Under the Spaniard's Lock and Key

BY

S
USAN
Ward manoeuvred herself down the ramp into the kitchen, her daughter and husband protectively shadowing her progress.

Propping her crutches against the chair her husband pulled out, Susan lowered herself into her seat, ignoring her nearest and dearest as they hovered anxiously.

Maggie, watching the procedure apprehensively, released a relieved sigh when her mum was safely seated. ‘You’re getting pretty good on those things, Mum,’ she observed, privately concerned that she was also far too ambitious. It was lucky her dad was now retired from his job on the oil rigs so was around to keep an eye on things when she wasn’t.

It had been three months since the experimental surgery, but to see her mum, who had been confined to a wheelchair for the last eighteen years, on her feet even for short periods still gave Maggie a thrill.

And now, if things went according to plan, in a couple of months she would no longer need the chair or even the crutches.

Susan dismissed the comment and turned her frowning regard on her daughter, who took a seat opposite. ‘Never mind that, how are
you
feeling?
Really
feeling,’ she added, holding up her hand in anticipation of her daughter’s reply.
‘She looks exhausted, doesn’t she, John?’ She appealed to her husband for support.

John Ward’s warm glance swept his daughter’s pale face, touching the warm dark ebony curls that clustered around her heart-shaped face. ‘She looks beautiful.’

Oh, well, Maggie reflected, at least I have got one fan even if he is my dad. ‘Thank you, though according to you I was beautiful when I was twenty pounds too heavy, had teenage acne and braces,’ she reminded him.

‘Don’t change the subject, Maggie,’ her mother said sternly.

‘I told you, I’m fine, Mum,’ she replied, pasting a determinedly cheerful smile on her face to illustrate the level of her fineness.

She had perfected the ‘I’m fine’ smile a long time ago, because no matter how bad her day had been Maggie had always been pretty sure growing up that her mum’s had been worse.

This conviction dated from the day when her dad had returned home from the hospital with her baby brother and no Mum—she had been four at the time.

Her other brother Ben, at the noisy toddler stage, had run around the room while John Ward sat with baby Sam in his arms and explained to Maggie that Mum would not be coming home yet and when she did Maggie would have to be a big girl and help her because Mum was not well.

Maggie had only vaguely understood the explanation of what was wrong with her mother, but she had known it was bad because her big strong dad didn’t cry.

The tears had scared her and made her feel sick inside. She had begged him to stop crying, and promised that if he did she would never
ever
be a bad girl.

Of course she had not been able to keep that promise, but
the determination that had been born that day to protect her mum and stop her dad crying had never left her.

Compared with what her mum had coped with, a broken engagement and a cancelled wedding faded into insignificance.

‘Seriously, I am fine,’ Maggie promised in response to the sceptical looks directed her way as she anchored her heavy dark hair at the nape of her neck with one hand and accepted the mug of coffee her father passed her. ‘I’m just sorry about messing everyone about this way,’ she added, her brow furrowing as she tried to calculate how much her parents had already laid out on the wedding.

It was easier to address the practicalities of the situation than think about what an idiot she had been. ‘All that money,’ she fretted.

‘Forget the money,’ her father said firmly. ‘That’s not important—’ He broke off mid sentence as the door opened to let in a cold gust of air and two young men in muddy rugby kit.

They ignored their sister, grunted in the direction of their father and mother before heading for the fridge.

‘Glass, Sam,’ Susan said out of habit as her younger son raised a carton of milk to his lips.

He lowered the carton and said, ‘We lost, if anyone’s interested.’

His older and slightly more intuitive brother nudged him with his elbow and removed the pad he was holding to his own cut lip. ‘They’re not interested, Sam. So what’s up, guys?’

Maggie got to her feet. Telling her parents had been bad enough—they at least, bless them, had not asked any awkward questions even though she knew they were dying to. She could not, however, rely on her brothers to be similarly restrained. ‘Nothing. That lip could do with a stitch,’ she added, casting an expert eye over her brother’s mouth.

Ben rolled his eyes and, taking the carton from his brother, took a swig of milk before subjecting his sister to an equally critical narrow eyed stare. ‘Sure. You
always
look like death warmed up.’

‘I’ve just worked a ten-night stretch in a busy casualty department,’ Maggie reminded him.

‘So?’ Ben retorted, looking unimpressed. ‘Nothing new there—you always work crazy hours. You have to be certifiably insane to be a nurse.’

‘Thanks.’ Maggie’s mouth twisted into a grim little smile.

Simon had called her the
perfect nurse.
The recollection sent her stomach muscles into tight unpleasant spasm, though, to be totally accurate, apparently Simon had been quoting his mother, the possessive Mrs Greer, whom Maggie had found to be manipulative and very overprotective of her only child, when he said this.

She resisted the temptation to cover her ears as snippets of that conversation drifted through her mind.

‘Obviously you won’t work when we are married. You can help out with my constituency work, and the social engagements.’

‘I like my work,’ she had replied, wondering how Simon would take the news she had no intention of giving up work.

‘Of course you do, darling. Mother has always said you are the perfect nurse and when she moves in—’

Maggie had been unable to hide her horror. ‘Your mother is going to live with us?’

Simon had looked annoyed by the interruption, giving a thin lipped smile. ‘Of course.’

He had made it sound as if it were a done deal, and why not? she thought with a grimace of self-disgust. She had always gone along meekly with what he said.

