And Mother Makes Three

Bron turned over the envelope, for a moment wondering if she’d misread the name, opened a letter addressed to someone else.

No. The handwriting might be that of a child but it was clear enough. Miss B Lawrence. Bronte Lawrence. So what on earth...? Then the penny dropped. ‘...a famous mother...saving the rainforest...’ The letter wasn’t meant for her, but for her sister. It was an easy enough mistake to make. It had happened fairly frequently in the days when they had both lived at home but it was a long time since anyone had written to her sister at this address.

But she still didn’t understand.

Brooke had never had a baby. This must be from some poor child who had no mother, who had seen Brooke on the television and had fallen under her spell. Well, didn’t everyone?

She read the letter again. ‘Dear Miss Lawrence.’ If it hadn’t been so desperately sad it would have made her smile—as if anyone would write to their mother in such a way. And the idea of her sister as a mother, now that was funny!

She read it again. For heaven’s sake, how could Brooke have had a child without any of them knowing? How could she have kept the fact hidden all these years, because it must have been years—the careful lettering had to have been the work of a child of eight or nine years old.

Yet even as she was discounting the possibility, her busy brain was doing the mental arithmetic, working out where her sister had been eight or nine years before. She would have been twenty, or twenty-one—and at university.

Bron read the address at the top of the letter. The Old Rectory, Bramhill Bay. Bramhill was on the south coast, just a few miles from her sister’s university. Then she shook her head. The whole idea was ridiculous. Impossible.

She went upstairs, changed out of her black dress and into a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, tied her hair back with an elastic band. Then she picked up the letter from the dressing table, where she had dropped it.

During her third year Brooke hadn’t come home after Easter even though their mother had been going through a crisis, had been asking for her. And Easter hadn’t been much fun for any of them. Brooke hadn’t been feeling well, had moped about complaining about feeling cold all the time, wrapped up in a huge baggy sweater, eating practically nothing.

Bron sat on the bed, her skin prickling with foreboding. Easter. After that she’d stayed away, pleaded fieldwork that she hadn’t been able to put off. Then after her finals she’d been offered a chance to take part in some project in Spain. Not that they’d had any postcards from her. She’d be too busy, Mother had said.

And she hadn’t been exactly tanned when she’d come back on a flying visit, high on her first-class honours and the offer of a dream job with a television company famous for its natural history programmes. She’d spent the next two months on some Pacific island and, naturally photogenic, had been an instant hit with viewers. After that the visits had been few and far between.

Hand to her mouth, she read the letter through again. It was polite, formal even, for a little girl at a primary school—formal, but just a little desperate too, Bron thought as the questions flooded through her head. Could Brooke have had a baby and put her up for adoption?

But then how would this little girl have found out who her real mother was? Surely you had to be eighteen before you could even begin to search the records?

But no, that couldn’t be right. It was there in the letter. ‘...You won’t have to see Daddy...’ Oh, God bless the child, it was enough to break your heart.

She stuffed the letter in her pocket and went downstairs, picked up the kettle, filled it and switched it on, then took out the letter again.

No, really. It had to be a mistake. It was impossible. Brooke wasn’t the kind of girl to get pregnant, after all. She was too focussed, too smart, too selfish. She’d known what she wanted and had set out to achieve it with a single-mindedness that had taken her to the top. She had known their mother was dying when she had left for Brazil, chasing the latest in a long line of television awards for her Endangered Earth series.

If she hadn’t wanted her precious car tucked up safely in the garage while she was away it was entirely possible that she would have made some excuse not to find the time to come home and say goodbye.

Yet if it was impossible why was it so difficult to simply brush away the idea?

She read the letter again, felt the tug at her heartstrings. Lucy. The child could be her niece...

No. She refused to believe it Or was she afraid to believe it? Afraid to believe that her sister could be that heartless? No. It had to be some little girl in a world of hurt latching onto a woman who had made caring for the planet her personal crusade. A little girl hoping that a woman with so much compassion would have some love left over to spare for her.

