The Accidental Mother (3 page)

She had to get on, go to lunch with Jake, she decided. She had to do something now that was normal and that she could control and understand. She just couldn’t understand Carrie being dead. She just couldn’t think about it.

“Well.” She glanced at the business card she was still holding before handing it back as requested. “Tess. Thank you for letting me know. You’re right, it was a shock, but I think the best thing is to get on with life as normal, so if that’s all?”

Tess looked taken aback and shook her head. “Oh dear,” she said, apologetically. “That’s not the only reason why I’m here, Miss Mills. Sophie. I didn’t come just to tell you Carrie was dead. Oh dear.” She took a deep breath. “It’s the children. Carrie’s children. Bella is six, and Izzy is just three.”

“Of course,” Sophie said, shaking her head grimly. “It’s terrible for them. Just terrible.” She didn’t quite understand what Tess wanted from her.

“Good, I’m glad you understand how difficult it’s been for the poor little mites. That’ll make everything so much easier for them.”

Sophie was confused. “Make what so much easier?” she asked politely.

“For the girls to come and live with you.” Tess studied Sophie’s blank page of a face. “You’ve forgotten, haven’t you? I was afraid that you might have—people never take these things seriously.” She could see that Sophie wanted her to get to the point. “Carrie named you in her will, but we only just found it, you see, a couple of days ago. Her neighbor had volunteered to sort through her things before they got cleared out—to save anything special and important for the girls. They found it in the bottom of a box of paints, can you believe—” Tess switched her smile back on. “She named you as the girls’ legal guardian, Miss Mills. You must remember you signed the agreement. She wanted you to look after them.”

S
ophie
had
forgotten until that moment. Of course she had—why would she remember a half-drunk agreement she had made nearly three years ago? Carrie was never supposed to actually die.

It had been after the girl’s christenings. Carrie’s mum had arranged the whole thing in the same Highbury church that Carrie had been christened and confirmed in. It was just after her first stroke, a mild one that she recovered from quickly, but she’d suddenly got a sense of her mortality and a renewed religious fervor that meant she had to see her grandchildren christened before she died, she simply had to, or so she’d told Carrie.

“Of course it’s emotional blackmail,” Carrie had told Sophie on the phone, sounding strung out and stressed, two conditions her mother invariably inspired in her. “I don’t want them christened. But Mum’s really turned the screws, so I’m bringing them both up. It’s either that or living purgatory for the foreseeable future.”

Sophie had felt a lot of sympathy for Carrie. She knew what it was like to have a twilight-zone mother; in fact, a lot of women her age had similar experiences with their mothers. For some reason, it seemed to Sophie that, immediately after becoming mothers, women began a degenerative process that slowly transformed them from bright and interesting people to dotty and eccentric and, especially in Mrs. Stiles’s case, unhinged harridans hell-bent on dragging their daughters to the same ruinous fate. It was the main reason among many that Sophie had decided she never wanted to have children: she never wanted to become
her
mother, let alone anyone else’s.

And Sophie’s mum was crazy only about dogs. Carrie’s mum, on the other hand, was a leader in the field when it came to bitter recrimination and emotional blackmail.

“What about Louis,” Sophie remembered having asked Carrie. “I bet he doesn’t want it. You could say he’s put his foot down and blame him, couldn’t you?” Carrie hadn’t answered for a moment, and Sophie had been able to hear the new baby gurgle and cough down the line.

“Oh well, no…I just. Well, no, it doesn’t matter. I’ve said yes now.” Carrie’s laugh had seemed a little thin. “Poor Bella, God knows what she’ll make of it, getting water chucked over her head by a bloke in a dress at nearly three years old! Mum’s even sorted out godparents, dreadfully pious cousins from Tottenham. But I put my foot down. I said I’d have at least one friend that I chose. You will do it, won’t you, Soph? I don’t think I can face the whole eternal guilt trip thing all on my own. You are a product of Our Lady’s too—at least you understand. And anyway, you’d make a good godmother, set the girls a good example and all that.”

Sophie had laughed at Carrie’s description of her relationship with her mother and the church. Carrie had declared herself an atheist and a vegetarian at fourteen. She and Mrs. Stiles had been engaging in a gargantuan battle of good and evil ever since, each thinking that the other was on the wrong side.

“Of course I will,” she’d said, looking forward to mulling over old times with Carrie. “But you won’t be alone, will you? Louis will be there, won’t he? He’ll stop your mum checking you into a nunnery!”

Sophie tried to remember if Carrie had laughed at the rather feeble joke, but she couldn’t.

