The Baby Gambit

by Anne Mather

CHAPTER ELEVEN

  IT WAS late in the evening when Grace got back to Brighton, and by then she was utterly exhausted. It had been an exhausting day, not just physically but mentally, and all she wanted to do was fall into bed and find a total escape in oblivion.

  Running away had been an escape of sorts, of course, but the physical removal of herself from the nightmare events in Italy just didn’t cut it. She was still there in spirit, and she thought she would never forget the look on Matteo’s face when she told him she was leaving.

  Not that he had had much chance to express his real feelings, whatever they might be. Apart from the fact that he had still seemed to be dazed by Julia’s revelation, Julia herself had made sure that they were never left alone together.

  Soon after Julia’s announcement, the marchesa had retired to her own apartments, and Grace could only imagine the effect this news might have on the old lady. She had never struck Grace as being frail until that morning, but when one of the footmen had assisted her out of the room she had looked incredibly fragile.

  Which made her own role in the proceedings even more unforgivable. Whatever plans Matteo might have had for her, whether indeed he had had any real interest in her or not, didn’t matter now. She had conspired with Julia to deceive the whole di Falco family, and, whatever the outcome, she was not wanted there.

  That was when she had remembered the name of the taxi firm in Portofalco. She’d seen the cabs buzzing about the town with their distinctive logo flashing like a beacon on the roofs of the vehicles, and it had been such a relief to be able to do something for herself. She’d known Matteo would have arranged for the chauffeur to take her back to the apartment if she’d asked him, but she’d wanted nothing more to do with the grim-faced master of the villa. Besides, she’d preferred Julia not to know what she was planning until it was too late to do anything about it.

  It had been a simple matter to make the call from her room, and then she’d hung about there until a suitable interval had elapsed and she could be sure the taxi was well on its way.

  Her bags were already packed, so it had been a simple matter to transport them to the front of the villa. She’d seen no one but members of the marchesa’s staff as she’d traversed the now familiar corridors, but when she’d emerged onto the terrace she had not been so lucky. Matteo had been there, and Julia, and he’d stared blankly at the bags in her hands.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘I’m leaving.’ Grace had thought it was obvious. ‘I’ve—called a cab. It’ll be here soon.’

  ‘A cab!’

  Matteo had looked stunned, but Julia had had no such reservations. ‘It’s probably for the best,’ she’d declared, with a careless shrug. ‘Grace knows that we’ve got things to talk about, plans to make. Don’t embarrass her by making her feel any worse than she already does.’

  Grace didn’t know what Matteo might have had to say to that because the taxi had arrived at that moment, proving she had estimated its journey time with more accuracy than she’d shown about anything else.

  But he had insisted on carrying her bags down the terrace steps and stowing them in the taxi’s boot for her. ‘This isn’t a good idea,’ he’d said finally, when she would have brushed past him to get into the back of the cab. ‘Grace, I mean it. This isn’t the end.’

  ‘It is for me,’ Grace had mumbled, not trusting herself to look at him, and, as if sensing a conspiracy, Julia had come down the steps to join them.

  ‘I’ll see you back at the apartment,’ she’d said, for all the world as if nothing momentous had occurred, and Grace hadn’t disillusioned her. But when she’d looked back at them, standing at the foot of the steps as the taxi drove away, she’d wanted to weep at the devastation she’d seen in Matteo’s face.

  She’d asked the taxi to wait while she collected the rest of her belongings from the apartment in Portofalco, somehow managing to make Benito understand that she wouldn’t be coming back. The old caretaker had looked positively disappointed, too, when she’d driven away, and she’d known that whatever happened in the future she would never forget the people she’d met here.

  She was lucky enough to get a seat on a flight leaving Pisa in the late afternoon, and she’d arrived at Heathrow in the early evening with an odd feeling of disorientation. It was familiar, yet not familiar somehow, and she’d realised it wasn’t the airport that had changed, it was herself.

  She’d had to take the tube into London to make a connection to Brighton, and by the time she’d suffered a diversion, due to a problem with the signalling system, Grace was in no mood to be sociable. She was looking forward to getting home and going straight to bed. Her mother, she knew, generally retired early, and she was hoping to avoid any explanations until the morning. She would have to tell her mother what had happened, of course, but not tonight.

