Juggling Briefcase & Baby

by Jessica Hart

  ‘Yes,’ said Lex, thinking about the twists and turns that had brought them both to this shabby pub. ‘Very funny.’

  The elderly couple in the corner had finished their lunch, and stopped at the table on their way past.

  ‘What a lovely baby!’ The woman beamed and chucked Freya’s cheek. ‘Aren’t you the bonny one?’

  Intent on her lunch, Freya paid little attention, but Lex felt his jaw sag.

  Lovely? In disbelief, he looked at the baby in question, who was happily rubbing mashed potato into her hair. One ear appeared to be encrusted with carrot and he didn’t even want to think about what might be dribbling from her nose.

  Romy avoided his eyes. ‘Thank you,’ she said with a smile.

  ‘I’ll bet she can twist you round her little finger, eh?’ The man actually nudged Lex. ‘Wait till she’s older. She won’t give you a moment’s peace!’

  ‘Make the most of it while she’s small.’ His wife nodded at Lex, who was too dumbfounded to do more than stare back at her. ‘You’ve got a lovely wee family,’ she told him. ‘You’re a lucky man!’

  ‘Enjoy your lunch.’ Her husband nodded farewell as he took her arm.

  A gust of cold air swirled into the room as they opened the door, but the next moment it had swung to, and Lex and Romy were left alone in the dining room.

  There was a moment of utter silence, and then Romy dissolved into helpless laughter. Diverted from her lunch, Freya stared at her mother, and started to chuckle as well, clearly puzzled by all the merriment, but perfectly happy to join in.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ demanded Lex, looking from one to the other.

  ‘Your expression,’ Romy managed at last, wiping her eyes and drawing a shuddery breath. ‘I wish you could have seen yourself! I’ve never seen anyone look so appalled at the thought of being associated with a lovely wee family!’

  Her whole face was alight with humour. The dark eyes were sparkling with laughter, and her expression was so vivid that Lex’s heart tripped, and all at once he was back in that restaurant in Paris, drinking in the sight of her, dazzled by her warmth and her beauty.

  He made himself look away. ‘I’ve never been taken for a father before,’ he said, his voice desert dry. ‘I’ve always assumed it would be obvious that I wasn’t.’

  ‘It’s an easy enough mistake to make,’ said Romy. ‘We must look like an ordinary family.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘I SUPPOSE so.’ For some reason, the thought made Lex uneasy. He felt ridiculously thrown. He wanted to rush after the couple and ask them how they could possibly have thought that he was Freya’s father. What did he need to do? Have never in a million years tattooed across his forehead?

  Romy’s smile still curved her mouth as she picked up her knife and fork once more. ‘I don’t think they were very impressed by your hands-off approach, though. I could see them watching you while I was trying to entertain Freya. They obviously thought you should have been helping me instead of making phone calls. I suspect that was why she thought she should remind you how lucky you are to have us.’

  ‘Dear God.’ Lex glanced at Freya, who had gone back to smearing lunch over her face, and shuddered. ‘I’m glad to have amused you,’ he added austerely when Romy started to giggle again.

  ‘Oh, you have. It was worth the rush this morning just to see you!’

  Freya was clearly a baby who enjoyed her food. There was a lot of gurgling and squealing and squeaking, with much smacking of lips together and banging of spoons. And the mess…indescribable! Lex decided, eyeing Freya askance as he put his knife and fork together.

  ‘I just hope she’s not going to be eating in front of Willie Grant!’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Romy soothed. ‘I’ll make sure he knows you’re not responsible for her in any way.’

  Lex pushed his plate aside. ‘Who is responsible for her, Romy?’

  ‘I am,’ she said instantly.

  It was none of his business, Lex knew, but he couldn’t help asking. ‘What about her father?’

  The last amusement faded from Romy’s face. ‘I thought we were sticking to business?’ she said, disliking the defensive note in her voice. She busied herself filling the spoon and offering it, without much hope, to Freya, who took it and wiped it on her nose.

  He shrugged. ‘I’m just interested in why you’re having to do everything yourself.’

  ‘Because I want to.’

