All That Mullarkey (24 page)

Justin fidgeted in his chair. ‘I don’t want to be a stranger. I want to be involved. Not just financially, either, I want to be … her father.’ He hesitated. ‘Is that on?’

The buzz grew louder and she clutched the sofa arm. ‘Of
 
course.’

He leaned forwards. ‘It’ll give you more freedom. I can help.’ His eyes lit up. ‘It was like being touched with a cattle prod when I met her yesterday. I connected with her instantly. I just fell in love. Do you feel like that about her?’

Cleo almost nodded herself dizzy. ‘Of course!’

He moved to sit beside her on the sofa. The buzz built, she was super-aware of every movement of his body, the lovely warm man-smell of him. He touched her shoulder. ‘We could be together with her, sometimes, so she gets both parents at once?’

The buzz rose to a slight, all-over vibration and she couldn’t stop beaming. ‘Brilliant!’

Justin smiled, a wide, relieved grin, and visibly relaxed against the cushions. ‘That’s great.’ He sighed. ‘Obviously, there’ll never be a
relationship
between you and me. That muddy water has flowed under the bridge, hasn’t it? I don’t suppose either of us would ever trust the other and we shouldn’t begin a relationship in the middle just because there’s a child. But if we can just be parents –’

The buzz died.

‘Heavy stuff.’ Drew shook his head in wonder.

Martin sagged against the bar. ‘And you’re sure the kid’s yours?’

Justin nodded, clutching his drink – grateful to be back with English beer. ‘I only had to look at her.’

‘I’d still take a test.’ Drew was ever belligerent and suspicious. ‘This Cleo woman’s not famed for being straight with you.’

Martin grimaced. ‘Yeah, she could be looking for money.’

Justin shrugged. ‘She hasn’t asked.’

‘Or someone to look after the kid.’

‘She hasn’t asked.’

Martin and Drew considered, eyes performing their habitual study of the talent in the room. Drew came up with the next minus. ‘Somewhere to live?’

‘She’s got somewhere.’

Martin tried his best, most rehearsed smile at two girls in an alcove seat. ‘Maybe she wants you to marry her.’

Justin snapped, ‘She’s already married! Or, at least, not divorced. Anyway, we agree there’s nothing like that. It didn’t work out before, and it won’t now.’ A sudden, vivid memory hit him – of the sex and fun before Cleo had suddenly remembered the little matter of her marriage. That had been such a knee in the nuts; it mustn’t happen again.

He straightened. ‘You just going to smirk at those girls all night, Martin? Or shall we try for some action?’

It wasn’t until much later – when they’d seen the girls to their own vehicle after rounds of drinks and a Chinese meal, when he’d kissed all the lipstick off a woman called Anita and taken her phone number and they’d all piled into Drew’s car – that Martin asked, ‘So what’s she like, your kid?’

Justin rubbed some feeling back into his legs where Anita had been sitting on his lap. ‘Cute. Fair hair with a row of curls at the back. Light-brown eyes, like mine. She was wearing a denim dress as big as a parachute and a hat like a knitted biscuit tin.’

‘Right,’ Drew said politely.

Martin grinned from the driver’s seat. ‘And what about the mother? How’s she looking?’

‘Oh …’ Justin expelled a long breath and thought, with a sudden lift in his groin, of Cleo’s stroke-me jumper and her peachy little behind rolling under the fabric of her trousers. ‘Pretty good.’

Chapter Twenty-Seven

‘This is going to be weird.’ Cleo lifted Shona’s buggy from the boot of the car where they’d parked behind the funfair.

Justin had been back in her life for three months now – or rather in Shona’s life. Shona was the focus of his attention whenever Cleo saw him. But it had been Justin’s idea to go on a ‘family outing’ to Hunstanton. ‘It’ll be a nice day. We can show Shona the sea, take her paddling, give her a taste of the great British seaside.’ He joggled Shona in his arms and she turned her face into the breeze, screwing up her nose.

It would have been smart to wear a swimming costume beneath her clothes but Cleo hadn’t thought of it. So she was left struggling uncomfortably behind a towel. And Justin – who had worn his trunks under his jeans, of course – held Shona’s hand whilst Shona touched seashells with her toes.