  However, when the taxi dropped her outside her mother’s modest semi in Islington Crescent, she saw at once that there were lights burning in several windows, upstairs and down, and that her brother-in-law’s Mondeo was parked in the driveway.

  Her heart skipped a beat. Surely nothing had happened to her mother? she fretted, hauling her bags up the path to the front door and fumbling for her key. No. She struggled to get the key in the lock as she assured herself that they would have let her know if anything was wrong, and then felt another surge of anxiety at the realisation that she hadn’t been available for anyone to get in touch with all today.

  Her key turned, but the door didn’t open, and she uttered a minor expletive as she took it out and examined it for identification purposes. But no, it was the right key, and she realized that someone must have slipped the bolt, too. She was about to try again, when the door was suddenly opened to her, and her nine-year-old niece gazed delightedly up at her.

  ‘Aunty Grace!’ she exclaimed. ‘What are you doing here? I thought you were on holiday in Italy.’

  Grace forced a smile. ‘I was,’ she said, looking over Sharon’s head to where her sister was standing in the dining-room doorway. ‘What’s going on? Mum’s not—’

  ‘Nanna’s fine,’ said Sharon at once, before her mother could reply. ‘We’ve come to live with her.’

  ‘What?’

  Grace couldn’t prevent the astonished exclamation, and her sister gave her daughter an impatient look. ‘Go into the living room and see if Daddy wants any more coffee,’ she directed Sharon shortly. ‘Hurry up, now. I want to talk to Aunty Grace.’

  Grace bet she did. Blinking a little in the hall light, she dragged her suitcase over the threshold, and, closing the front door, leaned back against it. ‘I asked, what’s going on?’

  ‘I know that.’ Pauline folded her arms rather protectively across her midriff. Unlike her sister, she was dark and rather sallow-complexioned, and it had pleased her no end when she’d beaten Grace to the altar. ‘I could ask you the same thing.’

  ‘Yes. Well...’ Grace didn’t want to get into that; not yet. ‘We’ll come to me in a minute. What did Sharon mean about you moving in?’

  Pauline sighed. ‘She shouldn’t have said anything. Nothing’s been decided yet. But I can’t deny that we—that is, Mum and Giles and I—have been discussing it.’

  Grace shook her head. She was beginning to feel the way Alice must have felt when she fell down the rabbit hole. Nothing seemed to make sense any more.

  ‘But why?’ she asked, feeling dazed. ‘I was only planning on being away for a couple of weeks.’

  ‘Oh, I know that,’ said Pauline airily, ‘but you’ve always said how difficult it was for you holding down two jobs at the same time.’

  ‘I haven’t—’

  ‘Well, Mum has, then. She’s always saying how busy you always are. Too busy to baby-sit, even, if you remember?’

  Grace blinked. This couldn’t all have come about because she’d refused to baby-sit the last time Pauline asked her, could it?

  ‘All the same...’

  ‘Look, Grace—’ Pauline gestured towards
the living room, where they could hear the television playing at full blast ‘—go and sit down. I’ll bring you a cup of tea. Then we can talk about things in comfort.’

  Grace didn’t move. ‘Where’s Mum?’

  ‘Where she always is at this hour of the evening,’ replied Pauline, with a sniff. ‘She’s in bed, of course. But if you go up to see her, don’t wake Hannah, will you? I’ve just got her off.’

  Hannah was Pauline’s younger child. An afterthought, Mrs Horton called her, and it was true there were seven years between Sharon and her baby sister.

  Grace endeavoured not to reveal her own feelings at this news and, picking up her case again, she started up the stairs. Perhaps her mother would be able to explain why, just over a week after she’d left England, her sister and her family had decided to take up residence in the family home.

  Mrs Horton looked up from her book in some surprise when her eldest daughter let herself into her bedroom. ‘Grace,’ she said, and Grace was relieved to see that at least her mother had the decency to look a little guilty. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I live here,’ said Grace shortly, and then, guessing this hadn’t been her mother’s idea, she sank down wearily onto the side of the bed. ‘So—’ she put their other problems aside for the moment ‘—how are you?’

