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She was growing so fast, maturing so quickly, giving him in one second a terrifying glimpse of the woman she would soon become and with it his awareness of how soon she would leave him to begin her own life, and at the same time the equally heartrending knowledge of how young she still was, how vulnerable… how precious.
He felt as tongue-tied, as shy and inarticulate as a boy, and just as unable to tell her how he felt about her; how much she meant to him.
As he collected her luggage and they headed for his car, he thought inwardly, Oh, Nell, how right you were to warn me not to let myself have regrets, not to turn my back on the pleasure of loving her.
‘It’s good to have you home,’ he told her gruffly as he unlocked the car. And then as she looked at him he put down her case and went towards her, giving her a fiercely protective hug.
Ignoring the lump of emotion aching in his throat, he added teasingly, ‘Jade was right, though, I’m not sure what Nell is going to make of your hair. It makes you look terrifyingly grown-up.’
When she flushed pink with pleasure, he knew he had said the right thing and knew as well that fierce dizzying surge of triumph that every father experienced when his teenage daughter, that beautiful, wayward, illogical and terrifying creature who had taken the place of his adoring little girl, smiled on him with approval.
* * *
‘I can hear them. I can hear the car!’ Tom announced excitedly, running downstairs and rushing towards the front door, flinging it open just as Marcus stopped the car outside.
As she watched the boy race towards them with uninhibited enthusiasm, Eleanor felt her tension ease slightly.
The passenger door of the car opened and she discovered she was holding her breath slightly.
The girl standing watching her was not the same one who had gone away, she recognised, as she searched Vanessa’s eyes for the old antagonism and saw instead only hesitation and a slight wariness.
It was up to her now. ‘Treat her as you would your own daughter,’ Jade had said.
Suppressing the flutter of anxiety tensing her stomach, Eleanor smiled and hurried forward, pausing when Vanessa turned her head to say something to Tom.
The protest, ‘Oh, Vanessa, your lovely hair!’ couldn’t quite be stilled, but to her relief all her stepdaughter did was laugh and look at Marcus.
‘Jade said you wouldn’t like it,’ she told Eleanor as she came towards her.
‘It’s not that I don’t like it,’ Eleanor told her. ‘It looks lovely and it suits you… It’s just that it… it makes you look so grown-up.’
‘She’s just saying that because she’s a mother,’ Gavin told Vanessa. ‘Mothers always say things like that. She wouldn’t let me have a new pair of trainers…’
Mothers always say things like that…
Across the three bent male heads, Vanessa and Eleanor looked at one another.
‘Your room’s all finished,’ Eleanor said quietly. ‘You were right about the furniture—the aqua finish looks much better than the peach. Do you… ?’
‘I want you to come and see the fish,’ Gavin announced firmly.
‘What, before you’ve seen your present?’ Vanessa teased him.
Half an hour later they were all sitting in the small sitting-room which was officially Nell’s office, but to which all the family seemed to gravitate, despite the fact that she had banned a television set from it.
‘This is for you,’ Vanessa told Eleanor almost hesitantly, handing her a flat, beautifully gift-wrapped package. ‘Jade helped me choose it. We got it in SoHo… from a craft shop.’
She looked so nervous that Eleanor longed to put her arm round her and tell her that no matter what it was she would love it because it came from her; but
she didn’t. Instead she started to open it, slowly, ignoring the boys’ exhortations to hurry up.
They had already had their presents: a baseball jacket and cap for Gavin, and a beautiful leather-covered photograph album for Tom, who had recently taken up photography as a hobby, another piece of news Vanessa must have learned via one of Tom’s letters, Eleanor reflected as she carefully smoothed the wrapping back from her own gift.
Her breath caught in her throat as she stared down at it, tears blurring her eyes.
‘What is it… what have you got?’ Gavin was demanding noisily at her side.
‘Do you like it? I thought… Well, I know you like things like that. Jade thought it was too sentimental. There were others…’