“Louis can’t come,” Carrie had told her, her voice wobbling as Sophie imagined her jiggling the baby in her arms. “It’s work. I told him not to worry about it. This whole thing is for Mum anyway. It’s her show.”

Sophie thought of the one time she had met Louis, at Carrie’s sacrilegious registry office wedding. Carrie had been eight months pregnant, in a white crocheted smock with wildflowers entwined in her brown curls making her look like an earth goddess. Mrs. Stiles had managed to overshadow the whole event by not being present. Sophie had barely spoken to Louis. He’d seemed slightly drunk, even during the ceremony, and she’d thought the very least he could have done was combed his hair and shaved off his near-full beard of dark stubble. He was personable enough and friendly, but secretly Sophie had disapproved of the whole relationship; it was too impulsive and somehow hurried.

Carrie had met Louis while she was on a long-planned painting holiday in St. Ives. He was into surfing and photography. They shared a love of art and of the sea. “Met most marvelous hunk,” Carrie had written on the postcard she sent to Sophie. “Am going to keep him.” She was pregnant three months later. They were married five months after that. Sophie had privately given it six months, as she made her excuses and slipped out of the pub wedding reception. She had felt out of place in her lilac suit and matching shoes, her long blond hair ironed straight over her shoulders. Everyone else had been tie-dyed and sort of a hippie. Carrie asked her to stay longer, but Sophie had explained she had to drive back up to London that night. She’d been working toward a promotion even then. The marriage
had
lasted longer than six months, and Sophie had been proved wrong, a new baby proved her wrong conclusively, she’d supposed. She had agreed to be the girls’ godmother.

The christening had gone exactly as Sophie had expected. It was long, the church was cold, and no one understood what the charming but heavily accented Dominican priest was saying. The baby had screamed relentlessly for the duration of the service, and the toddler—Bella—had had the sort of thick cold that made Sophie feel like she had a temperature and sore throat just by looking at her. Sophie had had to hold the baby at one point, and it had looked up at her. Two huge black, blank eyes peering out from a wrinkled, pinkish lump devoid of any recognizable emotion, and Sophie hadn’t got it. She didn’t understand why Carrie was so crazy about the baby. About both her children, actually. It had to be more complicated than just hormones duping all new mothers into eternal slavery. Kids had to have something going for them, but how could anybody be so in love with a leaden lump of alien life-form that looked like it had no humanity in it whatsoever, just an unremitting, single-minded will to suck mankind dry of everything that it had to offer? No, Sophie hadn’t taken to the baby at all, but at least Bella could talk and seemed quite sensible.

“I like your shoes,” the three-year-old had told her as they stood by the font. “And your pretty, beautiful clothes. Like Barbie.” She had reached for Sophie’s hand, and Sophie had held hands with her for twenty minutes, even though she’d feared the slight stickiness of Bella’s palm was not caused by chocolate alone.

Later that night, at Mrs. Stiles’s house, Sophie had sat up with Carrie long after everyone else had gone home or to bed. They had stockpiled three bottles of wine that Mrs. Stiles had bought for the occasion and were two-thirds of the way through the second bottle.

“Oh, my God,” Carrie had said with the practiced, hushed giggle of a mother. “What about that time we got caught in the boys’ changing room of St. Peter’s! My God. I thought Mum would literally kill me. She didn’t, though—she just looked at me and told me she was disappointed in me and so was Jesus.” Sophie had remembered the occasion—they had only narrowly avoided suspension. Her own mother had been too busy worrying about a new litter of puppies to be that cross. “Silly girl,” she had told Sophie when she heard. “If that Carrie told you to jump off a cliff, you would. Just don’t do it again love, okay?” she’d said.

“It was a fifth-grade dare, wasn’t it? Who could get Toby Barnes’s boxers out of St. Peter’s. What were we thinking? It just goes to show what clueless virgins we were. If we had any sense at all, we would have stayed well clear of Toby Barnes’s boxers.”

“Yes,” Carrie had said. “Unlike Ursula Goodman. She got far too close to them. Pregnant at fifteen. Exiled to Welwyn Garden City. Nightmare.”

Sophie had poured out the last of the wine. “Well, you’re a young mother. You seem to love it,” she’d said. “But then again, I suppose it’s different when you’ve got someone to share it with.”

Carrie had nodded and drained her glass in one gulp. “God, this stuff is rough,” she’d said, laughing. She’d paused then, and Sophie had waited, sensing that she wanted to say something.

“You know we bought the house after the wedding?”

Sophie had nodded.

“Well, mortgages and kids make you think about stuff. We made wills and even got life insurance!”

