The Accidental Mother (22 page)

“Do you think she’s got narcolepsy?” Sophie asked Bella.

“No,” Bella said, as if she had the first clue what narcolepsy was. “I think she’s three.”

“Of course,” Sophie said with a smile. “Silly me. Well, look, I think Louis will be off soon. Do you want to say good-bye.”

“He never said good-bye to me,” Bella said bluntly. She laid her head down on the pillow and ran her palm along Artemis’s back. “Besides, I’m having a nap anyway.”

Sophie nodded and closed the door quietly behind her.

“They’re both asleep,” she told Louis. “Izzy’s funny like that. One minute she’s all go, and the next she’s snoring.”

Louis smiled. “Bella used to be the same way.”

He and Sophie looked at each other for a moment, neither one knowing exactly what to say next.

“Right,” Louis said, standing up suddenly. “I’ll be off. What time do you want me tomorrow?”

Sophie felt herself blush inexplicably and cursed her unpredictable complexion. “Well, early’s good. They get up at six. So, eight?”

“Okay, eight it is.” And Louis was gone as suddenly as he’d arrived, leaving her small flat feeling positively palatial.

Sophie sat down in the unusually quiet living room and rubbed her eyes as she thought about Louis. He didn’t seem like an ogre; he didn’t seem like a thoughtless womanizer with a string of kids stretching around the world. He did seem like he was truly delighted to see Izzy and Bella again and anxious that they like him. But none of those things fitted with the picture she had built up from the bits and pieces of information she had gleaned about him. If he had just callously run out on Carrie, why would she have kept his absence a virtual secret from Sophie? If he was so concerned about his children, why did he go as far away from them as he possibly could? If he was such a good father, the kind of father who had a cute pet name for his elder daughter, and if he was such a good person, this selfless charity worker, then why did Mrs. Stiles hate him with a passion? And why was Bella still angry with him?

Somewhere in all this lay the truth about Louis Gregory. And Sophie knew that it was up to her to find it.

She was still trying to puzzle it out when Jake phoned.

“I called you at the office. I was sure you’d be there enjoying your success,” he told her. “You should have about a hundred people calling today, all wanting the same party!”

Sophie grimaced and tapped her forehead with the heel of her palm. She had really been looking forward to going in today, to taking all the glory and capitalizing on her success. But the moment Louis turned up, she had completely forgotten about it. She hadn’t even called Gillian, which meant that she had let slip a crucial moment to consolidate her position. She swore silently.

“Louis was here when I got back last night,” she told Jake by way of explanation.

“Ah, the prodigal father,” he said. “How’d that go?”

“Hard to tell really. I don’t know how to be with him. Whether I should be angry and cross and protect the girls from him. Or whether I should be nice and helpful and try to get them to like him. I mean, he got Carrie pregnant and ditched her. Maybe he’s not the sort of man who’d make a decent dad.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Jake said reasonably. “You don’t know what happened between him and Carrie. Maybe you shouldn’t cast him as the bad guy until you know the facts.”

“That’s just it,” Sophie said. “I don’t know. I wish I knew.”

“Then ask him,” Jake told her, as if it were obvious.

“I can’t ask him!” Sophie said, sounding horrified.

“Why not?” It was good question.

“I hardly know him,” she replied, knowing her answer was inadequate.

“But you’ve been caring for his kids,” Jake pointed out. “You were once close to his wife.”

“I just…I can’t ask him outright,” Sophie said.

Jake laughed. “Then be nice to him, let him trust you. Soon enough he’ll relax and tell you what you want to know.”

Sophie nodded. “That
is
a good idea,” she said hesitantly. “I know I should try to do that, but when I think about what he’s done, I just want to punch him.”

“Don’t do that,” Jake said. “Play the long game, it works every time. Or at least I hope it does.”

Sophie smiled. “I’d better call the office,” she said. “Check that everything’s okay. At least Gillian will be glad to know Louis’s back, although I’ll have to take a few days off completely until the girls get used to him, if they ever do.”

“I wouldn’t worry about Gillian,” Jake told her, a smile in his voice. “I spoke to her this morning. I told her that I was thrilled with the job you had done and that I would be signing a long-term contract with McCarthy Hughes based largely on you.”

Sophie took a moment to absorb that piece of information.

“Jake…,” she began uncertainly. She supposed she ought to be pleased. After all, the seal of approval from her biggest client could only help show Gillian how well she had dealt with work under the circumstances—that in fact she had excelled herself even when the going was tough. But somehow Jake’s having talked directly to Gillian made her feel uncomfortable. After all, they hadn’t exactly been discreet last night. Anybody could have seen them kissing. And what would Gillian think if she heard about that?

