sighed. And shrugged. ‘Louise organised herself a flight to Cassowary Island as a surprise Christmas gift to me. Then somehow last night a casual walk ended up in front of a jewellery shop. She pointed out the rings she liked. She pointed out that it was two weeks until Christmas. I thought … no use not being honest.’
‘Uh-oh,’ Ellen said. ‘Let me guess. She didn’t appreciate honesty?’
‘She hit me.’
‘Ouch.’ Ellen peered closer, saw the faint red mark across her boss’s strongly boned jaw. Winced. ‘That must have hurt.’
‘It did,’ he said, rueful. But also seemingly bewildered. ‘But it was totally undeserved. I spelled it out at the beginning. No strings.’
‘It’s a bit hard to stop strings forming,’ Ellen told him, returning to packing. ‘It’s nature. They just sneak up on you.’
Louise, the lady in question, was a thirty-four-year-old pathologist. She worked in the same hospital; she popped into the office often. Ellen had seen the normally single-mindedly professional pathologist glancing at Ben’s patients, at the mums-in-waiting, at the babies. She’d seen where Louise’s dreams were drifting, strings or no strings.
‘She’d make a lovely mum,’ Ellen said, a trifle wistfully. Her own children weren’t showing any signs of making her a grandma. She wouldn’t mind if her boss …
‘With someone else as dad,’ Ben said grimly, and snapped his briefcase closed. ‘Not me.’
‘What do you have against families?’
‘I have nothing for them and nothing against them. I just don’t have anything to do with them. Or women who want them. Which is why I’m staying on at Cassowary Island after the conference. The rest of the world can celebrate Christmas, and I’ll lie on the beach and wait for Santa to drop by with my Boys’ Own Adventure. That’s not to say I don’t wish you a wonderful Christmas,’ he said, hauling an exquisitely wrapped box from under the desk. ‘Merry Christmas, Ellen. Have a wonderful time.’
‘With my family,’ she said sadly. ‘You know I’d love you—’
‘No,’ he said. ‘And it’s time you stopped asking. I love you, Ellen, but even for you … even for anyone, I don’t do families.’
‘All I want for Christmas is my dad.’
‘That’s not exactly a practical wish.’ Jess was perched on the end of her small son’s bed, listening to his Christmas list with dismay. Until now Dusty’s Christmas list had been easy. Fire engine. Spider-Man outfits. Computer games.
She’d thought she had a couple of years until the troublesome teens, but lately they’d been showing signs of emerging. For Dusty wasn’t smiling with Christmas excitement. He was glowering, his ten-year-old face trying hard to look mature and solemn, not sulky and childlike. He wasn’t quite managing to pull it off.
‘You know your dad died when you were three,’ Jess said, as gently as she could. ‘Not even Santa can fix that.’
‘I know that,’ he said, intelligent kid speaking to slightly thick adult. ‘But all we have is three photos, and even they’re blurry. That’s what I want. A whole bunch of pictures. And other stuff. Pictures of my … my ancestors. And things. Real things. Like a cricket bat he used, so when Mike talks about his dad I can show him … something.’
So that’s what this was about, Jess thought. Mike Scott was Dusty’s new best friend. Mike’s dad had died of cancer last year and Mike’s mum, an anaesthetist, had moved to London to be closer to her mother. The two boys had become friends in the hospital’s after-school child-care programme, two ten-year-olds, smart as paint, both with dead fathers.
Difference? Mike had a lifetime of memorabilia. Dusty had three grainy photos.
Which was hardly surprising. Mike’s parents had been happily married. Jess was a single mum. She’d met Nate in her first year in medical school. She’d been desperately lonely and desperately unlucky, in her choice of boyfriend, in her choice of contraception, in … life.
She was much better at it now. Life. Somehow she’d scraped through medical school. Somehow she’d managed to raise a normally cheerful, healthy ten-year-old who hardly ever asked anything of her.
Who was looking at her now with the expression she knew well.
He seldom asked for anything, but when he did …
‘There’s nothing I can do about this,’ she said, knowing only an adult answer would do. ‘You know your father wasn’t ready to be a proper father when you were born, and you know he was killed when you were a toddler.’
‘When I was three,’ Dusty said belligerently. ‘There must be photos.’
‘There aren’t.’ She’d never been able to tell him the whole truth, that his father had never come near, had never seen his son, had even disputed fatherhood. ‘Dusty, we weren’t photo-taking people.’
‘Then someone else must have been,’ Dusty said, clinging grimly to his need. ‘When he was a kid.’
‘Your grandpa was a grouch,’ Jess said. Here at least she could be honest. Or a little bit honest. ‘I asked if he could let us see something of your dad’s childhood and he told me he wasn’t interested in sharing.’
And that summed up an appalling interview. Memories flooded back, Jess at twenty-one, using all her courage and failing. She’d hoped Nate had told his father about Dusty, or if he hadn’t … she’d hoped he’d be pleased he had a grandson. She’d hoped wrong.
She remembered standing in the marble hall of a house that had taken her breath away. Nate had been dead for three months. His child-support payments, tiny and grudgingly given but still desperately important if she was to keep studying, had stopped completely.
She’d known Nate’s family was almost obscenely wealthy. She’d known those payments would mean nothing to them, but they’d meant everything to her.
So she’d faced the old man-and watched him turn choleric with rage and disdain.
‘How dare you come near me with your lies and your schemes? My son would never have a child with the likes of you. Get out of my house; you’ll not get a penny out of me. Nothing.’
It had taken her two years to calm down, to find the courage to write. This time she’d enclosed a picture of Dusty, who looked just like his father, saying that even if he didn’t wish to help support Dusty, she’d like some kind of recognition that Dusty had had a dad.
She’d received a lawyer’s letter in response, threatening her with a defamation suit.
She could prove it in a minute, she thought. Nate had known it; that’s why he’d grudgingly paid child support. DNA testing would be conclusive, either from the old man or from Nate’s brother.
But what was the point? Prove paternity she already knew? Pay a fortune she didn’t have in lawyer’s fees?
Dusty needed to forget it, as she almost had. ‘There’s nothing we can do,’ she told Dusty now. ‘I know this is hard, but you need to accept that your dad’s dead. So’s your grandpa. There’s nothing left to show you of your dad’s family.’
‘You said Dad had a brother.’
‘He hardly talked of him. I don’t think they liked each other.’ She didn’t think the whole family liked each other.
‘So let’s find him.’
‘Dusty, he won’t want to see us. He’s probably grouchy like your grandpa.’
‘No, but we could see him,’ Dusty said. ‘It’d be like an adventure. Just … looking. I might be able to take a picture with my zoom lens. Then when Mike asks I can say he’s a secret and we had to sneak a look …’
And