  Edgy now, Romy picked up her mat. It showed an unlikely hunting scene, with red-coated riders hallooing and urging their horses over a hedge, while the hounds bounded alongside. In spite of herself, Romy shrank a little at the sight of their lolling tongues and great paws. No one would think of putting spiders or snakes on a mat, would they? So why were dogs different? If she had noticed the dogs before, she wouldn’t have enjoyed her pie nearly so much.

  She twisted the mat around so that they faced Lex instead.

  ‘Doesn’t he get a say?’

  ‘He doesn’t know.’ Romy balanced the mat between her hands, turned it so that it sat on the shorter edge. ‘I haven’t told him yet.’

  ‘He doesn’t know?’ said Lex, incredulous.

  ‘Look, it was just a fling,’ she said, not looking at him. ‘A holiday romance. I was running a dive centre in Sulawesi, Michael was travelling… He’s an artist, very laid-back, very charming.’

  Very everything Lex wasn’t.

  Round went the mat. ‘We had a good time. Neither of us wanted any more than that. Michael was on the rebound. He’d been dumped by his girlfriend a couple of months earlier, and I…well, you know how I feel about commitment.’

  Romy looked up then, and looked straight at Lex. The pale eyes were shuttered, his expression indecipherable.

  ‘It wasn’t just you, Lex,’ she said, since they seemed to have abandoned the pretence of sticking to business. ‘I don’t want to marry anyone. I certainly didn’t want to marry Michael. It was never a big deal for either of us. I liked him-he was great-but there was never any question of anything more than that.’

  ‘So how did Freya happen?’ asked Lex.

  ‘The usual way,’ said Romy with a touch of her old tartness. Then, when he just met her gaze, she bit her lip and went on. ‘We took precautions of course, but…well, sometimes it happens. By the time I realised that I was pregnant, Michael had already left.

  ‘He sent an email when he got home, just to say hello, but I knew that he wasn’t interested in me beyond a fling. I had another message a couple of months later, telling me that he was back with his girlfriend, so an email from me saying that he was going to be a father would have been the last thing he wanted.’

  Lex frowned. ‘Wouldn’t he want to know anyway?’

  ‘I don’t know…’ Romy sighed. ‘Sometimes I thought he would, and that it was wrong not to tell him, but then I thought of him being with his girlfriend, and I didn’t want to spoil that for him. It’s not as if he made any promises. Michael talked about Kate a lot when we were together, so I know how much he wanted to be with her. When he emailed, he sounded so happy-’

  She broke off, flashing Lex a look. ‘Would you have wanted to know?’ she asked abruptly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Just like that? No thought about how having a child would turn your life upside down?’

  ‘I’d still want to know,’ said Lex. ‘If, after Paris…’ He didn’t finish the sentence, but she knew what he was thinking. ‘I’d have wanted to know,’ he said. ‘I’d have thought I had the right to know.’

  Romy eyed him in dismay. Of all the people she would have expected to understand, she had thought it would be Lex! Lex, who hated chaos and was clearly appalled by Freya.

  ‘Maybe I was wrong,’ she said, chewing her lip. ‘It just seemed to me that learning that you’re a father is such a big thing. Having a child…it changes everything. Everything. I imagined how I would feel if I was Kate, finding out that it wasn’t just Michael any more, but Michael and a baby. It
would have changed things for her too… Oh, I’ve been round and round about this so many times since I found out I was pregnant!’

  Tiring of the mat, Romy let it drop to the table and started fiddling with a spoon instead, spinning it slowly between her finger and thumb. ‘Should I tell Michael? Should I not? What if he didn’t want anything to do with Freya? What would that do to her, to know that her father never wanted her? Would that be better or worse than not having a father at all?’

  ‘That’s not really the point,’ said Lex severely. ‘The point is that this Michael is partly responsible for her, and that means he should help support her.’

  ‘I don’t want help,’ said Romy stubbornly. ‘I don’t need it.’

  She caught the echo of her own words about Freya, and grimaced a little. ‘I don’t want to rely on anyone,’ she tried to explain. ‘It was my choice to have a child, my choice to bring her up on my own. Telling Michael wouldn’t be about the money.’

