Natural Father E-Book

Andy Knaggs

• Herausgeber: M-Y Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 498

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Life is good. A new home in the countryside, a well-paid job and, best of all, a son for Nick and Kay to rejoice in. To top it all, as little Davy’s second birthday approaches, Kay’s long-estranged dad comes back into the picture. It seems that not even the storm clouds that are starting to gather over Kay’s new workplace can spoil their idyllic family lifestyle. Until that is, they discover that the past hasn’t gone conveniently away, and everything that Nick and Kay hold dear suddenly comes under terrifying threat.

Leseprobe

NATURAL FATHER

Andy Knaggs

AN M-Y BOOKS PAPERBACK

© Copyright 2016

Andy Knaggs

The right of Andy Knaggs to be identified as the author of

This work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All Rights Reserved

No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.

No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with the written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended).

Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

ISBN–978-1-911124-19-1

CONTENTS

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

PROLOGUE

Well, well, well… would you look at that? It really was beautiful: beautiful enough to live for, beautiful enough to fight for; to die for even, if necessary. A butterfly, purple-winged and perfect, had landed just six or seven feet away from the man. He watched it, transfixed. It was a Purple Emperor. He knew that, and he knew exactly how unusual it was to see one up close. As he watched, the butterfly’s wings fluttered briefly; they had white smudges on them, brilliant in the sunshine. The creature was busy feeding on something in the undergrowth. Oh, it was glorious… beautiful. He smiled.

Noiselessly, he turned his head to catch the eye of a companion behind him, wanting to share the moment. Nancy was closest to him, and he could tell by the expression of reverence on her face that she too had seen the Emperor. Sensing his gaze, Nancy reluctantly raised her eyes from the butterfly to acknowledge the wonder that had landed in their midst. She shook her head at him, mouthing a silent “Wow”. Behind her, Liam grinned uncertainly. The man smiled and turned back to the butterfly.

Jesus, it was warm here. Shafts of sunlight burst through the canopy of beech leaves, casting dappled patterns of alternate dark and light on the woodland floor around the man. In his hand he held a saltshaker’s worth of soil that he had scrabbled up from the ground. He crouched there and rolled the dirt between his fingers: sifting it; enjoying the contrast of dry, crusty surface grains with the darker, cooler stuff he’d prised from just below the surface. Tiny flecks of white betrayed the presence of chalk.

He listened to the sounds around him. It seemed so peaceful, so tranquil here, away from humans, but in reality he was surrounded by noise. Birds were having a riot high up in the branches, apparently competing in song. There was that special buzz all around that told of thousands of different insects, almost all unseen, going about their endless business: fetching, carrying, fussing in the heat. He fancied that if he were to click his fingers they would all cease their droning and he would hear the minute vibrations of the Purple Emperor’s membrane-thin wings.

The butterfly shimmered in the barely discernible breeze. He watched for a few more seconds, hardly daring to breathe, before reluctantly deciding it must be time to get a move on. He heard whispers and low sniggers behind him, and then Nancy shushing whoever it was to silence. It was time to get his mind on the job. He let the handful of soil trickle back to refill the hole where he had scraped it up, but odd grains stuck to his palms, clammy with sweat. He brushed them off, and checked his watch. Any second now…

He glanced behind him, to left and right, and saw that everyone was there; everyone was watching him, crouching down and waiting for his signal to move. No one was sniggering now, not even Liam. Vince’s face was grave, ashen, he observed; like a man who had gone for a pleasant walk in the woods and discovered a concentration camp. The analogy worked well, he thought. Vince would soon lighten up. Well, maybe.

The man squinted up to where, far above the forest floor, branches and leaves swayed gently in the breeze. He closed his eyes and composed himself; forced himself to breathe evenly and deeply. This was it. He raised his right arm so that everyone could see his signal. This was what it had come to. It was a beautiful day, and it felt good to be alive and free. As free as a butterfly… the perfect omen. The arm came down.

Then he was on his feet and running, heading for the treeline in front of him, and out of the corner of his eye he saw the Purple Emperor take sudden flight in a blur of frantic, panicked motion, the beginning of it all. Behind him the stamping, rustling footsteps, lots of them, told him that he was not alone. Sprinting fast and closing on the treeline… almost there… and no sooner had he thought that than he was bursting from cover into the glare of sunlight and destiny.

CHAPTER ONE

The dark-haired woman folded her arms and scowled across the desk at her managing director. “If that’s the way it is, Richard,” she said, more loudly than was necessary, “if you’re not prepared to back me on this, then there’s no point in me working here. I’ll resign.”

Richard Cambridge sat back in his chair, linked his hands behind his head and cleared his throat before he replied. The woman facing him was seething with anger. “Come on now, Kay, let’s not get too dramatic about all this. You’ve only been here three weeks, for a start. You can’t resign. I won’t let you.”

“But, Richard, you’re not letting me do the job you asked me to do! That particular meeting is a key part of the whole campaign I’m putting together. We’ve got to reach out. Isn’t that the point of the initiative?”

Kay Campbell, recently appointed Head of Public Affairs, challenged the head man at contract research company Maier Science, her new boss, with a defiant glare. He couldn’t hide his amusement. He started chuckling, and that made Kay even angrier.

“Richard, don’t just laugh at me! I’m trying my bloody best here to help you. I’m trying to do the job you employed me to do, and you’re giggling like a silly bloody teenager. Stop it!”

Richard’s mirth intensified. He hid his face in his hands as he laughed. Kay sat back and waited, counting quickly to ten but finding she needed to keep counting up to and beyond twenty, before Richard’s red face finally emerged from behind his hands. She called him a bunch of names in her mind, but outwardly just bit her lip and stewed in her own indignation.

