A Mother's Secret

by Minna Howard

  ‘How are you, Sass?’ He turned to face her, his hand on the side of his daughter’s cot, a plastic affair no more glamorous than a washing up bowl.

  ‘Better, not so sore, but I still feel shocked at the sudden birth,’ she said.

  ‘It must have been terrifying, and such a fright, her coming so soon. I… I’m sorry I didn’t give you more support when you told me she’d arrived. I was so afraid,’ he gulped, ‘I didn’t know what to do.’

  As if to protest, his daughter let out a cry making him jump. Saskia turned to her, scooped her out of her cot, and cuddled her close, soothing her with her voice.

  ‘She’s so tiny,’ he said reverently, putting out a tentative finger and touched her cheek. ‘She’s beautiful,’ he said in wonder. ‘I never thought… I’ve never seen such a small baby. Are you sure she’ll make it?’ His eyes beseeched her as if she had the power to safeguard their child from all disasters.

  ‘The doctors are pleased with her and think she’ll be able to go home for Christmas,’ she said, looking up at him and feeling a sudden lurch of sorrow. They should be together, a small family, just the three of them, but he had left her and there seemed to be no turning back.

  ‘It must have been so frightening, were you alone or with Verity when she started?’ he asked.

  There was no point in keeping Ivor’s kindness a secret; there was nothing between them anyway. Bethan was obviously back in his life. He’d told her she’d spent that night in his flat a while ago and last night she’d seen her again.

  She had just come back from the hospital when she heard the two of them come up the stairs behind her as she was unlocking her door. Ivor was carrying Bethan’s case.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, putting it down and stopping on the landing outside her door. ‘You remember Bethan, she’s staying over tonight as a bunch of us are flying out to France to ski early tomorrow.’

  ‘Good to see you again, Saskia. I hear you have a baby? Hope she’s doing well.’ Bethan smiled at her, and Saskia forced herself to smile back. She was so pretty, shining with health and no doubt brilliant on skis. It was not surprising that Ivor wanted to be with her again.

  She’d gone quickly into her flat after wishing them a good holiday and lain awake half the night imagining them making love, curled up together in his large double bed. She’d heard them leave at dawn for the airport, an empty feeling inside her.

  The small room in the hospital crammed the three of them close together. She was silent a moment thinking of Ivor and Bethan setting off to spend Christmas in the mountains together with their friends. Darren asked again about the birth of their daughter and she said, ‘You remember Ivor Nelson? Well, he’s often in a bar where I work, and when he knew I was looking for somewhere to live he told me of a flat in a huge house in Chelsea which a friend of his recently inherited.’

  Darren looked surprised. ‘Oh, I didn’t know that. I thought you lived at your father’s house.’

  ‘No,’ she sighed. ‘Nathan’s mother turned up. She’s quite difficult so I moved in with Ivor… in his spare room,’ she added quickly. ‘Then a flat came free in the same house and I’ve moved into that.’

  ‘I see.’ He looked troubled.

  ‘Well, you and I have broken up, haven’t we? And you’ve got this other person.’ She was not going to say Ivor was back with his old love. ‘Anyway—’ she held the baby out to him ‘—this is your daughter, and I hope you will help me support her. I lost one of my jobs in a bar, or rather I couldn’t do it just after the birth. I can take her to Annabel’s studio to make clothes and we’re doing rather well, though it will probably go quiet after Christmas. I have to watch my money to be able to pay the rent, let alone buy all the things she will need.’ She moved closer to him and put the baby into his arms, hovering close, afraid he might drop her.

  He held his daughter nervously, looking down at her in wonder. She opened her eyes and stared straight back at him. Saskia moved away and watched them. Darren had seemed indifferent, as if he had to do this to please her, but as he held his tiny daughter and she kept her eyes on him she could see the change come over him as he stared down at her.

  For a long moment neither of them spoke, then Darren said, almost in awe, ‘I never thought it would be like this… I wasn’t expecting…’ He tailed off and bent down and kissed his child’s tiny forehead.