Sophie had nodded approvingly. She’d made a will soon after she’d bought her flat and arranged a policy to cover her mortgage in case she got knocked down by a bus. It was just sensible. Tidy. She was impressed that Carrie and Louis were even thinking that far ahead. Perhaps Louis was good for Carrie after all.

Carrie went on. “Recently I’ve been thinking that my will doesn’t do enough. I have to make provision for the girls in case anything happens to me, to both of us I mean. Name a guardian, you know.” Carrie had smiled at Sophie. “Someone who’s not my mother. So I was wondering, Soph—would you do it? Would you be the girls’ guardian? You’re the only person I know with a proper job.”

Sophie had laughed. “Oh, I’m flattered!” she’d said.

“Yes, well, you know what I mean. You’re the only person I think I’d trust with them.”

“Really?” Sophie had said. “You must have some very irresponsible friends.”

“Well, yes, I have,” Carrie had replied, only half-joking.

The two women had laughed, and Sophie felt a rush of their old friendship flood back. She had been touched and warmed by the request. It showed that they were still close, even all those miles apart. She had been flattered. Sophie didn’t know if it was the wine, the nostalgia, or echoes of a hundred promises that they had made unthinkingly to each other over the years, but in that moment she’d been uncharacteristically impulsive and accepted what she assumed was a kind of token gesture of commitment from Carrie.

“Of course!” she’d said without hesitation. “Of course I will. If anything ever happens to you and Louis, which it won’t, I’m your girl.”

Sophie shook her head. Her patience with Tess Andrew was draining rapidly away. It was bad enough to find out that Carrie was gone, but worse still for the news to be mangled by so much ill planning and incompetence.

“Miss Andrew,” she said scathingly. “Obviously I do remember that agreement. But that was in the event of
both
parents dying. You didn’t mention Louis. He wasn’t in the crash, I presume? He is the children’s guardian. He’s their father. I would have thought that was obvious.”

Tess puffed out her chest at Sophie’s tone and suddenly looked a lot more formidable. “Yes, technically that is correct, and we’re doing our best to track him down, but—”

Sophie cut her off. “Track him down? What do you mean, track him down?” She asked incredulously.

Tess pushed the chair she was sitting in a couple of inches away from Sophie’s desk and took a breath. “Louis Gregory left the family home some time ago. We can’t trace him. We think he’s overseas.”

Sophie rubbed her temples with her thumb and forefinger. “Carrie was on her own?” she asked, trying to force her mind to absorb all the information that was being thrown at her.

“Yes, since the little once was a baby apparently,” Tess said, looking slightly thrown. “I thought you would have known.”

Sophie thought of all the Christmas cards with Louis’s name that she had sent, and the cards she had received. To be honest, she’d probably never read them that closely, but now that she thought about it, she was fairly sure Carrie always signed any cards or letters either just from herself or, sometimes, “From us all.” Sophie had spoken to Carrie a few weeks after the christening and then a few months after that. Neither time did Carrie mention that Louis had left her, and it wasn’t exactly the sort of thing one asked in a casual conversation. After that, they hadn’t spoken. Sophie had just always assumed, like she supposed Carrie had, that they would speak at some point. But neither one of them had got around to making that call, and Carrie, her life, and her family had slipped further away from Sophie’s life until they were almost entirely separated. Until now.

Louis must have left Carrie alone with a new baby. Sophie had known from the moment she set eyes on him that he wasn’t the kind of guy to settle into marriage and fatherhood. She’d thought she had been proved wrong—but she hadn’t.

Even so, it didn’t make her the children’s guardian.

“Their grandmother surely—” Sophie began, watching the second hand of her watch. She wondered if Jake was outside now, talking to Cal and Lisa.

“Oh yes.” Tess nodded. “Mrs. Stiles brought them home with her right after the funeral. They’re here in London now. But two small children are a lot for an old lady to cope with; they can’t seem to settle. Bella has missed a lot of school. And Mrs. Stiles is very frail, you know. High blood pressure, angina. She tried her best, but there came a point when she had to call us in to help her just before everything stopped for the holidays. We’ve only been onboard for the last few weeks. Anyway, she’s moving into assisted living. There’s a place that came up just before Christmas, and she has to take it now or she’ll lose it. And even if she
could
cope with the girls, you can’t take children there. She feels awful about it, as you can imagine—but to be honest, I think the girls would be better off somewhere that wasn’t so…gloomy.” Sophie tried to take in everything that Tess was telling her.

“Carrie had a lot of family,” Sophie said. “No brothers or sister admittedly, but tons of cousins—she was Catholic!”