Looking After Dad

‘Who’s being sexist now? Though I’m only thirty-seven.’

‘Fast approaching forty, which makes you ripe for it. And I was off duty,’ Jess completed, with an air of ‘so there!’.

‘When you’re on duty, you have your wits about you and are the mistress of any situation?’

Her jaw jutted. ‘I do. I am. Though you’ll never experience it.’

‘Alas and alack,’ he drawled, and turned off the main road and into a quiet tree-lined avenue.

Ahead on the left, a pair of wide wrought-iron gates stood open. Swinging the Alfa Romeo through them, he drove onto a cobbled courtyard which was edged by half a dozen cottage-style houses, each with its own flower-filled front garden. To one side stood a row of garages fronted by a parking bay and here he stopped.

‘Daddy!’ a child’s voice shouted as they climbed out of the car, and Jess saw a little girl with long chestnut curls skipping across the courtyard.

She had big blue eyes and dimpled cheeks which were a straight steal from her father, but was small-boned and delicately built. Wearing a white lace party dress and with a white satin bow tied in her hair, she looked like a miniature angel.

Jess had been on the far side of the coupé, but as she came round the child stopped skipping, stood on one leg and studied her. Her gaze was steely and suspicious. Another inherited trait, she thought wryly.

‘Who are you?’ the little girl demanded.

‘This is Miss Pallister,’ Lorcan said.

‘Jess,’ she amended, ‘and you must be Harriet.’

‘S’right,’ the child agreed, pouting.

He bent to swing her up into his arms. ‘Got a kiss for your daddy?’

The pout vanished. ‘Lots and lots,’ she declared, and began to cover his face with energetic kisses.

Watching on, Jess felt a softening around her heart. There was something poignant about a man bringing up a small child on his own and, whilst Lorcan Hunter seemed the last person to inspire her sympathy, she could not help feeling sorry for him. Sorry that he had lost his wife. Sorry he was a single parent with its accompanying strains and stresses—though perhaps, by now, he had a second Mrs Hunter lined up?

As the kisses ended, Lorcan set his daughter down on her feet and indicated one of the houses. They were walking along the garden path when an old lady in a lilac two-piece and with her fly-away white hair caught back into a bun appeared in the doorway.

‘I thought I saw a visitor and what a lovely surprise,’ she said, in a soft Irish accent. She smiled at Jess. ‘I’m Peg Hunter.’

Smiling back, Jess gave her name. Unlike her son and granddaughter, Peg Hunter displayed an easy warmth and instant friendliness. She also confirmed her hunch that a part of Lorcan’s ancestry was derived from the Celtic.

‘Do come in,’ the old lady entreated, leading the way into a cosy, rather cluttered living room where a spare, distinguished-looking old man was sitting on a sofa reading a newspaper. ‘We have a guest, Bob,’ she told him.

‘This is Jess Pallister who used to work with me long ago at Dowlings,’ Lorcan said, introducing her. ‘We bumped into each other just now and I’ve brought her to see Harriet.’

His father greeted her with a smiling hello and everyone sat down.

‘When me and Grandma went shopping I had three ice-creams,’ Harriet announced, leaning against Lorcan’s knees.

As she had idolised her brothers, so Jess recognised that the little girl idolised her father. And as she had not cared for it when her brothers had brought a strange female into the house, so Harriet’s gimlet-eyed looks along the sofa showed that she had serious doubts about her presence.

‘Three?’ Lorcan protested. ‘Ma, that’s ridiculous. So many times I’ve—’

‘How about making us a cup of tea?’ his father suggested.

‘Right away,’ Peg said. She was halfway to the kitchen when she stopped and turned. ‘You asked me to buy Harriet a new dress; do you like it?’

Lorcan frowned at the white lace extravaganza. ‘Very nice.’

His reply had been tempered and Jess understood why. The dress was fussy and twee and Shirley Temple. Just the kind of dress which would appeal to an elderly lady, but murder to wash and iron.

‘I didn’t want it,’ piped up Harriet. ‘I wanted the blue dress.’

‘But, sweetheart, the shop didn’t have a blue one in your size,’ her grandmother said, ‘and this is almost the same.’

The little girl stamped her foot. ‘Don’t care. I don’t like this one.’ Squeezing up her face, she forced out a couple of tears. ‘I don’t like white.’

Replace ‘angel’ with ‘Hell’s angel’, Jess thought. Though what else could you expect when you considered her genes?

‘Don’t cry, sweetheart,’ Peg appealed, looking as if she might cry herself.

‘I hate white! White is stinky!’

‘So we’ll make it blue,’ Jess said.

As if clicked off by a switch, the temper tantrum stopped.

‘How?’ demanded Harriet.

Standing up, she held out her hand. ‘If you come with me to your daddy’s car where I left my bag, I’ll show you.’

‘You need the key,’ Lorcan said, lifting a hip and reaching into his pocket. ‘Here you are.’

When they returned a few minutes later, Harriet was wearing a pair of swimming goggles. They were blue-tinted goggles.

‘My dress is blue now,’ she declared, smiling down at the skirt. ‘And you’re blue, Daddy. And Grandma. And Grandpa. And—’

As the little girl lifted a cushion, turned pages in a book, peered out of the window and happily pronounced everything blue, her grandmother served tea and home-made sponge cake.

‘Where do you live, Jess?’ Peg enquired pleasantly.

‘In Wimbledon.’

‘You live alone?’

‘Yes, in a small flat. Though my family are nearby so someone’s always calling round.’

‘Have you ever been married?’ the old lady asked.

‘No. I was almost engaged once, but I’ve travelled a lot over the past few years and separations aren’t conducive to long-term relationships,’ she said ruefully.

‘How about a boyfriend now?’