For Our Children's Sake. NATASHA OAKLEY

flitted across her expressive face. Her hand went to her casually swept-up hair and fiddled with a strand hanging across her cheek. ‘What happens if you meet someone else? Or I do?’

      ‘It hasn’t happened to me in the last six years. I hardly think it’s likely to happen now. I don’t ever want to love anyone again. I can’t take the risk of anything hurting that much again.’ He had her attention now. It was in the way she leant forward and her hand stilled on her hair. ‘We have a common goal. It will be enough to build a good life for ourselves—and for the girls.’

      ‘And where will we live?’

      Was that a yes? He’d shocked her, unquestionably, but she could obviously see the advantages of a marriage of convenience. ‘If we decide to go ahead with it, that’s all open for discussion. It’s handy for me to be based in London, and I’ve a big house there, so that’s an option, but it’s not a necessity. Are you fixed here?’

      ‘My family’s here. Friends.’

      Memories, he realised, watching the way she bit on her bottom lip. ‘The details can be worked out later. In principle, what do you think? Will you marry me?’

      Lucy didn’t know what to say. What to think, even. Could she do it? Marry a perfect stranger? To give Chloe security and get to know Abby? And then she gave a half smile. Perfect? Had she really thought that? He was perfect—almost. Tall, handsome—in a clever kind of way, rather than a chocolate box model kind of thing. Gorgeous hands, eyes you could trust, and a committed father as well. It was an impressive list. But he didn’t love her and she didn’t love him.

      It was a big but. If she’d been young and impressionable he’d have been someone she might have dated—if it hadn’t been for Michael. There never had been anyone for her but Michael and never would be. People only had one great love in a lifetime and she’d already had hers. It had been fantastic—and now it was over.

      All she had in her life were memories—and Chloe. Lucy looked out at a small family cruiser passing outside on the canal. A mum, a dad and two little girls. She bit her lip. She could do that for Chloe. For Abby. If there was no possibility of her falling in love again she could commit herself to this new family unit. The girls could have everything. She looked back at Dominic.

      ‘I’ll do it. Theoretically, if we can work it all out, I’ll do it. For the girls, I’ll marry you.’

      She couldn’t believe she’d said the words that would commit her to a lifetime without love. It seemed a travesty of everything she’d shared with Michael. He wouldn’t have wanted her to spend the rest of her life alone in every way that mattered. Yet Michael couldn’t have known what would face her.

      Dominic leant forward. ‘We can make this work, Lucy. I know we can.’

      She could feel her eyes begin to fill up with tears and she blinked furiously. When she’d agreed to have dinner with Dominic to discuss the future she hadn’t dreamed the conversation would take this turn. It certainly wasn’t something that usually happened to a widowed mother of one who only wanted a peaceful life. ‘What do we do now?’

      Watching Dominic, she noticed a change. The tension had left him and in its place was a sense of purpose. She had the strangest sensation of being in a bubble. Everything was muffled, it was slower, it was…inevitable.

      ‘Are you working at the moment? Apart from on a casual basis with your mother?’ She knew she’d shaken her head when she heard him say, ‘That simplifies things.’

      Did it? Nothing seemed very simple to her. She could see every obstacle. She knew nothing about him. Not even what he did for a job, she recognised bleakly. Some kind of lecturer, perhaps? It hardly mattered.

      ‘We could start off in London and review it later. My house has room for some kind of a studio for you. I don’t know what you need for potting, but there’s an annexe on the ground floor that was intended for live-in help. It could be made into something quite useful. We could put in a wheel. A kiln? Is that what you need?’

      Everything was moving too fast. He was answering questions she hadn’t even got around to thinking yet. Was he really asking whether she wanted her own studio? It was unbelievable. She couldn’t get her head round it at all. This just couldn’t be happening to her.

      ‘Mum mainly produces named mugs for the tourist market. I’d rather try and paint again.’ This was just surreal. ‘And I like to teach. I’ve been doing a bit at the local secondary school while their art teacher has been off on maternity leave. I could do more of that.’

      ‘There’s a desperate shortage of teachers in London, so I can’t see that as a problem.’ He filled up his fork and ate another mouthful. ‘What we ought to do now is get on with organising our wedding. There’s no point in hanging about now we’ve made the decision. I’m assuming we’ll go for a civil ceremony.’ He frowned. ‘I think the rules have changed since the last time I got married. I think there’s a month’s delay from visiting the register office to the wedding itself.’

      ‘Is there?’ Lucy heard herself ask.

      ‘Minimum. I suggest you move in with Abby and I as soon as possible and we’ll set everything in motion. If the wedding is, let’s say, eight weeks from now, it gives us some time to review it.’

      ‘Review it?’ she repeated weakly.

      ‘Once we’re married there can be no turning back. We’ll be in it for the long run. For better, for worse and all that.’

      CHAPTER THREE

      TAKING off the wedding ring Michael had given her was the difficult bit, Lucy thought. It really felt like the end of one life and the beginning of another. She looked down at her left hand as it rested on the steering wheel, at the white band indelibly printed on her skin, marking where her ring used to be. Practically all her adult life she’d worn Michael’s ring and now it really was over.

      She was driving towards a new life. A new daughter.

      ‘Are we nearly there yet?’ Chloe asked, lifting her head from the awkward angle it had fallen to while she had slept.

      ‘Very close now, sweetheart.’

      They had left the motorway and were weaving through closely populated suburban housing. It was dirtier and greyer. And this was her new life? There were no fields dotted with cows, no picture-book cottages, no meandering little streams cutting between the hills. In their place were manmade recreational spaces and row upon row of postwar housing.

      ‘How much longer?’

      A bus moved up on the lane beside her. ‘It’s not far. Let me concentrate for a minute. There’s a turning off to the left somewhere near here.’

      She’d always hated the idea of city life. The city had always seemed to her to be a grubby place to live. Some people saw opportunity, but all she saw was the claustrophobia of it all. Yet this was what she’d chosen. For the good of Chloe—and Abby, whom she’d never met—she was going to make her life here.

      The road whipped round and the houses became more spaced out, some even attractive.

      It was a strange feeling. Almost like the first day in a new job. A mixture of excitement, anticipation and pure fear. Since the moment she’d opened her eyes that morning a feeling of nausea had settled deep in her stomach.

      Within the next few minutes she was going to meet the little girl she and Michael had created together. But for an administrative error it would have been this little girl she’d spent the last six years loving. Would she feel anything for her? Would it be enough to sustain her, spending her future with a man who didn’t love her and who openly admitted he didn’t want to?

      She rounded another bend and turned into a wide, tree-lined avenue. ‘This is it,’ Lucy announced in complete disbelief.

      ‘We’re going to stay here?’

      Lucy