A Daughter For Christmas

but right now she felt that if she dwelt too hard on her sister’s death she would find herself giving in to the temptation to bawl her eyes out.

She didn’t imagine that the man sitting opposite her would appreciate the outburst of emotion.

‘She and Roy—that was her husband—’

‘Who was also involved in this so-called accident—’

‘That’s right, and there’s nothing “so-called” about it.’

‘What happened?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Was she your only sibling?’

Leigh looked at him with frustration. Why wouldn’t he just let her finish her piece? Having jumped down her throat, why was he now dragging this information out of her? She didn’t like talking about it. In fact, she seldom did. She had wept at the funeral, but her thoughts she preferred to keep to herself. Circumstances had hardened her, forced her to become self-reliant.

‘Yes,’ she answered abruptly.

‘What about other relatives? Aunts, uncles? You haven’t mentioned your parents so I assume that they’re no longer on the scene.’

‘This is irrelevant,’ Leigh told him brusquely. ‘If I’d known you’d ask all these questions I would have come armed with a family tree.’

Nicholas looked at her carefully. ‘Why do you say that coming to me was the last resort? If there were relatives around, I assume—’

‘That I would have rushed to them for help first. Of course.’ Silly of me to assume that he might have been showing some kind of personal interest in her and, indirectly, in Amy. ‘There’s no one else, Mr Kendall. Jenny was all I had.’ Saying it out loud made it sound bleak and lonely. She remembered how it had been when her parents had died. She remembered that lost, exposed feeling, but she had been so much younger then and there had been Jenny to hold her hand and help her through. Now there was no one to shield her from the loneliness, waiting to strike.

‘Our parents passed away when I was twelve within months of one another. As for relatives, I think there’s an uncle somewhere in Australia and my father had a couple of cousins in Canada, but we never kept in touch. Is that sufficient background history, or would you like to know more? Maybe I could throw in my blood group for good measure?’ She was annoyed with him for prising information out of her which she had grown accustomed to keeping to herself.

‘To cut a long story short, there was no one else to turn to. And, anyway...’ She halted, unsure of what to say next.

‘And anyway?’

‘I happen to think that it’s important for Amy to eventually know who her father is,’ Leigh told him defiantly. ‘Even if it’s an intrusion on your lifestyle.’

‘Let’s just suppose that I give you the benefit of the doubt for a minute, that I actually believe what you’re telling me, don’t you find it a bit odd that you only suddenly thought it important nearly a year and a half after the event?’

‘She’s only seven...’

‘You were waiting until?’

She looked at him with deep dislike. Did he believe a word of what she was saying? Was he simply humouring her? Allowing her to have her say until his coffee was finished, whereupon he would coolly look her up and down and tell her to be on her way? She couldn’t even tell whether she was getting through to him at all because, whatever he said, his face remained unreadable.

‘Until she was a bit older.’ Leigh took a mouthful of her coffee, which was now tepid and quite disgusting. ‘Until she was more capable of...understanding...’

‘Thoughtful of you.’

What would it feel like to throw her tepid coffee all over him? she wondered. Would it wipe that expression of cynical self-assurance off his face?

‘Why did you say that you were willing to hear what I’ve got to say, Mr Kendall? You don’t want to hear a word I’ve got to say. You want to dig a hole, chuck me in, cover me with earth and then walk away, wiping your hands.’

‘What did your sister tell you?’

‘You were right,’ Leigh said eventually. ‘She was driven when you met her in Majorca. Not herself. I knew at the time. I vaguely recall that she was miserable, but she didn’t confide in me. I guess she had always been in the role of my protector so she felt that she had to protect me even from her own unhappiness. It turns out that...’ She sighed and ran her fingers through her short hair so that any attempt at neatness was instantly lost.

‘She and Roy had been trying for a family. Before they were married, even. Apparently. I knew nothing about all of this. The week before she had been to the doctor for the results of tests. It turned out that there was a problem. Roy couldn’t father a child. Jenny was devastated. Having children meant everything to her. In hospital she told me that she had even started buying pregnancy magazines in anticipation of the large family she and Roy were going to have.’