“Oh, Kay, you are priceless,” he told her, still shaking with mirth. ‘Listen, I’m sorry for laughing. I know you’re doing a great job, and I understand that you want to prove yourself. I can assure you, you have my total respect and confidence, and this document is exactly what we need. Exactly what we need apart from one thing: I’m not going to meet with SMAC. Those parasites are not interested in finding out the truth. They’ve got their own agenda, and I’m not going to give them the satisfaction of acknowledging them.”

“Well, I disagree with that strategy,” Kay said pointedly. “I think you’ve got to meet them. If we’re ever going to change the public perception of Maier’s activities, then SMAC is where we need to start.”

Richard smiled at her again, this time encouragingly. “Okay, then we’ll have to agree to disagree on this, and you can view it as your personal challenge to try and change my mind. This will be fun! A clash of the Titans. But I’m willing to bet you won’t have succeeded by Christmas. Shall we put a fiver on it?”

Kay sighed and fiddled with her pen, feeling up against it. Then she put down the pen, very deliberately on the desk, and looked up at her boss, poker-faced. “Make it a tenner and I’m in.” She reached out her hand to shake on the arrangement, which he accepted with another laugh.

“No letter of resignation then?”

“No,” she replied. “Not this time. But don’t mess with me, Cambridge. I’m going to keep banging this drum, so you might as well get used to the noise. I’m a highly experienced professional, and I’m used to getting my own way.”

“Kay, you are brilliant, but sometimes I do wonder whether you’re even aware that I’m the boss here and you’re not.”

She pulled a face at that pointed comment, but acknowledged that he had pulled rank with tact and humour, which had to count for something. “Now let’s wrap this up,” Richard went on. “I’ve got to get away this evening to take Muriel out for dinner, and I have a mountain of work to shift before that.”

Kay looked at her watch and reacted with surprise. “No way - it’s gone four! Another nanny is coming round for an interview this evening, so I need to get away early.”

They continued talking for ten minutes more, discussing various aspects of the campaign Kay had devised. Then she walked out to her car, drove through the security gate and set off for home.

As she drove, she thought over the meeting and the campaign that was her brainchild. It was a series of actions and initiatives designed with one purpose in mind: to improve the public perception of Maier Science, a company that ran a laboratory licensed to test potential new consumer products on animals.

Within Kay’s campaign were outreach projects to bolster mutual communication and understanding with local civic heads, particularly in the nearby city of Salisbury: police chiefs, local media from TV, radio and newspapers, and public interest groups; there was also political lobbying, PR programmes, and plans to approach potential investors. The company website needed sprucing up too. In fact, Kay had argued, it needed hauling down and starting again from scratch.

There should be openness and engagement on all fronts and with all interested parties, even with SMAC – a four-letter acronym that stood for Stop Maier Animal Cruelty: a group of animal rights activists that had latched on to the company and its business activities, and now dogged its every move. The group maintained a semi-permanent picket in the woods across the road from Maier’s facility, which, Kay had been shocked to discover, looked rather more like a prisoner-of-war compound than the clean, modern office complex she had been expecting. Fifteen-foot-high wire fences were topped with rolls of barbed wire all the way around the three-acre site. Access for staff and suppliers was through a security gate, manned by guards whose receding hairlines and expanding waistlines suggested their glory days were etched in history. The “gate” consisted of a solid iron bar that the security men raised and lowered by the press of a button in their small control hut. Stalag Luft 3, Nick had called it when they had first driven past Kay’s new place of work. There were no machine gun towers visible, but it had been hard to disagree with him.

Thank God it was down a quiet country lane where most people would never see it, Kay had thought. Barbed-wire fences faced by huge banners proclaiming Maier Science to be animal-killing scum was not a promising image to work with, and had quickly brought the enormity of the task home to her. Still, that was why they were paying her so much money and, after all, her financial cut from her old partnership with Wilf at Palmerston PR would not last forever.

The banners and shouted insults of the protesters as Kay drove into and out of work most days were still unsettling, but she had only taken the job after receiving assurances that the SMAC allegations of animal cruelty were baseless. The challenge had energised her professionally, and she was enjoying being back at work after almost two years spent looking after her new pride and joy: Davy, the little boy she and Nick had brought into the world.

Motherhood, she found, had consumed her while at the same time nourishing her soul. She loved every moment of it. The first stumbling steps; the magic of the first word to cross Davy’s lips; the feel and smell of his soft hair and skin; the giggles and the screams; the sleeping and the not sleeping.

When she’d found out that she was pregnant, back in the days when she’d lived in Hertford with her husband Lee and Nick was just a man she’d met in unusual circumstances, who had to be too good to be true, she had been terrified, for reasons she kept to herself. For years, she had fought Lee about parenthood. He had wanted children, she had wanted only her career, and it had driven a fatal wedge between them. But then Nick had come along, and in the sudden glowing turmoil of their lives being turned upside down, Kay had made a mistake with her contraceptive pills, and Davy was conceived. Somehow, knowing that the baby was Nick’s, and not Lee’s, had made all the difference.

Things had not been straightforward for Kay and Nick even so. As soon as she discovered she was pregnant, she had left the house in Hertford that she’d shared with her husband Lee – left it for good, she had decided right then. She had loaded her car with the clothes she wanted and driven to Nick’s flat in Camden to break the joyous news to him. It was a drizzle-swept Tuesday evening and he had been out as it happened, following Lee and a friend of his all the way to Luton where he observed all that they did in the shadowy night-time streets.

