by Penny Jordan
Joss gave her a sheepish look.
'I know. I know...' he conceded. 'But I had to come. If I hadn't...I tried to persuade Jack that it wasn't a good idea, but he just wouldn't listen, and the mood he was in I was afraid he would just up and leave anyway. At least this way I was able to come with him and persuade him that we should come here to you. He didn't want to, and it took me ages to persuade him that you might be able to help...'
'To help with what?' Louise demanded, exasperated.
'He wants to find David...his father,' Joss told her simply.
There was a brief silence while brother and sister looked at one another, and then Louise picked up the bread knife and reached for the loaf, telling Joss quietly, 'I think you'd better tell me the whole story.'
Ten minutes later, when she and Joss were sitting opposite one another in the small sitting room, Joss biting appreciatively into the sandwiches she had just made, he told her with a grin, 'Do you know, you sounded just like Mum back there in the kitchen?'
He was growing up fast, Louise recognised as she studied his lanky frame. Once he filled out a bit more he would probably top Max's six-foot frame, and maybe even grow taller than the Chester cousins, the shortest of whom was a good six feet two.
'Mmm...maybe. But don't expect me to listen as indulgently to whatever piece of mischief the pair of you are up to as she would,' Louise warned him, adding, 'You're lucky I was here. I should have been at work. If I hadn't had to go back to bed this morning with a migraine...'
'Yes, it was lucky,' Joss agreed, happily munching on another sandwich. 'I was a bit worried about how I was going to persuade Jack to hang around if you weren't here. When we hitched a lift from the ferry terminal he was all for going as far as Spain before we stopped.'
'Spain?'
'Mmm... He said that Uncle David once sent Gramps a card from there. Jack saw it when he went round. It was on Gramps' desk, apparently, although he couldn't get a proper look at it, and he says that when he went back to try and read it properly it had gone.'
'To read it properly? He had no right to be even thinking of doing such a thing,' Louise told him severely, wisely forgetting all the times she had been guilty of attempting to read her school reports upside down on her father's desk.
'Uncle David is his father,' Joss pointed out with unanswerable logic.
'Yes. I know,' Louise agreed. She started to frown. What she had initially assumed was just some boyish prank was beginning to take on a much more ominous perspective. So far as she knew, Jack had been happy—very happy—to make his home with her parents. She couldn't remember ever having heard him mention his father, never mind expressing a desire to see him. Olivia, she knew, had very ambiguous feelings about both her "parents, and had once remarked to her that she found it was much, much easier to think charitably of them now that they were not a part of her day-to-day life.
'I know that Uncle David is Jack's father,' Louise repeated. 'What I don't understand is why Jack should have decided he needs to see him so urgently that the pair of you have to set out to do so without first discussing it with Mum and Dad. Has there been a problem at home—a row about something...bedrooms not being kept tidy, homework not being done, that kind of thing?' Louise asked, mentally casting her mind back to her own adolescence and the areas of contention between herself and her parents then that might have led to her taking the same kind of action. Although, to be fair, she couldn't actually remember ever having wanted to leave home.
'No, it's nothing like that.' Joss shook his head, his answer so immediate and so positive that Louise knew he was telling her the truth.
'Then what is it?' she asked him.
'Not what, but who...' Joss corrected her, explaining, 'It's Max. He was in a foul mood when he was home last time. I think he must have quarrelled with Maddy because I saw her crying in the kitchen. Max had wanted Dad to play golf with him, but Dad said he couldn't because he'd already promised to take Jack fishing. Max probably wanted to borrow money off him anyway—you know what he's like.'
'Go on,' Louise encouraged him when he paused to wolf down the last of the sandwiches. She would have to go out and buy some extra food. There was no way she had enough in her meagre store cupboards to fuel a pair of appetites like her brother's and her cousin's.