‘Are you trying to tell me that she went on holiday with the express purpose of mating with a suitable specimen? ’ His mouth twisted cruelly, and Leigh shot him a helpless look from under her lashes.

‘Are you hearing what I’m saying? She was desperately unhappy when she went on that one-week break. She needed to be away from Roy, needed to think, but the more she thought the more unhappy she became, and for the first time in her life she did something totally out of character for her. She had a one-night stand.

‘As luck would have it, she got pregnant and decided to keep Amy. She said that she and Roy discussed it. They went through a rough patch for a while but he loved her and in the end he accepted the circumstances. He loved Amy as though she were his own.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘Look, I’m sorry that man was you. I’m sorry that you’ve had all this foisted onto you. It must be a nightmare. It’s also a fact of life.’

‘Why do you think that I would believe a word of what you’re telling me?’ He looked at her coolly, assessingly, without a hint of emotion on his face.

‘Because it happens to be the truth.’

‘And now are you going to tell me why you’ve been overwhelmed by the sudden desire to fill me in?’

Temporary insanity, Leigh thought, staring at her coffee-cup, a moment of sheer madness. Frankly, you’re the last person in the world I would want to confront with this dilemma.

‘Because circumstances have changed, Mr Kendall,’ she said awkwardly.

‘In other words, you’re broke. I wondered when we would arrive at the financial angle. Never mind the ethics of letting me know of this mysterious daughter’s existence.’

He nodded imperceptibly in the direction of the door, and George wafted into the room to remove their cups and saucers. The sleeping man in the armchair was beginning to stir. Leigh could feel Nicholas drawing away from her, signalling the end of her allotted time, and she was filled with a sudden

panicky desperation. As far as he was concerned, it all boiled down to money in the end after all.

‘You have a daughter, Mr Kendall, like it or not You can pretend to yourself that I’m nothing more than a cheap gold-digger and you can walk out of here and never look back, but that won’t change the fact that you fathered a child. I hope that knowledge bums a hole in your conscience for the rest of your life.’ Damn him if he thought that he would simply walk away and forget every word she’d said. Things were crashing down around her. She had swallowed quite a mouthful of humble pie, coming to this man. She would make sure that he knew it.

‘Don’t moralise to me, Miss Walker.’

‘I’ll damn well do as I please, Mr Kendall.’ She leaned forward and urgency lent her a desperate sort of courage. ‘Roy and Jenny left behind them a cartload of debt. I’ve spent the past few months lying awake every night, worrying about where the money was going to come from. I’ve struggled in a job that barely pays, I’ve struggled to be the emotional support system my niece needs and I feel as though I’ve worn myself to the bone.

‘I’ve come to you, yes, for help because I have nowhere else to go. The bank has foreclosed on the house. I don’t care about me, but there’s Amy to consider. She’s a child. She’s your child!’ She was trembling and every nerve in her body felt stretched to breaking point. She no longer cared what sort of impression she made. If she had to crawl on all fours she would do it, provided it went some way to ensuring some kind of future for Amy.

It occurred to her that there might be someone in the room who had overheard her, and she looked around surreptitiously.

‘No need,’ he told her, with less hostility in his voice than she would have expected. ‘That’s the beauty of this place. No one pays the slightest bit of attention to other people’s conversations. Even if something sensitive was screamed out to all four corners you would still be guaranteed that it would remain within these walls.’ He paused. ‘Not that I give a jot what opinion the rest of the world has of me.’

‘That must give you a great sense of freedom,’ Leigh said, distracted as much by what he had said as by his unruffled response to her slightly raised voice.

He looked at her curiously, as though trying to weigh her up.

‘You’ll understand that I will want a blood test to establish paternity.’

‘So you do agree that it’s possible that I’m telling you the truth. That I’m not some avid little gold-digger who’s shown up on your doorstep eager to see what I can cream off you.’