And Mother Makes Three

She glanced at the telephone. She would have to call him, explain. Later. It would take him a couple of hours to get home. Then she swallowed, hard. How on earth could she call a man and tell him that he’d made a mistake like that?

On an answering machine, that was how. Right now. She would just leave a message explaining about the mistake, explaining that Brooke was abroad. That would avoid what could only be an embarrassing conversation for both of them. She would do it now and then she could put it out of her mind.

She dialled the number, waited for the tone. ‘Mr Fitzpatrick,’ she began firmly. ‘Fitz—’ She stopped. Suppose someone else listened to the message? Suppose Lucy came in from school and switched it on? She had assumed he would be going straight back, but he might not. She hung up, unwilling to risk it. She would have to do it face to face. Or rather ear to ear. She was twenty-seven years old, a grown woman. She could handle it. In the meantime she went in search of her secateurs. Cutting back the spring-flowering shrubs would help to take her mind off Mr James Fitzpatrick’s hot mouth. Maybe.

The day dragged interminably, the clock seemed on a go-slow. The last thing in the world she wanted to do was to call James Fitzpatrick and make him listen while she explained that he had kissed her by mistake. Yet in some secret part of her she knew that she was just like a child counting down the endless hours of Christmas Eve, waiting to hear his voice...

Seven o‘clock came. Lucy’s bathtime? Time for homework? What had she and Brooke done at seven o’clock when their father was alive? Played, talked, laughed. Laughed a lot. Did Lucy and Fitz laugh together?

Eight o‘clock. Eight o’clock had been bedtime for them. Indisputable. They’d been able to read, they’d been able to listen to the radio for half an hour, but they’d had to be in bed by eight. Old-fashioned rules. Nine o‘clock, she decided. She would be safe at nine o’clock.

At a quarter to nine o’clock she could wait no longer. She picked up the telephone and dialled the number. Mr Fitzpatrick? she’d rehearsed the casual tone. My name is Bronte Lawrence. We met this morning when you mistook me for my sister... A little gentle laughter. No, no need to apologise, I quite understand... She hadn’t got beyond that part. At that point she was hoping he would be too busy grovelling to recall how eagerly she had kissed him back.

‘Bramhill six five three seven four nine.’ A child’s careful voice enunciated the numbers perfectly. ‘Lucy Fitzpatrick speaking.’

‘Lucy...’ Bron’s hand flew to her throat as the word escaped her lips. She sounded so grown up...

‘Mummy?’ The word was an essay in uncertainty, hope, longing. ‘Mummy? It is you, isn’t it?’ Mummy. The word seemed to echo over and over in her head so that she didn’t know if it was Lucy shouting it or just in her imagination, but as Lucy’s careful telephone answering voice disintegrated into childish excitement Bron froze, unable to answer. In her uncontrollable eagerness to speak to James Fitzpatrick, she had done precisely what she had wanted to avoid. ‘Daddy said you wouldn’t get my letter, that you must have moved but I prayed...’

‘Who is it, Lucy?’ James Fitzpatrick’s voice reached her, distantly.

‘It’s my mummy. My mummy! Daddy, she’s rung, she’s going to come. I told you she would—’

Then the mouthpiece was covered so that there was only a distant murmur. Then his voice in her ear. ‘Brooke?’ She didn’t answer. She couldn’t. This was all her fault. She should have made him listen this morning. She should have rung straight away, left a number for him to call back. Suddenly all the things she should have done seemed so obvious, so simple. Why hadn’t she seen? Because she hadn’t wanted to? ‘Brooke, is that you?’ His voice was sharper. How could she have raised the child’s hopes like that when she could only dash them...? ‘Brooke!’

She came to with a start. ‘Fitz, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—’

He wasn’t interested in apologies. ‘What the devil do you think you’re doing, ringing here when Lucy might answer the phone?’ He practically hissed the words into the phone.

‘She should have been in bed,’ she hissed back.

‘Motherly advice? From you?’

‘No... I’m sorry... Look, I had to ring. I had to tell you—’

‘What? Tell me what? After what you’ve just done, the only thing I’m prepared to hear right now is that you’ll be here on Friday.’

Oh, Brooke! How could you get me into a situation like this? What on earth am I going to do? And as clearly as if her sister were speaking in her ear she heard Brooke laughing at her dilemma, saying, Do, darling? Why, do whatever you want. If you’re so concerned about Lucy, why don’t you go and play happy families for an afternoon? They already think you’re me and you always were so much better at the caring stuff...

‘Well?’ he demanded. ‘What am I to tell Lucy?’