Fitz turned from the cooker. Lucy was drawing a picture, working at the kitchen table, her arm curled protectively about the paper. ‘Will you be long, sweetheart? Tea’s nearly ready.’

She tucked her pencils and the picture carefully away in her school bag then looked up, her bright blue eyes unusually shadowed, like someone with a secret.

And she did have a secret. How long had she known? When had she found her birth certificate, the photograph of Brooke Lawrence, all the things he had kept locked away at the back of his desk, at the back of his life?

He had been going to tell her. One day. He had fooled himself into believing that he would know when it was the right moment to sit her down and explain about her mother, tell her what had happened. But what time was ever right to tell a child that her mother hadn’t wanted her?

‘I’m done,’ she said with a quick smile. ‘Shall I lay the table?’

God, when she smiled she looked so like Brooke. He hadn’t anticipated that. The chestnut hair and blue eyes had fooled him into thinking that there was nothing of Brooke to see in the child. But that enchanting smile...

‘Please,’ he said quickly and looked away, making a performance of stirring the sauce. Why did it still get to him? Brooke Lawrence might have had a smile like an angel but that was as far as it went. Somewhere, deep inside him he’d always known that, even when he’d been pursuing her with a single-mindedness that had been nine parts testosterone to one part common sense.

How on earth was he to tell this child, this little girl that he loved so much that he sometimes thought his heart might break just looking at her, how was he to tell her that her mother had never wanted her, had handed her over to him and walked away without a backward glance the day after she was born?

He had never believed she would do it. He had always believed that once her baby was lying in her arms she would love her.

No. He could never tell Lucy how it had been. But Claire Graham was right—he would have to tell her something, as much of the truth as she could manage. When she was old enough she could confront Brooke herself, ask her why. Ask her how she could do that. Maybe she would be able to tell him, because he had never understood.

He should tell her now, before she fabricated a dozen fantasies about how it might be. He stared into the saucepan as if the contents might provide him with inspiration. Nothing. ‘Lucy—’

‘What are we having?’ She hooked a long, thin arm about his waist as he stood at the cooking range and, standing on tiptoe, peered into the saucepan.

‘Spaghetti carbonara.’

‘Oh, yummy. Can I have a Coke with it?’

He glanced down at her and his courage failed him. ‘If I can have a beer.’

‘Yeuch. Beer’s disgusting.’

‘Oh? And how do you know what beer tastes like?’ She giggled and his heart did its usual somersault. ‘Go on, then, get the drinks while I dish up.’

Later, he tried again. ‘Lucy, Miss Graham asked me to visit her today.’

A brief startled glanced then a casual, ‘Oh?’ Then, ‘Can I turn on the television?’ She was avoiding asking him why her head teacher had wanted to see him.

‘Leave it a minute.’

‘It’s something I want to see,’ she protested, unusually sulky. This was worse, far worse than he had ever imagined. Or maybe he had just refused to imagine this moment.

‘She told me...’ he began, then cleared his throat. ‘She told me...’ He stared at the top of her head as she suddenly became totally engrossed in her trainers. ‘She told me about sports day,’ he said, finally. ‘Did you forget, or didn’t you want me to come?’

She flung her head up. ‘No! You mustn’t! You mustn’t come!’

‘Why?’ Her reaction startled him but he tried not to show it, tried to hide his concern beneath a grin. ‘Are you going to come last in everything?’

For a moment he saw her struggle with a lie, with the temptation to tell him that she was going to be terrible. But maybe she realised he didn’t give a hoot where she came in the fifty metres, or whether she fell over her feet in the high jump, that he would come because he loved to see her having fun. ‘No. But if you come it will spoil—’ She stopped.

‘Spoil what, sweetheart?’

‘I...I...’ She reddened, swallowed. ‘I’ve done something that’s going to make you really angry. Daddy.’

He was almost afraid to ask, but he had to know, so he pulled her towards him, picked her up and settled her against his chest. ‘Let me decide about that. I don’t suppose it’s as bad as you think.’

The words were a long time coming and when they did come they were mumbled into his chest. ‘I—wrote—to—my...’ His heart seemed to stop beating during an endless pause.