Nick was acting at Kay’s request. She had become suspicious of her husband’s moods and behaviour so Nick had agreed to follow him, to find out what was going on. That turned out to be shocking. Poor Nick was a shoeshine man at Liverpool Street Station at the time, with no training whatsoever in undercover work. He found himself hiding in the dark recesses of a dingy alleyway as Lee and his companion, a young man named Billy, had tried to launch an attack on a Muslim man who was passing by. It all seemed to be carefully planned in advance but had gone horribly wrong when Nick’s mobile phone had rung at the vital moment, just as Billy was about to strike their unwitting target. Confused by the ringtone coming from the shadows behind him, he had hesitated and the intended victim had taken his chance to counter-attack with a knife, leaving Billy stricken on the floor. No doubt hardly believing his luck, the Muslim man had taken flight, leaving a cowering Lee behind him.

Nick had run off too but in the opposite direction. He fled back to the station and got on the next train to London. He had told Kay everything when he returned to his flat later that evening to find her waiting, wet and windswept, by the front door, even though she might have sat in her car and kept dry. She hadn’t been able to keep still, she was so keyed up. Nor could Nick – he was in bits and pieces about what he had just witnessed. What Lee had been involved in was a big surprise to Kay. He had no background in race hate, that she knew of.

They had talked long into that night. Nick had been so upset by what he had seen that he had even thrown his mobile phone away in disgust – hurled it without ceremony into the River Thames. But after all that drama, the news of Kay’s pregnancy made him glow with delight.

She stayed at his, and the next day things quickly moved forward. Kay had taken time off from work so that she could find herself a new flat. Nick’s was actually owned by his girlfriend, an Australian called Justine, who had been away in Melbourne visiting her hospitalised dad. Nick and Kay really needed to talk more, to spend time together and work things out, but there had been little opportunity for this so far. And then Justine had turned up the following night, hotfoot from Heathrow.

Kay and Nick were out at the time, viewing a property for Kay to move into. They drove back to the flat to discover the lights were on, which could only mean that Nick’s girlfriend had come home. His shock at the discovery turned to blind panic when Kay reminded him that some of her possessions had been left lying around the flat – clothes, make-up, toiletries. Given that, and the obvious conclusion that Justine would come to, it was a surprise that Nick’s clothes and possessions weren’t already in a pile outside the front door. They drove around the corner, parked the car, and debated what their best course of action was. Should Nick go in now? Should he come back the next day? What was certain was that Kay would need somewhere else to sleep. She got on her phone to arrange a hotel room, and once that was booked they decided that Nick should go into the flat. Kay would wait for him in the car for two hours, after which she would go to the hotel where he would be able to find her once he had the chance.

Feeling sick with nerves, Nick summoned up the courage to let himself in. It was an understatement to say that Justine was angry. There were no pleasantries. She did virtually all the talking, in a very loud voice, hurt and anger etched into her face. She said she had been calling Nick repeatedly on his mobile, first before she had boarded the plane in Melbourne, then time after time upon reaching London. The first call had rung and rung before going to voicemail. That was the one that had reached Nick while he hid in the alleyway observing Lee and his friend, and had caused Billy to hesitate – and suffer the consequences. The later calls Justine had tried to make had not even got through to voicemail. It was as if the mobile had been destroyed, she said angrily. True enough, Nick acknowledged to himself – it was at the bottom of the Thames by then, and would remain there.

And then she had got home and had found another woman’s clothes, another woman’s moisturiser, another woman’s bloody Veet, for Christ’s sake, littering her flat! Unless Nick had turned into a tranny while she was away, she’d draw the inevitable conclusion. Nick was by then too shame-faced, too beaten down, to argue. The pain he saw in her eyes was only matched by his own guilt.

“You’ve got ten minutes to pack what you want to take, including all of that bitch’s stuff, and then you can get the fuck out of here, and get the fuck out of my life!” Justine bawled at him. Then she had slumped down on the sofa and hidden her face as she wept. When Nick tried to touch her, to soothe her, to explain things to her, she rounded on him viciously and pushed him away. There was nothing to be done anyway; Kay was waiting for him outside. He packed some things and left, closing the door behind him with a heavy heart. He was appalled at himself and his own actions. He had never hurt anyone this much, he was certain of that.

Kay was waiting in the car, where she’d said she would be. They drove to the hotel in almost complete silence, both of them thinking about the enormity of this latest development: now they really were together, but what did they even know about each other? At the hotel they checked in, had a drink in the bar, and shared a few feelings and fears. Nick had been on the verge of tears since leaving Justine’s, and Kay could see how badly shaken he was. It was no surprise when, after a couple of drinks, he had wanted to go upstairs and sleep.

That was exactly what they did until the morning light woke them hours later. Then they smiled at each other, heads close together on the pillows, and it felt like the first moment of the rest of their lives.

It still felt good now, more than two and a half years later, thought Kay, as she guided her Audi confidently around the winding country lanes between work and home. It had been the happiest time of her life. They had both needed to escape in some way, and so, later that day, they had jumped into Kay’s car and driven away from London, having tied up some loose ends with their jobs. They had headed west from the M25, with Nick holding the roadmap and calling out suggestions for where they could stay.

Eventually, and for no particular reason other than the fact that neither of them had been there before, they decided they wanted to see Stonehenge. They took the A303 and Kay’s car ate up the miles, leaving London and all it represented far behind. After the silence of the night before, laughter came easily to them – more and more easily, in fact, the farther they drove.

By the time they had reached the tourist attraction, the daylight was already starting to fade. There wasn’t going to be much time to see Stonehenge and they were in the middle of Wiltshire, with nowhere to stay for the night. They drove slowly past the eerie stone circle, seeing knots of people standing and gazing at the powerful sarsens and lintels that rose out of the creeping gloom.

“Mmm... a pile of rocks,” Nick muttered under his breath.

Kay giggled and slapped his arm playfully. “Don’t be such a bloody philistine.”

They headed for Salisbury to find a hotel, and ended up staying there for a week – sightseeing, walking the old streets of the city, marvelling at its cathedral, and falling in love with the nearby countryside, the rolling hills and valleys, the copses and hedgerows.

