Uphill All the Way (19 page)

'And how are
you
to know whether they're awful? You've never met them!'

Kieran looked stricken. Bethan went deadly quiet.

Judith looked from one of them to the other. She felt furious for all the reasons she'd just outlined. But also because they were making her deal with this when she had so much else to deal with. And still she had hanging over her the task of telling Kieran that Giorgio was dead, it not being news she cared to break over the phone. An inappropriate time now, and it couldn't even be considered a priority.

She could do no more for the life that had gone out of the world. The life coming into it took precedence. She forced herself to concentrate on that difficulty. 'Does your father know, Kieran?'

Kieran looked horrified. 'No!'

Taking a deep breath, she focused on limiting the damage, making her voice sensible, reasonable. 'You've made a bad job of this, and now you're preparing to make it even worse for your parents by running away, adding more crushing fears to the ones they'll have already.' She shook her head at Bethan. 'Your poor parents!'

Bethan began to sniffle.

They sat in silence for some time while Judith frowned. 'I'll come with you both,' she offered, heavily, in the end. 'Because you do have to tell your parents. You have to grow up tonight and learn to think of someone other than yourselves. If you're bringing a child into the world you'll find you do a lot of that. Stop manufacturing reasons to feel hard-done-by, and bloody-well face reality.'

It wasn't a textbook counselling session, Judith was certain the counsellor wasn't meant to yell and swear. But it got Bethan and Kieran into her car.

Bethan lived in a nice new part of town in a detached house, overlarge for its plot but not actually big. The bricks were yellow, the roof tiles red, the window frames had been stained with a too red mahogany, and would soon need doing again.

Hannah and Nick Sutherland looked bewildered and suspicious at the party descending on them. Hannah was small and mousy with blonde streaks that might have once brightened her up a bit but had now almost grown out. Nick was chunky, with thinning brown hair.

They stared from Bethan to Kieran to Judith.

In the silence, Judith wondered whether the youngsters actually expected her to do the breaking of the news, and wished she'd established earlier that it was their job.

But then, with a noise like an elephant's sneeze, Bethan burst into tears and threw herself into her mother's arms. 'Mum, I'm so sorry. You're going to be so sad and angry!'

She was right.

It was a long evening. Nick and Hannah Sutherland, as predicted, were both sad and angry. Also horrified, hurt, gutted, disappointed; the list of their emotions was long.

Judith did what she could to keep everyone calm and focused on the problem rather than on their anger. And, eventually, to reassure them. 'You probably can't see it now, but Kieran is a lovely boy. Immature, of course.'

'I'm not!'

She smiled at her stepson. Ex-stepson. 'You are! Or you would've wanted a girlfriend your own age, you wouldn't have allowed yourself to be kept a secret, and you would've made damned sure that you didn't impregnate her!
And
,' as an afterthought, 'you wouldn't be scared to tell your father.'

Then she gave Hannah and Nick, stunned and flabbergasted, poor souls, her telephone number, 'In case I can be of any help to you,' and prepared to take herself off home with a parting, 'If you want me to see your father with you, Kieran, ring me. But I think I may have done all I can do to help, tonight.' She was very tired. She'd been up about twenty hours, and hadn't slept much prior to that.

Kieran sent furiously after her, 'It's nothing to do with you!' And then, contradicting himself, 'Don't go!'

Judith turned back to press three kisses on his forehead. 'You know I'll always be on your side, darling. But I think you and Bethan need to talk to Bethan's parents, now. And I think you ought to tell your father.'

In her car, she suddenly became aware of the crucifix touching the skin below her throat. She fished it out of her shirt, held it, kissed it, closed her eyes very tightly. Anyone watching might think she was engaged in private prayer. But she just wanted it against her lips because it had lain so long against Giorgio's flesh.

How she needed to be alone! If only Moll would be in bed when she got home, then she could get back to that bottle of wine.