'Well, I don't know exactly what Max did say to Jack, but...' Joss pulled a face. 'All Jack would say was that Max had called him a cuckoo in the nest, unwanted by his own parents, and asked Jack if he had any idea how much his school fees were costing Dad. Not that it's—'
'He did what? Do the parents know about any of this?' Louise asked her brother acerbically.
Joss shook his head. 'No. I wanted to tell them but Jack wouldn't let me. I think he's a bit afraid that Max might be right and that—'
'Right? Of course he isn't right. Mum and Dad look on Jack as one of us,' Louise protested indignantly. 'They'd no more begrudge the cost of Jack's school fees than they would yours. Less...'
'No,, I know that. But you know how Max is about money…'
'Yes. I do know,' Louise agreed. It was an unfathomable mystery to her how she and the rest of her siblings, her cousins, could ever have come from the same gene pool as Max.
'I suppose one of the things that makes Max so horrid is that, deep down inside, he must know that no one likes him,' Joss suggested.
Louise gave him a surprised look.
'If only! If you're trying to drum up my sympathy for Max you're wasting your time—and putting the cart before the horse. The reason no one likes Max is because he is the way he is, not the other way around. Look at the way he treats poor Maddy—'
Louise broke off, wondering belatedly if her mother would approve of her discussing such a subject with her younger sibling. But Joss didn't look in the least disconcerted by her comment.
'Aunt Ruth says that Maddy is a bit like a sleeping beauty, and that she doesn't do anything because she hasn't woken up to her own true potential yet. Aunt Ruth says one day she will, and that when she does Max had better watch out,' Joss told her simply.
'Jack says that he doesn't want to be a burden on the parents any longer,' he added, 'and that he intends to find his father and make him repay Dad for everything that he's spent on him. And he says that if he can't then he'll have to forget about university and get a job so that he can earn some money to repay them himself...'
'Oh, Joss,' Louise protested emotionally. 'That's the last thing Dad or Mum would want him to do. Why on earth didn't he talk to them about this instead of...?'
'He said he couldn't because he knew that they would deny everything,' Joss told her.
'They would deny it because it simply isn't true.
They love him just as much as any of us,' Louise protested.
'I know that,' Joss agreed. 'But I don't think that Jack does. It must be hard for him, though, because in a way Max was right about one thing. Uncle David and Aunt Tania didn't really want him and Olivia... Not like Mum and Dad want us.'
Louise bowed her head, knowing that there was nothing she could say.
'Different people have different ways of loving,' she informed her brother gruffly. 'Just because Uncle David and Aunt Tania weren't as good at parenting as the folks, that doesn't mean that Olivia and Jack weren't loved and wanted.'
Joss looked steadily at her. 'Aunt Ruth says that having truly loving parents is like having a hundred fairy godmothers—only better!'
Louise gave her brother an old-fashioned look.
'All right, now I know why Jack is so determined to find his father—although how on earth he hopes to do so when Dad's tried without success I don't know. But what I don't fully understand is exactly what you are doing with him...'
'I couldn't let him go on his own,' he told her simply. 'Anything could have happened to him. So I thought if I could persuade him to stop off here with you, you could...'
'I could what?' Louise prompted, firmly ignoring the sharp tug of emotion she had felt as she listened
to him. Her brother had enough admiring fans already without her adding herself to the list.
'Well, I told Jack that you might be able to find something out for him...what with Brussels being the headquarters of the European Union and everything, but...'
'I understand what you're saying, Joss,' Louise agreed. 'But you do know, don't you, that Mum and Dad will have to be told where you are, and that they'll insist that the pair of you go straight back to school?'
'Yes, I know.'
Louise looked at him. She had a pretty shrewd suspicion that Joss had known exactly what would happen in stopping off to see her, and she suspected that he had deliberately manipulated events so that a full stop would be placed on Jack's expedition before it took them too far from home.
'You stay here with Jack,' she told him. 'I need to go out and do some shopping if I'm going to be able to feed you. When I come back I think a telephone call to home would be in order, don't you?'