Halfway through the week, while enjoying the weak October sunshine outside a pub in the sleepy little village of Hindon – some twenty miles from Salisbury – after another day of peace and happiness, they decided to stay in Wiltshire for good. If possible in this village, with its two pubs, its church set halfway up the hill, and its air of complete seclusion from the rest of the world.

They went for a stroll down the hill, past cottages bearing quaint, sweet names such as Honeysuckle, Rose and Azalea; yellowing lime trees lined the pavement all the way down, and at the bottom they found a lane leading to a small school, with just beyond that a handful of bungalows set in a cul-de-sac. It was a picture of England in repose that Kay could only have dreamed of back in the hustle and bustle of London commuting. She wanted it for herself. She wanted to share her life with Nick and bring their child up here. They had nowhere else to go, and could put down roots wherever they chose. Nick hadn’t needed much persuading. They were both enchanted and excited by the prospect.

It hadn’t all been sweetness and light, though. The first night that they stayed in Salisbury, Kay had turned on her mobile phone. She had deliberately left it off for a couple of days, partly so that work queries wouldn’t disturb them, and partly because the dark shadow of her husband Lee still hung over them.

She found many missed calls, voicemail and text messages waiting for her, mostly from Lee, but also from her old business partner Wilf, warning her that her husband had been calling the office continually. It was a sobering reminder of the world they had left behind and from which they were not yet free, wherever they ran to hoping to start a new life. Kay shared a mortgage and a joint bank account with Lee, although she had her own money as well. She was more than happy for him to keep the house, since she had no intention of returning to it anyway. She didn’t want anything from Lee, in fact.

She decided on the spur of the moment to call him and tell him this. It would be the last time she would use the mobile phone. It was on a contract from the office anyway, but she would switch it off again immediately after speaking to Lee and then return it to Wilf. She took some time to write down a bunch of important phone numbers from the Contacts list, then jotted down a few thoughts as she composed herself. She called her husband’s number while Nick watched. Lee answered very quickly.

“Kay, thank God...”

“Lee, listen: I’m not coming back. It’s over. I’ve met someone else, and I won’t be on this number again. You can keep the house and everything else. I don’t really care. Goodbye.”

And that was it. She had hung up, switched the mobile off, and tossed it onto the bed by Nick’s feet.

“Done and dusted, babe,” she’d said, bending down to kiss her new man. Nick was slightly perturbed by what had just happened, and over the next few days it ate away at him. Kay seemed to imagine that uttering that brusque farewell, getting rid of her mobile phone and job, and setting up home with him in Wiltshire, was all that was required; that they would both live happily ever after with their baby. Nick saw it slightly differently, though: wasn’t she going to divorce Lee? It wasn’t a clean break if she was still married to him. Kay was uncertain about the technicalities, and didn’t want to enter into any sort of negotiations that would let Lee know where they were. She was running away from it all, Nick told her. She was vehement about her decision, however.

“I never want to see him again, and I don’t want him to know where I am. The only thing that matters now is us,” she said.

For the time being, they had agreed to let that situation lie. There was enough to do anyway: finding a flat to rent in or around Salisbury while they looked for something more permanent; contacting various financial organisations of which Kay was a client, either to cancel payment arrangements or to get communications placed on hold until they had a new address; and finding employment for them both.

That all seemed a long time ago now. They had got lucky with the house-hunting and snared a big dormer bungalow they had seen in Hindon almost as soon as it came onto the market early in 2008, just three months before Davy was born. By that time, Kay had come to an arrangement with Wilf back at Palmerston PR. She had received a substantial lump sum that represented half of her stake in their business. The rest he would pay her over a period of two years in the form of a monthly retainer. Kay became, in effect, Palmerston PR’s office in the West Country. She even picked up some new clients to add to the firm’s portfolio.

As for Nick, they had decided that he should be free to start afresh in whatever job took his fancy. There was no pressure. It was an opportunity to do something interesting or different, something that made him happy – even if the money wasn’t amazing. In his past working life he’d been in banking and then, after some hard times, had started getting himself back on his feet as a shoeshiner. That was how Kay had met him, when Nick had cleaned her husband’s shoes for him while the warring couple argued at Liverpool Street Station one morning in 2007.

Nick wasn’t going back to either of those jobs, that much he knew. The fire of ambition did not burn bright within him; he was unclear what he wanted to do next. The answer came unexpectedly. He had joined a temping agency, and for a few months did spells of office work. He hated it. He hated being in an office, and he hated most of the people he had to work with. To his way of thinking they took themselves far too seriously.

He also did some bar work in Salisbury, and it was while pulling pints one evening, with Kay sitting at the bar to keep him company, that the pair of them got talking to a friendly older couple who had frequented the pub several times before while Nick was working. The man’s name was Jerry, his wife’s Lorna. He had a smiling, weather-beaten, craggy face, making him look older than his alleged age of forty-eight. She was a petite blonde, laughing often and mostly deferring to Jerry, whom she obviously adored. They seemed a sweet and contented couple.

It turned out that Jerry worked as a landscape gardener. He had been doing it for years, and ran his own business. But he wasn’t getting any younger, and it was getting more and more tiring doing the heavy lifting and the digging that was part of the job. Nick happened to mention that he was trying to decide on a new line of work, and quite fancied something outdoors.

This was in February 2008, not long before Kay and Nick moved from their rented flat into the bungalow in Hindon. Outside the pub, the rain was pouring down. They had been talking for only half an hour or so, but Kay had been intrigued to see how well Nick and Jerry were getting along. Already they were taking the mickey out of each other.

