River Deep (40 page)

‘Aidan, my God, you look so … well!’ She put her arm around Becca’s shoulder and brought her forward a couple of steps.

‘Here’s Becca. Becca, meet your dad.’

Becca and Aidan looked at each other, their mouths set in exactly the same line, each trying to smile and each frozen with nerves.

‘You’re tall,’ Aidan said finally. ‘Like me and my girls, my other girls, that is. They’re both tall, but luckily, like you they’ve got their mother’s figure.’

He grinned and Becca smiled tentatively back. Sarah saw her lip wobbling slightly and wished to God that she could read her mind, find out how she was coping.

Aidan picked up Becca’s hand. ‘And you’ve the family curls. I hope you don’t hate them as much as I did. If you’re anything like Gracie and Faith, you will. You’ve got your mother’s eyes, though, and her mouth.’ Aidan smiled at her and paused. ‘Becca … I know that I only found out about you a few days ago, and I know that it’s strange … We’ve got a lot of getting to know each other to do – but I think we’ll do just fine, don’t you?’

Becca nodded uncertainly and glanced at her mother, then back at her father.

‘I thought that when I saw you I’d want to hug you or something, but I, um … well, I feel a bit weird about it, so I won’t at the moment if you don’t mind?’

Aidan laughed and put his arm around her shoulder. ‘I don’t mind. Let’s find a place to eat, shall we, and then work out how we’re going to spend the next few days. Is that all right, Sarah?’

Sarah nodded. ‘Sure, the car’s outside. I thought we could eat at your hotel, maybe. You must be tired …’

Aidan shook his head and looked at Becca. ‘I’m fine. Come on, kiddo, let’s go.’

Maggie was quietly trailing behind them, wondering if they’d all fit in Sarah’s mini, when Aidan finally spotted her.

‘Maggie! Maggie Johnson, is that really you?’

Maggie stopped and glanced down at herself. ‘Um, yes? Hi, Aidan,’ she said, a little nonplussed by his reaction.

‘Maggie Johnson, you look incredible. Who’d have thought it?’

Maggie laughed. ‘Thanks, I think … And, um, so do you look …’

‘Fat and bald, a regular sex god – yeah, I know,’ Aidan said, and laughed the kind of laugh that set them all off until eventually people started to look at them and raise their eyebrows.

Maggie noticed that it was already dark and that the air held the slight edge of the damp chill as she headed back to The Fleur just after eight that evening. It had been a strange day, to say the least, but she thought probably a good one. Or at least the beginning of something good for Becca, and maybe even for Sarah with a fair wind and some good luck.

Of course it had been awkward at first, the four of them crammed into Sarah’s tiny and at the best of times rickety mini. Once the nervous laughter had subsided, Sarah had asked Aidan all sorts of polite questions about his home, his family and his job, and he in turn had asked after her family and congratulated her on running her own business, which she had accepted with self-deprecation. Becca and Maggie had sat together on the back seat, knees touching and exchanging glances when Becca wasn’t staring studiously out of the window.

Maggie wondered if Becca was somehow disappointed with the reunion, if she had expected something more dramatic or even romantic, in the traditional sense of the word. She wondered if Becca had thought there could be no long silences between a reunited father and daughter, or if she had allowed for the fact that, after all, the two of them were strangers with a lot of ground to make up. It was hard for Maggie to really understand what it meant, or to appreciate how difficult a journey it would be. She reached for Becca’s hand and held it, relieved and touched when Becca did not take it away.

‘So, Becca,’ Aidan said over the starter at lunch. ‘What do you want to do while I’m here? We’ve got a week this visit. We could catch a film? Or maybe I could take you bowling. Gracie loves bowling, though Lord knows she’s so little she practically shoots off down the alley after the ball! What do you like doing?’

Becca looked at him across the table and then at her mum. She opened her mouth, but nothing seemed to be forthcoming.

‘She likes talking on the phone a lot,’ Sarah said with a small smile. ‘And shopping. Yep, talking and shopping, that’s her main hobbies.’

Becca’s eyes widened in horror.

‘Mum!’ She turned to Aidan. ‘She makes me sound like I’m a total airhead. But I’m not, I like reading too. And I like writing stories and stuff, sometimes, although they’re not … very good or anything.’

Becca faltered to a halt, and Maggie racked her brain for any one of the hundreds of things that should have been obvious to cover the silence.

‘I like poetry,’ Aidan said. ‘Do you write poems? Love poems to your boyfriend?’