But it wasn't to be. Although it was midnight Molly was waiting up for her, buttoned up in a pink candlewick dressing gown that didn't suit her and looked as if it should have been cut up for dusters years ago. Not that Judith ever cut things up for dusters, but Moll did.

'Hot chocolate?' offered Molly. The drinking chocolate powder was in the cups, ready.

Judith retrieved her huge glass of wine and drank half of it quickly so that no one could expect her to do anything else responsible for a few hours. 'Not for me, thanks.'

Because she knew something was up, and even though she was aware that Tom ought to know first, Judith told her sister about the impending fatherhood of Kieran.

Molly curled up tightly in the chair, her voice small. 'You've got a lot on your plate, haven't you?'

She quelled the desire to thank her for noticing. 'Quite, yes.'

'I ought not stay.'

Molly looked so forlorn that Judith felt her heart melt. For a big sister, Molly took some surprising detours into the territory of little sister, looking for help and comfort and, chiefly, support. 'Of course you must stay, as a temporary measure.' She took her sister's cold little hand in hers. 'But it won't work, darling, not long-term. You can't slide into my life. You won't like it when I want to read for hours, or stay on the computer all day. Or invite Adam round to get drunk.' His face flashed into her mind, his half-smile, the concern in his eyes. Adam was the one person who'd offered her unselfish support during her intense grief.

She caught a grimace flashing over Molly's face. 'You see! You don't like my friends. You'll warn me about Kieran and grumble about Adam or Melanie, you'll expect me to consider you, your likes and tastes. Well, that's OK for a fortnight or so, but it'll soon get old. You need to sort out your life.'

Molly sniffed. 'Me? If anyone needs a life sorting it's you - '

'No!' Judith interrupted, firmly. 'You've got no basis for that remark. I think your disapproval of me must be habitual. If you examine the situation, you'll see that, actually, my life is sorted. I live alone in this house from choice. There's no mortgage, so my income is enough to get me by.'

She let her voice soften. 'I don't need to sort out my life, Molly. I need to recover. To grieve. To adjust.

'But you're in a different place. You need either to attempt to save your marriage, or to make the decision to abandon it. You need discussions with Frankie so that you can make those decisions, see solicitors if necessary. Limbo isn't the place for you - it's my province. Because Giorgio's gone. And I've been left behind.'

Part Two

The Road Gets Steep

Chapter Eighteen

'Why have you got the hump with me?'

Judith watched Adam as he drove through the centre of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, his eyes on the road, face giving nothing away. Although only mid-afternoon, winter's early dusk was turning the world purple and making brighter the Christmas lights that surely should be taken down now. It was the end of January.

'I haven't got the hump with you. I just asked why you see Tom's happiness as your concern.'

'Same reason you see Shelley's as yours, I suppose.'

He shook his head, his mouth quirking up at one side, as it did when something wasn't really amusing him. 'We're still friendly, but that's as far as it goes. She's no longer my concern; she's able to run her own life. As Tom is.'

Judith turned away to look through the steamy glass into the bow window of a shop full of intriguing glass decanters. She would have liked to mooch around the centre of Ashby, but it seemed that Adam wasn't in the mood for one of their impromptu stops after a photo shoot.

In the last seven months - could it really be seven months
since Giorgio
, as she'd begun to think of it? - she'd become used to zipping all over Northamptonshire and the surrounding counties with Adam. It was now second nature for her to take responsibility for certain things on a shoot, especially the fiddly stuff, leaving him free to talk to his subjects or prowl around considering light and angles.

The work suited her, sporadic, varied, enough to harness some of her energy and intelligence but not so much as to tie her down to routines and regular hours. After Giorgio's death, a shock she hadn't quite been prepared for, Adam had offered her more hours and a permanent job, as if sensing her desperate need to be occupied, to have a structure to her life.

Somehow she'd never moved on. Adam was so easy to get on with he was now a firm part of her life.