Gareth paused in the foyer to the apartment block. He had had to call in to see Pam Carlisle earlier in the day, to check on a couple of points she had raised in the committee, and during the course of their conversation she had happened to mention that Louise had been struck down with a bad migraine. He would be the last person she would feel like seeing. He knew that, especially after this morning. But it hadn't been difficult getting her apartment number from her boss, though he had to admit he had felt a small stab of guilt over the way he had described himself to her as an old friend of the family.
'Oh, really? Louise never said,' she had responded, obviously rather puzzled.
'It probably slipped her mind,' Gareth had responded.
No, she wouldn't want to see him, but he wanted ...needed to see her. This morning... He closed his eyes. Damn it, his body still ached unbearably for her, but that was nothing compared with the agony of deprivation and loss that was affecting his emotions.
Joss answered the door to his knock, recognising him straight away and welcoming him in.
'Louise's just gone out for reinforcements... food...' he explained with a warm smile.
'I was just going to make a cup of tea for Jack,' he explained as he led the way to Louise's small kitchen. 'He didn't feel very well on the ferry and he's lying down. Can I make one for you?'
Gareth smiled his acceptance, his attention briefly caught by Louise's sketch of Tuscany.
'Louise drew it,' Joss remarked as Gareth studied the sketch of the small shrine on the road to his family's villa.
'Yes,' Gareth agreed, without removing his attention from the sketch.
'She's not the world's best artist,' Joss elaborated. 'Strictly speaking her perspective could be improved upon.'
'Strictly speaking,' Gareth agreed urbanely.
'But of course I expect you see it with rather different eyes,' Joss commented simply.
Gareth swung round to look properly at him.
He had got to know Louise's family well during the summer in Tuscany. Joss had been rather younger then, of course, but Gareth had very quickly picked up on the fact that within his family he already had the reputation of being something of a prophet and a seer, and was blessed with, if not exactly foresight, then certainly twenty-twenty emotional vision. Bearing in mind all this, Gareth resisted the temptation to probe more deeply into the reasoning behind his statement and said calmly instead, 'Yes. I believe I do. Are you and Jack planning a long stay with your sister?' he asked conversationally, determinedly changing the subject.
'Er...no... The thing is, she wasn't really expecting us at all. She's only got one bedroom...'
Gareth had enough experience from dealing with his nieces and nephews, not to mention his students, to know when someone was being evasive, and it wasn't very long before he had managed to coax the full story out of Joss.
'What makes Jack believe his father might be found in Spain?' he asked him, when he had finished.
Half an hour later, when Louise eventually returned to the apartment, weighed down by several bulging carrier bags, it was to discover that not only had Gareth apparently made himself very much at home in her apartment, but that it had additionally been arranged that her brother and her cousin were going to be staying with him, and not, after all, with her.
'Gareth says he doesn't mind, and since he's got a spare bedroom it seemed the sensible thing to do,' Joss informed her as the three of them deftly relieved her of her heavy shopping.
On the point of informing Gareth in no uncertain terms that there was absolutely no need for him to involve himself in what, after all, was a purely personal family affair, Louise looked across her small and now very crowded sitting room, which seemed to be filled with very big males, and hesitated.
'I promise you, they'll be perfectly safe,' Gareth informed her quietly.
Louise frowned as she looked from his clear, intent gaze to her brother and then her cousin who was now out of bed and looking better, correctly interpreting the message both in Gareth's words and his expression that he knew what was going on.
While she had been rushing round the supermarket snatching up food she had acknowledged that the first thing she needed to do was to speak to her parents— something it would be very difficult for her to do with Jack in the apartment with her. If Gareth took both boys back to his apartment with him she would at least have the opportunity to speak openly to her mother and father, and she knew, too, that they would both be safe in Gareth's hands, that she need not worry that he would somehow allow Jack to do a disappearing act on them. In fact, if she was honest, it was almost a relief to have Gareth there, if not to take charge then certainly to play a supporting role in the small mini-drama which had erupted into her life.