“Outdoors, eh, fella? You reckon you could you work in that sort of outdoors?” Jerry gestured with his thumb towards the window, where rivulets of rainwater were streaming down to run off the windowsill and drip onto the cobbled stones of the marketplace outside. Jerry was chuckling as he said it and he looked Nick squarely in the eye, awaiting the answer.

Nick didn’t back down. “Yeah, that wouldn’t bother me at all. Why don’t I come and help you out tomorrow, old fella? I can push your wheelbarrow for you.”

Jerry pretended to be taken aback. Turning to his wife, he muttered, “How about that then, bloody Cockneys, eh?” Then he smiled back at Nick. “Okay, young man. I’ll take you up on that. I’ll show you what a proper day’s bloody work is.”

Much laughter and verbal jousting later, Jerry and Lorna prepared to head out into the continuing downpour, and it was settled: Jerry would pick Nick up at 6 a.m. the following morning, and take him out working for the day.

“And six o’clock is a bloody lie-in for me, boy, I tell you,” was Jerry’s parting shot.

“I’ve had worse, Jerry. I’ll be ready,” Nick had promised.

And it turned out that he loved it. The weather was filthy that first day, but the work was honest and fulfilling, and he and Jerry got on famously. They laughed a lot and made good progress with their work. Nick showed some aptitude for the job and soon it became a regular thing, three days a week at first. Then Jerry calculated that, with Nick’s help, he could take on more work, and actually give Nick full-time employment. For his part, Nick enrolled in a local college to study for a BTEC qualification in horticulture as soon as he was able. Soon after that, Nick and Kay moved into their dream house, and soon after that Davy was born, before Nick’s disbelieving eyes, in the Maternity Unit of Salisbury District Hospital.

Whenever she thought of it, Kay would still beam at the joy and wince at the pain of that day, and she did so again as the car swept around the last corner and entered the village of Hindon. She would be home within a minute. So much for slowing down the pace of life here in Wiltshire, Kay thought: she needed to pop over to old Mrs O’Neill’s to pick up Davy, then drive Nick over to Salisbury, where he was going to a snooker hall with Jerry and a couple of other men; then back home in time for 6.30 p.m. when there was a new girl coming round to be interviewed for the position of part-time nanny to Davy. Jemima, her name was. Jemima Bond. It was a good name, and Nick and Kay had laughed about it when Jemima had first responded to the advert, Nick going into one of his flights of fancy about her being the sister of secret agent James Bond, and cracking a bunch of corny jokes to that effect. I mean, Double-O Three and a Half? Please...

Someone had to be called Jemima Bond, Kay had supposed out loud, trying to stop herself from laughing and drag the conversation back into the grown-up sphere; Bond was a fairly common surname, she said, and Jemima was a pretty name, kind of doll-like. Kay wondered what this Jemima Bond looked like, and whether she would live up to Nick’s expectations for a beautiful but deadly secret agent.

Well, she thought, turning left past the pub, on to the High Street, and heading downhill past the pollarded lime trees and chocolate-box cottages towards School Lane and their home, soon enough she would find out.

***

A little boy sat playing with his toys on the living-room floor; his mother, sat on the sofa, watching him with proud and adoring eyes.

Moments like this were wonderful for Kay; moments when she felt truly blessed. There were others that she and Nick shared, such as their eyes meeting and expressing, without words, exactly how lucky they knew they were. Her work was done for the day, but with Nick out for the evening, it was just Kay and her son tonight, having quality time together.

She sipped her red wine and smiled to see Davy’s serious expression. He got so caught up in things; in his endless curiosity he wanted to know everything, touch everything… and break most things. Sometimes, when he needed help with whatever had grabbed his attention, he would look up at her with imploring brown eyes, forehead furrowed. Usually he would utter just two plaintive words – “Mummy, come” – and Kay’s heart would melt all over again.

He was happy at the moment, though, wearing his favourite outfit – Woody the cowboy from the Toy Story movies – and singing a nonsensical little ditty of half-formed or made up words to himself as he scribbled in a drawing pad. Toys and crayons and bits of colourful bric-a-brac littered the carpet around Kay’s feet, and had been spread around every corner of the room in Davy’s pursuit of fun. He was doubly excited tonight as well, because Kay had told him that a woman was coming to meet him – a woman who would look after him when Mummy went out to work during the day. Only if Davy and Mummy liked her though, Kay had assured him.

Jemima Bond was due to arrive at any minute now. She would not be the first nanny Nick and Kay had tried, and that caused Kay to feel a little nervous.

The last one, Chantelle, had not worked out well. She was a young girl who lived in the village, the daughter of a couple Nick and Kay had met in their local. She had just left school after taking her A-levels and was looking to earn a little money before going to university. She proved to be apathetic about her duties, however, and her conversational range didn’t seem to extend far beyond what had happened on The X Factor.

Then one day Chantelle turned up late, causing Kay to be late for work. Worse, Kay could smell alcohol on the girl’s breath. That was the end of that. So Nick and Kay had decided to advertise for a new nanny, and it had taken a few weeks before a CV turned up from the soon-to-arrive Jemima Bond. She seemed to have relevant qualifications and experience, which was more than could be said for Chantelle, and nobody else had applied, so Kay had called her and fixed up a meeting.

It was another fine day in late June and the patio doors were open, allowing a welcome breeze into the house. Outside, hardly a voice or a car engine interrupted the quiet in this secluded corner of the village. Given Nick’s developing fondness for horticulture, the back garden was too small really, as was the bungalow itself. They would need more space as Davy grew up.

