Juggling Briefcase & Baby

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. She 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.

‘No,’ she said. ‘No regrets.’

They drove on through the dark in silence. In spite of her earlier anxiety about the snow, deep down Romy wasn’t really worried. There was something infinitely reassuring about Lex’s coolly competent presence. He drove the way he did everything else, like a man utterly sure of himself. The only time he lost that sense of assurance was in the air, but now he was on the ground and firmly back in control

Romy eyed him under her lashes. His hands were big and capable on the steering wheel, and the muted light from the dashboard threw the cool planes and austere angles of his face into relief.

That was the point she should have looked away, but her gaze came to rest on his mouth instead, and without warning the memory of how it felt against hers set something dangerous strumming deep inside her.

Alarmed, she forced her eyes away, but instead of doing something sensible like fixing on the satellite navigation screen, they skittered back to his hands, which only made the strumming worse as the memories she had kept repressed for so long clamoured for release.

Lex’s hands. The feel of them was imprinted on her skin. He had long dextrous fingers that had sent heat flooding through her. They had been warm skimming over the curve of her hip, sliding over her thigh, gentle up her spine, hungry at her breast… He had played her body like an instrument, coaxing the wild, wondrous excitement with those possessive hands, that mouth, exploring her, loving her, unwrapping her, unlocking her as if she were some magical gift.

Desperately, Romy made herself stare out at the snow until the swirling flakes made her giddy. Or perhaps it was the memories doing that. Why had she let herself remember? She should have kept them firmly locked away, the way Lex had clearly done.

Now she was hot and prickly all over, and even the backs of her knees were tingling as if he had just kissed her there again.

He had been such an unexpected lover, so cool on the surface, so passionate below. Afterwards, Romy had realised that it shouldn’t have been such a surprise. As a child, she had once seen Lex play the piano, had watched astounded as he drew the most incredible music from the keys.

Her mother had claimed that he was good enough to play professionally. There had been a flaming row with his father when Gerald Gibson had dismissed Lex’s talent.

‘He can play the piano if he wants, but what’s the point of him studying music?’ he had demanded. ‘Lex will be joining Gibson & Grieve. Economics makes much more sense.’

What Lex thought about the piano, Romy had never known. Only once more had she ever heard him play, in a dimly lit café in some Paris back street, which they had found quite by accident. They had sat late into the night, listening to the band.

Occasionally one of the musicians had drifted off for a drink, and someone from the audience would get up and play in their place. Lex had taken a turn at the piano at last, improvising with a guy on the saxophone, his body moving in time to the music, utterly absorbed, and Romy had listened, her throat aching with inexplicable tears. This was not the dutiful son, the boy who had joined the family firm and set out to please his father. This was her lover and a man she suspected Gerald Gibson didn’t even know existed.

‘Romy?’

Lex’s voice startled Romy out of her thoughts and she jerked upright. ‘What?’

‘I wondered if you’d fallen asleep.’

‘No. I was…thinking.’

‘What about?’

For a moment, a very brief moment, Romy considered telling him the truth. She could turn to him in the darkness and confess that she had been thinking about him, about how he made music and how he made love and how he had made her feel.

But the thought had barely crossed her mind before she remembered how his face had closed on the plane. ‘It was a long time ago,’ he had said. ‘We’ve both moved on.’

As they had. Lex was right. It was pointless to bring it all up again.

He wanted to draw a line under the whole episode and stick to business. And let’s remember, Romy, she reminded herself, this is your boss, and you need this job. If he wants to stick to business, business it is.

‘Nothing,’ she said.

‘Well, start thinking about how you’re going to explain Freya’s presence to Grant.’ Lex tapped the sat nav. ‘According to this, we’re nearly there.’

Sure enough, a few minutes later they were bumping along a track and over a bridge, and then quite suddenly there were lights glimmering through the snow and the dark bulk of Duncardie was looming above them.

Concealing his relief at having arrived at last, Lex drove into a courtyard, and parked as close as he could to the massive front door.

‘Only three and a half hours late,’ he said grimly.

He switched off the engine, and there was a sudden, crushing silence, broken only by the sound of Freya burbling to herself in the back seat. She had woken half an hour before, and Romy had been on tenterhooks in case she started to cry again, but her daughter seemed perfectly content to play with her toes and chat away in her own incomprehensible language.

