Promise Of A Family. Jessica Steele

don’t think I could wait endless months until Mum gets back.’

      Leyne studied her niece’s earnest little face, and just had to go to her and give her a hug. ‘It might take me some little while,’ she hedged. ‘But can you leave it with me, and I’ll see what I can do?’

      ‘I knew you would,’ Pip responded trustingly—and Leyne felt her heart would break. How long had this been fidgeting away in the dear child’s head?

      Leyne wondered what could she do? Goodness knew when Max would be in touch again. Should she try to contact her on her cellphone? Why not? Max, after all, was the only person to tell her, and also to tell her how she wanted her to handle this delicate situation.

      Leyne waited until Pip had been in bed an hour before, calculating that it would be around seven in the evening in Brazil, she rang her sister’s mobile phone number.

      Her hope, however, that she would not be ringing Max in the middle of something extremely important was not required. Her sister’s phone was on voicemail, and Leyne realised Max must have switched it off.

      Over the next few days, very much aware of how frequently Pip would give her that serious-eyed look, Leyne tried to contact her sister. But each time she met with the same result. Max’s phone was never switched on.

      With Pip’s silently questioning eyes starting to haunt her, Leyne gave serious thought to calling the emergency contact number Max had left. But would Max or, by the sound of it, grumpy Ben Turnbull appreciate some runner chasing after them in some dense jungle—or wherever they might be—with the domestic question of who was Max’s child’s father?

      It was a dilemma that caused Leyne to have some very fitful nights. But, whatever she did, she knew that she must not panic. She must deal with this as she had so glibly told Max that she could deal with anything that cropped up. She must deal with it calmly and without fuss. But where the Dickens did she start if she was to try not to send someone racing after Max when she had barely just left on her six-month-long assignment?

      ‘I suppose you’re busy tomorrow?’ Keith Collins asked when he stopped by Leyne’s desk on Friday.

      Pip was having a sleepover at Alice Gardner’s home tomorrow. ‘Depends why?’ Leyne replied with a smile.

      ‘I was thinking dinner—and then coffee at my place?’

      Leyne wasn’t so very sure about the coffee offer. While she did not doubt that Keith was quite capable of making them coffee, it was what went with the coffee that she was wary of. She liked Keith, but was only starting to get to know him.

      ‘Dinner sounds lovely,’ she accepted.

      ‘I’ll call for you at seven,’ he replied, with a wolfish kind of grin, and went on his way.

      Leyne supposed she was still half hoping that Pip was not truly serious about wanting to know the identity of her father. But, on picking her up from Dianne Gardner’s house after work, Leyne soon realised that her niece was far from ready to let go.

      ‘I don’t suppose you’ve any news for me yet?’ Pip asked, within five minutes of seeing her.

      Leyne did not pretend not to know what she was talking about. ‘It’s a bit early yet, love. Er—it may take weeks rather than days,’ she replied. With Max more or less incommunicado, she had not the first idea where to look. And supposing she were to find out. Did she have the right to tell Pip? Conversely, did she have the right to withhold that information from her? ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’

      ‘I know you will,’ Pip said trustingly—and at the little girl’s faith in her, so Leyne knew that she could just not ignore her need to know who her father was.

      The trouble was, where to start? Pip was safely tucked up in bed that night when Leyne acknowledged that it had seemed no problem whatsoever to be appointed her niece’s guardian. But Leyne could not help but feel like some petty criminal when, biting the bullet as it were, she that night quietly entered her sister’s bedroom in search of Pip’s birth certificate.

      She supposed when she had located it that it had been too much to hope that the birth certificate of Philippa Catherine Leyne might reveal who her father was. Leyne had been pretty certain, since her niece went by her mother’s surname of Nicholson, that it would not show her father’s name anyway. Even so, to see a short straight line in the space for ‘Father’ still came as a bit of a disappointment. All too clearly, Max did not want anyone to know the name of the father of her child.

      Max had never spoken of him, and although Leyne supposed she must have had a natural curiosity at some stage, she was sensitive that some things were very private and were to be respected as such.

      She put Pip’s birth certificate away. It seemed Max’s cellphone was permanently switched off, because all her attempts to reach her had come to nothing. Leyne briefly toyed again with the idea of using that emergency number and have someone try to find her in that vast country of Brazil.

      But, in the end, she abandoned the notion. She had assured Max that she could cope with whatever cropped up. It would be like throwing in the towel at the first hurdle. It suddenly came to her that she must think not of what Max would want, but must think of what was best for Pip.

      Leyne thought back to eleven and a half years ago, when Max had given birth to her precious child: Pip, with her astonishing mop of jet-black hair. Max had been living at home then, and in fact she had never lived anywhere else. So…

      Suddenly Leyne saw a chink of light, saw what was now blindingly obvious. If Max had been going out with someone, and she was too choosy to give herself to just anybody, then of course he must have called at the house for her. Which meant her mother, their mother, must know him! Their mother must know the name of Pip’s father, and all about him.

      Feeling very much like telephoning her mother straight away, Leyne made herself go downstairs and think about it.

      Perhaps, on second thoughts, with her quest so delicate, a personal visit to her mother would be a better idea. While Leyne knew that she was very much loved by their mother, she was also aware of the special bond between her mother and Max that had probably begun when, widowed young, Catherine Nicholson—as she had then been—had cleaved to her toddler daughter.

      Yes, definitely her mother would know, Leyne decided, and got out of bed on Saturday morning reflecting that she would again try to phone Max, but if she could still not contact her that she would contact her parent.

      While Leyne still felt very undecided, not sure if she should be doing what she was contemplating, her imagination took off as she pondered if there was some dark reason why Max had never mentioned Pip’s father. Was he some kind of villain, some jailbird, some monster, that Max had never breathed a word of who he was? Perhaps, Leyne fretted, she would be doing Max a disservice if her sister did not want Pip to know the name of her father because he was a felon?

      From what she knew of Max, though, and how, while occasionally dating, she had always been most circumspect about who she went out with, Leyne could not see her being involved with anyone who was not upright and honest.

      More often than not Leyne took Pip and Alice swimming on a Saturday morning. Leyne decided not to alter that morning’s arrangement. She would leave it until Pip went to Alice’s for her sleepover and would then ring her mother in St Albans and ask if it was convenient if she drove up to see her.

      The best-laid plans…she discovered, when Dianne Gardner rang to say she had been called away unexpectedly to an elderly aunt who had been taken ill.

      ‘Would you mind very much if we put off the sleepover until next Saturday?’ Dianne asked.

      ‘Not at all,’ Leyne replied, and offered, ‘If it will help I can have Alice here with me until you get back. She can stay the night here to save you rushing back.’

      Silence for a moment as Dianne thought it over before, ‘Would you mind?’ she asked gratefully. ‘I wouldn’t…’

      ‘It will be a pleasure,’