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‘You haven’t eaten anything but mush for twenty-four hours,’ he said just as softly, his delineation of Henry’s superb homemade soups and soufflés grossly unfair, ‘besides which the news has been full of how this particular strain of influenza has young and old and everyone between off their feet. It’s nasty.’
‘Georgia still seems okay.’ She glanced towards the girls, their curls like living flames in the glow of the fire. ‘Right from a tiny baby, bugs just seem to bounce off her somehow, whereas poor Emily catches everything that’s going.’
‘It must have been tough being sole parent, especially when they were first born.’
Her hands twisted in her lap. ‘Sometimes.’ She kept her eyes on the two small heads. ‘But they more than made up for any difficulties,’ she said defensively, ‘and they’ve always been very happy children. They haven’t wanted for anything.’
‘I wasn’t criticising,’ he said soothingly, ‘and I can see what a great mother you’ve been and are.’
‘Perry would have been a terrible father. He only ever thought of himself and would have made their lives miserable. The fact that he has never even tried to see them proves that.’
‘Kay, for what it’s worth I think you did the only thing you could when you threw him out.’ He stared at her. ‘Were there people who said you should have stayed with him regardless?’ he asked quietly. ‘For the sake of the children?’
‘A few.’ And it had hurt, terribly, even though she’d told herself they had no idea what had gone on behind closed doors.
Anger thickened his voice. ‘Fools are always the first to give an opinion. I was brought up in a home that resembled a war zone for a great deal of the time. Believe me, the twins are very fortunate. You have two normal, well-adjusted and happy little girls; they’re a testimony to the fact that you were right in the course of action you followed. Don’t ever doubt that, not for a minute.’
Funny, but she hadn’t expected such understanding and comfort from him, not from Mitchell. She hadn’t spoken of how she felt to a living soul before this, not even her mother, but he had seemed instinctively to guess the doubts and fears she managed to keep under lock and key most of the time. With her father having died when he did, the girls had never really had a male figure in their lives, apart from her brother, and Peter was too busy with his own family to spend much time with them.
‘Better no father at all than one who would have put them through hell, Kay.’
He took her hand, feeling it flutter in his before it became still.
The sky was dark outside the warmth of the house, but with the snow steadily falling a winter wonderland was forming in the garden, its glow luminescent in the light from the windows. Her mother and Henry were still talking quietly together, their voices too low to be overheard, and the twins were busy with their dolls, and it just seemed the moment to say, ‘It’s affected you deeply, the way your father was, hasn’t it.’
She saw his jaw clench and for a moment she thought he was going to draw away. Instead his hand tightened on hers. ‘It was my mother who was a serial adulteress.’ It was bald and flat. ‘It got in the end so it was any man, any time, but long before that I knew she didn’t love my father or my sister and I. I don’t think she was capable of love in any form.’
‘You…you knew she was having affairs, even though you were just a boy?’ Kay whispered.
‘I can’t remember a time I didn’t know,’ he said bitterly. ‘They would row—no, that’s too mild a word for what went on. They would fight, quite literally, at times. She’d fly at him and he’d try and hold her off for a while, but she always pushed him too far. She broke his arm once; I was about nine at the time and I can remember his scream when she brought a poker down on him. He said he was leaving then, but of course he didn’t. Don’t ask me why because I don’t think he loved her any more.’
‘Oh, Mitchell.’ Pain streaked through her. Pain for him now, and for the small, bewildered little boy he had once been. For the sister who had also been embroiled in the madness. ‘Your sister? Was she younger than you?’
He nodded. ‘I used to look after her as much as I could; she was a sweet kid, timid. Scared to death of our mother.
Most times when we’d get home from school the house would be empty. Dad would get home from work, sometimes before she got back and other times after. She never tried to deny where she had been or with whom. She was very honest.’ His mouth twisted bitterly.
‘I got a couple of paper rounds, one before school and one after. I think I’d got some crazy idea of saving enough to take Kathleen, my sister, and I away somewhere. Normally I was back long before Dad got in but this particular night my bike got a puncture. From what the neighbours said, Dad was waiting for my mother when she got home and when he found out she was seeing a man he worked with, he dragged her to the car to go and confront him at his home in front of his wife and family. Why he took Kathleen with him I don’t know—perhaps it was to make this guy feel bad, or because he didn’t want to leave her alone in the house. There was a head-on collision with a lorry anyway. End of story.’
Kay put her other hand on top of his, pressing it as she said, ‘It wasn’t your fault, Mitchell. You weren’t to know he would do that, that he’d take Kathleen with him.’
He shrugged powerful shoulders. ‘I was all Kathleen had; she trusted me. I should have been there. I wouldn’t have let her go with them.’ His voice was so raw she blinked against it.
‘Perhaps your father would have made you go too and you’d all have been killed. Four lives lost instead of three.’
‘For a long time I wished it had been that way.’ He looked her full in the face, his mouth twisting. ‘I was an angry young man, Kay. Very angry, very bitter, very foolhardy. I did some things I’m not proud of and it was more by luck than judgement I didn’t end up in prison. Then one day a group of us were racing each other on motorbikes. One of my friends was killed in front of my eyes. It brought me up short. I realised I wanted to live after all.’
‘I’m glad you did,’ she said softly. She hadn’t meant to say it the way it had sounded. Her voice hadn’t been nearly as matter-of-fact or prosaic enough. But what really scared her half to death was the consuming urge to comfort him, to take the look of bleakness out of his eyes and to kiss the hard set of his mouth until it relaxed beneath her lips. Friends. The word mocked her. The feelings she had for Mitchell were not ones of friendship, they never had been, and they didn’t remotely resemble the starry-eyed infatuation and girlish love that had led her to marry Perry either.
A CD of Christmas carols had been playing in the background and now, as it finished, Mitchell rose to his feet. ‘There’s a cartoon called Santa’s Special Christmas starting about now. Fancy watching it, girls?’ he asked Georgia and Emily.
Kay stared at him as he walked across to the huge television set and switched it on. Was it her imagination— part of the shock of acknowledging how she felt about him—or had his action been a deliberate withdrawal? Did he feel he’d said too much, revealed too much? How did she handle this?
As the twins positioned themselves at a suitable distance in front of the TV clutching their dolls, Kay lay back against the sofa and shut her eyes. She was aware of Mitchell walking across the room again but when she opened her eyes she saw he had picked up the blanket that had been wrapped round Emily, and was now tucking it round the small child as she sat with Georgia on the floor. The action was so poignant for some reason that Kay wanted to cry.
‘Do you think you ladies could manage a sherry now you’re in the land of the living again?’ Mitchell included Leonora in the smile he gave, and when Kay and her mother both accepted and Henry made a move to rise he waved the older man down, saying, ‘Stay where you are, Henry, I’ll get them. A drop of your usual?’
Kay had to admit she thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the evening, even though she dozed off twice before dinner.