They already think you’re me. ‘Yes.’ She heard her voice as if at a great distance. ‘Tell her I’ll be there. I—um—I need directions.’

‘I’ll fetch you.’

‘No.’ Her brain was back-pedalling as fast as it would go. ‘No, don’t do that.’ An afternoon pretending to be her sister just to make a little girl happy would be difficult enough; a couple of hours in a car with James Fitzpatrick would be impossible.

‘It’s no trouble.’

Then she realised why he was offering, more than offering—insisting. ‘You don’t have to worry that I’ll let Lucy down.’

‘Don’t I?’ The words sounded as if they had been wrenched from him. She didn’t answer because her brain was yelling in her ear: Tell him! Tell him, now! Before it’s too late. But it was already too late. Lucy had heard her, thought she was Brooke. No explanation, a thousand times ‘I’m sorry for raising your hopes’ could ever make up for that disappointment. ‘Have you got a pen there?’

‘What?’

‘A pen. For the directions.’

‘Oh, yes... No, wait,’ she said as she grabbed for a pen and it skittered from her grasp, slid across the floor. ‘I’ve dropped it.’ He waited patiently while she retrieved it and then, assuming she knew where Bramhill Parva was, explained how to find the school.

‘Have you got that?’ Got it? She looked at the notepad with its incoherent scribble, but she didn’t ask him to explain it again, certain if she did he would insist on fetching her, wouldn’t take no for an answer. She’d already had a firsthand example of his inability to listen.

‘Yes, yes. I’ll find it.’

Then, as if talking to her was putting too great a strain on his good nature to be sustained, he said, ‘I’ll fetch Lucy to say goodnight.’

‘Mummy? Are you really coming on Friday? Can I tell Miss Graham? Can I tell Josie?’

Still stunned by the sudden turn of events, Bron took in a deep breath. ‘I’ll be there, Lucy, you can tell who you like. Goodnight, darling, sleep tight.’

The nightly ritual of her own childhood. Goodnight. Sleep tight. Watch the bugs don’t bite. Oh, dear God. What on earth had she promised? More to the point, how on earth was she going to carry it through?

CHAPTER THREE

QUEEN of the Amazon chic. Easier said than done, Bron thought the following morning as she regarded the arid desert of her wardrobe. It didn’t need a critic to tell Bron that her wardrobe was short on any kind of chic. Her whole life was short of the kind of glamour that came as second nature to Brooke.

Her hair, for instance. She fluffed it up, more in hope than expectation. It flopped right down again. Brooke might get away with that when she was chatting up orang-utangs in the steam of a Borneo forest, but when in London she visited her Knightsbridge hairdresser as often as necessary to keep the image diamond-bright.

Bron turned from the mirror to the framed photograph of her sister at an awards ceremony, picked it up to looked more closely at the fashionable jaw-length bob her sister had adopted—a bob with attitude was the way one magazine had described it. Actually, she looked more like a little girl who had forgotten to comb her hair, a cheeky, flirty little girl, an impression that was enhanced by the backless Ribeiro dress she was wearing. Nearly wearing. A dress that showed her tanned skin off to perfection, a dress that stopped a foot shy of her knees and showed her legs to perfection too. Not much cloth to show for so much money... but what there was certainly did the trick.

Their mother had tutted when she’d seen it—tutted, but smiled indulgently. Well maybe it was her time for a little self-indulgence, time to find out exactly what it was like to be her sister.

Hair first, then. And nails. She called the Knightsbridge hairdresser to enquire if they could fit Miss Lawrence in during the morning. They fell over themselves to help and when she arrived she was treated with the kind of deference that would have amused her if she could have relaxed sufficiently to enjoy it. She didn’t tell them that she was Brooke, they just assumed. Did she really look so like her sister?

They tutted over the condition of her hair, muttered about too much sun, cut it and cosseted it. Her nails were gentled into gleaming plum-dark ovals. Her skin was cleansed and toned and made up. Before her eyes she was transformed into her sister. But the likeness must have been there all along, it was just that people saw them differently.

The beauty salon expected Brooke and never considered the possibility that she might be someone else. Fitz had expected Brooke and that was who he had seen. It suddenly occurred to her that no one would question her. That if she kept her nerve getting away with it would be easy. All she needed now were some of her sister’s clothes.

She left the salon and hailed a taxi, directing the driver to her sister’s flat.

‘Could I have your autograph for my little girl, Miss Lawrence?’ he asked as he handed her a receipt for the fare without being asked. ‘She’s a real fan of yours. Says she wants to save the world when she grows up, just like you. Gives me hell, begging your pardon, when I spray the greenfly. Says I should leave them for the ladybirds.’