  ‘Oh—not too bad.’ Mrs Horton managed a faint smile. ‘I manage. How about you? You’re looking a little better, I must say.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Grace was amazed that that was true. ‘I’m okay. Change of plans, that’s all.’

  Mrs Horton shook her head. ‘You should have let us know.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ Grace was sardonic. ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘Well—’

  ‘No—’ Grace reached out and clasped one of her mother’s hands, stroking the swollen knuckles with genuine contrition. ‘That’s just an expression. I didn’t mean it as it sounded.’

  ‘Nevertheless, you deserve to know,’ declared Mrs Horton, gazing at her eldest daughter with troubled eyes. ‘It’s Giles, you see. He’s lost his job—again.’

  Grace groaned. ‘Not again.’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’ Her mother sighed. ‘There was some money missing from the petty cash, you see, and although he swears it was nothing to do with him someone saw him at the race track last week, and so—’

  She broke off but Grace understood only too well. Her brother-in-law was an inveterate gambler, and it wasn’t the first time her mother had had to use what little money her husband had left her to bail him out.

  ‘But why did Sharon say they were moving in here?’ she asked gently. ‘Is that your decision?’

  ‘Well, it does seem a possible solution,’ agreed Mrs Horton reluctantly. ‘There’s no way Pauline can continue to pay the mortgage on their house with no money coming in.’

  ‘But he’ll get another job, won’t he?’

  ‘I hope so. He certainly seems to have learnt his lesson this time. I suppose it depends what happens when the case goes to court,’ said Mrs Horton, looking down at their clasped hands, and Grace groaned.

  ‘It’s not going to court, surely?’

  ‘Well, it might,’ admitted her mother unhappily. ‘And until then I couldn’t let those two children go without, could I?’

  ‘No.’ Grace conceded the point. She knew her mother thought the world of her grandchildren, and she could hardly blame her because she was doing what she thought was best for all of them. ‘So,’ she added softly, ‘where does that leave me?’

  ‘That’s up to you,’ said Mrs Horton at once. ‘This is your home, and if you want to stay here, then of course you must. But—’ she hesitated ‘—it hasn’t escaped my notice that one of the reasons you were so susceptible to that illness you had was because you’ve been trying to do too much. Travelling up and down to London every day, working at the museum, serving part-time behind the bar at the Royal Oak, trying to keep everybody happy—it’s too much.’

  Grace looked doubtful. ‘So what’s your solution?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know...’ Mrs Horton looked embarrassed now. ‘I can’t make your decisions for you, Grace. But it seems to me you were a long way happier when you had your own place in town.’

  Grace expelled an unsteady breath. She’d known where this was heading, of course, from the minute Sharon had blurted the news that she and her parents had moved in. The ironic thing was, before she’d gone away, she’d have probably welcomed the idea. Now, however, all she wanted to do was bury herself in the bosom of her family. She’d even been considering giving up her job at the museum and trying to find something suitable nearer home, but it appeared she wasn’t going to be given the opportunity. There was no way she could live here with Pauline and her family, and they both knew it. For one thing, she and Giles had never hit it off, and the knowledge that he’d been lying to her sister yet again could only sour the situation even more.

  ‘Oh, Grace—’

  Her mother was looking really worried now, and Grace knew she couldn’t allow her to know what she was thinking. ‘You could be right,’ she said, with determined brightness. ‘Yes, I think it might prove advantageous all round.’

  After all, she thought, Pauline loved their mother too. Why did she always think she was the only support her mother had?

  ‘Are you sure?’ Mrs Horton wasn’t yet convinced. Then another thought occurred to her. ‘You still haven’t told me what you’re doing home. Is Julia all right?’

  Grace knew a hysterical desire to laugh. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘Julia’s all right.’ But she couldn’t bring herself to tell her mother about the baby. ‘I just—got bored, that’s all. There’s not a lot to do in Portofalco.’

  * * *

  Two weeks later, Grace moved into a rented apartment in St John’s Wood.