  Saskia watched them her feelings mixed. She wanted him to love their daughter and be part of her life, but she also wanted to keep this child to herself, though she knew that was not right. She had been perfectly happy without a father, she told herself, but then she’d sometimes felt, as she grew up, that something or rather, someone was missing from her life.

  ‘What’s her name?’ He looked up. ‘I forgot to ask.’

  ‘She hasn’t got one yet,’ she confessed, ‘I can’t make up my mind. It was all such a shock and I’m still getting used to her. I’d like her to have my mother’s name but as a second name. I want her to have her own.’ She wondered if he’d want her to have his mother’s name, Gail. She couldn’t really remember his parents; she’d hardly known them.

  ‘No name?’ He was shocked. ‘Did you not think of one before she was born?’

  ‘No, I tried not to get too involved with it all, get on with my life. If you’d been around it would have been different,’ she said with feeling. ‘Besides, she came early, before I was ready for her.’

  He bit his lip, looking awkward. ‘We must think of a name at once. Or before I leave anyway.’

  ‘When are you going? Aren’t you staying with your parents for Christmas, after that shock with your father’s health? How is he?’

  He would not meet her eyes. ‘No, Dad will be fine. It wasn’t a bad one, more a warning than a serious attack – though he must take care, of course. But… well, I… we have plans to go to Jamaica for New Year,’ he said defiantly.

  She didn’t want to know, think of him with this other woman instead of being a family with her. She took their daughter from him saying she must settle her down to sleep.

  He reluctantly handed her over and helped tuck her into her cot. She clamped down her feelings of regret, of pain, that they would not bring up this child together. She must accept that the love they once had for each other had gone, drifted away while they were not nurturing it, though they would always be linked together because of this child.

  ‘Any names you like?’ he asked, his hand on the blanket over his child, gazing at her.

  ‘I vaguely thought Chloe or Jade,’ she said, ‘but I don’t know.’

  ‘What about Fleur?’ he said. ‘She’s perfect like a flower.’ He smiled that tender smile she’d loved so much. Did he smile at his new love like that?

  THIRTY-NINE

  It wasn’t as if she’d never done Christmas before, Verity grumbled to Nathan, but it always seemed to turn out to be a commotion. It should be easy: the menu was the same, though sometimes she included an exotic vegetable dish or rum butter as well as brandy butter, but even with those things, it didn’t need complicated cooking or obscure ingredients.

  Her mother used to put the vast turkey into the oven overnight and let it cook slowly for hours, but Verity found hers only took a couple of hours or so and could sit happily ‘resting’ until they were ready to eat, and it tasted good.

  The boys still begged for stockings and Toby, perhaps to amuse Saskia who’d just arrived to spend the holiday with them, was even collecting up some straw for the reindeer and saying that he’d leave a glass of sherry for Father Christmas, which Saskia found very funny.

  ‘I never did things like that,’ she said a little wistfully.

  ‘Didn’t Father Christmas come to your house then?’ Toby asked in surprise. He loved tradition and of course, presents from wherever they came from.

  ‘Not really, Mum didn’t believe in telling children things that weren’t true. I did have a stocking, well a sock really, until I was about seven,’ she explained.

  �
�It’s not a real lie, but a story, a sort of tradition.’ Toby said. The two of them were decorating the tree that stood in the living room. Marius was out, and Nathan was in his study upstairs. Verity was hovering around writing Christmas cards to put through the letter boxes of locals, drawing up the last shopping list and listening out for baby Fleur, half-hoping she’d wake so she could go to her.

  It was a great relief to them all that the baby was now strong enough to be allowed home. Verity was also delighted and relieved that Darren, though more by chance than intention, had turned up to meet his daughter and chosen her name with Saskia. It was also a relief that his family wanted to be part of Fleur’s life.

  She had left Darren and Saskia alone with their child that evening, giving them a chance to work out between them how they would care for their daughter.

  Seeing her leave, one of the nurses said, ‘I’m glad the father has turned up. Many don’t. Let’s hope they take good care of her.’

