The Baby Surprise: Juggling Briefcase & Baby

Occasionally one of the musicians had drifted off for a drink, and someone from the audience would get up and play in their place. Lex had taken a turn at the piano at last, improvising with a guy on the saxophone, his body moving in time to the music, utterly absorbed, and Romy had listened, her throat aching with inexplicable tears. This was not the dutiful son, the boy who had joined the family firm and set out to please his father. This was her lover and a man she suspected Gerald Gibson didn’t even know existed.

‘Romy?’

Lex’s voice startled Romy out of her thoughts and she jerked upright. ‘What?’

‘I wondered if you’d fallen asleep.’

‘No. I was…thinking.’

‘What about?’

For a moment, a very brief moment, Romy considered telling him the truth. She could turn to him in the darkness and confess that she had been thinking about him, about how he made music and how he made love and how he had made her feel.

But the thought had barely crossed her mind before she remembered how his face had closed on the plane. ‘It was a long time ago,’ he had said. ‘We’ve both moved on.’

As they had. Lex was right. It was pointless to bring it all up again.

He wanted to draw a line under the whole episode and stick to business. And let’s remember, Romy, she reminded herself, this is your boss, and you need this job. If he wants to stick to business, business it is.

‘Nothing,’ she said.

‘Well, start thinking about how you’re going to explain Freya’s presence to Grant.’ Lex tapped the sat nav. ‘According to this, we’re nearly there.’

Sure enough, a few minutes later they were bumping along a track and over a bridge, and then quite suddenly there were lights glimmering through the snow and the dark bulk of Duncardie was looming above them.

Concealing his relief at having arrived at last, Lex drove into a courtyard, and parked as close as he could to the massive front door.

‘Only three and a half hours late,’ he said grimly.

He switched off the engine, and there was a sudden, crushing silence, broken only by the sound of Freya burbling to herself in the back seat. She had woken half an hour before, and Romy had been on tenterhooks in case she started to cry again, but her daughter seemed perfectly content to play with her toes and chat away in her own incomprehensible language.

‘OK,’ said Lex. ‘Now remember, the whole deal is riding on this meeting, so we’ve got to get it right.’

‘Right,’ said Romy.

‘If we want Grant to take us seriously, we’ll have to be professional, and that means making a good impression right from the start. We’re going to have to work hard to make up for turning up late with the entire contents of a Mothercare catalogue.’

‘Professional,’ Romy agreed. ‘Absolutely.’

The moment the wipers had stilled, the snow had started to build up on the windscreen, and already they could barely see through it.

Lex was calculating how quickly he could unload the car. ‘You take Freya,’ he told Romy. ‘I’ll bring the stuff.’

Romy thought doubtfully of everything she had brought with her. ‘It’ll take ages if you do it on your own. Why don’t we do it together?’

‘There’s no point in two of us blundering around in the snow,’ he said gruffly. ‘Take Freya into the warm. Hopefully we’ll have a chance to change and get rid of all this clobber before we meet Grant himself.’

‘All right.’ Romy drew a breath and looked at Lex. ‘I’m ready.’

He nodded and reached for the door handle. ‘Then let’s go and get this deal.’

It wasn’t far to the door, but it was bitterly cold and to Lex, labouring backwards and forwards in the dark through the snow, it felt as if he were trapped in an endless blizzard. Head down, he dumped stuff in the stone porch as quickly as he could before running back for the next load. At least someone was transferring it all inside, he saw, but he was very glad indeed to make the last trip, skidding and sliding over the snow.

Brushing the worst of the snow off himself in the porch, Lex shook out his sodden trousers with an irritable grimace. His feet were frozen, his hands numb, and melting snow was trickling down his neck, and he was cursing Willie Grant’s refusal to go to London and meet in a warm, dry office, where all sensible deals were made.

But this was the deal he wanted, Lex reminded himself. He bent to retrieve the last of Freya’s luggage and stepped through the door.

He found himself in a vast, baronial hall, complete with antlers on the wall, some sad, glassy-eyed creatures stuffed and mounted long ago, and even the requisite suit of armour standing to attention at the foot of a magnificent staircase.

Lex didn’t see any of them. He registered three things simultaneously. One, a small, portly man with a halo of white hair, holding Freya. Willie Grant himself, in fact, who turned to watch Lex’s approach.

Two, the fact that he, Lex, far from presenting a crisply professional appearance, was dripping snow everywhere and had a bright yellow bag decorated with teddy bears wearing bow ties in one hand and a huge pack of nappies and a pushchair in the other.

And three, Romy, terrified and trying not to show it, standing rigidly beside Willie Grant while an Irish Wolfhound, easily the biggest dog Lex had ever seen, sniffed interestedly at Freya’s feet.

Forgetting his humiliating appearance, Lex dropped the teddy bear bag and snapped his fingers. ‘Come,’ he said to the dog, who trotted obediently over to greet him.

‘Sit.’

The great rump sank to the floor.

‘Good dog,’ said Lex, and rubbed the huge head that came up to his chest, while Romy sent him a speaking look of gratitude.

Willie Grant’s expression was harder to decipher.

‘That’s Magnus,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t usually go to strangers.’

‘I like dogs,’ said Lex, giving Magnus a final pat.

It was too late to hide the pushchair and nappies. He set them down, tried to pretend that he wasn’t dripping everywhere, and stepped forward to offer his hand.

‘Lex Gibson,’ he introduced himself.

‘Willie Grant.’ Willie’s grip was firm and he studied Lex with interest, not unmixed with surprise.

‘I’m very sorry we’re so late.’

‘Oh, not to worry about that,’ said Willie. ‘Your secretary rang, so we got the message that you would be delayed and that you were bringing the wee lassie with you.’ He beamed at Freya and tweaked her nose. ‘She’s a bonny one, isn’t she?’

‘Yes, I’m sorry about that—’ Lex began, and then stopped short as Freya, clearly recognising him, broke into a gummy smile and reached out her arms towards him.

Instinctively, Lex took a step back, but Willie was watching Freya and didn’t notice. ‘Ah, I see who you want!’ he chuckled. ‘Old Willie’s not good enough for you, is he?’

And before Lex could react, he had handed Freya over and turned to take Romy by the arm.

‘Now come away in and have some tea in the library,’ he said and bore her off up the magnificent stone staircase, leaving Lex, aghast, holding Freya at rigid arm’s length.

It wasn’t often that Lex was at a loss for words.