  She had begun to irritate herself with her fiddling and she made herself stop and put her hands in her lap. ‘I expect he would want to support Freya if he knew,’ she said. ‘Michael’s a decent man. He wouldn’t run away from the responsibility.

  ‘I’m the one that has done the running away,’ she admitted. ‘I didn’t want to upset things between him and Kate, but the truth is that I used that as an excuse. I was afraid that if I told Michael he might want to be involved in Freya’s life. He might want to see her, and she…she might love him.’

  Romy’s eyes rested on Freya, who was absently wiping a spoon in her hair and wearing a pensive expression. ‘Children do love their fathers.’

  Her voice was very sad, and Lex’s expression changed. ‘There’s no reason to think that he would be like your father, Romy.’

  ‘No, but what if he was? What if he disappointed her? What if he didn’t love her the way she deserves to be loved?’

  She had been such a daddy’s girl. Her whole world had revolved around her father. She couldn’t wait for him to come home at night and drove her mother mad, jiggling up and down with excitement. There was no joy to compare with that of seeing him appear, of running into his arms, of being swept up into a hug and swung round and round until she was giddy and giggling.

  ‘Who’s my best girl?’ he would ask.

  Romy would shriek, ‘Me! Me!’

  ‘And who do I love best in the world?’

  ‘Me!’

  Romy could still remember it, the blinding happiness, the utter, utter security of wrapping her skinny arms around his neck and knowing that her father was home and that nothing could go wrong when he was there.

  And then one day he sat her down and told her that he would never be coming home again. That he was going to live with someone who was not her mother and have a new family. She was going to have a new brother or sister, he told her.

  ‘But I still love you,’ he said.

  Romy didn’t believe him. If he loved her, he wouldn’t leave her. She was six, and she never felt quite safe again. Even now, the memory of that morning had the power to rip at her heart and bring back the black slap of disbelief. How could he have done that to her? How could he have left his best girl?

  Twenty-four years ago, and it still made her feel sick with misery and incomprehension.

  The thought that Freya might be hurt in the same way was unbearable. However hard it might be to struggle on her own, Romy knew it was better than letting herself rely on someone who might leave them both.

  ‘It wasn’t an easy decision, Lex,’ she said slowly. ‘I thought about it every day. I still think about it. I don’t know if I did the right thing not telling Michael when I was first pregnant. It felt right, that’s all I can say. It felt as if it would be better for Freya if it was just two of us.

  ‘Recently though…I suppose it’s partly seeing Tim and realising that there are great fathers out there, but I’ve been thinking that I should tell Michael about Freya after all. Not for the money, but because Freya needs a father as well as me. And because Michael deserves to know that he has a daughter.

  ‘But first I want to be sure I’m truly independent. This deal with Grant’s Supersavers is important to you, I know,’ she told Lex, ‘but it’s just as important to me. It’s my chance to really make my mark, something really impressive to put on my CV for when I have to look for my next job. In the past, I’ve just drifted from country to country and picked up work when I needed it, but it’s different now. I need a proper job, and I can’t rely on anyone but myself for that.’

  ‘You’re not exactly alone in the world,’ Lex pointed out.

  ‘No,’ she acknowledged. ‘Mum and Keith were great when I came home to have Freya, but they’ve done enough. They’re too old to live with a baby. I moved out as soon as I could, but I was getting desperate about finding anything when Phin offered me this job at Gibson & Grieve.’

  Romy looked across the table at Lex. ‘I never thanked you for that.’

  ‘Thank Phin,’ he said with a dismissive gesture. ‘He fixed it all.’

  ‘You’re Chief Executive. You could have said no.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have done that,’ said Lex, but he avoided her eyes, remembering how dismayed he had been when Phin had told him what he had done. If he thought he could have persuaded his brother to change his mind, he would have done.

  ‘Well, thank you anyway.’

  ‘You can thank me by making sure this deal goes through,’ said Lex roughly, and Romy nodded.

  ‘I’ll do whatever I can to make it happen,’ she said. ‘For both of us. And when it’s done, and I’ve got the experience I need to get a permanent job, then I’ll tell Michael that he has a daughter.’

