The Accidental Family (36 page)

“Come on, my baby,” Sophie said, lifting Bella slowly up in her arms, a little unsteady under her weight. “I’ll carry you back up to bed and we’ll take care of those feet. You need to sleep, and in the morning I’ll drive you all home, okay?”

Before Bella could respond, Louis’s phone rang. Woman and child watched as he checked the name, hesitating for a fraction of a second before answering.

“Hi, you okay?” he asked. “Yep, yep, okay.”

He put down the phone and looked at Sophie. “I have to stay on in London a bit longer.”

“I knew it,” Bella sobbed. “You like that Seth and that Wendy woman better than us.”

“No, no, darling. I’ve just got to stay for one more day—”

“Stay forever!” Bella told him, weary with anger. “I don’t care. I hate you!”

“Just wait,” Sophie said to Louis. Carefully she walked over the broken glass and carried Bella to the bedroom, where Izzy was still blissfully asleep. She lay Bella gently down on the bed and went to the bathroom to search out antiseptic spray and Band-Aids.

“It’s not too bad,” she said as she gently examined Bella’s feet. “No glass, just a few little cuts. These Band-Aids can come off in the morning.”

“Want to keep them on,” Bella grumbled as Sophie tucked her back into bed.

“Okay then, keep them on,” Sophie said, smoothing the child’s hair back from her face so that she could plant a kiss on her seldom-seen forehead.

“Bella—you trust me, don’t you?”

Bella nodded.

“I promise you that Daddy isn’t going to leave you,” she told Bella. “He didn’t mean to keep the truth about Seth from you. He thought he was protecting you and Izzy until you were ready to find out about Seth. Perhaps he was wrong, but I know one thing. He loves you and your sister with all his heart. And the biggest regret—the thing that makes him saddest in all the world—is that he ever left you before. I know now that he would never ever leave you or Izzy or me again. I promise you.”

“Do you?” Bella asked, her lids swollen and heavy. “Do you promise?”

“I do, sweetheart.”

“And you won’t go anywhere, will you, because you said always, forever, whatever and that’s the rule, isn’t it? You can’t leave us now you’ve said that, can you?”

“No,” Sophie said. “And I never will, come what may.”

“Want to go to sleep,” Bella mumbled, her cheeks still wet with tears as she drifted off, with the sudden release only a child can have.

Sophie took a deep breath as she walked back down the stairs,
preparing what to say to Louis, how to help him deal with what had just happened and work out what to say to Bella. It meant that she’d have to wait at least another day before telling him she was pregnant, but as long as she could get things between him and Bella on an even keel again that didn’t matter. She stepped over the broken glass and pushed the living room door open and her heart sank.

Louis had made a liar out of both of them.

He’d left.

Eighteen

It was just after four on Sunday afternoon when they finally drove into St. Ives and Sophie decided they should head to Ye Olde Tea Shoppe before they did anything else. As taking up smoking again was definitely not an option and gin was off the table, even if she could stomach it, she decided that a cream tea for two all to herself was the
only
option.

She hadn’t seen the point in waiting in London for Louis to get in touch. For one thing, she’d tried his cell phone the moment she’d realized he’d gone and found it ringing behind a cushion on the sofa. And he had not called her since he’d left without saying good-bye.

It had still been dark when she packed up the car that morning, the chill in the air seeping through her coat and sweater. As she slammed the door of the car shut, she stood perfectly still for a second, watching the rising sun streak the dirty sky with gold over the chimney tops and trying to work out exactly what had happened last night.

Everything had been going so well, everything had been almost perfect, and then before she could tell him about the baby, Bella’s whole life, and even Sophie’s estimation of Louis, who she thought she knew so well, had shattered all around her, just like the glass smashed on her mother’s hall tiles. What she couldn’t understand was that Louis hadn’t even stayed to see that Bella had gone to sleep, to check that her feet weren’t too badly cut, to tell her where he was going and when he’d be back. He’d just left, without his phone, and Sophie had no idea why.

