been here all day.’
‘No, I’ll stay.’ She took his father’s hand, squeezed it. ‘I’ll be back in a little while.’
His father ignored her, instead grabbing his wrist as he made a move.
‘Tell me you’ll do it!’
‘Don’t fret,’ his mother said soothingly. ‘You can leave George to sort things out at the garage. He won’t let you down.’
She looked pleadingly across the bed at him, silently imploring him to back her up.
‘Of course he’ll let me down,’ his father said before he could speak. ‘He never could stand getting his hands dirty.’
‘Enough!’ the nurse said and, not waiting for his mother, George walked from the room.
She caught up with him in the family room. ‘I’m sorry—’
‘Don’t! Don’t apologise for him.’ Then, pouring her a cup of tea from one of the flasks on the trolley, ‘You do realise that he’s not going to be able to carry on like this?’
‘Please, George…’ she said.
Please, George…
Those two words had been the soundtrack to his childhood, his adolescence.
‘I’ll sort out what needs to be done,’ he said. ‘But maybe it’s time for that little place by the sea?’ he suggested, hoping to get her to see that there was an upside to this.
She shook her head. ‘He’d be dead within a year.’
‘He’ll be dead anyway if he carries on.’ Then, because he knew he was only distressing his mother, he said, ‘Will you be okay here on your own? Have you had anything to eat?’
‘I’ll get myself something if I’m hungry,’ she said, refusing to be fussed over. Then, her hand on his arm, ‘I’m so grateful to you for coming home. Your dad won’t tell you himself…’ She gave an awkward little shrug. ‘I don’t have to tell you how stubborn he can be. But he’s glad to see you.’
The traffic was building up to rush-hour level by the time Annie reached the far side of Maybridge. Unused to driving in heavy traffic, confused by the signs, she missed the exit for the motel, a fact she only realised when she passed it, seeing its lights blazing.
Letting slip a word she’d never used before, she took the next exit and then, rather than retracing her route using the ring road, she turned left, certain that it would lead her back to the motel. Fifteen minutes later, in an unlit country lane that had meandered off in totally the wrong direction, she admitted defeat and, as her headlights picked up the gateway to a field, she pulled over.
She found Reverse, swung the wheel and backed in. There was an unexpectedly sharp dip and the rear wheels left the tarmac with a hard bump, jolting the underside of the car.
Annie took a deep breath, told herself that it was nothing, then, having gathered herself, she turned the steering wheel in the right direction and applied a little pressure to the accelerator.
The only response was a horrible noise.
George sat for a moment looking up at the sign, George Saxon and Son, above the garage workshop. It was only when he climbed from the car that he noticed the light still burning, no doubt forgotten in the panic when his father had collapsed.
Using the keys his mother had given him, he unlocked the side door. Only two of the bays were occupied.
The nearest held the vintage Bentley that his father was in such a state about. Beautiful, arcane, it was in constant use as a wedding car and the brake linings needed replacing.
As he reached for the light switch he heard the familiar clang of a spanner hitting concrete, a muffled curse.
‘Hello?’
There was no response and, walking around the Bentley, he discovered a pair of feet encased in expensive sports shoes, jiggling as if in time to music, sticking out from beneath the bonnet.
He didn’t waste his breath trying to compete with whatever the owner of the feet was listening to, but instead he tapped one of them lightly with the toe of his shoe.
The movement stopped.
Then a pair of apparently endless, overall-clad legs slid from beneath the car, followed by a slender body. Finally a girl’s face appeared.
‘Alexandra?’
‘George?’ she replied, mocking his disbelief with pure sarcasm. ‘Gran told me you were coming but I didn’t actually believe her.’
He was tempted to ask her why not, but instead went for the big one.
‘What are you doing here?’ And, more to the point, why hadn’t his mother warned him that his daughter was there when she’d given him her keys?
‘Mum’s away on honeymoon with husband number three,’ she replied, as if that explained everything. ‘Where else would I go?’ Then, apparently realising that lying on her back she was at something of a disadvantage, she put her feet flat on the concrete and rose in one fluid, effortless movement that made him feel old.
‘And these days everyone calls me Xandra.’
‘Xandra,’ he repeated without comment. She’d been named, without reference to him, after her maternal grandmother, a woman who’d wanted him put up against a wall and shot for despoiling her little princess. It was probably just as well that at the time he’d been too numb with shock to laugh.
Indicating his approval, however, would almost certainly cause her to change back. Nothing he did was ever right. He’d tried so hard, loved her so much, but it had always been a battle between them. And, much as he’d have liked to blame her mother for that, he knew it wasn’t her fault. He simply had no idea how to be a dad. The kind that a little girl would smile at, run to.
‘I have no interest in your mother’s whereabouts,’ he said. ‘I want to know why you’re here instead of at school?’
She lifted her shoulders in an insolent shrug. ‘I’ve been suspended.’
‘Suspended?’
‘Indefinitely.’ Then with a second, epic, I-really-couldn’t-care-less shrug, ‘Until after Christmas, anyway. Not that it matters. I wouldn’t go back if they paid me.’
‘Unlikely, I’d have said.’
‘If you offered to build them a new science lab I bet they’d be keen enough.’
‘In that case I’d be the one paying them to take you back,’ he pointed out. ‘What has your mother done about it?’
‘Nothing. I told you. She’s lying on a beach somewhere. With her phone switched off.’
‘You could have called me.’
‘And what? You’d have dropped everything and rushed across the Atlantic to play daddy? Who knew you cared?’
He clenched his teeth. He was his father all over again. Incapable of forming a bond, making contact with this child who’d nearly destroyed his life. Who, from the moment she’d been grudgingly placed in his arms, had claimed his heart.
He would have done anything for her, died for her if need be. Anything but give up the dream he’d fought tooth and nail to achieve.
All the money in the world, the house his ex-wife had chosen, the expensive education—nothing he’d done had countered that perceived desertion.
‘Let’s pretend for a moment that I do,’ he said, matter-of-factly. ‘What did you do?’
‘Nothing.’ She coloured slightly. ‘Nothing much.’ He waited. ‘I hot-wired the head’s car and took it for a spin, that’s all.’
Hot-wired…