‘Did you get any injuries from the train derailment I saw on the telly, Mags?’

Maggie dragged her wandering thoughts back to the present and responded to the ghoulish enquiry from Sam with an absent nod of her head.

‘That explains why she looks so wrecked,’ Sam observed.

Ben shook his head. ‘No, it’s not work…’ His eyes widened. ‘Are you pregnant?’

The colour flew to Maggie’s cheeks, and Susan Ward looked uncomfortable, making it obvious that this had been her first thought too.

‘Ben!’
his father warned.

‘No, it’s OK, Dad,’ Maggie said, placing her hand on her dad’s shoulder. ‘It’s not a secret.’ She took a deep breath. ‘If you must know the wedding is off.’

Sam closed the fridge with his elbow and let out a silent whistle. ‘So no more slimy Simon!’

‘Simon is not…’ Maggie stopped. Actually he was. She suddenly felt pretty stupid that her little brother had recognised the characteristic and she hadn’t.

She had wasted four years of her life on Simon, which might have been acceptable if she had been desperately in love with him, but Maggie now knew she hadn’t been.

Maybe she was one of those people that couldn’t fall in love? A depressing thought but a definite possibility; she had certainly never experienced the sort of blind, intense passion her friends spoke of.

‘Do you have to send back the presents? There’s a coffee maker that’s much better than the one we have—’

Sam’s brother cut across him. ‘Did he dump you? Or…God, had he been cheating on you?’ The idea drew a chortle of laughter from his brother. ‘I didn’t think he had it in him.’

‘Simon did not sleep with anyone.’ Not even with me, Maggie thought, swallowing the bubble of hysteria in her throat.

‘Well, what did he do, then?’

Maggie’s eyes fell as she hesitated. For the first time in her life she felt awkward bringing up the topic of her adoption.

She had never had any hang-ups at all about being adopted, no yearning secret or otherwise to find her natural mother—it had never even occurred to her that Simon had any concerns.

Though concern was clearly an understatement considering the lengths he had gone to to trace her birth mother. Thinking ahead, he had called it; anticipating future problems, he had explained with a self-congratulatory smile.

Maggie closed her eyes and could hear him calling her birth mother’s identity ‘a potential skeleton-jumping-out-of-the-cupboard situation’ before going on to explain in the same pompous manner that a politician in his position—one with a future—could not be too careful.

‘He had a problem with…’ She looked at the expectant faces and hesitated again.

Mum and Dad had told her years ago that they would understand if she wanted to contact her birth mother, but Maggie had never believed they could be as all right with the idea as they appeared.

Maggie, who had always been keenly conscious of the crazy guilt thing Mum had about not being able to do the things with her children that able-bodied mums took for granted, had no intention of searching out a mother who was able to enter the mums’ race on sports day.

To her mind even thinking about her birth mother felt like a betrayal of the parents who had loved and cared for her, and why contact a stranger who had given her away and risk rejection for a second time?

Would they believe that Simon had made the unilateral decision to search for her birth mother? Or would they think that she had decided they were not enough family for her? Maggie decided there was no point taking a risk.

‘It was a lot of little things. We simply decided that we didn’t suit. It was all very amicable,’ she lied, absently touching the bruised area on her wrist.

‘Maggie will talk about it when she’s good and ready and you two,’ John Ward said sternly, ‘have all the sensitivity of a pair of bricks. Your poor sister—’

‘Had a lucky escape,’ Ben interrupted. ‘And don’t look at me like that—I’m only saying what everyone else is thinking. Sorry, Maggie, but it’s true.’

Susan broke the awkward silence that followed this pronouncement.

‘What you need is a holiday.’

Maggie laughed. ‘You think I should go on the honeymoon cruise?’

Maggie had no desire to go on the cruise that had been a cause of friction. Though Simon had reluctantly agreed that it might not be proper to take his mother on their Mediterranean honeymoon, he had assured her that next time of course she would go with them; Mother apparently loved cruises.

He hadn’t asked Maggie if she enjoyed them.

‘Oh, goodness, no, there’d be too many middle-aged people on a cruise,’ Susan exclaimed, adding, ‘Where did I put those brochures you brought home the other day, John? I think they’re on the piano stool. Go get them, Ben.’

‘Mum, I can’t go on holiday. There’s so much to do. I need to cancel the—’

‘Your father and I will do that.’

John nodded. ‘Of course, and you might as well say yes, Maggie, because your mum will wear you down eventually. She always does,’ he added, dropping a kiss on the top of his wife’s fair head.

He wasn’t wrong. By the time the weekend was over Maggie found she had booked herself on a European coach tour.

Her mum had mixed feelings about her choice.

* * *

‘But, Maggie, there will be nobody under forty on a coach tour.’

‘Mum, I’m not looking for romance.’

* * *

‘What about fun?’

It was a question that Maggie considered on more than one occasion over the next few weeks.

Maybe, she mused, she ought to put sensible on hold and try spontaneous, though not as spontaneous as her friend Millie had suggested when she heard the news of the broken engagement. Fun was one thing but, as she told Millie, the idea of a casual fling with a stranger did not appeal to her.

She had responded with a mystified shake of her head to Millie’s suggestion that she might not have met the right stranger yet.

What Millie didn’t get was that she simply wasn’t a very
sexual
person.