  The snow was little more than a light powder when they left the pub, but the further they drove, the heavier it got, until great, fat flakes were swirling around the car and splattering onto the windscreen.

  The short winter afternoon was drawing in, too, and Romy began to feel as if they were trapped in one of the snow scenes she had loved to shake as a child, except in this one the snow didn’t settle after a minute or two. It just kept on coming. Soon, Romy couldn’t see the country they were driving through, but it felt dark and empty and wild, and it was miles since they had passed a vehicle going the other way.

  ‘Do you think we should turn back?’ she ventured at last.

  ‘Turn back? What for?’

  ‘The snow’s very heavy. What if we get stuck?’

  ‘We’re not going to get stuck,’ said Lex. ‘We’re certainly not turning round and going back on the off chance that we do. We’re almost there. This meeting is too important to miss because of “what if”.’

  ‘We might break down,’ said Romy, who had been checking her mobile. ‘And I’m not getting a signal on my phone. How would we get help?’

  Lex sucked in a breath. ‘Romy, there is nothing wrong with the car,’ he said, keeping his voice even with an effort. ‘Anyway, I thought you were the one who wanted adventure? When did you turn into a worrier?’

  ‘When I became a mother,’ said Romy, glancing over her shoulder to where Freya was, thankfully, sound asleep. ‘I used to pack up and go without a thought. It never occurred to me that anything could go wrong, but now…’

  She sat back in the seat, turning the useless phone between her hands, her eyes fixed on the swirling snow but her mind on the day her life had changed for ever.

  ‘I didn’t know what terror was until Freya was born,’ she said slowly after a moment. ‘Until I held her in my arms and looked into her face, and realised that it was up to me to keep her safe and well and happy. What if I can’t do it? What if I get it all wrong? I’m terrified that I’ll be a bad mother.’

  Where had that come from? Romy wondered, startled. She spent a lot of time assuring her mother and her friends that she was fine on her own, that she was managing perfectly well. She spent a lot of time telling herself that too.

  And she was fine. She was managing. S
he just didn’t tell anyone how hard it was. How scared she was.

  Now, unaccountably, she had told Lex, of all people. The one person who would least understand.

  ‘I worry about everything now,’ she confessed. ‘I worry about what will happen if Freya is sick or if she struggles at school. How will I pay for her university fees? What if she has a boyfriend who hurts her?’

  Lex shot her a disbelieving look. ‘It’s a bit early to worry about that, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘She’s only a baby.’

  ‘Thirteen months,’ Romy told him, ‘and growing every day. I know it’s stupid, but I can’t help myself. I’m afraid I won’t be a good enough mother, that I won’t be able to give her what she needs. I’m afraid I won’t be able to support her by myself, and that I’ll have to rely on other people, that her happiness will be in someone else’s hands. I’m afraid her father will want to be part of her life and afraid that he won’t. Oh, yes,’ she said with a lopsided smile, ‘I’m a real scaredy cat now!’

  ‘Then you’ve changed more than I thought you had.’

  ‘You should be glad. An irresponsible eighteen-year-old with itchy feet isn’t much good to you.’ Romy paused. ‘She never was.’

  ‘No,’ Lex agreed, and his voice was tinder dry.

  Romy blew out a long breath. ‘I miss being that girl sometimes,’ she said. ‘I miss how fearless I was. I had such a good time. I can’t believe I did all those things now, now that I’m scared and sensible and the kind of person who puts on a suit to go into work every day. It feels like remembering a different person altogether.’

  ‘So if you hadn’t got pregnant, would you still be drifting?’

  ‘Probably. I’d been in Indonesia a couple of years. I was thinking of moving on. Thailand, maybe. Or Vietnam. Instead I’m a single mother living in the suburbs and struggling into work on the tube every day.’

  Lex glanced at her, and then away. ‘No regrets?’

  Romy looked over her shoulder again. Freya’s head was lolling to one side. Ridiculously long lashes fanned her cheeks and her lips were parted over a bubble of dribble. Her baby. Her daughter. Her best girl.