The Secret Mother

Then she had been young and fresh and curvaceous. Now she was old, if not in years at least in experience, and thin to the point of gauntness, her glow extinguished.

No, he wouldn’t recognise her. After several sessions of plastic surgery, it was doubtful if her own mother would have known her.

But it was a risk she couldn’t afford to take. She could still see his expression, the way he’d looked at her with such contempt and condemnation.

Still the longing to see him again, the need to see his child, was like a physical pain.

No. No! She couldn’t do it. Such a step would be utter madness. It would tear open all the old wounds and destroy what little peace of mind she had managed to find.

But if she got the post as nanny it would be the answer to all her prayers.

Fifth Avenue, on this cold, bright morning, was teeming with both traffic and pedestrians, its glittering shops and gilded window displays rivalling the sunshine.

The sidewalks were clear of snow, except where it had been piled along the edges in dirty banks, but Central Park looked like a winter wonderland, and there was skating on the pond and at the Rockefeller ice rink.

The Baltimore building, she discovered, overlooked the park. Standing in its marble-floored foyer, beneath a magnificent chandelier, Caroline admitted that she’d been insane to come. She was behaving like an utter fool. Yet, lured by the chance to achieve her heart’s desire, she had been unable to help herself.

Following a virtually sleepless night, that morning, after she had given the twins their breakfast, she had dialled the number Lois Amesbury had written down and waited with a wildly beating heart to hear Matthew’s voice.

It had been something of an anticlimax when the call had been answered by a woman with an Irish brogue, who’d identified herself as Mr Carran’s housekeeper.

Caroline had stated her business, and after a minute or so the housekeeper had returned to say cheerfully, ‘Mr Carran will be pleased to see you at nine-thirty, Miss Smith. He said to take a cab, and he will reimburse you.’

Hoping that the exercise would calm her, and with time to spare, Caroline had paid off the cab some blocks away, and walked down Fifth Avenue.

Now it was almost nine-thirty and, moving towards the bank of elevators on the far side of the foyer, she was forced to admit that the strategy had failed. Her stomach was churning and she felt almost sick with nerves as she pressed the button for the penthouse suite on the sixty-fifth floor.

As the high-speed elevator carried her smoothly upwards she took a pair of heavy, dark-rimmed spectacles from her bag and put them on.

Though they were no longer necessary to mask the scar that had run across the bridge of her nose and above one eye, she still preferred to wear them. They were something to hide behind. And knowing the tinted lenses altered the colour of her eyes, changing them from a light, clear aquamarine to a deeper cloudy blue, now provided an added crumb of much needed confidence.

The buxom, middle-aged housekeeper opened the door to Caroline’s ring, and hung her coat on the mirrored hallstand.

‘Mr Carran is waiting for you in his study,’ she said, her smile approving of the newcomer’s neat bun, the plain woollen dress and simple calf-length boots. ‘It’s the door there, on the left.’

Crossing the large, luxuriously carpeted hall on legs that shook, Caroline knocked and waited.

‘Come in.’ After almost four years, that decisive, low-pitched voice was heartbreakingly familiar.

She swallowed hard, and her palm, damp with cold perspiration, slipped on the doorknob, making her fumble, before the door opened into a book-lined study.

Matthew Carran was sitting behind a polished desk, a slim gold pen in his hand and a sheaf of papers in front of him. As though impatient of the business suit he was wearing, he had discarded his jacket and loosened his tie. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, exposing lean, muscular arms, sprinkled with dark hair.

At her entrance he rose to his feet and stood stock-still, neither moving nor speaking, while his eyes travelled slowly over her.

He seemed taller, his shoulders beneath the pinstriped shirt even broader than she remembered, but his tough, hard-boned face, the peat-dark hair and handsome green-gold eyes were the same.

Though she had thought herself prepared, a flood of emotion swept over her, sending her mind reeling. The book-lined room began to whirl hideously, and the faintness she’d felt the previous evening returned, threatening to engulf her.

Head bent, she bit her soft inner lip savagely, focusing her attention on the pain, refusing to be dragged under.

‘Are you all right?’ he demanded.

‘Yes...’ Lifting her head, she swallowed, tasting the slight saltiness of blood. ‘Quite all right, thank you.’

‘Perhaps you’d like to sit down?’

When, thankfully, she sank onto the chair placed opposite his, he resumed his own seat and remarked with what sounded like genuine concern, ‘You’re rather pale. Have you been unwell?’

‘No.’ It was the truth, and she left it at that.

‘Have you had much time off while working for Mrs Amesbury?’

‘It was agreed that I should have one day a week and every alternate weekend—plus the odd evening, if and when I wanted it.’

But she had rarely taken advantage of the concessions.

‘I meant for illness and suchlike.’

‘None. I’m perfectly fit and healthy.’ Now.

He studied the delicate oval of her face for a moment, then gave a slight shrug before saying, ‘If you are contemplating working for me we need to get to know each other, so can I ask you to begin by telling me about yourself?’

Before she could comply, he added, ‘You have an attractive voice, but you sound more English than American.’

Caroline stiffened. She had given no thought to her voice or her accent.

As she hesitated he asked a trifle impatiently, ‘Well, are you English?’

‘I was born in London, but I have dual nationality.’

‘Tell me about your parents.’

She glanced at him in surprise.

‘A person’s background can be relevant.’

He’d known nothing of her background previously, so it couldn’t do any harm.

‘My father, a native New Yorker, was a writer and journalist. He was working in London when he met and teamed up with my mother, who was a newspaper photographer. They got married and I was born a year later. We lived in London until I was fifteen, then we moved to New York.’

‘You’re an only child?’

‘Yes. Having no brothers or sisters is my one regret.’

‘So you had a happy childhood?’

‘Very. It was slightly bohemian, I suppose. But I always felt well loved and cared for.’