Suddenly afraid, she had sat down in the chair and wept. She was frightened for Bella and Izzy, scared of the loss that was still damaging and that she barely understood. And she was fearful for herself and her baby, the tiny life inside her that had to have been battered by the torrents of emotions that had wracked her body recently. But the thought that made her most afraid was that Mrs. Stiles was right about Louis. He would run away from trouble when the going got hard, just like he had when he found out about Carrie’s affair. Sophie thought back to the night when he’d described how he’d felt and why he’d left, the night they’d first slept together. He’d seemed so genuine, so plausible—a vulnerable man who’d made a mistake and bitterly regretted it. But what if he’d said what he knew she wanted to hear in order to get her into bed? What if he’d just run out on Bella because he couldn’t cope, just as he’d given up on Carrie because he didn’t have the guts to fight for her? Sophie shook her head; that wasn’t her Louis—that wasn’t the man she loved, the man she knew—it couldn’t be. She was tired and upset and hormonal and Mrs. Stiles’s warning was echoing around in her head like a siren, tempting sailors onto dangerous shores.

Sophie had picked up Louis’s phone, her thumb hovering over the keypad as she contemplated reading his texts and checking his messages, perhaps trying to find something that might tell her
where he was, and then before she knew what she had done she’d thrown it hard against the wrought-iron fireplace, smashing its fragile plastic casing to pieces.

And on that cold September morning Sophie realized that for the first time since she’d met Louis, she was angry with him. She was blood-boiling, heart-pumping, teeth-grindingly furious with him and she knew that if he turned up on the street at that moment she would happily have punched out his lights.

Even so, on the drive back down to Cornwall, she had kept her phone by her side, and her hands-free plugged in, convinced that he would find a way to call her eventually, full of apologies for dashing off, with news of a genuine emergency and wondering what had happened to the phone he’d so stupidly left behind. But as the journey wore on and the girls’ enthusiasm and collection of songs wore out, Sophie’s phone remained silent. She stared at it furiously, willing it to make a noise, but still it didn’t ring, and that made her angrier still.

She was too old and too pregnant to be waiting for her boyfriend to call her at this stage in her life. Now was the very time she should be feeling secure and happy, not wondering if she even still had a relationship. But the fact was that Louis was gone and he’d left her to pick up the pieces of his daughters again.

“When is Daddy coming home again?” Izzy asked just as they hit Devon. It was a question that Sophie had endeavored to answer several times on her journey down, but her trite answers of “Soon, sweetie” and “Before you know it” had not satisfied the four-year-old and had succeeded only in drawing sighs from Bella.

“He’ll be back when he’s finished helping Wendy with Seth,” Sophie told her hesitantly. It was the grain of truth that Bella had been waiting to pounce on.

“Because Daddy is Seth’s daddy and Seth is our half brother,” Bella informed her little sister without ceremony. Sophie had tried
to persuade Bella not to tell Izzy about Seth until after they got back, but she knew it was unfair to ask a child for such restraint and she counted herself lucky that they’d made it this far before Bella blew the story wide open.

In the driver’s seat Sophie braced herself for Izzy’s reaction.

“Oh,” Izzy said, thinking for a moment. “But isn’t Seth a grown-up man? And Daddy’s a grown-up man, so he can’t be Seth’s daddy—that’s just silly! Grown-up men can’t be grown-up men’s daddies!” The idea seemed to tickle Izzy, making her giggle. It wasn’t quite the reaction Sophie had been expecting.

“That Wendy woman is Seth’s mummy,” Bella went on, determined to make her sister understand. “Daddy and that Wendy woman used to do kissing when they were young. So even though Seth is a grown-up man, he is still Daddy’s son and our half brother.”

“How can he be half a brother?” Izzy quizzed her, her giggling rubbing Bella exactly the wrong way. “Hasn’t he got any arms or legs?” She doubled over in her car seat with laughter, finding herself utterly hilarious.

“He’s our half brother because he’s only …,” Bella trailed off, at a loss as to how to explain. Sophie decided it was time for her to step in.

“Half brother means you have the same mummy or daddy. You and Bella have the same daddy as Seth, but there are two different mummies. Your mummy and Seth’s mummy, who is that Wendy woman,” Sophie explained, using Bella’s phrase for Wendy without thinking and gaining some small satisfaction from it.

“So we really have half a brother then?” Izzy asked, perplexed.

“Yes, and that’s where Daddy is,” Bella added darkly. “With him.”

“And when is he coming back?” Izzy inquired, her voice suddenly trembling.