Kay heard a car pull up outside and went to look out of the kitchen window, taking her glass with her. A yellow convertible VW Beetle had stopped immediately behind her black Audi. The hood of the Beetle had been down but was now sliding back into place over the top of the car. Kay couldn’t see anyone in the driving seat at first but then a couple of seconds later a figure popped up into view – she must have been reaching down to pick something up off the floor of the car, Kay thought. All she could see at this point, though, was long, dark hair tied neatly in plaits and topped by a jaunty brown suede cap. The Beetle driver then pressed a mobile phone to her right ear and spent a few moments speaking. After finishing the call, she swung the door of the VW open.

A slim young lady wearing black-rimmed glasses was revealed. She was dressed in a light blue denim shirt hanging loose over black leggings and white plimsolls. She swung a patchwork corduroy bag onto her right shoulder, then looked around briefly before appraising the door of Kay’s house and starting to walk up the path, past Nick’s red Alfa Romeo on the drive. Kay watched her for another second, taking in a few more details: a narrow, plain, serious face that was still girlish – as if there remained some living to be done yet, a hardening of her skin and muscles, a little definition. This wasn’t yet the face of the woman she would be – though Jemima was twenty-five, according to the CV she had emailed. The expression she wore was impassive, regarding Nick’s car with an air of cool detachment as she passed it. There was just a flicker of acknowledgement towards the face watching her from the kitchen window as she approached the front door.

“Guess what, Davy darling – your new friend Jemima is here,” Kay called, rushing back through to the living room.

Davy looked up, beaming his gap-toothed grin. He clambered to his feet and was off towards the front door at a trot, his toys forgotten. Kay put her glass of wine down on the table next to the sofa, and hurried after him. They reached the door at the same moment, just a second after the girl outside had rang the doorbell. Kay helped her little boy to pull the door open.

The smile that greeted them both was striking. The young lady Kay had watched get out of the VW Beetle and walk up the garden path had looked a little apprehensive perhaps, but this new girl was someone that Kay wouldn’t have hesitated to put in front of clients back in her London PR days. They would have been eating out of the palm of her hand in minutes. Jemima had a face full of freckles, Kay saw; a face that now brimmed with energy and enthusiasm as she fixed her grey-blue eyes first on Davy and then on Kay.

“Hello, Mrs Campbell, I’m Jemima. Pleased to meet you.”

She extended a hand to Kay. The handshake did not match the smile for dynamism or conviction, Kay noted, the fingers hanging limply in her hand. Jemima rapidly broke contact and fixed her attention back on Davy.

“He’s going to be a heart-breaker, isn’t he?” she enthused. “Hello, Davy!”

“He certainly is,” Kay responded, trying to match her smile. “Davy, say hello to Jemima.” He had gone shy, and was hugging Kay’s left leg.

“Hello, Yemima,” he said in a small, bashful voice.

The two women laughed. “Please come in, Jemima – if I can just prise this kid off my leg,” Kay said with obvious effort. It was hard, with Davy gripping her leg, for her to open the door fully so that Jemima could step inside. They laughed again as Kay, with difficulty, dragged away her leg, little boy attached, to make room. The door swung fully open and Jemima stepped forward as Kay scooped Davy up in her arms and walked towards the living room, calling over her shoulder for Jemima to come through.

As she entered the living room, Jemima exclaimed, “Oh, such a beautiful house.” Kay beckoned her to sit down and they took seats, Kay on the sofa and Jemima in the armchair by the living-room door. Now each could size up the other properly for the first time. Davy seemed struck dumb and was standing behind his mum’s legs, just in case a barrier was necessary between himself and this newcomer. Probably the smile had dazzled him too, Kay thought. For now, the boy sucked his thumb and looked at Jemima with a mixture of fascination and uncertainty.

“Can I get you a drink of something? Tea? Coffee? Wine?” Kay asked brightly.

“No, I’m fine Mrs Campbell, thanks...”

“Call me Kay – please.” A pause then: “Actually, I’m not really a Mrs Campbell. That’s my maiden name. I used to be a Talbot... long story...” Kay raised her eyebrows as if to establish it would be ill advised to make her tell that story. Jemima just smiled and showed no sign of wanting her to do so. She waited.

“Well, anyway…” said Kay. She turned and grabbed some sheets of A4 paper that had been next to her glass of wine on the dining table. “So, I’ve read your CV. You’re twenty-five and you live in Salisbury; you’ve got an NVQ in Children’s Care, Learning and Development, and your driving licence is full and clean. There’s obviously much more to Jemima Bond than two sheets of paper, though, isn’t there? Tell me how you got into child care.”

Jemima’s grey-blue eyes had been restless, darting around the room a little tentatively, taking in her new surroundings. Now she turned her attention back to Kay and her son. Her face really was quite freckly, Kay thought, and the black-rimmed glasses made her look... bookish. Was that the word?

“Yes, I’ve been looking after toddlers since I was ten,” said Jemima. She didn’t speak with the local West Country burr to her voice, Kay noticed. A glance down at the CV reminded her that Jemima was an Oxfordshire girl. “My parents had a car accident the year after my brother Josh came along. We lost Daddy, and Mummy was confined to a wheelchair.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. That must have been terrible for you.”

“Well, yes… it was really hard, but you get used to these things. Anyway, because of that I had to look after Josh from an early age, and I found that I loved it. It’s such a magical thing, watching babies grow and learn.”

Kay was touched by Jemima’s story, and part of the reason was that she had not seen her own father for years – since around the time she had settled down with Lee, in fact. He was, so far as Kay knew, still living on the same rough housing estate in South London where she had grown up, and still frittering away his days on booze, fags and horses, she supposed. She felt an ache of guilt that she didn’t even know that much.

Jemima was still speaking. “When I got the chance I studied child care at college, and since then I’ve worked with a few different families – agency work mainly. But I’m looking for something a bit longer term.”

“Yes, the agency – is that where you know this person Sarah Sykes from? The one you put down as a referee. I wondered about that. Couldn’t find the agency on a Google search and the number on the form was unobtainable for some reason when I tried it.”