A relief to have Gareth there? She could feel herself starting to stiffen with inner apprehension at the thought, but oddly, instead of telling him that his help most certainly wasn't needed, she found herself turning instead to Jack and asking him gently, 'Are you feeling okay now?'
'Yes,' he responded. 'It was the ferry and then the jolting of the lorry ride...it made me feel really sick.'
'I told you you shouldn't have eaten that curry,' Joss remarked severely.
'I was hungry,' Jack countered. 'And anyway, I wanted to go straight to Spain, not come here first and—'
'Look, why don't we argue out the pros and cons of this later?' Gareth interposed, pushing back his sleeve to look at his watch as he announced, 'It's almost six p.m., and I don't know about everyone else, but I'm getting hungry. What do you say to you two coming round to my flat with me, where you can have a shower and get yourselves sorted out, and then, say at seven o'clock, we'll come back for Louise and the four of us can go out for something to eat?'
Louise opened her mouth to object, to say that she was perfectly capable of making her own arrangements, not just for the boys' welfare but for her own supper as well, but quite unaccountably she discovered that she was closing it again without a word of protest being uttered.
Both boys had brought haversacks with them, and with truly amazing speed Gareth soon had them and their belongings organised and marshalled at the door of her apartment.
'Is seven o'clock all right for you?' he asked Louise as Joss opened the door.
'Yes...it's...it's fine,' she agreed. The close confined space of her small hallway made it impossible for her to move away from him. Was it really only this morning that he had held her in his arms and she had...? Shakily she closed her eyes, unable to bear the burden of the memories she was reliving.
'Are you all right? Is it your migraine...?'
Her migraine... How did he know about that?
Louise's eyes opened abruptly.
'I'm fine,' she told him curtly. How would it feel to be the woman Gareth loved, the woman he wanted to cherish and protect, to spend his life with, to have his children with? She could feel herself starting to tremble deep down inside, and it was several minutes after they had gone before she felt able to walk to the telephone and dial her parents' tel
ephone number.
Her mother answered the phone almost immediately, and Louise could hear the anxiety in her voice as she did so.
'It's all right, Mum ,' she told her quickly. 'They're here with me.'
'They're what?' She could hear the astonishment in her mother's voice. 'But what...? Why...?'
Quietly Louise outlined the details of the story Joss had told her.
'Oh, no,' her mother protested when she had finished. 'I can't believe that Jack could ever think we felt like that. Neither your father nor I have ever...' Her mother stopped speaking for a moment as her emotions overwhelmed her.
'And you say Joss told you that it's because of what Max said to him that Jack has decided that he's being a burden on us...?'
'Well, yes, at least according to Joss. But I was wondering, Mum...' Louise paused and nibbled thoughtfully on her bottom lip. 'He's at a very sensitive age, and no matter how much you and Dad love him you aren't his mother and father. There are bound to be times when he wonders about them, when he feels angry and hurt and rejected by what they've done, and perhaps...'
'Yes, I understand what you're saying,' her mother agreed quietly. 'Olivia and Ruth both think that we... that all of us might have been over- compensating to him for the fact that David and Tania aren't here, and I think they're probably right. Thank goodness Joss had the good sense to come to you...'
'Mmm...' Louise agreed, and then added warningly. 'I don't want to sound pessimistic, but it seems to me that this isn't something that's going to go away very easily. All right, this time he's here, but...'
'I know what you mean,' her mother acknowledged swiftly. 'And it isn't even a matter of ensuring that he doesn't take off to go looking for his father again. There are quite obviously some very important issues concerning his parents troubling Jack. Issues which he no doubt thinks can only be resolved by discussing them with his father face to face. Right now Jack needs David, and I only wish it was possible for him to have him here. Since he disappeared your father has tried very hard to trace him, but without any success. Your grandfather has received the odd card from him, just telling him that he's safe, but that's all. Where are the boys now, by the way?' her mother asked.
