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Chapter 18
After such a full and exciting day, and feeling pleasantly tired and quite replete, Annabelle couldn’t wait to get back to the house and have a shower. She’d change into her pyjamas, and maybe they’d crack open a bottle of wine. No doubt the younger kids would retreat to the games room, which they had claimed for themselves, and Ellis and Portia would disappear off to their bedroom to carry on texting and messaging the same people they’d been texting and messaging throughout the day. All Annabelle wanted to do was to relax in the lounge or on the terrace with a glass of something alcoholic, and she was brimming with contentment when she swung the car off the road and onto the drive.
What the—!
She barely had time to register the figure standing on the step of their house, before Jake gave a yell and was opening the car door even before the vehicle came to a halt.
Alarmed that he might hurt himself, she screamed ‘Jake!’ but as she did so Izzie also spotted her father.
Squealing with delight, the little girl scrambled across Sam and almost fell out of the car door in her haste to follow her brother.
Feeling sick, Annabelle yanked the handbrake up and switched off the engine, then she too was out of the car and running towards the front door.
Jake and Izzie beat her to it.
Jake already had his arms around his father’s waist, his head buried in his chest, and Annabelle could hear him sobbing. Izzie, on the other hand, wasn’t upset in the slightest. She was excited and happy, and was hopping from foot to foot waiting for her turn to receive a cuddle from her dad.
‘Troy, what are you doing here?’ Annabelle choked out the words, her heart thudding, her thoughts whirling.
Troy’s eyes bored into hers and he pushed Jake away, holding his arms out to her, but Izzie took advantage and threw herself at him, and his arms came around his daughter automatically. But he didn’t look at the child: his attention remained on Annabelle.
‘Why do you think?’ he grinned. His expression was cocky, the tone of his voice jaunty and self-confident.
She was dimly aware of the others congregating behind her, but she was frozen to the spot.
‘Dear God, is that Troy?’ she heard Beverley ask. ‘I thought you were in Australia.’
‘I’ve come to get my girl back,’ Troy said still refusing to look anywhere else other than at Annabelle.
Izzie cried, ‘Yay! Are you taking me home, Daddy?’
He finally glanced down at his daughter, and said, ‘Yes, sweet pea, you’re coming, too.’
‘And me?’ Jake sounded doubtful.
‘Of course. I wouldn’t be taking my two favourite girls home and not taking you as well.’
‘I hate to interrupt,’ Helen said, waving him out of the way, ‘but are we going inside, or are we going to stand on the drive for the rest of the evening?’
With Izzie still clamped around him like a limpet, Troy shuffled to the side, and Helen fished a set of keys out of her handbag.
‘I suppose you’d better come in,’ she said, sounding every inch as though she was the lady of the manor.
Annabelle’s instinctive cry of ‘No!’, was met with a scowl from her son and a pleading ‘Please, Mummy,’ from Izzie.
Annabelle stood frozen to the spot while Helen stalked into the hall, followed by Beverley and the rest of them. Only Ron remained outside with her, Troy and the children.
She didn’t know whether that was a good thing or a bad one.
Frantically collecting her scattered wits, the question of what her ex-husband was doing here was rapidly followed by another.
‘How did you know where to find us? Did my mum tell you?’ Annabelle didn’t think her mother would, but one never knew. May had been disgusted when Annabelle had informed her what Troy had done and she was aware there was no chance of Annabelle ever getting back with him, but on the other hand hewasthe children’s father and her mother had made it very plain that Troy should step up to the mark and shoulder his responsibilities. Then there was the issue of the children missing their father dreadfully, even though he wasn’t the best parent in the world and didn’t seem to give two hoots about them. If Troy had contacted May, her mum might very well have told him where they were staying.
‘Your mum wouldn’t tell me if I was on fire,’ Troy said. ‘Jake gets the credit for that.’
Annabelle inhaled sharply. ‘Jake?’ Her son wouldn’t meet her eyes, and she glanced back at Troy. ‘Is that what happened when you phoned me the other day? Jake had been playing with my phone. He must have called you and you thought it was me?’
‘Yeah, I did. You weren’t very pleased to hear from me.’