“Oh, really? That’s odd. Well, I know that Sarah left them soon after I signed off. We kept in touch, though, and she knows me really well.”

“Okay, well, I haven’t got round to writing to her yet – been so busy with work that I keep forgetting. I hope you don’t mind, but I jotted down a few questions to ask you. I’ve never really interviewed for a nanny before, so if it’s okay...”

“No problem Mrs Cam... sorry, Kay. That’s what we’re here for, I guess.” Jemima smiled reassuringly.

Kay had flipped over one of the sheets of paper to reveal some handwritten notes. She drank some of her wine, put the glass back on the dining table, and then smoothed Davy’s brown hair affectionately with the now-free hand. He remained by his mother’s knees, still looking at Jemima with awed interest.

“I think he likes you,” Kay said. Jemima unleashed that smile again. “I’ve never seen him so quiet,” Kay went on. “Maybe you should move in full-time!”

Both women laughed, and Davy, aware of being the centre of attention again, blushed like mad. “You gone all shy, darling,” Kay cooed.

“He’s gorgeous – you’re so lucky,” said Jemima. Kay told the boy to go and shake their new friend’s hand and say hello. He did so at the second time of urging, reluctantly at first, but when he reached Jemima he threw his hands round her neck and kissed her, wetly and clumsily, on the cheek. Then he mumbled “hello”, and settled against her arm, resting his head there, cheeky and possessive now while his mum looked on fondly. As for Jemima, she looked enraptured by the match-winning approval she had apparently already pulled off.

“Well, I’m wondering whether I even need to ask you all these questions,” said Kay waving her notes, “since the boss has clearly made his decision already. Congratulations!”

She reached over to shake Jemima’s hand, laughing as she did so, but though she didn’t refer back to her list of questions, the interview wasn’t quite over. Kay wanted to get to know this young lady a little better, to cement the favourable impression left on her so far.

“So what made you move to Salisbury, Jemima?”

“My boyfriend – well, he didn’t make me, but I wanted to be with Stuart.”

“Oh, right – so you live together?”

“Yes. He studied at Oxford – that’s how I met him – and then he got a job here, so I moved to be with him.”

“Ooh, sounds serious. Do I hear wedding bells?” Kay drained the rest of her wine. She looked up again, smiling, only to see that Jemima seemed suddenly hesitant.

After a second or two of visibly wrestling with the words, she replied wistfully: “Well, I hope so – but you know: men.” Almost instinctively she gave Davy a little squeeze on the shoulder, as if to mark him out as a future exception.

Kay could sympathise. She said: “Yeah, not half. My husband Lee was a git, but I’m very happy with Nick now. You must meet him sometime – well, of course you will, when you start. He’s out playing snooker at the moment.”

“You’re not married, though, are you?” asked Jemima, happier not to be talking about herself.

“No, not yet; I’m still married to Lee even though I left him more than two and a half years ago.” Kay hesitated before confiding: “He doesn’t know where I am.”

“Oh my God! That’s amazing.” Jemima raised her fingertips to cover her mouth in a show of disbelief.

“I’ll sort it out one day,” Kay laughed. “Anyway, I must just get a quick refill.” She took her empty wine glass from the table, rose from the sofa and walked through to the kitchen. Jemima turned to smile at Davy, who was still standing by her side. It was the first time that she and the boy had been alone together.

“I must say, I do like your cowboy outfit, Davy. Are you the sheriff?”

“I’m Woody! Snake in my boot!”

The two of them giggled as Kay re-entered the living room carrying her glass and the bottle of wine, half-full. Davy reached up and pulled Jemima’s cap from her head, cramming it on his own in place of his cowboy hat. It covered his face, causing more giggling. “So,” Kay said brightly, intent on a fresh start, and remembering a key question from the hand-written list that she had put aside some minutes before, “what sort of food will you prepare for Davy?” It struck her that she had said the word will, rather than would, as if it had become a fait accompli that Jemima had the job already.

The girl quickly had her business head back on too. “I love cooking actually, so I could do lots of things. I could make a nice little Shepherd’s Pie with fresh vegetables. And I remember Josh always used to love the sausage casserole I did for him. I assume you would want a balance of meat and veg, really?”

Kay had sat back down on the sofa, and was pouring herself some more wine. “Yes, that sounds very good,” she said, placing the bottle on a coaster on the dining table. “And how well do you know this area? My little boy needs to be entertained, not to mention worn out, during the day!”

“I’ve thought about that,” replied Jemima. “I mean, I’m still getting to know it really, but I did some research on the internet. I wondered if Davy likes animals? There are a few places like Longleat, and a farm near Swindon where you can get close to the animals and learn about them. If the weather is nice that could be fun. Also there’s a wildlife rescue centre in Salisbury, and lots of parks and playgrounds. We could even have a picnic by the cathedral. I made a list of ideas anyway.”

At this, Jemima took a folded piece of paper from her bag and handed it over to Kay. There was a good list of places to go to and things to do typed upon it – enough to reach on to the other side of the sheet. Kay was impressed. There was too much information on it for her to study in detail right now, so she folded it back up and put it on the sofa beside her, voicing her thanks.

Kay continued to pick out questions from her own list, enquiring about Jemima’s disciplinary views, what she most enjoyed about looking after young children, what skills she had learned on her NVQ course, and the ticklish matter of salary. Everything was talked through satisfactorily and Kay felt herself relaxing a little. This was an intense young lady – Kay felt she was constantly being scrutinised – but Jemima seemed nice enough and she certainly seemed to know her stuff. Davy was quite attached to her already, which was the most important thing. Nick would be pleased.

“It’s Davy’s second birthday in the middle of July. We’re hoping to do a little party and get some of the local toddlers to come over. It would be great if you could help me with getting that together in the run up to it,” said Kay.

