The Accidental Family (28 page)

“Oh no, you don’t,” Cal warned her. “You don’t get to stay in bed moping. You need to be up and about and telling me how to oust Eve permanently without incurring a criminal record, while I
commit artery suicide with a double bacon cheeseburger. You owe me, Sophie. I’ve lost hours of my life listening to you twittering on about Louis, debating if he is or is not the love of your life, blah, blah, blah, and I’ve never complained.”

“Er, excuse me—” Sophie began to protest.

“Barely ever complained. And now it’s your turn.”

“Okay, fine, you’re right,” Sophie conceded. “You are a good friend to me and I should be a better one to you even if I am in the middle of my own personal crisis. I’ll get up and get dressed and come and meet you for lunch.”

“Great, come and pick me up at my office at one,” Cal instructed her.

“Well, I would, but I don’t really know if I want to deal with all the fuss of going back to the office …” But Cal had hung up.

After a shower Sophie spent much longer than she’d anticipated in deciding what to wear for her first visit back to the offices of McCarthy Hughes, which had once been such a huge part of her life. She had to get her look exactly right and she had to do that with the haphazard collection of clothes she had thrown into her suitcase. Somehow she had to find a look that said she was happy to have given up her hard-earned and well-paid career for a man she barely knew, but that, given the need, she could step back into it at a moment’s notice because her finger was still firmly on the corporate-event-planning pulse. Sophie found herself thinking of Jake Flynn’s fiancée Stephanie Corollo as she dressed, in the end picking a smart cream shirt to top off her pencil skirt, and finishing with a neat vest that nipped just under her breasts. It took her an age to dry her hair with her mother’s weak and dangerous-looking hair dryer, the very same one Iris had been using to blowdry various animals since the seventies. When she came to putting her makeup on, she found that half of it was missing, probably
having found its way into Bella and Izzy’s play makeup set. Eventually though, Sophie was able to stand in front of the mirror and give herself a once-over. She looked good. She looked like a woman in control, even if she wasn’t entirely sure that some of the long blond hairs that had strayed onto her shoulders didn’t belong to an afghan hound called Marilyn.

Just as she was leaving, her phone rang. Sophie looked at the name that flashed onto the screen as she picked up her jacket and bag, expecting it to be Cal. But it was Louis’s name that came up on the screen. He was calling her at last. He was missing her at last, and most important, he was making the first move.

“Hello,” she said tentatively, an edge of uncertainty in her voice.

“Is this Aunty Sophie?” Bella’s voice boomed out. Whenever she was on the phone, she always had a tendency to talk twice as loudly as normal, which Sophie put down to the several months she’d lived with her grandmother.

“Bella? Yes, it’s me,” Sophie said, a rush of warmth sweeping through her. “Why aren’t you at school, are you feeling poorly?”

“I am at school,” Bella bellowed. “Me and Izzy borrowed Daddy’s phone out of his jacket pocket this morning and took it to school so we could talk to you. We put it in Izzy’s book bag because nursery children hardly ever get searched.”

“I’m here too!” Sophie winced as Izzy’s high-pitched shriek came through.

“Shush or else we will be discovered!” Bella urged her sister, who collapsed into a fit of giggles, giving Sophie a mental image of Bella swooping the phone out of her sister’s reach as Izzy tried to grab it.

“Bella? You’ve taken Daddy’s phone without him knowing and smuggled it into school?” Sophie asked her anxiously.

“Yes,” Bella said. “We wanted to talk to you and Daddy said
not to phone you until you phoned us, because you needed to think. We were going to call you on the phone box outside school because we know your number, but we needed money or a credit card so I borrowed Daddy’s phone instead.”

“You were going to leave the school grounds on your own to try and phone me?” Sophie asked, trying to quell the alarm that heightened her tone. “Wouldn’t your teachers have noticed?”

“Not at pickup time, it’s easy to sneak past the teachers with all those people in the playground,” Bella said proudly, which didn’t exactly reassure Sophie, but right now she knew the last thing Bella needed to hear from her was a scolding, not if she was prepared to go to those lengths to talk to her.

“And where are you now?”

“We are in the playground, behind the scooter rack—it’s lunchtime,” Bella told her a touch impatiently.

“And are you okay?” Sophie asked her.