‘OK,’ said Lex. ‘Now remember, the whole deal is riding on this meeting, so we’ve got to get it right.’

‘Right,’ said Romy.

‘If we want Grant to take us seriously, we’ll have to be professional, and that means making a good impression right from the start. We’re going to have to work hard to make up for turning up late with the entire contents of a Mothercare catalogue.’

‘Professional,’ Romy agreed. ‘Absolutely.’

The moment the wipers had stilled, the snow had started to build up on the windscreen, and already they could barely see through it.

Lex was calculating how quickly he could unload the car. ‘You take Freya,’ he told Romy. ‘I’ll bring the stuff.’

Romy thought doubtfully of everything she had brought with her. ‘It’ll take ages if you do it on your own. Why don’t we do it together?’

‘There’s no point in two of us blundering around in the snow,’ he said gruffly. ‘Take Freya into the warm. Hopefully we’ll have a chance to change and get rid of all this clobber before we meet Grant himself.’

‘All right.’ Romy drew a breath and looked at Lex. ‘I’m ready.’

He nodded and reached for the door handle. ‘Then let’s go and get this deal.’

It wasn’t far to the door, but it was bitterly cold and to Lex, labouring backwards and forwards in the dark through the snow, it felt as if he were trapped in an endless blizzard. Head down, he dumped stuff in the stone porch as quickly as he could before running back for the next load. At least someone was transferring it all inside, he saw, but he was very glad indeed to make the last trip, skidding and sliding over the snow.

Brushing the worst of the snow off himself in the porch, Lex shook out his sodden trousers with an irritable grimace. His feet were frozen, his hands numb, and melting snow was trickling down his neck, and he was cursing Willie Grant’s refusal to go to London and meet in a warm, dry office, where all sensible deals were made.

But this was the deal he wanted, Lex reminded himself. He bent to retrieve the last of Freya’s luggage and stepped through the door.

He found himself in a vast, baronial hall, complete with antlers on the wall, some sad, glassy-eyed creatures stuffed and mounted long ago, and even the requisite suit of armour standing to attention at the foot of a magnificent staircase.

Lex didn’t see any of them. He registered three things simultaneously. One, a small, portly man with a halo of white hair, holding Freya. Willie Grant himself, in fact, who turned to watch Lex’s approach.

Two, the fact that he, Lex, far from presenting a crisply professional appearance, was dripping snow everywhere and had a bright yellow bag decorated with teddy bears wearing bow ties in one hand and a huge pack of nappies and a pushchair in the other.

And three, Romy, terrified and trying not to show it, standing rigidly beside Willie Grant while an Irish Wolfhound, easily the biggest dog Lex had ever seen, sniffed interestedly at Freya’s feet.

Forgetting his humiliating appearance, Lex dropped the teddy bear bag and snapped his fingers. ‘Come,’ he said to the dog, who trotted obediently over to greet him.

‘Sit.’

The great rump sank to the floor.

‘Good dog,’ said Lex, and rubbed the huge head that came up to his chest, while Romy sent him a speaking look of gratitude.

Willie Grant’s expression was harder to decipher.

‘That’s Magnus,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t usually go to strangers.’

‘I like dogs,’ said Lex, giving Magnus a final pat.

It was too late to hide the pushchair and nappies. He set them down, tried to pretend that he wasn’t dripping everywhere, and stepped forward to offer his hand.

‘Lex Gibson,’ he introduced himself.

‘Willie Grant.’ Willie’s grip was firm and he studied Lex with interest, not unmixed with surprise.

‘I’m very sorry we’re so late.’

‘Oh, not to worry about that,’ said Willie. ‘Your secretary rang, so we got the message that you would be delayed and that you were bringing the wee lassie with you.’ He beamed at Freya and tweaked her nose. ‘She’s a bonny one, isn’t she?’

‘Yes, I’m sorry about that-’ Lex began, and then stopped short as Freya, clearly recognising him, broke into a gummy smile and reached out her arms towards him.

Instinctively, Lex took a step back, but Willie was watching Freya and didn’t notice. ‘Ah, I see who you want!’ he chuckled. ‘Old Willie’s not good enough for you, is he?’