Jemima nodded and said that she would love to. She had a query of her own too. “Can I ask, does Davy have any grandparents?”

Kay grimaced slightly. “Not really,” she began, before pausing to gather herself. “Neither of Nick’s parents is around now, and I lost my mum years ago as well. Dad is up in London somewhere as far as I know, but we fell out when I got married to Lee and we haven’t spoken since.”

“Oh, I see. Well, that’s a shame. I always think it’s a lovely thing for children to have elderly people in their lives to look up to. But if they’re not around, they’re not around.”

Kay could only shrug. Thinking about her dad made her feel guilty. She looked at Davy, who was entertaining himself by spinning Jemima’s cap around on his head. It really was too complicated to explain the story about her dad, the hurt he had caused, and the things he had said. Kay felt her eyes welling up and glanced away, out of the patio doors, to conceal it. Looking out at the garden, it suddenly struck her as an excellent change of subject. “Come and see our garden, Jemima,” she insisted with a smile. “Do you like to be called Jemima by the way, or do you prefer something shorter?”

“Jemima is good.”

“Okay. Come and see out here. It’s Nick’s pride and joy.”

Kay took up her glass of wine and led the way through the open patio doors. The early-evening warmth hit them as they reached the threshold and halted there. A sweet, heady scent filled their nostrils. Nearest to the house, the garden had a curved border full of yellow and red flowers, leading to dark pinks, then pale blues, purples and lighter pinks furthest away. In the far left corner was a weeping crab apple tree, its purplish foliage drooping earthwards, and in the far right corner a rocky water feature gurgled down to a pond. Small piles of rocks, the same as those in the rock cascade, were dotted around the flower beds.

At the door Davy stood by Kay’s side and started pulling at her jeans, saying, “Mummy, play.” Kay stroked his hair, but said, “Not now, darling, Mummy’s talking to Jemima. We’ll play in a minute.” He was obviously feeling a bit neglected. Jemima stood next to Kay, scanning the garden from crab apple tree to water feature.

“It’s a bit small for what Nick wants to do with it,” Kay went on enthusiastically. “I think he’d quite like a football pitch so he can kick a ball around with Davy without smashing the flowers to bits – but it’s just beautiful, don’t you think? I can never remember all the names, but over there we’ve got some foxgloves… Digitalis something or other; here there are hollyhocks and poppies; those blue ones there are forget-me-nots, the pink ones are called Candytuft… can’t remember what those purple ones are. There are some lovely red roses there. The tree is called Royal Beauty – I chose that – isn’t it just gorgeous? We’ll get some amazing dark red apples from that in the autumn, but they’ll be too sour to eat, I think.

“Nick made the rock feature and the pond all by himself, would you believe? Mind you, it took him weeks to get it done! We’ve really taken to pottering about at weekends – spend hours out here with Davy. I try to help Nick, but I’ve never really done any gardening before. We haven’t finished yet, though. He wants to put in some decking and we want...”

There was a sudden flurry of movement to Kay’s right and a cry of: “Davy, no!”

She was startled from her horticultural exposition to discover that Jemima was no longer beside her. She had dashed the two or three yards back inside the front room to the dining table, and Kay now saw what had happened. Jemima had Davy in one arm, and the bottle of wine in the other; Davy, looking both guilty and confused, had both hands full of tablecloth. Only the timely arrival of Jemima had stopped him from accidentally pulling the wine bottle down onto either him or the carpet.

“Oh my God,” Kay exclaimed, rushing over to grab hold of her son, who was close to tears.

“I’m sorry, Mrs Campbell, I saw Davy tugging the cloth and the bottle was about to fall, but luckily I just got here in time,” said Jemima, now relinquishing her hold on Davy as his mother took control. Kay picked him up and held him close as tears started falling.

“No, please, don’t apologise. I should be thanking you for acting so quickly. I can’t believe I was rabbiting away about the bloody garden and not paying attention to what Davy was up to. Now, now, baby. It’s okay. No harm done. Now, now.”

Kay paced the room from side to side, comforting the boy, watched by Jemima who, having performed her good deed, now didn’t seem to know what to do with herself. Somewhat gingerly, she put the wine bottle back onto its coaster on the table and stood there awkwardly, a slightly uneasy expression on her face. Kay thought she knew why.

“I want you to know that I don’t make a habit of leaving bottles of wine around for Davy to grab hold of. I usually just have one glass when I get home from work, and the bottle stays in the kitchen out of his reach.

“It’s okay, Mrs Campbell. Accidents happen. No harm done.”

“Well, accidents like this shouldn’t happen. I guess I just got carried away and wasn’t thinking. It won’t happen again. You must think I’m a terrible mum.”

“Not at all, no. Really... don’t worry about it.”

The boy was still grizzling. “He’ll be all right,” said Kay, patting his back. “He likes a little cuddle from time to time, you’ll find – don’t you, Davy darling?”

They sat down again and chatted while Davy recovered from his misadventure. Soon he was sufficiently recovered to detach himself from his mother, and within minutes he and Jemima were giggling together as they played with his toys on the floor. Kay smiled with relief and took the offending wine bottle back to the kitchen.

“Davy, my favourite little cowboy,” she called, walking back into the front room, “you can play for another twenty minutes with Jemima and then it’s bath time and beddy-byes.”

CHAPTER TWO

Gorgeous oranges and golds marked the evening sun’s final slide towards the horizon as Jemima Bond pulled up outside the second house she needed to visit that night. The text message had arrived from Stuart just before she had left Kay and Davy at about 7.45: Meet round Nancy’s place at 9, urgent stuff. Yeah, right, Jemima thought, whatever. She had some interesting news of her own to deliver about the woman she had spent the last hour or so with.