“We’re not bad,” Bella said. “Daddy seems quite cross most of the time. And that Wendy woman keeps coming around. They keep talking without us being able to hear them, but I know they are talking about Seth. Who is Seth?”

“He’s Wendy’s son,” Sophie said uneasily, hating the position that Louis was unwittingly putting her in, forcing her to tell half-truths to the children.

“Well, I don’t know why Daddy’s so worried about him. Anyway, I miss you a lot.”

“And me, and me too!” Sophie heard Izzy in the background.

“I miss both of you too,” Sophie reassured them. “I really do. But you know Daddy’s going to be worried when he finds out his phone is missing. He needs it for work.”

“Except he’s not working this week,” Bella told her. “He’s stopped all of his work to help that Wendy woman find that Seth person.”

“Has he?” Sophie asked, taken aback. She hadn’t quite expected Louis to alter his life so radically the moment she left the scene. What did it mean that he’d turned down or called off work right at the moment when his business was gaining a reputation? Did it mean he was willing to give up, for his son, for Wendy, everything he’d been building over the last few months?

“When are you coming back, Aunty Sophie?” It was Izzy who spoke this time, having successfully wrested the phone from her sister.

“Um, well …soon I expect.” Sophie glanced at her watch. She was going to be late for Cal.

“Tomorrow?” Izzy asked. “Tomorrow is soon.”

“It might not be exactly tomorrow,” Sophie told her, feeling her chest tighten. “But it will be soon.”

“Do you promise?” Izzy asked her solemnly.

“I do promise that I will see you soon,” Sophie said, hating to be vague, but knowing that with Izzy at least, an open promise would be sufficient.

“Hey …” Izzy yelped a protest as Bella came back on the phone.

“We have to go, there are teachers coming,” Bella hissed.

“Oh …right, but, Bella, listen—give your phone back to Daddy as soon as you see him, okay? I want to talk to him tonight. And promise me that you will not ever go off the school grounds unless it’s with a relative or someone else you know, okay?”

“Okay,” Bella hissed. “Got to terminate connection. Roger, over and out.”

Once the connection was severed, Sophie thought for a moment, feeling uneasy about the lengths Bella had gone to to talk to her. Nothing really bad had happened, but still, if the seven-year-old was prepared to consider sneaking out of school to make a call to Sophie, then what else might she do if she felt under
pressure? Sophie felt angry with Louis, who surely must know she would always have time to talk to the girls. He was being petulant, punishing her for leaving, and it was the children who were suffering. Sophie would have called him right then if he’d had his phone and told him exactly what she thought of him banning the girls from speaking to her, and of canceling his work to follow Wendy. But she didn’t, and all in all that was probably a good thing.

Sophie looked up at the skyscraper where McCarthy Hughes was located and felt her heartbeat quicken. There had been something about her journey over here, the rumble of the Tube train as it carried her into the heart of the city, the smell of the damp autumn air as she emerged a short walk from her former offices, that had sent adrenaline surging through her body, reminding her of the thrill she used to get from her job.

Not so long ago, the building she stood in front of had been her entire universe and she had been at the hub of it. And now she was back.

“Sophie!” Nick Parkin spotted Sophie first when she walked into the open-plan office. “What are you doing back?” He greeted Sophie with a hug, whispering into her ear, “Please tell me that your romantic dream didn’t work out and that you’ve come to rescue us from the Evil Queen and bring spring back to Narnia again. It hasn’t been the same since you left.”

“I’m sorry, Nick, but coming back here is the last thing on my mind,” Sophie lied, wondering uncomfortably if the feeling she was experiencing in her gut was the feeling of being at home. She stopped by Clara Hodgkin’s desk to say hi.

“Sophie, how are you?” Clara exclaimed. “What’s life like on the outside?”

“It’s great, thanks,” Sophie told her.

“Well, I don’t need to tell you how difficult things are here. No one’s got any money. No one’s getting new accounts. The only one who’s doing okay is your protégé, and Eve doesn’t like it one bit. I know you ran away to a better life, but I miss you, Soph. Any chance you might come back?”

“No,” Sophie told her. “I don’t think so, Clara. Look, the experts say that things won’t be that bad for long.”

“Are they experts on Eve getting a personality transplant?” Clara joked bleakly.

