“We did and we will. I thought it would be fun if we all looked together, maybe next week.”
“That would be great. What time will you be down on Friday?”
“What time will you and David be ready?”
“If you’re coming to Mass it starts at eleven o’clock. We can leave soon after that.”
“I’ll be there for eleven o’clock. Is there any other news?”
“No, not really.” Her voice had dropped.
“What about exam results?”
“We get them tomorrow. I think I’ve passed them all. Daddy?”
“What about David?” I asked.
“He says he’s happy. Daddy, are you all right?”
“Yes, what makes you think I’m not?”
“You sound a bit strange, sort of distant. You’re whispering.”
“I’m fine, Bella, just a little tired maybe.”
“How’s Grandma?” I had told them during the last exeat about Elizabeth’s stroke.
“Much improved. Have you rung her?”
“Yes of course, but you can’t really tell anything when you can’t see the person you’re speaking to.” I was rather pleased my daughter couldn’t see her father at that moment, she most definitely would not have understood.
Belinda had given the twins phone cards at the start of the term, but I was sure David had sold his on – at a profit – because he never rang of his own accord. It crossed my mind that Belinda had touched the card Isabelle was now using.
“I saw them this afternoon. Grandpa was taking her out for a drive and she was fine.”
She seemed satisfied. “Got to go, Daddy,” she said in a rush. “We’ve got our end of term party this evening.”
“Well have a lovely time and I’ll see you on Friday.”
“Okay.”
“And when you see David tell him the same will you?”
“Will do. Bye.”
“Bye, Bella.”
Trying not to disturb Sophie, I replaced the old-fashioned receiver in its cradle.
“Was that your daughter?” a sleepy voice asked next to me.
She had been awake all the time. “Yes,” I replied to the top of her head. “Just checking on arrangements for Friday.”
Adjusting her position, Sophie twisted onto her stomach and looked at me. “I pick Emma up on Friday as well.”
“Where is she at school?”
“Crawbury College,” Sophie said running her tongue over her lips. “It’s between Chipping Norton and Burford.”
“I think I know it.” We hadn’t looked at it for the twins but I remembered one of my colleagues from Astek saying that his daughters went there. Crawbury College was exclusive and therefore expensive.
Sophie tucked her hair behind her ears. She looked tired. The phone call from Isabelle had probably woken her from a deep sleep.
“Are you ready to talk?” she said.
“About what?”
“Stop being evasive, Richard,” she scolded me, but with a smile. Lifting herself up, she knelt beside, and put a hand on my chest. She had a lovely figure and Abby had been right: it was as good out of a swimming costume as it was in. Suddenly thinking of what Abby had said seemed a little incongruous and insensitive under the circumstances, but at least it brought a reciprocal smile to my lips.
“What are you smiling for?”
“I was enjoying what I was looking at, that’s all.”
Sophie took her hand from my chest and moved her fingers along the pink lines on her thighs and then on her stomach. “I don’t think these will ever go, regardless of what I was told.”
“Maybe in time, they have already faded.”
“I know and I suppose whenever I see them it’ll remind me of what you did for me.”
I put my fingers on her cheek and stroked her face. “I told you at the time, I did no more than anyone else could have done.”
“Are there any decent restaurants in Market Harborough?” Sophie asked, opening her eyes and holding my hands in hers.
“A couple.”
“Shall we give your pasta a miss this evening? I feel that we should celebrate.”
“Yes,” I said smiling, “I think we should.”
“In that case, and as it’ll take me only a few minutes to get ready, we have time to work up an appetite.”
It was over an hour later that we drove away from Blue-Ridge and headed down the hill towards the village. At the bottom of the hill, I was about to turn left for Market Harborough, when Sophie suddenly said: “No, not yet. Can you go and park by the ford?”
I did as she asked but with a quizzical expression on my face. We got out of the car and, taking my hand, she led me to Belinda’s grave. She knelt down at the end of the grave and put her hands together.
“Belinda, I have already told him, and now I am here to tell you, that I have fallen in love with Richard. I do honestly believe that I can make him happy. I know how much he loved you and still does, but I know I can bring him some of the happiness he lost in April. I also know we have a lot to go through. I know we are going to have to cope with a lot of wagging tongues but most of all I know that people are going to say that it is too soon. Can you put a time limit on when people should or shouldn’t fall in love? The children – I have a daughter, Emma, who is the same age as Isabelle and David – aren’t going to find what we have to tell them easy to accept but, given time, I am sure they will learn to accept us both. I have already met, albeit briefly, your mother and father, and they too will need some convincing that I’m not a frustrated divorcee looking for security with another man.
“Richard has been through a lot recently and I don’t know what he has already told you, but I’m sure he will come back to see you on his own. It is important that I am not here when he tells you the circumstances under which he and I met. Belinda, I’m not stealing your husband, I am asking if I can share him with you. I am sure I can make him happy again, and I promise you I will look after him. I am sure you will agree that he isn’t the sort of man who should be left on his own.
“Belinda, thank you for listening. I didn’t know you but from what I have been told and seen in Blue-Ridge, you were a lovely, lovely person. I felt I could come and talk to you and, if you don’t mind, I will come back and talk to you again.”
Sophie bowed her head, closed her eyes and said a few words I couldn’t hear. Leaning over Belinda’s grave, she picked up a couple of small sticks that had fallen from the adjacent tree. She then stood up and walked over to me.
“Don’t say a word,” she told me.
She took my hand again and led me back towards Pooh Bridge. Once we were standing in the middle, she gave me one of the sticks.
“I’m not going to even try to replace Belinda, Richard. I couldn’t, but over the last couple of hours you have given me more happiness than I have ever had before. I want that happiness to continue for both of us. Each time we come back here and play Pooh sticks, I am really saying thank you not only to you but also to Belinda for giving me the opportunity to be happy.”
She dropped her stick over the side of the bridge and I did the same with mine.
We watched the sticks bobbing in the water as they floated away, and I realised that perhaps I could cope with what we were going to have to face, because when Sophie Mackintosh knelt in front of Belinda’s grave and started talking to her, I felt the conscience that had haunted me for so long, fade away.
The End
Nigel Lampard was a Lieutenant-Colonel in the British Army and after thirty-nine years of active service he retired in 1999. Trained as an ammunition and explosives expert, he travelled the world and was appointed an Order of the British Empire for services to his country.
As a second career he helped British Forces personnel with their transition to civilian life, and finally retired in 2007, when he and his wife Jane moved to Leigh-on-Sea in Essex. Married for over forty years, they have two sons and four grandchildren.
Nigel started writing after a tour in Berlin in the early 1980s – he fell in love with what was then a walled and divided city. After leaving Berlin, the only way he could continue this love was to write about it. By the time he completed the draft for his first novel he was already in love with writing.
Also by Nigel Lampard
Naked Slaughter
Obsession
In Denial
The Loser Has To Fall
Subliminal
Pooh Bridge: conscience stricken Page 31
