by Liz Fielding
‘Or you could sublet your London flat and put that money in the bank,’ Martha pointed out. ‘Unless there’s some pressing reason to return to London? You never talk about Hannah’s father. Does he support her? Does she see him?’
‘N-no—’ It would have been the perfect excuse, but then she would have had to invent some man, a relationship that had gone off the rails. She’d told Hannah that she didn’t see her father because he lived in another country but that he had been kind when her mama had been very sad.
Her best friend at preschool had a daddy who lived in Australia so she’d accepted it without question.
For now.
She knew that if Hannah was ever to know who her father was, she would have to tell Kit, but she was very afraid that he wouldn’t want to know.
‘He was there at a bad moment,’ she told Martha. ‘That’s all.’
True, and less embarrassing than admitting that her precious daughter was the result of a one-night stand at a beach party with her mother’s ashes barely in the ground.
Shame had sent her running back to England and then a pregnancy that would have caused gossip, raised eyebrows, a stain on her mother’s memory, had kept her away.
Her daughter had turned three at the beginning of May, time enough, she hoped, for dates to have blurred.
‘Did you ever tell him about Hannah?’ Martha asked.
‘I... No,’ she admitted. ‘He was long gone before she arrived.’
To say that Martha pulled a face would have been an exaggeration. There was the slightest movement of muscles, more than enough to show her disapproval. ‘And now you’re hiding out, afraid to get involved again.’
‘It’s simpler this way.’
‘Men do tend to complicate life,’ Martha agreed, ‘but they add a little spice. You’re a single mother, Eve, not a nun.’
‘Martha! I’m shocked.’
‘Are you?’ Her godmother could write an essay with the lift of an eyebrow. ‘Clearly you haven’t heard the rumour that it was my generation that invented sex as a recreational pastime.’
It was perhaps as well that, having arrived at the entrance to the ballroom, Martha didn’t wait for a response, but reached for a glass of champagne.
‘This is stunning,’ Eve said, following suit as she took in the magnificence of the ivory-and-gold ballroom.
She’d never been to the resort as a girl, although she’d instantly recognised Kit Merchant when he’d left the party to come and talk to her.
She hadn’t wanted to talk, and she was pretty sure he hadn’t followed her for the conversation. A local hero, he could probably have had any girl on the beach, but they were his kid sister’s friends, pretty and no doubt keen to attract his attention. Trouble, in fact, which might have accounted for his eagerness to get away.
Normally, she’d have told him to get lost, but she’d been a mess. Her mother had just died, and her father hadn’t felt the need to fly in to support her at the funeral. Her boyfriend had felt the same way, sticking to his plan to go backpacking around Europe during the spring break rather than fly to Nantucket, and she’d dumped him by text from the airport.
She’d been at the party because her cousins’ arms had been twisted to take her with them and she had only gone to get away from another miserable night sitting in with Nana.
She had been desperate for someone, anyone, to put their arms around her, to hold her, and Kit had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Not that he’d failed her. Far from it. No doubt used to females throwing themselves at him, he had responded with some truly outstanding sex. Not the wham, bam, anonymous stuff she’d expected, had wanted right there on the beach to drive away the pain. Instead he’d grabbed her hand, racing with her to his beach hut where they’d had hot, mindless sex, as if they were both desperate to blot out the world. But then he had slowed everything down. They had drunk a rich red wine under a star-filled sky before making slow, sweet love; the kind that could break your heart. That you would never forget.
She swallowed, looking at the men in dinner jackets, the women in their beautiful clothes, and had a moment of regret for the head-turning red curls, wishing she were wearing something a little less...classic.
Wanting, just for a moment, to feel that alive again.
But only for a moment.
She’d been there and done that. She had Hannah, with her own Titian curls and Kit’s bright blue eyes, as a constant reminder of the night she’d lost her head.
Her baby girl. The love of her life.
She knew she should tell him, that he had a right to know, but her world was complicated enough. She wasn’t going to stick around and risk blundering into the man who’d made her laugh, made her cry, made love to her with a sweet passion that had changed everything in one starlit night.
The man who, at the fierce banging on his beach cabin door, the call that he was needed, had rolled out of bed, pulling on his jeans and grabbing his sweatshirt. All he’d said was, ‘Stay out of sight...’ on his way out.
She had waited until the first pink edge of dawn appeared on the horizon and then she had run back to her grandmother’s house and thrown her things into a bag. Nana had been asleep, so she’d left a note, caught the first ferry back to the mainland and been back in London twenty-four hours later.
Had he waited, holding his breath, waiting for the call from one of the less glossy gossip mags asking for a comment on the story they were about to run?
My Night of Sex... Sex in the Sand... Abandoned After a Night of Sex...
There had been stories in the past and, even if some of them were pure fiction and others heavily embellished to make better headlines, he had clearly made the most of his youthful fame. There were still photographs of him with beautiful women, but these days no one was talking, and neither would she. Not even when, weeks later, after her finals were over, she’d had time to realise what was happening to her body and two pink lines had changed her life for ever.
