Promise Of A Family. Jessica Steele

and hoping she had remembered his number correctly—this was not the first time she had cancelled their arrangements—she pressed out the digits—and waited.

      ‘Keith,’ she said, when she recognised his voice. ‘Leyne Rowberry.’

      ‘I shall never forgive you if you’re putting me off!’ he stated, in a voice that wasn’t over-brimming with good humour.

      ‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ she replied cheerfully. ‘The thing is—er—I wondered if you’d rather come to my place for coffee?’ And quickly, lest he got the wrong idea, ‘I can promise you one of your favourite sumptuous feasts first.’

      ‘You’re breaking our date!’ he exclaimed heavily, and for a moment Leyne wondered if she even liked him.

      ‘I’m offering an alternative,’ she answered, concentrating her thoughts on the nicer side of him that she had previously seen.

      ‘Too late now for me to make alternative arrangements,’ he said—as if she’d be gutted if he couldn’t come!

      ‘Your choice,’ she offered. If he wanted to try and find a date elsewhere, good luck to him.

      The evening was not a success. The meal, if not exactly sumptuous, was good. But, since the girls had helped with the coconut and orange pudding, it seemed churlish not to let them stay and eat with them.

      Keith appeared to be making an effort to be charming, but he was obviously not devastated when Pip asked if they could be excused and, armed with various nibbles, she and Alice raced off up the stairs.

      Leyne went to the kitchen to make coffee and saw that Keith’s good humour was surfacing when, on her return, he joined her on the sitting room sofa. ‘Sugar?’ she asked, quite aware that he was sitting unnecessarily close. She poured him a coffee and put a few inches of space between them when she got up to reach to the table for the sugar bowl.

      ‘You really have the most extraordinarily lovely hair,’ he murmured of her light-coloured hair, with its naturally lighter strands of blonde—sugar was all too plainly not his first priority.

      ‘Cream or milk?’ she offered.

      ‘Cream,’ he replied, and, looking into her large blue eyes, ‘To go with your lovely complexion,’ he said. And, taking the coffee from her, he placed it down on the low table in front of them and turned as though to take a hold of her. He got as far as, ‘Leyne, beautiful Leyne…’ when hoots of laughter wafted down through the floorboards overhead. ‘Oh, for—!’ he exclaimed impatiently. And, totally put off his stride, ‘Can’t those girls keep quiet?’

      ‘Not for more than five minutes, I shouldn’t wonder,’ she replied equably.

      ‘How long will they go on for?’ he asked, sounding hopeful and disgruntled at one and the same time.

      ‘I’d be very surprised if they settled down this side of midnight,’ Leyne answered. ‘It’s a sleepover,’ she added. She felt sorry for him, even though his hopes for the way the evening would end had never coincided with hers.

      She guessed, when shortly afterwards Keith left, that he would not be asking her out again. It was a pity; she liked him a lot of the time. She was not, however, heartbroken.

      Dianne Gardner called for Alice around mid-morning the next day, and ten minutes later Leyne rang her mother and asked if it was convenient for her and Pip to drive up to see them. Catherine Rowberry had remarried four years ago, and had generously allowed her two daughters and granddaughter to remain living in their old home when she had moved to Hertfordshire with her new husband.

      ‘I’d love to see you,’ Catherine answered warmly. ‘Roland has had a heavy cold, but he’s no longer infectious.’

      ‘Is he up to visitors?’ Leyne asked doubtfully. While sympathising with Roland, she was not wanting her niece to catch his cold, albeit Pip had not suffered an asthma attack in an absolute age.

      ‘You probably won’t see him. You know how it is—well, perhaps you don’t—but while women have colds, men, as dear as they are, have flu. Roland may say hello, then go and rest.’

      ‘Fancy going to see Nanna?’ Leyne asked Pip, and saw the lovely dark-haired child’s eyes light up.

      ‘It’s ages, simply ages, since I last saw Suzie!’ she exclaimed of Roland Webb’s Labrador dog.

      Suzie came in handy, in as much as while Pip played in the large garden with the dog, it gave Leyne the chance to have a private conversation with her mother. Roland had heroically made it to his feet to greet them when they arrived, but, as her mother had hinted he might, had retired for a ‘lie-down’.

      ‘Er—Mum,’ Leyne said, after some minutes of wondering which way to bring up a subject that had an unspoken taboo attached.

      Leyne’s pensive expression was not lost on Catherine Webb. ‘This sounds serious?’ she observed.

      Leyne looked at her still beautiful fifty-six-year-old parent and knew that there was only one way to say this. ‘Pip wants to know who her father is,’ she stated, but the minute the words were out she saw her mother mentally strapping on armour to defend her firstborn.

      ‘Maxine intends to tell her when she’s old enough,’ her mother answered, a touch stiffly.

      It heartened Leyne that her sister fully intended to tell her offspring of her father. But Leyne knew that she could not leave it there. ‘Pip wants to know now, Mum,’ she said, and insisted, ‘I think she’s old enough now.’

      ‘She’ll forget all about it soon. It’s only a whim,’ Catherine reasoned.

      ‘She’s been wanting to know for some while now.’

      ‘It will pass.’

      Leyne did not want to badger her mother, who was already starting to show prickles in her protectiveness of her eldest daughter. ‘I don’t think she will,’ she pressed on. And, knowing her mother had lived in the same house until after Pip had celebrated her seventh birthday, ‘As tractable as Pip is, you know what she’s like once she has set her mind to something.’

      Catherine Webb looked exasperated and worried all at the same time. ‘Maxine will want to tell her herself.’

      ‘Max isn’t here,’ Leyne reminded her mother quietly. ‘I’ve tried countless times to contact her, but her phone isn’t ringing out. And while I have an emergency number for—’

      ‘I wouldn’t call this an emergency!’ her mother cut in hurriedly. ‘Pip will just have to wait.’

      Love her mother though she did, Leyne felt very much like telling her that she was not the one who was guardian to the child; she was not the one who would look up occasionally from whatever she was doing to find Pip looking at her as though she was just bursting to ask how far she had got along with her enquiries.

      ‘I don’t think it will wait, Mum,’ she stated seriously. ‘I’m worried that it’s preying on Pip’s mind.’ Leyne broke off to try another tack. ‘You must have met her father?’

      ‘No,’ her mother promptly replied. ‘I never met him.’

      Which, since she had always known her parent to be incapable of telling a lie, was something of a body-blow to Leyne. ‘You never—?’ She broke off, something in her mother’s expression seeming to tell her that her mother knew more than she was telling. ‘But you do know who he is?’ she pressed.

      Her mother gave her cross look, but did concede, ‘He never came into the house. And it was only a brief affair—over almost before it began.’

      ‘But it was long enough for Max to fall in love with him?’

      Catherine Webb’s expression softened. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘She loved him.’ A faraway look was in her eyes. ‘Then Maxine came home one night and shut herself in her room. When the next morning I asked her what was