Page 33 of The Mad Marchams

“We did.” She grinned at him to show that she wasn’t really upset. Mrs. Reynolds handed her a covered dish, and they set off for the dower house, crossing the kitchen garden alongside the stables.

“Did your father marry more than once?” Mabel asked.

“Yes, after my mother died, he briefly married her best friend, Marjorie, which didn’t work out as well as either of them thought it might. Then there was Brigitte, a delightful French woman who blessed him with the twins before scarpering back to France.”

“Interesting. In my family it was my father who did all the running. At one point he had three women from three California towns each believing she was his only partner. Eventually, all the women got together, worked out what was going on, and gave him an ultimatum.”

“To do what?”

“Pick one of them.”

“And did he?” Colin asked, genuinely relieved not to be having to talk about his own crazy family for once.

“No. He married a teenager instead.”

“Ouch.” Colin winced. “Mind you, my father was thirty years older than Brigitte, so I’m not one to throw stones.”

“My dad stuck with the last one, though,” Mabel said with a smile. “They’ve been married for ten years. She doesn’t take any shit from him at all.”

“Mrs. Reynolds just said my father never got over my mother dying and that none of the others ever measured up to her.”

“Do you think she’s right?” Mabel asked.

“I’ve never thought of it like that, before.” Colin sighed. “It’s not as if my father shares his emotions about anything with me. In fact, I remember coming home from school at Christmas and finding Marjorie installed in my mother’s place and nobody even bothering to offer an explanation.”

“That sucks.”

“I didn’t even know my mother had died until—” Colin closed his mouth.

“Until what?” Mabel stopped walking and looked up at him, her brown eyes clear and full of sympathy.

“The headmaster called me into his study to give me the news.”

“Had she been ill?”

“She’d seemed a bit down and she took a lot of naps, but that wasn’t unusual. My father wasn’t an easy man to live with at the best of times, and he didn’t tolerate illness or ‘sloth’ as he called it. When I returned home at the end of term, I found out she’d had cancer for quite a while.”

“So no one summoned you home to say goodbye to her, even though they knew she was sick?”

“Apparently, my father thought it would upset us,” Colin said carefully. “I think I’d rather have been given the opportunity to say goodbye.”

Mabel abruptly started walking again. “Sometimes I’d like to get hold of your whole family and…take them to therapy.”

“It wouldn’t work,” Colin pointed out. “They’re British.”

“But still.” She sighed. “Did they send for you when your older brother died?”

“They didn’t need to. I was home when it happened.”

“That must have been horrible.”

Colin increased his pace. “We should hurry. I think it’s about to rain.”

“What time are you heading off tomorrow?” Mabel asked. She was sitting at the kitchen table with her laptop and a cup of coffee in front of her. Her hair was in two high pigtails that bounced when she moved her head, and she wore jeans and one of his old Oxford college T-shirts.

“As I have no intention of driving into London, I’ll leave early and get the nine o’clock train and walk to their offices.” Colin paused. “Are you sure you don’t want to come with me?”

“Nah, a girlie day hanging out with Felicity and your grandmother is just what I need.”