“Jake, thank you. But I don’t want people to think that you’re putting a word in for me because of…‘us,’” she said uneasily.

Jake laughed, but she could tell she had somehow wounded him.

“Sophie.” His voice hardened. “You might remember that before I started mooning around you like a lovesick schoolboy I ran the U.K. operation of the Madison Corporation, the world’s third largest private asset management corporation. I know my business, and I promise you, no matter how much I want you, I would
never
compromise my position just to impress a woman.”

“Of course you wouldn’t,” Sophie said hurriedly. “I know that. Oh, Jake, I’m sorry—”

“You are good at your job, Sophie,” Jake interrupted her. “And I’ll be sticking with McCarthy Hughes for our event management because of that and that alone—whether or not anything happens between us.”

“I’m sorry, Jake. I’m just a bit tired, and there’s so much going on—”

“You know what?” he said, clearly not wanting to hear Sophie say that line again. “You need to take some time off from work completely, and perhaps you should take some time off from me. Try to figure out what you want and call me when you do, okay?”

“I will call you,” Sophie said, feeling anxious that he was withdrawing from her so abruptly. “Jake, you’ve been great these last few weeks. Thank you.”

“It’s no big deal,” he said, his voice melting a little.

“And I’m so sorry about last night,” she said.

“Oh, baby,” Jake said warmly. “Not as sorry as me.”

B
y the next morning Sophie had formulated a plan which she considered to be a work of Machiavellian genius that would rival any of Eve’s concoctions.

She was going to take Jake’s advice and be nice to Louis. It was a simple plan but one that invariably worked when she was hooking a difficult client. She would be really encouraging. She’d be perfectly pleasant and nonconfrontational, and gradually he’d let his guard down. When he was relaxed with her and trusted her, then she’d find out exactly what he was up to and exactly who he was. And when the time was right, she’d be able finally to ask him—what
did
happen between him and Carrie?

Sophie had thought she actually didn’t know very much about Carrie’s relationship with Louis or her feelings for him, other than the brief descriptions of general contentment that Carrie had given in passing during their rare conversations over the years—even, it seemed, after he had left. But the more Sophie thought about it, the more she realized that she did know. There were tiny clues slotted inside memories that Sophie had rarely, if ever, accessed until now. And now another puzzle piece had come back to her.

Carrie had sent her some photos after the wedding. Sophie remembered that the film must have been rarely used, because it showed Carrie throughout the developing stages of her relationship with Louis right up until the so-called honeymoon, when she sat on the beach at St. Ives looking, according to Carrie, who had inscribed the back of each picture, “like a big fat whale.”

Sophie reached over and switched on a light next to the sofa. She looked at the video clock; it was nearly seven-thirty, which was sleeping late when Bella and Izzy were in your life; the excitement and drama of yesterday must have worn them out. It didn’t take her long to find the photos, she knew exactly where they were—in a shoe box on top of one of the kitchen units. Sophie retrieved the box and sat down on the edge of the sofa, praying that the girls would stay in bed for a few moments longer. She didn’t want Carrie’s photos to upset them.

The first four or five were all taken on the same beach. It must have been right at the start of the relationship. Carrie was smiling and radiant, her brown curls blown about by the breeze. They had taken photos of each other. In one of Carrie’s, her arms were outstretched as if begging for an embrace, and in another she was blowing a kiss right at the photographer. Louis looked less comfortable in his photos, his hands shoved in his pockets, a shy half smile on his face, and his shoulders shrugged against the cold. But in one image Carrie had caught him unawares gazing out at the horizon, looking relaxed and, yes, quite attractive if scruffy and unkempt were your type. Sophie turned over the photo and smiled. “Mine, all mine!” Carrie had written on the back triumphantly. The last photo of the set was of them both. Sophie guessed that Carrie must have held the camera at arm’s length to take them together because the photo was blurred and out of focus. It was easy, however, to make out the width of their smiles, even though Carrie’s hair had flown over most of Louis’s face.

There were a few snapshots of the Cornish countryside, each inscribed with the location, time, and date, and after those came two photos of what had become Carrie’s house. A tiny terraced house that seemed to perch precariously on one of the steep lanes that led up away from the beach. Virgin Street it was called. Carrie had laughed and laughed when she told Sophie her new address, delighted that she of all people was going to be living on such a chaste road. It had cost much more than they could afford, and Carrie had had to swallow her pride and beg her mum for a deposit, and Louis had had to take on a second job to make the payments on the mortgage, but Carrie had known from the moment she set eyes on the run-down little house that she had to have it, and she got it. Which, Sophie reflected, was just like Carrie—she always got what she wanted in the end.