And before Lex could react, he had handed Freya over and turned to take Romy by the arm.

‘Now come away in and have some tea in the library,’ he said and bore her off up the magnificent stone staircase, leaving Lex, aghast, holding Freya at rigid arm’s length.

It wasn’t often that Lex was at a loss for words.

‘Er…’ was the best he could manage.

‘Perhaps I should take Freya,’ Romy said quickly, trying to hang back. ‘Lex is rather wet.’

But Willie wasn’t to be deflected. ‘Oh, bring the wee one too, of course,’ he tossed over his shoulder at Lex. ‘You’ll soon dry off by a good fire. Ewan’s around here somewhere. He’ll take your stuff to your room while Elspeth’s bringing us some tea.’

That left Lex with little choice but to carry Freya gingerly after them, dangling between his hands. He was terrified that she was going to cry, but she just stared at him with those disconcertingly direct dark eyes.

The library was warm and cluttered, with heavy red velvet curtains closed against the night and a fire crackling behind a guard.

‘We put that up as soon as we heard you were bringing the baby,’ said Willie.

‘I was afraid she’d be a nuisance,’ Romy said, settling herself on the red leather sofa, and looking anxiously over her shoulder to see where Lex and Freya were.

To her dismay, the huge dog had followed them up the stairs and threw itself down on the rug in front of the fire with a great thud. Romy was convinced she could feel a tremor in the floor and wouldn’t have been in the least surprised if the ornaments had come crashing off the mantelpiece at the impact.

She had been terrified in the hall when Magnus appeared. On one level, Romy knew it was stupid. Just because one dog had bitten her when she was a child didn’t mean that every dog would bite. Perhaps it was knowing that they could that made her so nervous.

And this dog was a monster, the size of a small pony at least. When it had stuck its great muzzle towards her, she had frozen with terror. Unable to move, the breath clicking frantically in her throat, she had only been able to watch as it swung its head round to investigate Freya in Willie’s arms. Her daughter’s feet had been mere inches away from those huge teeth.

Willie didn’t seem to have noticed anything amiss. He’d been laughing with Freya, as if unaware that a mere nudge from the beast beside him could send them both crashing to the ground where it could savage them.

She should snatch Freya back, Romy had thought frantically, but that would mean pushing past the dog and panic had clogged her throat at the idea of touching it. What if it turned on her? What if its eyes went red and it went for her? What if-?

And then Lex had stepped into the hall, and the world had miraculously righted. He had taken in the situation at a glance. Romy had sagged with relief as he’d called the dog away. His effortless control of the animal had given her a queer thrill, she had to admit, even as she despised herself for feeling so safe with him. That smacked too much of neediness for one of Romy’s independent turn of mind.

Still, there was no denying that Lex was a formidable figure, even dripping snow and burdened with ridiculous bags. He must have hated meeting Willie like that, Romy thought, remembering how much he had wanted to present a professional image.

It was all her fault for bringing so much stuff with her. Well, she would make it up to him, Romy vowed. She would do everything she could to make sure Willie agreed to sell to Lex.

Wondering where Lex and Freya had got to, Romy made herself focus on Willie, who was assuring her that Freya would be no trouble. ‘I like to see the wee ones,’ he told her. ‘Moira and I dreamed of Duncardie full of children, but sadly it wasn’t to be.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Romy gently.

Willie looked sad, but squared his shoulders. ‘At least we had each other,’ he remembered. ‘I never looked at another woman after I met Moira.’

‘You must miss her very much.’

‘I do. It’s been five years now, and I still miss her every day. And every day I remember how lucky I was to have found her. It’s a great thing to find a love like that,’ he told Romy.

‘It must be.’

Fleetingly, Romy found herself thinking about Lex, which was ridiculous, really, because although that week in Paris had been wonderful and intense, it hadn’t been about love, not the way Willie meant. It had been passion, it had been desire, it had been sheer, unadulterated lust, but it couldn’t have been love.

She hadn’t wanted it to be love. Even at eighteen, she had known that love meant making compromises. It meant putting your heart and your happiness into someone else’s hands, and Romy had done that once. She had loved her father absolutely, and she wasn’t prepared to risk her heart again.

Never again.