The Unmarried Husband

‘It’s irrelevant, since Lucy isn’t pregnant.’

‘Why don’t you answer my question?’ He leant forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and subjected her to intense, cool scrutiny. ‘I’m interested in your answer.’

‘I have no idea.’

‘Maybe you would have suggested that I encourage my son to adopt the mantle of fatherhood at the age of seventeen? Marriage as soon as possible?’

‘It’s always preferable for a child to have both parents.’

‘And does yours? I take it that she doesn’t, since you’re not a “Mrs”.’

‘No, there’s just me.’

‘What happened?’ he asked, after a while, and Jessica looked away, feeling cornered but not quite knowing how to extricate herself from the situation.

‘There was never a potential husband, if you must know.’

He didn’t say anything, and she could well imagine what sort of sordid possibilities were going through his head.

‘I’m afraid it just didn’t work out quite the way that I’d imagined it.’

‘I see.’

‘Do you, Mr Newman?’

‘Shall I tell you what I see, Miss Hirst?’ He paused, though not long enough for her to reply, then he leaned forward slightly, and his voice when he spoke was grim. ‘I see an anxious young mother who’s desperate that her daughter doesn’t repeat the same mistakes that she made. That’s fair enough, but I really don’t think that you’ve looked at the whole picture, have you? You’ve somehow got it into your head that my son is to blame for your daughter’s behaviour, and I’d be interested in finding out how you arrived at that conclusion.’

The tables had been turned. She had hoped to surprise this man into some sort of favourable response, or at least shared sympathy. But sympathy didn’t appear high on his list of virtues, and every word he had just spoken was tantamount to an attack.

‘I’m not blaming you in any way,’ Jessica informed him, her face burning with anger. She took a deep breath. She was here, he wasn’t going to suddenly vanish like a bad dream, and she might just as well make the best of the situation. ‘You’re right: I’m worried about my daughter and I’m desperate enough to approach someone I’ve never laid eyes on in my life before.’ Fortunately. ‘I don’t know that your son is responsible for Lucy’s change of attitude…’

‘But you’re more than willing to jump to the conclusion…’

‘I’ve put two and two together!’

‘And come up with…what…Miss Hirst? Three? Five? Sixteen?’

‘Maybe!” Jessica exploded, keeping her voice down, though she would have loved to yell her head off. ‘But then again maybe not! I’m willing to take the chance because I can see my daughter going off the rails bit by bit, and I have no idea how to stop the downward trend!’ Her jaw ached from anger and frustration, and a refusal to allow tears to blur the issue.

‘Over the past few months she’s changed,’ Jessica continued in a calmer tone. ‘Become difficult. More and more parties, sneaking back into the house at all odd hours. Her schoolwork’s taken a back seat. It’s only a question of time before her grades start to suffer.’ She looked him straight in the eye. ‘Lucy doesn’t have the advantages of money to tide her through, Mr Newman. She has her brains, but her brains are nothing without her willingness to use them, and right now I’m very much afraid that she might decide not to.’

‘What did you have in mind when you came to see me, Miss Hirst?’ The coldness had given way to something else, although for the life of her she didn’t know what. His expressions, she was fast realising, were difficult to read. He could be thinking anything. But at least he seemed prepared to hear her out.

‘I thought perhaps that you could have a word with your son, Mr Newman. I’ve tried talking to Lucy on numerous occasions, but she switches off.’

‘And you think that that would achieve anything?’

‘It would achieve more than what’s being achieved at the moment, Mr Newman. Right now, I’m more or less living on a battlefield. Occasionally there’s a cease-fire, but it never lasts very long, and they seem to be getting increasingly shorter.’

‘You still haven’t told me why you think my son’s responsible. Surely your daughter has lots of friends? How do you know that she isn’t being led astray by someone else?’

‘I know all of my daughter’s friends.’

‘All of them?’

‘To the best of my knowledge. I mean, obviously I have no definite proof that your son is behind Lucy’s change.’ In a court of law, she thought, I’d already have lost the case. ‘I haven’t overheard him forcing her to rebel, I haven’t found letters from him encouraging sabotage. But his name’s been on her lips ever since she started…ever since…this…problem arose.’

‘You make my son sound like some sort of subversive force to be reckoned with.’ He laughed shortly, as though the notion was utterly ridiculous. As though, she thought suddenly, he was vaguely contemptuous of his son. ‘Have you met him?’

‘No, but…’

‘Then you should reserve judgement until you do, Miss Hirst. What, incidentally, do you think is going on?’

‘I honestly don’t know,’ Jessica admitted. ‘It’s just that your son seems to be very influential over my daughter’s life at the moment.’

‘Do you think they’re sleeping together?’ he asked flatly, and she threw him a long, resentful stare.

‘It’s a possibility, I suppose.’ Not one that she was willing to indulge in, but the truth had to be faced.

‘Would your daughter tell you if they were?’

‘I’m not sure. I’d like to think that she would, but I really just don’t know.’ It all sounded so vague. Impulse had made her take action, but these questions made her realise that what she felt was so instinctive and nebulous that she could hardly blame him if he refused to cooperate. Aside from which, he was a father, after all, and no one liked the implication that their child was a corrupting influence, least of all when the implication came from a perfect stranger.

‘Maybe,’ she suggested helpfully, ‘you could just tell Mark to back away a little, leave her to get on with her life…?’

‘He’s seventeen years old,’ he told her. ‘He’s hardly likely to relish me telling him what he can and can’t do.’

‘You’re his father!’

‘That doesn’t necessarily mean that he’ll bow his head and listen to a word I say to him,’ he informed her tersely. ‘You’re an intelligent enough woman.’ He made it sound as though he had his suspicions about that. ‘I’m sure you know precisely what I’m trying to say.’

‘That you won’t do a damn thing to help. That you’ll allow your son to ruin Lucy’s life.’

“‘Ruin”’s taking it a bit far, isn’t it?’

‘No, it is not!’ This time it was Jessica’s turn to sit forward, her hands tightly clenched. She had first-hand experience of what happened when your life suddenly veered off at a tangent and you were left to pick up the pieces. Mark and her daughter might or might not be sleeping together, and if they weren’t then she was going to make damn sure that they didn’t. Accidents happened, and accidents could change the whole course of your life.

‘Look,’ she said, in a more controlled voice, ‘all I’m asking you to do is have a chat with your son—tell him to wait until Lucy gets a little older if he wants to see her.’

‘Maybe send him off to a boarding school somewhere just to make sure?’

‘I could do without your sarcasm, Mr Newman.’

‘And how do you intend to control your own daughter? How do you know that if Mark obliges and disappears from the scene altogether she isn’t going to find another focus of attention?’

It was a sensible enough question, but Jessica still resented him asking it. She stared at him speechlessly, and he looked back without flinching.

‘Well?’ he asked silkily.