Then came the wedding photos. Clearly whoever had taken these photos was more than a little worse for the wear; the subject of each print was tilted and skewed, as if the wedding had taken place during an earthquake. The only straight and fully in focus picture was of a rather nice fire extinguisher. But mainly they were of Carrie and Louis, holding hands and laughing. Louis was flushed, and Sophie remembered that he had been quite drunk and had stumbled through the vows. Carrie, who was very pregnant by then, was also flushed but not drunk. She looked so happy. She looked almost victorious. As Sophie looked at the next photo, she saw herself—or at least half of herself—her face obscured by her hair. Carrie had reached out a hand to her and pulled her close, and as Sophie looked at the photo she suddenly remembered what Carrie had whispered in her ear in that moment so vividly that she could almost feel her friend’s breath on her neck. “I’ve finally done it, Sophie,” she’d whispered. “I’ve got everything I wanted. I’m free.”

Sophie remembered thinking that being married to a drunk surfer and saddled with a baby at not quite twenty-three was the very last thing she would call free, but Carrie seemed to believe it. Then Sophie came to the final photos: Carrie on the beach, in a big, loose white cotton shirt propped up on her elbows, a plate of sandwiches balanced on her bump. In the background, Sophie saw something she hadn’t remembered. She had always assumed that Louis had taken these last few photos, which Carrie had captioned. “The Gregorys honeymooning at home,” but he couldn’t have, because he was in them. Not in the foreground but much farther back, just above Carrie’s left shoulder.

Sophie peered at the photo. Yes, it was definitely Louis, messing around with someone else, another girl. A slender blonde. He had his arms around her waist, and she had her head tipped back and was smiling up at him. Sophie bit her lip. If she had been about to give birth and was sitting on a beach with her brand-new husband frolicking with some hussy a few feet away, she would have been livid. But would Carrie? Probably not, Sophie concluded. Carrie had an amazing self-confidence. She would never have believed that Louis would do any more than flirt with the girl because he absolutely loved her. She had told Sophie that often enough in the years before Izzy. It must have been devastating for her when he left—she would have been totally unprepared. It must have hurt her pride just as much as her heart. Maybe that was why she hadn’t told Sophie about it.

Sophie ran her thumb along the edge of Carrie’s face and smiled back at her, and she was surprised to feel a rush of tears build up behind her eyes. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She hadn’t cried for Carrie yet—she hadn’t had time to—and in all the chaos and confusion, she had almost forgotten that she still loved her, that despite their distance, she knew if she had walked into a room and found Carrie there, not only would she have been delighted to see her but they would have never stopped talking and laughing until it was time to go. Sophie had taken the depth and longevity of their friendship for granted, and now she realized she would never again walk into a room and see Carrie there.

“Mummy!” Sophie jerked her head up and saw Izzy peering over the side of the sofa.

“That’s Mummy!” Izzy said, delightedly pointing at the photos that were laid out on the sofa. She ran around and sat next to Sophie, who gathered the photos into a loose pile.

She looked down at Izzy’s expectant face and, uncertain that she was doing the right thing, handed her the first photo on the pile, the one of Carrie blowing a kiss.

“Oh, Mummy,” Izzy said, chuckling fondly, and she planted a kiss on the photo.

Silently Sophie handed Izzy photo after photo, and each one seemed to thrill her even more.

“That’s that man who is my daddy there!” she exclaimed at the first image of Louis. “With my Mummy!” Izzy seemed to think it was incredible they should be together, and Sophie realized Izzy probably didn’t understand that they had once known each other. Izzy cooed over the wedding pictures and laughed and laughed at Mummy with the sandwiches balanced on her tummy.

“Mummy,” she said. And just as Sophie had done, Izzy ran her finger gently along the side of Carrie’s face.

“Mummy,” she said, more softly this time.

Sophie put her arm around the little girl and held her own reactions tightly in her chest. “You can keep these if you like,” she said. “And then you can look at Mummy whenever you want.” Izzy nodded and gathered up the photos. “Where is Mummy again?” she asked after a while.

“She’s in the sky, Izzy, and the stars and the sun,” Sophie said, carefully making sure her voice stayed steady.

“And in the moon and the trees and the lampposts and the, and the—houses?” Izzy asked her.