Becca squirmed. ‘No,’ she said flatly. ‘And anyway, I’m too young to even have … a … boyfriend?’ she finished uncertainly, her cheeks flushing as she finished the longest speech she had made in front of her father.

Aidan chuckled and leaned a little closer to her. ‘Gracie would love a boyfriend, but she’s only eight. I wish she were as sensible as you! You know there are two little girls in Boston over the moon with excitement about having a long-lost big sister. They can’t wait to meet you, and neither can my wife Fran.’ He paused. ‘So is there anything you want to do while I’m here?’ he asked.

Becca stared at her plate, probably thinking, Maggie guessed, that it shouldn’t be up to her to decide. ‘Don’t know,’ she shrugged. ‘You decide.’

Aidan glanced at Sarah, who smiled at him. ‘What about the London Eye? My guide says it’s really something.’

Becca looked up and nodded. ‘Yeah, all right,’ she said.

‘Maybe Madame Tussauds?’ Aidan began.

Becca rolled her eyes. ‘No way! I’m not queuing for hours with all the stupid tourists!’

Aidan smiled and Becca flushed. ‘Where else, then?’ he asked. ‘Any ideas?’

Becca glanced around nervously. ‘I wouldn’t mind going to the Tate Modern.’

‘Where?’ Sarah could not hide her shock. ‘You’re not interested in art, are you?’

Becca scowled at her. ‘I might be. This boy at school said it was cool …’ She trailed off and all three adults said ‘Oh, I see,’ to themselves simultaneously.

‘The Tate it is, then,’ Aidan said.

‘Thanks … um, Aidan,’ Becca said. ‘I’m glad you came.’

That hadn’t been the end of the awkward pauses or the strained silences, but it had seemed to mark their gradual decline and the beginning of a new friendship.

They said goodbye to Aidan at the hotel. He arranged to take Becca out for breakfast the next morning.

As soon as they’d headed back to the salon, Becca had started talking and still hadn’t stopped when Marcus dropped off Sam an hour after they got back. He’d stood and listened as Becca gave him a speed-speak, potted version of her day in a sixty-second package.

‘Cool, Becs,’ he said with a smile when she’d finally paused for breath. ‘I’m really pleased it went so well for you, darling.’ He gave her a bear hug, lifting her clear off the floor. Sarah waited for him to tuck Sam into bed and then made them all a cup of tea.

‘Sounds like you did the right thing,’ Marcus said to Sarah when Becca had disappeared into her bedroom to phone all her friends.

Sarah nodded. ‘Yeah, I think it was the right thing, not just for Becca but for all of us. I think we can all move on from this now. I’m just sorry I didn’t have the guts to do it years ago.’

Marcus shrugged and, picking up his jacket, leaned in to kiss her on the cheek. ‘So am I,’ he said just before he left.

‘He so loves you
still
, the mentalist,’ Maggie told Sarah when Marcus had gone.

‘He does not! That was years ago,’ Sarah said with a laugh. ‘He has girls chase him down the high street throwing their knickers at him. He’s a single fireman for God’s sake, he has the sex life most men only dream about. He’s certainly not pining after me when he could have any passing twenty-year-old!’

‘Sarah, he asked you to marry him. You could have married him! Anyway, it’s obvious he still feels something for you – it’s written all over his face.’ Maggie crossed her arms. ‘I think he still loves you, and we know he loves your daughter like she was his, and he loves his son more than anyone in the world except maybe you. You were insane for not giving him a chance when he asked you. Maybe now you’re so keen on doing the right thing, it’d be a good time to try again with him. After all, he hasn’t got anyone serious in his life, has he? He’s fair game.’

Sarah shook her head and looked at Maggie as if she were insane.

‘You’re insane! Even if I was …
hypothetically
… interested in him he wouldn’t be now. He’s playing the field, enjoying himself. I mean, even if I did – in theory – think I might care about him, there’s no point in thinking about it. You should know you can’t go back in life, Maggie – you have to keep going forward even when it hurts you. Anyway, this is me we’re talking about. I don’t do relationships.’

Maggie shook her head and picked up her bag.

‘No, the you who thought some eighteen-year-old kid with spots was the only man you could ever love,
that
you didn’t do relationships. The thirty-odd-year-old you with the two kids, the successful business and a new start could do relationships if only she’d give it a go. It might go wrong! So what? You have to give these things a try, Sarah, or you’ll regret it!’

Maggie stood up and put her hand on her hips, enjoying having the moral high-ground for the first time in ages. Sarah looked her up and down, clearly unimpressed with her stand.

‘I tell you what,’ Sarah said with a small smile. ‘I’ll agree to go out with Marcus the next time I see him if you ask out that Pete bloke. We can double-date.’

