Freeing Grace (21 page)

I reckoned it was stretching the point, blaming the game they play in heaven for all the Harrison troubles, but I didn’t say so.

She pulled on her own shoes. ‘So you’re definitely not in love with Lucy.’

‘Don’t think so.’

A minute later, she nudged me. ‘Hey, Jake. D’you think Matt will have come to meet us?’

I didn’t answer. The cabin lights went dim, and we began to descend into the Underworld.

‘I hope I’m in time,’ she said.

A stressed-looking Lucy was waiting at the barriers. No Perry. No Matt.

‘Jake Kelly,’ she said, kissing me on the cheek. ‘You did it. You are a genius!’

‘Lucy.’ Deborah held out her hands. ‘It’s so good to see you.’

‘Hello.’ Lucy spoke sweetly, stepping out of reach. ‘Had a lovely time?’

Deborah’s arms fell to her sides. She looked around forlornly. ‘Where’s Matt?’

‘You’ll have to make do with the understudy, I’m afraid,’ said Lucy. Then she took my arm and chatted all the way to the car park, ignoring her stepmother.

I wasn’t going to sit in the passenger seat and be roasted by overheated emotion. Lucy was clearly furious with her stepmother for legging it. Deborah was in a stew because she’d had to come back.They could bloody well spend an hour stuck in adjoining seats, and sort out their differences.

‘I’m sure you two girls have lots to catch up on,’ I said, and shot into the back, chortling to myself.

The journey began in an arctic silence. Lolling against the window, I closed my eyes and gave in to the hum of the car engine as we slid out of Heathrow and into the Monday evening traffic. I was in the strangest sort of limbo. I had no job, no home, and no real plans. And here I was, a sort of unwilling valet to this tribe of complete barking maniacs.

I don’t know what it is about cars. Unless I’m actually driving, I have to go to sleep. It’s a sort of Pavlovian response with me. So I began to drift away almost immediately and watched the hostie stepping out of her uniform, smiling and whispering
Go on, take a handful.

I opened my eyes, though, at Deborah’s voice.

‘I’m sorry I’ve hurt you, Lucy,’ she said.

There was no reply.

After a minute or so, she spoke again. ‘How’s Matt? Is he coping with all this?’

‘Nope.’ Lucy’s voice sounded brittle. I’d never heard her like that before. ‘Dad phoned the social worker and told her you’d completed your, er, assignment and were on your way home.’

‘And?’

‘She said it’s too late.’

Deborah put a hand to her mouth. ‘No!’

Lucy nodded, flicking on her indicator. We were joining the M25.

‘Yep. They’ve found a wonderful adoptive couple and told them they’re getting the baby. They’re delighted, and the plan isn’t going to change now.’

‘Oh, no
.
’ Deborah sounded as though she meant it, and perhaps she did.

‘Oh,
yes.
’ Lucy seemed exasperated. ‘You’ve really buggered things up, this time.’

‘We must be able to do something?’

Lucy put her foot down and headed for the fast lane. ‘Dad phoned that slimy solicitor, Forsyth, and he got onto them this morning. Told them they have to assess you and threatened to get a court order forcing them to do it. Said it wasn’t your fault you were, um . . . not in the picture, it was all down to cell phones not working, and that as soon as you heard you got on the first flight home.’

‘What did they say?’

‘They’re not very happy about it. Forsyth says you have
got
to be on their doorstep first thing tomorrow morning.’

‘Have you met Grace?’

A pause. Lucy was messing about with the heating. ‘I went once with Matt. She’s stunning.’

‘When can I see her?’

‘Well, Matt’s going in the morning. Maybe you could muscle in.

You’re so good at that.’

I saw Deborah run a hand over her face, as though checking it was still there. Lucy glanced over her shoulder at me, and I snapped my eyes shut.

‘Why did you bring poor Jake back with you?’ she hissed. ‘Hasn’t he done enough?’

‘Yes, but he offered to come. Says he feels responsible.’

I almost sat up and let them know I was awake, but before I could say anything Lucy exploded.

‘Jake?
Responsible
? He doesn’t know the meaning of the word. You’re screwing him, aren’t you?’