“Yes,” Sophie said. “Mummy’s all around you. Watching over you and loving you and keeping you safe.” More than anything, Sophie wanted to believe her own words; she wanted to recapture some of the childish faith that Izzy had.

“But I want to see Mummy properly,” Izzy said, her voice very small now and her eyes welling with tears. “I want to cuddle her up.”

At that moment Bella, already washed and dressed, appeared on the other side of the sofa and, pulling herself onto the seat, put her arm around Izzy too, so that it crossed over Sophie’s.

“See that bump?” she said, pointing at the photo. Izzy nodded, her bottom lip still quivering. “That’s me in there,” Bella said.

“That’s not you in there,” Izzy said with a tiny smile. “You couldn’t get in there!”

“I could when I was a tiny, tiny baby and not even born yet.”

Izzy examined the photo again. “Where’s me?” she demanded, but with a fraction of her usual imperiousness. “Where’s me in a bump? I had a bump too, didn’t I?” Fortunately, Sophie did have a photo that Carrie had sent her just before Izzy was born. It had arrived in an envelope with no note, only a quick message scrawled on the back, “Thought you’d like to see how fat I’m getting!”

Sophie quickly flicked through the remaining contents of the shoe box and took the photo out. Carrie was smiling, although she looked a little thinner in the face and paler in that photo. Now that Sophie compared the two photos, she saw that Carrie’s initial radiance was gone. Still, she handed it to Izzy.

“Here,” Sophie said. “That bump is you.”

Izzy laughed again, even as the tears dried on her cheeks, and as Sophie relaxed, she discovered that she had been holding her breath. She glanced up at Bella, who was looking at the last photo of Carrie, her lips pressed into a thin line, her hands folded in her lap.

“Are you okay, Bella?” Sophie asked. It was a question she found herself asking routinely, never receiving a satisfactory answer. Whereas Izzy was beautifully transparent, her sister could be like a tightly closed book.

Bella nodded and hopped off the sofa. “I’m getting Cheerios,” she said, and she trundled into the kitchen.

“And me, and me as well!” Izzy shouted, scooting after her, leaving the photos scattered across the sofa. Sophie gathered them up and put them back in the shoe box.

“I’ll leave these on the table,” she called out to the girls, who were doing their best to scatter cereal all over the floor. “Better get a move on, because Louis will be here any minute.” And just then the doorbell sounded. Sophie looked at the clock. It was right on the dot of eight.

If there was one thing that Sophie decided she was never,
ever
going to do ever,
ever
again it was to answer the door to a handsome man in her cartoon pajamas.

“You did say eight, didn’t you?” were Louis’s first words to her as she ushered him up the stairs, hoping that the length of her hair would be enough to prevent him from getting the full Snoopy effect of her nightwear combined with her blazing hot cheeks.

“Yes, yes, I did,” she said, trying to keep the brisk tone out of her voice and to remember Plan Nice. “We found some old photos, and we got held up looking at them.”

Louis stood back at the flat door and waited for Sophie to go in first. “Suits you,” he said drily, with half of that infuriating smile. “Snoopy style, I mean.”

“Ha-ha,” Sophie said without mirth, narrowing her eyes at him. When she walked into the living room, Bella was ensconced in Artemis’s chair eating her Cheerios and watching TV, and Izzy was on the floor doing the same thing, only a lot less tidily.

“Hello, the man who is my daddy!” Izzy said, waving her spoon at Louis. “I saw you today!”

Bella said nothing, only glancing at Louis, who loomed awkwardly in the corner.

“Look,” Sophie said. “Can you make yourself a drink if you want one? I need to get dressed.”

Louis smiled again.

“What?” Sophie demanded of him.

“It’s just that—Well, you’re a lot less scary in pajamas,” he said quickly and headed for the refuge of the kitchen.

Swallowing her irritation, Sophie looked from Bella to Izzy. “Be good,” she said. “I’ll be ten minutes.” But she took at least twice that long because she felt compelled to have a shower and give her hair a quick wash as well, applying extra concealer and mascara to make up for the whole pajama incident. While it obviously didn’t matter at all what Louis thought of her, Snoopy pajamas did not put her in the best light, and if he thought of her as the kind of person who wore cartoon characters to bed, then it would be much harder for her to get him to take her seriously. And she didn’t like the way he had seemed to relax in the situation before she had. Yes, it would make implementing Plan Nice much easier, but why should Louis—the one who was utterly in the wrong—have the way made so smooth for him that he could easily forget he’d had at least some part in creating this tragedy? The thought of it made Sophie edgy and defensive.