  Saskia told her later that Gail, Darren’s mother had insisted that he go and see his child. She was afraid to leave her husband after his heart attack to come with him, but both his parents, after getting over the shock of hearing about her existence, wanted to embrace her as a welcome part of their family.

  Darren was now quite besotted by his daughter. He’d never been that enamoured with babies, but then he hadn’t had much connection to them. Seeing his tiny child, so vulnerable and perfect, something in him blossomed and he wanted to be part of her life in far more ways than just helping Saskia with the expenses and having Fleur to stay some far-off time in the future.

  ‘So…’ Verity wondered how to put it. ‘Will he come back over here to help out?’

  ‘No, not just now. He has got this new, very well-paid job that he wouldn’t get here, but he’ll send money and come and visit often. He wants me to take her to stay with his parents. I… well, I hardly know them, but I do want her to have a family around her. I only really had Mum and then she died, though happily now I’ve found all of you, my new family.’ Saskia’s voice quivered. She took a deep breath and Verity squeezed her arm in comfort.

  Saskia went on, ‘So Fleur and I have you all here and Darren’s parents and his sister. It’s only right that she is surrounded by love, don’t you agree?’

  ‘Yes, I do. I’m glad Darren and his family are there for her. How often do you think Darren will see her?’ Verity wondered if he would come back to Saskia, want to be a family now their child was here, a living, growing being with her own charm and character.

  ‘We’ll see how it goes, but he wants news and photos of her on WhatsApp every week.’

  ‘Won’t be long before she’s running around.’ Verity wondered how Darren’s new lover would take to this event.

  Saskia had worried that Fleur would disrupt them all as she often cried during the night but to her surprise her presence changed the household in better ways that she could have hoped for.

  Having a baby in the house rejuvenated Nathan. It seemed to take him back to when they were younger and their sons were babies. ‘How alert she is! She’s so interested in everything and she loves those silver baubles!’ he exclaimed, watching as Fleur followed them with her eyes.

  ‘Yes, do you remember our first Christmas with Marius?’ Verity asked him. ‘He could stay quiet for ages just lying in his pram looking at the lights on the tree.’

  Later that night when they were in bed in the dark, he took her in his arms. ’I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I feel we’ve drifted apart, or anyway, I’ve been distant with you. I found it hard when Toby left for Nottingham and it seemed as if our childrearing years were over, coupled with the responsibility of that trouble in Singapore, and, indeed, finding out I had a daughter. I took it out on you, which was unfair. You’ve been good and kind taking her in. I don’t think I’d have done it if a child of yours suddenly arrived on the doorstep. You’ve been wonderful.’ He held her close. ‘I don’t deserve you.’

  Rubbish.’ She kissed him. ‘We’ve got through it and you have the daughter you wanted, and now we are grandparents,’ she said sleepily, a surge of relief going through her.

  For the first time in ages they made love tenderly and lovingly and both knew that though they had mislaid each other a little, now they were back together again.

  It was so special to have a new baby in the house again, Verity thought. The boys were enchanted with her, so tiny and yet seemingly to recognise them, watching them as they danced around her. She had won over Marius, and the boys even managed to persuade her to go out with them one evening, leaving Fleur in her grandparents’ care.

  Two days before Christmas, Delia rang. She had fallen out with whichever lover she had planned to go to France with.

  ‘He’s so selfish,’ she complained. ‘He’s planned everything he wants to do without discussing it with me. He’s asked another couple of women, old friends, he calls them,’ she added darkly. ‘He can’t pull the wool over my eyes, they are old lovers, and I don’t want to share the villa with them. I can come and stay with you after all.’ She finished as if she was offering them a treat.

  She was the last person Verity wanted in the circumstances. The boys were good at managing her but Saskia and the baby were another matter, even though Fleur was her great-grandchild – a fact Delia did not want to own, partly because she felt it aged her too much and partly because she didn’t want to believe that her beloved son could have got caught out this way.

