A Perfect Night. Penny Jordan

his second or was it third cousin Guy Cooke had asked him drily when they had been discussing the subject of his impending return.

      ‘How about an ill-judged early marriage followed predictably, I suppose, by a divorce.’

      Guy’s eyebrows had lifted as he shrugged dismissively, ‘Divorce isn’t exactly a social sin any longer Seb, and from what you’ve told us your ex-wife has remarried very happily and the two of you are on relatively comfortable terms.’

      ‘Oh yes, from Sandra’s and my own point of view the divorce was the best thing we could have done other than not to have married in the first place.

      ‘No, it’s not the fact that we married far too young and for all the wrong reasons that I feel bad. It’s…’ He had paused, grimacing before continuing, ‘Sandy always used to complain that I was a selfish bastard not really fit to be either a husband or a father, too wrapped up in my career and my own professional goals. I thought at the time that she was being ridiculous. After all, I was working to provide a decent standard of living for her, or so I used to tell her and myself, but of course that was just the excuse I used to conceal the fact that she was right that I was being selfish, and that the rush I got from knowing I was right in there at the cutting edge of discovering new drugs that were going to provide the kind of breakthrough that would change the world was far more important to me, far more compelling and addictive than any pleasure I got from being with her.’

      Guy and Chrissie, his wife, had exchanged ruefully happily married looks while Chrissie had lifted their son Anthony up off the floor to give him a hug, and although they had both made the right kind of protestingly reassuring noises Seb hadn’t been deceived. Of course privately they must both have thought that he had been selfish. How could they think otherwise? Seb had seen the loving commitment Guy was making to his own family, had witnessed at first hand during his stay with them when he had attended his initial interview the ‘hands on’ fathering that Guy was giving his son.

      ‘But at least you and Charlotte have formed a proper father and daughter bond now,’ Chrissie had reminded him gently.

      ‘Yes, more thanks to Charlotte’s maturity than any good parenting on my part,’ Seb had returned, adding, ‘After all she could very easily have refused to see me when I wrote and asked her if she would consider allowing me back into her life. George, Sandra’s second husband has been far more of a proper father to her than I have.’

      ‘Maybe so from a practical point of view,’ Guy had agreed, ‘But biologically you are her father and you only have to see the two of you together to see that.’

      ‘Oh yes, she’s got my genes when it comes to her physical looks,’ he agreed.

      ‘And she’s got your brains by all accounts too,’ Chrissie had laughed.

      ‘Well, Sandra and I met originally at university so I suppose that aspect of her nature is down to both of us, but I admit that I was surprised when she told me that she intends to follow much the same career path as I’ve chosen.’

      ‘And since she’s going to be studying for her A levels at a private sixth-form college near Manchester, you’re bound to be able to see a lot more of her.’

      ‘I hope so,’ Seb had agreed. ‘Although at sixteen she’s almost an adult now with her own life and her own friends. Sandra did say though that she was relieved to know that I would be on hand for her at the weekends especially now that Sandra and George are likely to be based abroad for the foreseeable future.’

      ‘Well we certainly loved meeting Charlotte,’ Chrissie had told him warmly. ‘Although I suspect she felt a little bit overwhelmed by the massed ranks and fervent curiosity of the Cooke clan in force.’

      The Cooke clan. How he had hated and chafed under the burdensome weight of his family’s reputation when he had been growing up, Seb reflected now. Of course he hadn’t known then that he wasn’t on his own and that Guy, too, had suffered his own personal war between his inner needs and the town’s expectations. But then Guy had met Chrissie and in helping her to make peace with her family history Guy had come to terms with his own unhappy childhood memories.

      Seb knew that without the incentive of having Charlotte at college in nearby Manchester there was no way he would have come back to his birthplace in the small historical Cheshire town where, or so the story went, his family line had come into being following the seduction of a local girl by a member of a notorious band of Romany travellers who visited the town every year.

      The children—the clan—that union had given birth to down through the centuries, whether rightly or wrongly, had garnered a notorious reputation in the town for not always walking on the right side of the law, and of course predictably it had often been a case of ‘give a dog a bad name…’ Certainly it seemed that historically, their family had been a convenient peg for the townspeople to hang all their local crimes of theft and unlawfulness on.

      Now, of course, those days were gone and his relatives so far as Seb knew were, in the main, sturdy and worthy citizens, and so intermarried and interwoven with the families and fabric of the area that they could not in all fairness any longer be considered to be a separate and dangerously untrustworthy clan of outsiders.

      Even so the lusty lifestyle of the original ancestors had left its mark on the collective conscience of the other families in the town. Cooke men had a reputation for fathering sturdy sons whose dark eyes tended to hold the kind of gleam that mothers and young impressionable girls quite rightly found dangerous.

      Seb had known from an early age that he wanted to escape from the restrictions of living in a small-town community where everyone knew everyone else. He had wanted to break through the glass ceiling imposed on him by the expectations and reservations of those around him simply because of the surname he carried. It had been his interest, cultivated and encouraged by his grandfather and a fascination with the problems that manifested themselves in the plants his grandfather grew because of their genetic make up which had initially led to his choice of career.

      University might have freed him from the restrictions imposed on him by his small-town upbringing but in order to get there he had had to focus on the more self-absorbed, self-interested side of his personality and that ultimately had created a blinkered concentration on his career to the detriment of his personal relationships.

      It had taken a comment he had overheard from a female colleague to make him realise the error of his ways. She had been talking with another co-worker unaware that he was in an adjacent room and could hear them.

      ‘He actually hasn’t seen his daughter in over ten years. Can you believe that?’

      ‘It happens,’ the other woman had pointed out. ‘Divorced men do lose touch with their children.’

      ‘Yes, I know, but he just doesn’t seem to care. Doesn’t he have any human feelings?’

      That night at home alone in his empty executive apartment Seb had replayed the overheard conversation in his head and he had asked himself the same question.

      The answer had shocked him.

      Yes, he did care, more than he had known, and he had cared even more after that first fateful reunion with Charlotte when he had recognised not just in her face, her physical features, but in her personality as well, such a strong resemblance to him that he had felt as though someone, something, some emotion, was cracking his heart in a vise.

      It had not been an easy task building bridges that would allow them, allow her, to lower the guard she had quite naturally put up against him. She’d been outwardly pleasant and friendly, but he had nevertheless known that inwardly she was extremely wary of him. And who could blame her? But that had been three years ago, and now he was very much a part of her life. But he was still aware that nothing, no amount of remorse, or regret could totally eradicate the past.

      Sandra, his ex-wife, had gone on to have two more children, both boys, with her second husband George and Charlotte was very much a part of that happy close-knit family, but she was also his daughter and, like him, a Cooke.

      ‘All