‘Damn!’ Cleo tutted as she fumbled her knickers onto the sand.

Justin grinned. ‘You drop your knickers too easily.’

Almost losing her towel as she hoiked her costume up to her waist. ‘Actually, it’s been over two years …’ She stopped. Bugger, damn, blast, if only she could bite that back! The silence seemed to hang her last words in the air in big black letters.

Arms shoved through straps under T-shirt, T-shirt snatched over her head, she aimed for composure and turned to her daughter. ‘Let’s paddle.’

She took Shona’s other hand and they strolled down to where the wavelets were frilly. Mr and Mrs Average and their child, enjoying a day on the sand.

As the first cold water reached Shona’s rounded feet she yipped and went sharply into reverse, then changed her mind and followed the wave out again. Cleo smiled as Shona laughed at the waves, stiffening as each ran further up her legs. ‘Col’!’

‘Cold,’ Cleo agreed. ‘But nice?’ Shona’s expression suggested it wasn’t
that
nice and the tugging to free her hands declared that she’d ventured deep enough. Cleo stayed with her while Justin waded in to porpoise through the sparkling waves, resurfacing further and further out.

The breeze whisked Cleo’s hair in front of her eyes as, not for the first time, she adjusted herself to a new responsibility. It was her job to keep Shona safe. The sea on the east coast could be treacherous and undercurrents had been known to snaffle children from right beneath parents’ noses.

Still. It was difficult to conceive of an undertow that would drag Shona under in these six inches of salty froth. She risked a glance in Justin’s direction, allowing herself to watch the water run off his back as he waited for a wave. To notice – she could hardly help noticing – the way his swimming shorts clung now they were wet and …

She whipped around at the splash beside her as Shona tripped and executed a fine belly flop. ‘Oh, whoops, up you jump!’ Guiltily, Cleo hauled Shona to her feet. ‘Did that taste nasty? What a sad face. Never mind, let’s find your bucket and spade.’

Spurts of sand were soon flying though the air to shower Cleo’s hair and eyes, as Shona added a sandy layer to a liberal coating of factor 25. They were both laughing at her fat, sandy legs when Justin returned.

How could Cleo not be aware of him drying his back, his arms, head, leaving his hair in spikes. He dropped down beside her and raised his eyebrows. ‘Two years?’

Very interesting, watching Shona. Cleo couldn’t unglue her eyes. ‘Mmm?’ she answered vaguely. Then, ‘Shona, look at these shells. Black, look, see?’

‘B’ack,’ Shona nodded.

‘Really, two years?’

Picking up a little blue plastic mould, Cleo packed it with damp sand and tipped it over to make the shape of a sea horse. ‘Sea horse, Shona!’ Shona reached out a small, plump hand and tried to pick the sea horse up.

‘’Gain!’ she demanded, when it was reduced to a pat of sand between her fingers.

Cleo made another. Another and another and another for Shona to destroy with a quick grab and a huge chuckle. Another so that Justin would keep answering Shona’s chuckles with his own, another so that he’d lose the thread of his thoughts.

If only.

‘You’re kidding about the two years, right?’ he persisted, when Shona had become fed up with sea horses and was engrossed in the sensation of pushing her toes through dry sand.

Cleo began filling the castle-shaped bucket so as not to have to look at him. ‘Celibacy’s very “in”.’

He made a disbelieving noise.

She turned the bucket upside down and smacked it with the pink spade. Shona immediately grabbed the spade and began beating the bucket’s bottom with grim concentration. ‘Ban-ban-ban-ban-
bang
!’

He was still waiting, Cleo could tell without looking. Oh, what did it matter? What harm could she possibly do her image, maimed and bandaged already in his eyes? She lifted the bucket from a perfect sandcastle and watched as Shona pushed it slowly over with her feet. ‘First I was pregnant and newly separated – not pulling points.’ She laughed to prove she wasn’t whingeing. ‘Then I was a single mum, too busy, babysitters too few and far between. I’ll get around to it, when the time’s right.’