‘I assumed
you
were, actually. He’s your type. There’s just a hint of the untamed, isn’t there, under all that self-deprecating charm? Just a little roughness around the edges.’

‘We don’t all behave like rabbits.’ Lucy began to tailgate the car in front, jabbing her foot onto the brake every time we were about to collide. It was terrifying. ‘You’ve made a fool of my dad. Now you’re throwing your coils around one of my dearest friends.’

‘I am not!’

‘I saw you simpering up to him as you came through customs. Jake’s not on the menu. Hands off.’

Deborah sighed. She sounded tired to her bones. ‘Just grow up, Lucy, and accept that I’m not a wicked sorcerer with a magical talking mirror. I’m just a fallible human being. I make mistakes, quite a lot actually, but I muddle through as best I can. Christ! Mind that car!’

‘Don’t you tell me how to drive.’

The car in front pulled across to let us past—clearly its occupants valued their lives—then Lucy swerved back into the middle lane, narrowly avoiding a Porsche whose driver was talking on his mobile.

‘Oh, I know
exactly
what you are.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘You conned Dad into marrying you—oh yes, you did. Money and status, that’s what you were after. Then the novelty wore off so you started frolicking about, going for your dirty little holidays, all courtesy of his bank account. And then,
then
—and this is the icing on the cake—you abandoned him when he’d never needed you more. I can see through your baby-doll dimples. I’ve got no illusions about what you are.’

‘And you’re a spoiled little daddy’s girl,’ snapped Deborah. ‘Why d’you think he’s got me back here? Do you
really
imagine he gives a monkey’s cuss about Matt’s baby?’

Lucy glared stonily at the road. When she next spoke, it was in the sort of singsong voice people use when they’re reading fairy stories to their toddlers.

‘I’m sure you find it hard to imagine anyone having unselfish feelings, Deborah. But actually, Dad does. He cares about Grace. You, on the other hand, care only about Deborah Harrison, because you are dazzlingly self-obsessed.’

‘I’m here, aren’t I?’

‘You had to be dragged back, kicking and screaming.’

‘Well, what about you? You’re her aunt. I don’t see
you
offering to look after her,’ persisted Deborah.

‘Don’t be bloody ridiculous. I’ve got a career. I’ve got a future. You haven’t.’

One of them, I didn’t see which, turned on the radio full blast. It was an organ recital, I think. The Porsche roared past, and Lucy swung smartly out behind him and fixed him in her sights, hunched and murderous like the Red Baron in a dogfight. No one roars past my Lucy and gets away with it.

They both shut up then and lapsed into silent seething; I was relieved, although I thought Lucy’s driving was going to kill us all. There’s something humiliating about being forced to listen to two women accusing one another of sleeping with you, as though the suggestion was a grave insult.

Ah well, I told myself, as I closed my eyes once more. This is not my problem. And I’m not in love with either of them. No way.

No way in this world.

Chapter Sixteen

Phoning her mother would be the best part. Fola must be the first to know.

They’d agreed to leave the news untouched until after the weekend. After all that had happened, it seemed too bright a joy, too much a thing made by enchantment; they were superstitiously afraid of breaking the spell. It was filmy, a web in the shimmering morning. If they reached out to touch it, the strands might shrivel yet again into nothing. So they hugged it to themselves, and for the first few days they told no one. Better not to tempt fate.

Leila took a week off work. There was so much to organise, and anyway work seemed irrelevant just now. All through Monday, she saved up the wonderful moment when she would let the news out of its box. She spent the day in the garden under a porcelain-blue sky, raking leaves and digging compost into the beds. Humming to herself, daydreaming, she planned how she would tell them. She practised the words she would use, pictured her mother’s generous face fragmenting into joy.

In the allotments across the railway line someone had lit a bonfire, and Leila held her face up to the white smoke as it hung in the stillness. At half past three she heard a rhythmic creaking from the garden next door. Jacinta’s swing. A minute later came the sound of talking-to-yourself singing, an aimlessly meandering chant.

Leila stopped in the act of pruning the roses. She stuck her head over the fence. ‘How was school today, my friend?’