She hadn’t talked and she couldn’t call Kit.
The news had been full of the start of the single-handed round-the-world yacht race, or maybe that was all she had been noticing because Kit was the skipper that every camera had been watching, the man already making the headlines after rumours that his entry had caused a rift with his family.
Calling him on the satellite link would have been a very public way to inform him that he was about to become a father. While the headlines would have cheered a newspaper man’s heart and set Twitter alight, the trolls would have been out in force. She would have been mobbed by the press, her poor grandmother would have been under siege, and she would have had to go into hiding.
It had given her plenty of time to think. Time for her heart to stop when, two months into the race, his radio had gone silent after a storm. She’d hugged her belly protectively during the ten long days before he’d been spotted by search aircraft.
The photographs had shown that his damaged mast had been lashed back into place and the pundits had speculated with sickening detail how he must have climbed in heavy seas to repair it.
Worse, he’d signalled that his communication equipment had been smashed in the storm that hit his mast, but he was okay and was continuing with the race.
He’d finally limped home after more than four months in third place. A great feat of sailing, according to the yachting community.
Eve hadn’t cared about the sailing or the press, she’d just been furious that he would recklessly endanger himself for a piece of silverware to stick on the mantelpiece.
Had he no feelings for his family and what they must have gone through?
She knew all about recklessness. Her mother had taken risks and died; she would protect the precious little girl growing inside her from that kind of pain.
* * *
‘Kit? Where are you?’
‘Sorry, sis. The ferry was late but we should be with you in about thirty minutes.’
‘We could delay the start—’
‘No, dinner won’t wait so go ahead with the presentations. Lucy can speak after dinner before the serious bidding. How was Dad this evening?’
‘Furious. Frustrated at not being able to remember stuff. To walk properly. To say what he’s thinking.’
‘That’s probably a blessing.’
Laura laughed. ‘Undoubtedly, but he’s improving every day, even if the words aren’t in any dictionary, so stand back to have your ears blasted.’
* * *
‘Your grandmother and I used to come here all the time when we were growing up,’ Martha said. ‘Christmas parties, birthday treats, sailing. I missed her so much when she went off on her travels after college.’
‘I didn’t know Nana travelled. Where did she go?’
‘Spain, France, Italy, Ireland. There are photographs. You’ll find them as you sort through the cottage. Bring them over and I’ll tell you who everyone is.’ She sighed. ‘The itchy-feet gene runs deep in your family. Your mother was away to Africa on some research trip the moment the ink was dry on her degree, met your father and never really came home again.’
‘Nana wasn’t...’
‘Welcoming? Easy to live with?’ Martha finished for her. ‘She was such fun as a girl, but she was never the same after your grandfather died. We tried to involve her, but we didn’t understand so much about depression back then and we were all so busy with our own families.’ She shook her head. ‘But that’s not what kept your mother on the move. That’s who she was. I’ve never been further than Boston, which is why she asked me to be your godmother. She wanted someone grounded in your life.’
Eve struggled for something to say but Martha rescued her.
‘I thought you were going to follow in your parents’ footsteps, Eve. I seem to recall that you were studying zoology?’
‘I was.’ She had dreamed of returning to Africa, to the scent of hot earth when the rains came, the thunder of hoofbeats as a million wildebeest migrated across the plains, velvet-black skies filled with stars. ‘When I discovered I was pregnant I realised that fieldwork wasn’t going to be an option, at least not for me, so I forgot about my Masters and I took a teaching diploma.’
‘Pregnancy didn’t slow your mother down.’
‘She wasn’t alone, not until Dad left her, but I’d never send Hannah to boarding school.’
Martha reached out and took her hand. ‘Her death was such a tragedy. I hope your little girl gives you some comfort.’
‘She is a gift, Martha. My joy.’
‘Well, let’s hope this visit will be as blessed,’ Martha said, innocently.
Eve realised that she’d underestimated her godmother’s capacity for mental arithmetic, but she’d been away on a fishing trip when Eve had met Kit that summer. Martha might have put her swift departure together with Hannah’s birthday and come up with a theory about where and when, but that was all it was. There was no way she could be certain that Hannah had been conceived on the island.
‘People are beginning to sit down,’ she said, changing the subject. ‘Shall we go and find our table?’
Martha knew everyone at their table, mostly couples of her own generation who greeted her warmly before quietening to listen to Barbara Merchant welcome them and introduce the auction.
She had the same colouring as Kit, Eve thought; the same sun-streaked hair, the same vivid blue eyes. Lost in memories of that night, she heard little of her introduction to the cause for which the auction was being held.
‘Let’s go and check out the trips,’ Martha said, when she was done.
Monitors showed film of the trips on offer at Merchant resorts and some of their partners, in fabulous locations.
There was whale watching off the west coast, trips to Europe—vineyards in France, culture in Italy, golfing and fishing in Scotland—but it was the last one, the wildlife safari, that brought a gasp to Eve’s lips.