Another sandcastle, another Shona bulldozing job. The
sun went in and Cleo slipped Shona back into her dress. Even when the sun was shining, the breeze was still enough to raise goosebumps and Cleo was glad to wriggle into her own T-shirt and jeans, conscious of the gritty layer on her skin.

‘Gink!’ demanded Shona, losing interest in sea, beach and candy-pink bucket.

‘Here’s your cup – let’s get you back in your buggy while I clean you up.’ Cleo brushed sand from Shona’s feet while Justin repacked a backpack of mountaineer’s proportions – proving that, thankfully, he wasn’t a man who would hover helplessly.

They found a pub garden with a lawn and seats in the shape of wooden animals and ate seaside fish and chips for lunch, with mugs of tea and thick slices of buttered bread.

‘Good to give this a go,’ said Justin. ‘Spending a day together for Shona’s sake.’

Licking salty fingers, Cleo shrugged. ‘I’m glad you can give up the time.’

He grimaced. ‘It’s nice to get away from the flat, to be honest. My old tenants, the Blumfields, seem to be playing juvenile revenge games because I hoofed them out when I got back to England. You know the kind of thing – insurance men arriving for mythical appointments, the police screeching up because they’d had a report of a woman screaming in my flat, that kind of prank stuff.’

‘Was there one?’

‘What? A woman?’ He grinned. ‘I’m seeing someone called Anita so she’s been there. But not screaming. Now they’ve started putting disgusting things through the letter box, dog-do and a dead rabbit’s head.’

‘Sounds as if it’s getting beyond a joke.’ Trying not to think about a woman called Anita in his flat, Cleo snapped off the delicious battery tail of her fish and ate it with her fingers.

Justin frowned. ‘I’m hoping they’ll get tired of all these pranks very soon. But I think the scumbags have moved into another flat nearby, because lately I’ve seen them about a lot. The bloke always shouts, “Fucking getchoo!” at me, so I’m pretty sure that he hasn’t forgiven me for wanting my flat back.’

After, they pushed Shona’s buggy past the bandstand and up the hill towards Old Hunstanton. Cars whizzed past on one side and gardens blazing with marigolds gazed out to sea on the other.

Justin took over pushing the buggy up the hill. ‘Why did you and your husband split up?’

She felt a big, silent sigh heave her chest. ‘He slept with someone else.’ All this soul-baring was supposed to be behind her.

He snorted. ‘So did you.’

She made herself face his mocking eyes and the eyebrows raised over them. ‘So it wasn’t much of a marriage any more, was it? He had a ding-dong with Lillian, a sex bomb he worked with and professed to dislike, then had to avoid sex with me because he thought he’d caught something nasty. Just when he thought he was safe with a clean bill of health, he got careless. I overheard him talking. All the ugly truths.

‘Then his mother died in an accident and Gav had to cope with the grieving of his dad and pregnant sister, and a wife who wouldn’t stay.’

They approached the top of the hill. After a moment Justin said, ‘Poor bastard.’

‘That’s how I felt. But when I admitted I’d also slept with someone and was almost sure I was pregnant, that’s when he told me he’d known for years he was infertile.’

She felt Justin turn sharply. ‘And you really didn’t know?’

She shook her head. ‘I thought we’d just decided against kids. He was always vehemently anti-children but it was just a cover.’ She paused to get her breath, gazing out at a white-tipped sea where a dozen tiny sailing dinghies rounded a buoy, her hair blowing around her head. ‘End of marriage. I moved out. Despite Shona, he didn’t want me to go.’ She paused, staring out at the wind-ruffled waves. ‘He’s been living near his dad for a while but now he’s thinking about coming back.’

‘To live with you and Shona?’ Apprehension threaded his voice.

Oh. Cleo felt fresh realisation and obligation settle around her. She’d assumed there was no one to be affected by her decisions, once she and Gav split. But there was. There was. If she wanted anyone to come and live with her, it could affect Justin’s relationship with Shona.

She turned away from the eye-aching brightness of the sea’s glitter.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Cleo leaned back and let the wine float her mind. It was quite a novelty, these days, the chill of the wine glass in her hand and Liza perched on the seat of the wine bar beside her. The decor of antiqued gold and grass green made Cleo think of warm sunny evenings, relaxing and secure.