted with Seth, I need to work out what’s happening there and get it on an even keel. So maybe it is best for you to move in with your mum while I’m doing that.”

“Out of the way,” Sophie confirmed, her tone nudging at anger.

“No, that’s not what I mean.” Louis frowned. “Look, it was you who packed a bag and left without a moment’s notice. All I’m saying is that maybe it is a good idea after all.”

“Because Wendy says so?” Sophie was desperate to bring things back to the point where she felt she could reach out and touch and kiss him and tell him about the baby, but the more she wanted that, the more she seemed to say the very thing that would push him away.

“No, not because of Wendy, because of Seth and because it’s what you want.”

“And what you want too,” Sophie said, struggling to contain the tears that came so quickly these days. “When you say put the engagement on hold …what do you mean?”

“I mean exactly that,” Louis told her. “I’m a man, I mean what I say. There aren’t any double or triple hidden meanings with me.”

“And then?” Sophie asked him, bewildered by how quickly it had come to this between them.

“I don’t know, you answer that one,” Louis told her. “You’re the one who left.”

Sophie struggled with the hundreds of things she wanted to say, but they somehow wouldn’t form themselves into a sentence.

“I think you should go and find Seth,” she said instead, feeling somehow as if she was breaking for good an invisible bond. “It’s late.”

“Okay,” Louis said and nodded. “We’ll probably be all night, so I’ll ring you in the morning.”

“Fine,” Sophie said and bowed her head.

“Right, I’ll get Wendy.”

As Louis strode past her, Sophie grabbed his arm. It was the first time they had touched each other since he’d arrived.

“Louis, I have to tell you something.” Sophie swallowed. She simply could not find the words to tell him she was pregnant. Not now, not when things were like this between them and she was sure that the news would serve only to drive them further apart. “I really think you should tell the girls who Seth is and why you are looking for him so hard.”

“I know you do,” Louis said.

“If Bella finds out another way, she’ll be so hurt and angry. I’m worried about how she’ll react, especially after she took your phone—”

“She what?”

Sophie realized belatedly that Louis probably still didn’t know about that. “She borrowed your phone to call me one day. They wanted to speak to me and they didn’t understand why you wouldn’t let them call me. Neither do I, for that matter. You know how much I love Bella and Izzy; no matter what happens between us I will always be there for them.”

“They are my daughters and I know them. I know what’s best for them.”

Sophie nodded, realizing that he was in no mood to listen to her, and let go of his arm. “I hope you find him.”

“Me too,” Louis said, opening the door and unleashing a cacophony of canines into the room, excited all over again to find people there. “Me too.”

As Sophie lay in the middle of the double bed in the nicely appointed guest room where the girls were to sleep, she wondered vaguely why her mother had insisted on putting her in her old bedroom despite the fact that it was now used more as a kennel and storeroom and came complete with an extra layer of dog hair and no heating. It had to be habit, she supposed. Her mother couldn’t imagine her sleeping anywhere but in the room she had grown up in. Still, she was glad the girls had this nice, cozy room to stay in that was relatively free from pet invasion, unless you counted Tripod, who Iris let sleep in here, and he was really only three-quarters of a dog.

“So then,” she said, finishing that night’s story, “Petal the Princess Fairy Pony got on the boat and sailed off into the sunset looking for the World of the Mermaids.”

“No, it’s the
Land
of the Mermaids,” Bella, the principal author of the story, reminded her.

“Sorry, the Land of the Mermaids, and tomorrow we will follow her wonderful adventures in the Town Under the Sea.”

Sophie looked down to where Izzy was already fast asleep in the crook of her arm, her thumb plugging her mouth, her long, dark lashes sweeping the tops of her cheeks. Just to look at her, already so lost to her dreams, made Sophie feel very, very tired.

“Aunty Sophie,” Bella said, drawing Sophie’s attention to her large, dark, and very wide-awake eyes.