“We don’t know,” Bella said, scowling out the window. “He might not come back at all, not if he prefers them to us.”

“Bella …,” Sophie warned as she caught sight of Izzy’s face in the rearview mirror, on the brink of crumbling into tears.

“Of course Daddy’s coming back.” Sophie glanced at her dark and silent phone and added through gritted teeth, “Eventually.”

“So tell me all about it then,” Carmen asked her as soon as she had the girls settled at a table by the window with a pile of pens, a coloring book, and a plate of sandwiches.

“I don’t really know where to start,” Sophie said bleakly, spreading jam on her second scone. “The long and the short of it is that Bella overheard us talking about Seth when she came down for a glass of water and she found out that he’s their brother. She went ballistic—it was so frightening, Carmen. I thought the girls were settled, that they were moving on with their lives, coping without Carrie. But I was a fool to think that it could be so simple. I lost a parent and I’m still not over it, and I was much older than them when it happened. Bella is terrified that her whole world is going to get pulled out from under her again, and as for Izzy, she’s always laughing and chuckling away, but sometimes I look at her and I still don’t think she really understands that Carrie isn’t coming back one day.”

“Poor little mites,” Carmen said, glancing over at the girls, who were frantically drawing picture after picture of mermaids and fairy ponies. “They’ve had it harder than most, but they’re lucky too. Lucky that they’ve got you and Louis there for them.”

“But have they? I mean, I panicked and went off to London and left them more or less at the drop of a hat and now Louis has disappeared into the night. I have no idea where he’s gone, who he’s with, or if he’s even coming back. I don’t know anything and that means I have nothing to tell the girls. And add that to the fact
that he hasn’t called me and I’ve wrecked his cell phone, not to mention that I’m pregnant, and then you’ve got a right old mess.”

“You’re pregnant!” Carmen gasped, clapping her hand over her mouth just in time to stifle the salient word before the girls heard it. “You’re
pregnant
?” she asked again in a whisper.

“Yes,” Sophie said and nodded. “It came as something of a shock to me too.”

“Well, I don’t know why, what with all that shagging you’ve been doing. One of the little buggers was bound to get through eventually. After all, if there’s one thing we know about Louis it’s that he’s fertile.”

“Thanks for that,” Sophie said through a mouthful of cream and jam. “Anyway, what do I do now?”

“Stop eating cakes for a start,” Carmen said. “I’ve heard that pregnancy pounds are the hardest to lose. I can’t believe that knowing you’re pregnant he left you in the lurch! That just doesn’t seem like Louis at all.”

“No—he doesn’t know. I haven’t had a chance to tell him yet. But please feel free to beat him up on the grounds that he has generally left me high and dry with his two angry and confused daughters. He definitely deserves a slap or two for that.”

“You’re pregnant,” Carmen repeated, her eyes wide with wonderment. She reached out a hand to cover Sophie’s. “Oh my god, babe—that’s immense.”

“I know!” Sophie said. “It’s taking me a while to get my head round it, but I think that I am, or at least I will be, really pleased. Me pregnant with an actual child, who’d have thought it?”

“At least now you have a reason to eat for two,” Carmen joked, but there were tears in her eyes.

“Oh, Carmen, I’m so sorry. I’m being completely tactless,” Sophie said, remembering only then what Carmen had told her just before she left St. Ives.

“Don’t be so silly,” Carmen said, shrugging off with one shoulder any pain she might be feeling. “If I tried to avoid every pregnant woman around here, I’d never go out. Thank god I’m not still in Chelmsford—the place is crawling with them. Besides, I’ve had a lot of time to get used to the idea and I’m fine with it. Really I am.”

“And how are things between you and James?” Sophie asked her. “Is that still all okay?”

“Yes, of course it is, me and James are as tight as a drum,” Carmen said, smiling. “For now at least. What you and I need is a plan, a plan to find Louis and get him back down here looking after his girls and wife-to-be like he should be.”

“Short of hiring a private detective to find him again, I honestly don’t know how to do that,” Sophie told her. “Chances are he didn’t know my phone number by heart, because it was stored in his cell, which is now well and truly dead. And I don’t know Wendy’s number. I think the only thing I can do is wait for him to get in touch …and I bloody hate it.”

“I know!” Carmen said. “He’ll have left a message for you on the phone at his house. He knows that number.”