Jacinta jumped off the swing in midair, plait soaring, and ran to push her way through a hole in the fence.

‘My dad caught my sister snoggling with her boyfriend on the sofa yesterday,’ she announced smugly. Her round cheeks were flushed. ‘Sent him packing. He put a big rocket up his bottom!’

‘Oh, dear,’ said Leila.

‘Then Daria locked herself in her room and cried and cried
.
She said her heart was broken. So my mum’s bought her a
gigantic
box of chocolates. Mum says they’re just as exciting as a boyfriend and a lot less trouble.’

‘Very true indeed.’ Leila nodded solemnly. ‘How’s poor old Daria now?’

‘She’s very spotty. Can I do your garden?’ asked Jacinta, looking critically around at Leila’s neatly dug beds. ‘I’m brilliant at gardening.’

‘That’s good,’ said Leila, handing her a trowel. ‘Because I haven’t a clue.’

After a while the dew began to fall, softly soaking them. The bell ringers began their weekly practice, the sound glittering in the gentle air; a train grunted past, rattling its commuters home. As dusk was gathering, Jacinta’s broken-hearted sister—a dimpled, red-lipped beauty, who always reminded Leila of Disney’s Snow White—appeared over the fence, looking perfectly cheerful and calling Jacinta in for tea.

With her chatty companion gone, Leila couldn’t hang on any longer. She left her muddy shoes on the back step, peeled off her gardening gloves and gave her hands a quick scrub. Then, with a sense of momentous occasion, she lifted the telephone. The smell of leaves and earth clung to her clothes as she dialled the familiar number.

She stood in the hall, listening to the ringing tone; she could picture her parents’ tomato-red telephone hanging on the kitchen wall by the cork message board. They’d had the same board since Leila was a schoolgirl. Nowadays it hung overloaded, crammed with the wild primary colours of grandchildren’s art.

She smiled as she waited, lips moving as she rehearsed her lines. Mum was going to go crazy. When she heard Fola’s husky voice, she almost lost her own.

‘Hi, Mum? It’s me.’

A brief pause. Then, ‘Leila!’

‘Hi. How are you?’

‘Fine, we’re both fine. Except your dad’s got a nasty twinge in his hip today.’

‘Is he taking the glucosamine I gave him?’

‘Yes, because I remind him every morning.’

‘Are you ready for the trip to Nigeria?’

‘Well, I’ve found our passports, which is a start. Is everything all right?’ Fola sounded suspicious now, guarded, clearly wondering what this call was for. Leila knew her mother’s morbid dread of unexpected calls. She feared bad news, had done for years, since the death of her brother.

‘Everything is great, Mum.
More
than great.’

‘Your big brother’s here for supper, with the kids. D’you want to talk to him?’

‘Maybe later.’ Leila paused for one last, delicious moment. ‘Hey, Mum. We’re adopting a baby.’

‘. . . ?!’ It was a disbelieving yelp.

‘We’re adopting a baby.’

Fola squealed, a long ‘
Eeee!
’ of delight, and Leila held the receiver a foot away from her ear, eyes squeezed shut, laughing silently. She could hear her mother yelling to the others, to her father and brother and anyone else who would listen:
They’re getting a baby! A baby!
Sounds of general celebration floated down the line.

Isaiah must have grabbed the receiver: she heard her eldest brother’s voice, precise and measured. ‘Look out, Leila!’ He had two already, and another on the way. ‘You aren’t going to get any sleep for the next twenty years!’

Then Fola again, breathless. ‘When?’

‘We don’t know yet. There’s a few legal things first—but quite soon, we hope.’

‘Girl or boy?’

‘A girl.’

‘Has she got a name?’

‘We haven’t been told what name the parents have given her. We thought we’d like to call her Fola, Mum.’

Fola promptly started to cry. Leila could hear her gulps, and then her father’s gravelly pleasure: ‘Hey, Leila! You can tell poor old David to say goodbye to the easy life.’

Leila was shivering a little now, with the wonder. ‘I’ll tell him that. Sorry about your hip, Dad.’