Maggie fell off the moral high-ground and sat back down with a plonk.

‘I can’t ask him out. His fiancée is back. She came back and I went round there to see him and talk to him and stuff and they were … in bed.’

Sarah sighed and reached over to pat Maggie’s knee.

‘I’m sorry mate, but you’re not that upset, are you? It was just lust, wasn’t it?’

Maggie looked at her hands.

‘Yeah, it was just lust. And the way he laughed and the funny feeling I got when he smiled at me and the fact that when I was with him I felt like I was on a first date with someone I’d known all my life. That sort of thing.’

Sarah looked at her. ‘Mmmm,’ she said.

‘Mmmm?’ Maggie replied. ‘What does Mmmm mean?’

‘It means this isn’t another double-bluff to get Christian back, is it?’

Maggie looked abashed. ‘No it is not!’

She wondered if now was a good time to tell her about Carmen, but decided that best friends didn’t need to know everything about each other. Not if there was a chance of her ever having the moral high-ground again. ‘No it is not,’ she repeated. ‘I know it can’t happen, but I think that … well, I think that it’ll take me a long time to stop thinking about that kiss, that’s what I think.’

Maggie stood up again. ‘I’ve got to get back to The Fleur, but listen, you never did give it a try with Marcus in the first place. You met him, you had his son and then when you found out he wanted both of you, you ran a mile. You never went anywhere. This is a new beginning for Becca. If there’s still a chance, let it be a new beginning for you too.’ Maggie gave Sarah a hug. ‘Just promise me that if Marcus asks you out again, you won’t turn him down, OK?’

Sarah shrugged exactly like Becca would.

‘
Promise?
’ Maggie pressed her.

‘OK, OK!’ Sarah rolled her eyes and, raising her right hand, recited, ‘I promise if Marcus asks me out again at anytime in the near future I won’t turn him down.’ She dropped her hand. ‘But he won’t. No way. And you promise me that if you get the chance to tell Pete how you feel, fiancée or no fiancée, you will, OK?’

Maggie kissed her friend quickly on the cheek and then raced down the stairs two at a time and on to the street.

‘OK!?’ Sarah shouted after her.

‘OK!’ Maggie called back, pulling the shop door closed. ‘But I won’t get a chance, so it doesn’t matter,’ she mumbled to herself, and then smiled. Marcus was still standing by his car looking up at the flat. Maybe this was her chance to get Sarah going again.

‘Trust me,’ Maggie said lightly, ‘stalking’s not all it’s cracked up to be – I know.’

Marcus laughed and looked at his feet.

‘I was just thinking, that’s all,’ he said. ‘About stuff. I don’t know, Maggie, I still feel that …’ Marcus closed his mouth as if stopping a secret from escaping. ‘Never mind, I’ll get off now. I’m on shift in half an hour.’

As he opened the car door, Maggie put her hand on his arm, deciding that she could try just one more meddle before she gave it up for good.

‘You know what I think,’ she said, glancing up at the flat window. ‘I think that if you were, say … going to ask Sarah out again, for example, you know, if you were … then I
think
that she’d probably say yes this time. If you were going to, that is. Oh, and we never had this conversation, OK?’

Marcus looked at Maggie and then back up at the flat. Both of them felt the same little thrill of fear.

‘Really?’ he said.

‘Really,’ Maggie said, giving him a good luck punch on the arm. She’d left him there standing by his car, plucking up courage. If he did go back up there it certainly would take a lot of courage. She just hoped Sarah didn’t back out of her end of the deal.

Maggie stopped short outside the pub, feeling as if she had just been slapped hard in the face by the future. The Fleur, her home and one of her few constants for so many years, had been altered irrevocably in the matter of a few hours. Scaffolding masked the frontage on both corners, and tarpaulin covered that in green swathes of netting. Jim had managed to get the new name sign reading ‘Business As Usual’ up. She was pleased to see he’d added his own arrow pointing to the small arched side entrance that hadn’t been used for God knows how long. He’d managed to open the rusty wrought-iron gate and, Maggie noted, even find a bulb of the faux Victorian lamp that lit the narrow archway. Maggie walked through it in to the tiny courtyard, which had just enough space for one dilapidated picnic table. Only this morning the courtyard had been full of old crates and empty bottles that somehow never got returned, mostly because the brands of beer they once held were long obsolete. Now there was a planted tub of late geraniums in one corner, two outdoor candles glowing softly in the dark and a couple kissing noisily, sprawled across the damp and mouldy table.