  Despite her initial misgivings, the move had proved beneficial in the end. It had given her something to do, something to think about, other than her emotional problems. And, although her world had still not yet settled back onto its axis, finding the apartment and furnishing it had provided her with an alternative to the chaos of her thoughts.

  The curator at the museum had been pleased to see her, too, although he had insisted she give herself another couple of weeks before returning to work.

  ‘We don’t want you having a relapse because you haven’t given yourself time to recover, do we?’ he asked, his curiously youthful features mirroring a very genuine concern. And, even though Grace knew he had to be at least sixty, as usual he behaved as if she was much older than himself.

  And, goodness knew, she felt it, she mused as the prospect of spending another two weeks browsing round the shops or visiting her mother filled her with apprehension. She had hoped that getting back to work would restore her stability, but now it seemed she was to suffer her anguish a little longer.

  In Brighton, Pauline and Giles had now settled into the house in Islington Crescent, and Pauline was even talking of getting a job herself if she could get Hannah into a crèche. Even Giles had thanked Grace for moving out. Although he’d spoiled it afterwards by suggesting that living with her mother must have cramped her style.

  When would people—men, in particular—ever get it into their heads that she wanted more out of life than promiscuous sex? Grace wondered wearily. It was as if she went around with a sign on her head. All she’d ever wanted was someone to love her for herself.

  She hadn’t heard a word from Julia since her return, but that hadn’t surprised her. If she knew Julia, she’d be too busy preparing for her coming nuptials to care what had happened to her erstwhile friend. Although she didn’t know all the details, she must have guessed what had been going on between Grace and Matteo, and she had every right to feel aggrieved that Grace should have betrayed her in that way.

  As far as Matteo was concerned, Grace had to concede that Julia did have a different agenda. Despite the way he’d deceived her, she was evidently prepared to forgive him to gain her own ends. But Grace cou
ldn’t help wondering if love had ever come into it, for either of them. Matteo had insisted it hadn’t, and she was very much afraid he was right.

  Not that that excused his behaviour, she told herself doggedly. However tempted she might be to feel sorry for him, she mustn’t forget he’d brought it on himself. But oh—her lips trembled—she couldn’t forget how he’d made her feel. After everything that had happened, she was still a sucker for love...

  * * *

  She spent the Sunday before she was due to start back at the museum sorting out some of the boxes she’d brought up from Brighton the previous day. They were full of books and papers she’d been storing since her university days, and she’d been promising herself that she’d get rid of them for ages.

  She wasted some time reading over old essays she’d written and pulling faces at faded photographs that revealed what an innocent she’d been then. It was almost painful to remember the dreams she’d had when she was eighteen, when the whole of her life had seemed to be ahead of her. Now, she felt as if the better part of it was behind her, and the emotional torment she’d suffered these past weeks had seemed to prove it.

  She came across a picture of herself and Julia as students, and although she was tempted to consign it to the pile of papers she was throwing out she didn’t. How young they looked, she thought, feeling a sudden wave of nostalgia. She sighed. Poor Julia. It wasn’t her fault that Grace had fallen in love with the man she wanted to marry. But what chance of happiness would she have with a man like Matteo di Falco? Marriage had never been on his agenda, and would his wealth really make up for what she was giving up?

  It wasn’t something Grace wanted to think about, and, stowing the photograph in the bottom of the box that contained the things she was going to keep, she picked it up and carried it into the bedroom.

  One of the disadvantages of the small apartment was its lack of cupboard space, and she was standing with her hands on her hips, studying the possibility of stowing boxes in the wardrobe, when the doorbell rang.

  She sighed. Now who was that? As far as she was aware, only the members of her own family knew this address, except Mr Seton, of course, and he was unlikely to spread it around. No. The most likely solution was that it was Karen and her husband come to view her new home. Ever since Pauline and her husband had moved back into their mother’s house, Karen had taken every opportunity to grumble about her, but Grace had so far avoided getting involved in family politics. If Karen resented the fact that she and her family were stuck in a small town house while Pauline’s children had the run of Islington Crescent, that was her problem. Grace didn’t have an opinion.