Sophie slowed as she approached the office that had once been hers and was now Cal’s. Leaning over his desk in a tight black dress that showed every single one of her ribs was Eve, examining something on Cal’s computer screen.

Sophie stood in the doorway and looked around at what had been her domain for so long. It was the place where she had tried so hard to be secretly in love with Jake Flynn and where she had first heard the news that Carrie had died and left two small children in need of a guardian. Cal had changed it completely, as Sophie knew he would. It had been painted a fresh white, he had moved in a sofa, there was a vase of ostentatious flowers, there were new blinds, and artwork was hanging on the wall.

“A-hem,” Sophie coughed to make her presence known, even though she was fairly sure that both Eve and Cal knew she was standing there.

“Sophie Mills!” Eve said slowly, a second or two before she looked up from the screen at Sophie. She treated Sophie to a thin red-lipped smile. “You look like you’re enjoying country life. At least the food.”

“And you look more and more like a Disney villain every time I see you,” Sophie commented back sweetly. “Are you hoping to get a film role this year?”

“Well, you’re the expert—after all, your entire life is make-believe.
” Eve raised an eyebrow. “Tell me, how is life with your off-the-shelf family? Everything you hoped it would be?”

“And more,” Sophie said, shooting a look at Cal that warned him he better not have told Eve anything about her current issues.

“Yes, well, I suppose a twenty-year-old stepson probably is more than any new bride would ask for.” Eve smirked as she shook her head.

“And how are you?” Sophie asked her. “Still totally and utterly alone?”

“Only on the nights I want to be.” Eve walked over to Sophie and held out a hand. “It’s good to see you, Sophie. We miss you around here. Total pain in the arse you might have been, but you were quite good at your job.”

“I was good at your job too,” Sophie reminded her. “Which reminds me, how’s Gillian dealing with stepping down?” Sophie was interested to find out how her former boss was getting on. The die-hard career woman had withdrawn from her executive position at McCarthy Hughes, deciding to make spending time with her children her top priority, just before Sophie had made her own decision to leave. Sophie wanted to hear that Gillian was happy, that she had made the right choice. Somehow it seemed terribly relevant just then.

“Gillian was a pain in the arse after you left,” Eve sighed. “Even though they brought her in only as a consultant, she was on my back every minute, as if I might not fill her matronly shoes every bit as well as you did! But then she got pregnant, a swan-song baby or something. Went on and on about leaving for good, taking time to enjoy her pregnancy for once, and I’ve hardly heard from her since. Obviously, I don’t need her help or advice …but to just wind up your whole life to gestate. Who does that?”

Sophie shrugged. “Mothers?” Gillian had left to be with her own children. To most people, those who weren’t raised by wolves
anyway, that made perfect sense. But Sophie had left her life behind for someone else’s children and a man she barely knew. Until recently it couldn’t have seemed simpler, but now suddenly Sophie was seeing it through someone else’s eyes and she found that she was doubting herself.

“Well, listen, I have to get on, top job to do and all that, but just so you know …” Eve paused in the doorway as she was about to leave. “Look, Sophie, we need all the good people we can get right now. And you were—are—one of the best. If you ever do need a job, then please come and ask me. You could have your old job back like a shot, anytime; I really mean that.”

“Isn’t my old job your current job?” Sophie asked Eve.

“Your old, old job. Anytime. I’d love to have you come work for me.”

“Um, isn’t her old job my new job?” Cal sounded alarmed.

“Well, like I said, we need good people.” Eve narrowed her eyes at Cal. “But actually, Sophie, I miss your input. If you thought you could come back, I’d have a word with the board. Create a post for you—something appropriate, flexible—something that could suit you.”

Sophie nodded, trying hard not to let the inner smugness she felt show on her face. Eve still needed her,
wanted
her. McCarthy Hughes did miss her after all, and just then, when she was unsure as to exactly how much she was wanted elsewhere, that was hard to resist.

“I’ll bear it in mind,” Sophie said as Eve slinked out of the office and across the floor like a black mamba in heels. She turned to Cal, who suddenly looked anxious.

“I want to have a word with you,” she said.

“You never said not to tell anyone,” Cal said a little later as they sat over a mixed meat grill with onion rings and relish.