  ‘Oh, well, we are quite a full house, Delia. You’ll find it very disorganised and noisy. Saskia is here with the baby, Fleur, your great-grandchild. You know what new babies are like, crying all night,’ she said knowing that Delia had had a nanny until her children were ‘civilised’ as she put it.

  ‘I’m sure there’s a little corner for me. I’ll only come for Christmas Eve and leave after Boxing Day. I won’t be in the way.’ She sounded a little cowed now and Verity felt sorry for her. It seemed if she didn’t come to them, she’d be alone for Christmas.

  She’d have to put the boys in together or put one on a camp bed in Nathan’s tiny study, but naturally, he would insist that she come; his mother couldn’t be alone for Christmas and on this she agreed. It was just another drama to deal with.

  ‘Fine, it’ll be lovely to see you, but again, I must warn you it will be quite noisy, and the baby can’t help not knowing what time it is and waking half the night,’ Verity said firmly.

  Nathan appeared in the kitchen, just after his mother had rung off, and she told him the new plan, knowing that he guessed how much she didn’t want Delia to come just now.

  He sighed. ‘She can’t be alone for Christmas. I’m sorry, darling, I know it’s a lot more work, but we’ll all muck in and we’ve masses of food and drink. Which room shall we put her in?’ He came over to hug her.

  ‘What happened? Boyfriend died, ran off with someone else.’ He attempted to joke.

  ‘Sort of, he insisted on taking two other women with him as well as her.’

  ‘Glutton for punishment then,’ he laughed.

  Toby and Saskia came in, Toby saying he was hungry. They heard the front door close and Marius joined them, laden down with carrier bags having done his Christmas shopping.

  ‘Delia is coming to stay, her plans have fallen through,’ Verity said. She saw the instant consternation on Saskia’s face, and added quickly, ‘Only for a few days, and she’ll love to see Fleur.’

  ‘Where will she sleep?’ Marius shot a look in his brother’s direction. The two of them got on well, but they did like their own space.

  ‘You two boys must go in together or one in my study, you decide between you,’ Nathan said.

  ‘But I’ve got my things all over the place and I haven’t wrapped my presents yet,’ Toby wailed, knowing that he would be the one to move out of his room.

  They heard the baby cry and Saskia ran out of the room to go to her.

  *

  Christmas day arrived. Father Christmas an
d his reindeers had eaten Toby’s offerings, presents had been opened and a huge and delicious meal consumed.

  To everyone’s surprise, Delia was quite fascinated by Fleur. ‘She looks so like you did at that age, Nathan,’ she said proudly.

  ‘Really? I can’t see it in the photos of me as a baby,’ Nathan answered. ‘Also, she’s so fine and feminine, I’m sure I didn’t look like that.’

  Saskia who’d seemed to be on edge whenever Delia came into the room, softened a little, perhaps realising that Delia was doing her best to build bridges between them.

  It was typical of Delia to complain about things she disapproved of and then when they happened, often claim them as if they were her idea. Now Delia, having accepted that Saskia was her son’s daughter and her granddaughter, was turning it to her advantage. Fleur would surely have inherited all Nathan’s good points and anything not up to scratch would come entirely from Saskia’s mother’s side.

  Knowing that this was Saskia’s first Christmas without her mother, Verity took Nathan aside to remind him and he took her, just the two of them, on a quiet walk to reminisce and chat about her mother.

  They walked together over Putney Bridge going down the tow path, beside the river. It was high tide, the water lapping over the edge on to the road. ‘I wish I’d seen her again,’ Nathan said, ‘and that she’d told me about you earlier, but I’m glad we’ve found each other.’ He squeezed her arm, which she’d linked with his. ‘We’ll keep her memory between us. I can see a likeness of her in Fleur, so a part of her will always be with us.’

  On Christmas night, as they all slumped round after a day of feasting, Saskia said she’d go home the next day. ‘Get Fleur settled in. After all she came straight here from the hospital and it’s time she lived in her new home,’ she said. ‘It’s been great you all having us here over Christmas, but I must get back. Get her organised before I start work with Annabel again.’