She'd become attuned to his quiet directions. 'Jude, gold umbrella, please. We need warmer skin tones.' He'd refer to her, jokingly as his umbrella girl. She was au fait with his admin - OK, she'd reorganised it - and took over the phone calls that made him cross, typically wheedling usable addresses from picture desks or chasing up late payments from accounts departments.

People skills, she thought, yawning. Adam had loads, but didn't always bother to harness them. Especially when it came to editorial assistants. The subjects of his photographs, on the other hand - victims, as he termed them - got the full benefit of his charm, and that's how they were persuaded to change clothes and jewellery for the fourth time, or shunt enormous amounts of furniture in and out of their rooms to suit his shots.

As well as their working relationship, she and Adam had created a mutual aid society, from which Judith was certain she profited most.

Oh, the relief, for instance, that he'd taken over her rampaging garden! A more than fair exchange for her undertaking his household correspondence and bill payment, tasks that she could perform in minutes but irritated Adam like an attack of scabies. Adam serviced Wilma's wheelchair, Judith ironed Adam's dress shirt, tied his bow tie and fastened his cuff links when he had to go - scowling - to some magazine's awards evening, a networking opportunity that couldn't be missed. The list of exchanged favours was long and complicated.

And she didn't want to jeopardise friendship, working relationship, or mutual aid society, with a falling out over nothing.

'I feel bad for Tom,' she temporised. 'He's lonely, and he realises that his relationship with Kieran is bad. I feel guilty that Kieran came to me, putting me in the position of colluding with Tom's son against him.' Then, because she could seldom resist winding him up, 'You don't mind if I care about Kieran, do you, if I'm not allowed to feel bad about Tom?'

He flicked her a wry glance. 'I completely understand you caring for Kieran.' His attention returned to the jammed traffic, the red brake lights blurred by the rain. 'But hasn't Tom got a more recent wife to feel bad for him?'

She grinned. 'No good, though, is she? She ran off with a toy boy and got her own life.'

Suddenly they were clear of the centre, and Adam put his foot down. 'Haven't
you
got your own life?'

She studied him as she swayed with the rhythm of the car, curious at his irritation. 'Look, I'm sorry Tom rang my mobile during the photo shoot. I forgot to turn it off, and I know that annoys you. I tried to get rid of him, but he didn't want to be got rid of. That's why I agreed to meet him tonight'

Adam took the road for the motorway, and shrugged.

After her usual stint in front of Adam's computer, swapping his mouse from left to right, then home for a shower and a meal, Judith met Tom in a pub. It was too odd to visit the home where they used to sleep together and where Tom later slept with Liza. Nor did she wish Tom to call at Lavender Row, because then she wouldn't have the option of leaving if things got tricky.

Tom hadn't liked this decision. He had old-fashioned views of pubs: they were for guffawing over dodgy jokes, pint in hand. So far as heart-to-hearts were concerned, they lacked privacy.

Over the past few months Tom had taken each and every opportunity to coax Judith to petition Molly to return to his poor old mate Frankie who was, by Tom’s account, utterly miserable since he'd failed to persuade Molly to give their marriage another go. Better Frankie be miserable separated than Molly be miserable married, in Judith's opinion, and she invariably gave Tom short shrift on the subject. But today Tom had agreed to leave the subject of Molly and Frankie alone - because he wished to confide his worries over Kieran.

Which was uncomfortable for Judith, who was deliberately keeping Kieran's secrets.

She was no saint, but she was generally straight with people, and Tom's unease only increased her sense of duplicity.

From a wine-red velvet banquette, she faced him across the smoky atmosphere of The Holly Tree, he on a stool, crouching like a bullfrog. He drank the three halves of John Smiths that he believed was the limit to keep him safe from the breathalyser, and regarded her from beneath whitening eyebrows that seemed to beetle more busily each time she saw him. 'I don't know what to do with my son, I really don't.'