The Nymba Safari Lodge had been built high amongst the trees with viewing platforms where you could watch animals in a landscape that was painfully familiar. There was a glimpse of a giraffe at sunset, forelegs spreadeagled as it drank at the oxbow lake. There was the dusty green bark of fever trees, a family of warthogs snuffling through the grass.
‘Eve?’
‘Nymba... It was our home,’ she said. ‘It’s where we lived...’
The cover of the brochure for the safari trip had a photograph of a mama elephant, trunk curled protectively around her calf, and Eve picked it up, instinctively hugging it to her.
Nymba...
It was what her mother had called their boma. The word meant home and for just a moment she could hear her mother’s voice as she’d given her a hug before putting a small grey velvet elephant in her arms and sending her off to school.
‘This little elephant’s trunk is my arm, Evie. Hold onto it when you’re lost...put it around you when you need a hug...’
She wished she could wind the clock back to those last few weeks with her.
‘Excuse me? Can I get in there?’
The woman waited for her to move and Eve stepped back, forcing a smile as she turned to Martha.
‘There are some really exciting trips on offer. Have you seen anything you like?’ she asked.
‘I was hoping for something a little more relaxing than zip-lining through a rainforest,’ she said, ‘but this one could have been made for you. Your grandmother left you some money and you could do with a break.’
‘That’s rainy-day money and, anyway, Hannah is too young to come with me.’
‘The rule with an inheritance is to give ten per cent, save ten per cent and spend the rest,’ Martha said. ‘Serendipitously, if you were to make a winning bid for the safari, you’d be economising by giving and spending at the same time.’
Eve laughed at her logic but shook her head. ‘Good try, but I couldn’t leave Hannah.’
‘It’s only for ten days. I don’t imagine you took her to lectures with you when she was a baby? Teaching practice?’
‘Well, no. Obviously. She is in a wonderful day nursery, but I’ve never left her at night. She’d miss me.’ And she knew everything there was to know about missing your mother.
‘Mary would love to have her stay and Hannah would have a great time with her cousins.’
‘You’re very free with your daughter’s hospitality.’
But Eve knew her godmother was right.
Mary was one of those women who wrapped you up in a hug and instantly made the world seem a better place. Older, she’d been married and living in New York when Eve’s mother had died, or things might have been very different.
Now she and her husband were back on the island with their three children and a menagerie of pets, and Hannah adored, and was adored by, all of them. Every sentence seemed to begin with Cara and Jason and Lacey...
‘Okay,’ she admitted. ‘I’d miss her.’ Putting an end to the discussion, she turned to a rail journey across the US. ‘This hits the less strenuous requirement,’ she said. ‘Or how about this camel trek across the desert? Camping out under the stars. You might meet a dark-eyed sheikh. Very romantic.’
‘There is nothing in the least bit romantic about camels, Eve. They spit.’
‘Okay... Is there anything here that you do fancy?’
‘I’m rather taken with the idea of sailing down the Adriatic from Venice to the Greek islands in that classic nineteenth-century sailing yacht, and if Kit Merchant happened to be at the helm there would always be something attractive to look at.’
Eve felt her cheeks heat at the mention of his name. ‘Isn’t he estranged from his family?’
‘There was a big row three or four years ago. Christopher did
n’t want him to take part in the round-the-world race. He said it was time to stop playing and concentrate on the business.’
‘Sailing is his life.’
‘The resort is his father’s.’
Eve had to clear her throat, stop herself from looking around, although she suddenly felt as if she had a great big sign on her back saying ‘HERE’ before she could manage a bright, ‘Maybe a brush with death will soften his father’s attitude.’
‘Maybe. Ah, now this is the one I’ve been looking for.’ Martha picked up a pen, wrote her name and a substantial bid for a vacation at the Merchant Spa in Phuket. Then she held out the pen. ‘Your turn.’
Eve looked back at the African trip.
‘Just to show my support,’ she said, raising a fairly modest bid that someone had already made.
She had only just put down the pen when a man picked it up and outbid her.
Martha had met someone she knew and, while she was talking, Eve checked by how much she’d been outbid. Five hundred dollars... It was still ridiculously cheap, and she placed another bid.
Just to help push up the price.
She straightened to find Martha, thoughtful, watching and guiltily put down the pen. ‘It’s going to go much higher.’
‘They’re starting to serve dinner,’ she said. ‘We should go back to our table.’
As they moved away someone else stepped up to make another bid. As Eve smothered a squeak of protest, Martha took her arm.
‘Leave it until after dinner when we know what we’re up against.’
‘Yes... No!’ Realising how quickly she’d been sucked in, she said, ‘Wow, that’s dangerous.’
‘The trick is to decide on your top bid and not to get carried away. Well, not too much,’ Martha added, smiling.
‘Oh, no, I’m done,’ Eve declared, but she couldn’t stop herself from looking back, fingers twitching.
