A Paper Marriage. Jessica Steele

she asked with a smile.

      ‘My mother rang.’

      ‘Everything all right at home?’

      ‘How would you feel if I left a week earlier than we said?’

      ‘Today?’ Donna queried, her smile disappearing. ‘I’d hate it.’

      ‘You’ll be fine on your own; I know you will,’ Lydie assured her bracingly.

      That had been some hours ago. Lydie drove into her home village and realised she had been an infrequent visitor just lately to the home she so loved. Beamhurst Court was in her blood, and it had been a dreadful wrench to leave Beamhurst five years ago when at the age of eighteen she had gone to begin her career as a nanny.

      Her first job had not worked out when the husband had started to get ideas about his children’s nanny that had not been in her terms of employment. She had left to go and look after Thomas, Donna and Nick Cooper’s first child, while they followed their careers.

      Donna had suffered a quite terrible bout of the baby-blues following the birth of her second child, Sofia. While she was surfacing from that she had started to get very depressed at the thought of returning to work. It had been her husband Nick who had suggested that unless she desperately wanted to keep on with her career, given that they would not be able to afford a nanny and would have to let Lydie go, they could otherwise manage quite adequately without her income.

      ‘What do you think?’ Donna had asked Lydie.

      ‘Which would make you happier?’

      Donna thought, but not for very long. ‘I’ve always felt a bit of a pang at missing out on Thomas’s first couple of years,’ she answered. That, simply, decided the matter.

      Lydie had been due to leave next Tuesday, when she went home for her brother’s wedding the following Saturday. She knew it would not be long before she found another job but, having been so happy with the Coopers, and on edge most of the time with her previous employers, she was in no rush to accept the first job offered.

      She turned her car in through the gates of Beamhurst Court and love for the place welled up in her. She stopped for a brief while just to sit and look her fill. Beamhurst would one day be handed down to her brother, she had always known that, but that did not stop the feeling of joy she felt each time she came back.

      But her mother was waiting for her, and Lydie started up her car again and proceeded slowly up the drive, starting to get anxious again about what it was that worried her father so, and what it was that caused his business telephone line to be unobtainable.

      She left her car on the drive, knowing that her father was her first priority. She would not be looking for a new job until she knew what was happening here. Using her house key, she let herself in and went in search of her parents.

      She did not have to look far; her mother was in the hall talking to Mrs Ross, their housekeeper. Lydie kissed her mother and passed a few pleasantries with Mrs Ross, whereupon her mother said they would have afternoon tea in the drawing room.

      While Mrs Ross went kitchenwards Lydie followed her slim stiff-backed mother into the drawing room. ‘You took your time getting here!’ her mother complained tartly, turning to close the door behind them.

      ‘I had to pack. Since I was leaving anyway there didn’t seem much point in going back next week to collect my belongings,’ Lydie answered, but had more important matters on her mind. ‘What’s going on? I rang Dad’s office and—’

      ‘I specifically told you not to!’ her mother interrupted her waspishly.

      ‘I wouldn’t have mentioned you’d phoned me! If I’d had the chance! His number’s unobtainable. Where’s Dad now? You said he no longer has an office. But that’s impossible. For years—’

      ‘Your father no longer has an office because he no longer has a business!’ Hilary Pearson cut her off.

      Lydie’s lovely green eyes widened in amazement. ‘He no longer…!’ she gasped, and wanted to protest, to believe that her mother was joking, but the tight-lipped look on her parent’s face showed that her mother saw no humour in the situation. ‘He’s sold the business?’ Lydie questioned.

      ‘Sold it! It was taken away from him!’

      ‘Taken! You mean—stolen?’ Lydie asked, reeling.

      ‘As good as. The bank wanted their pound of flesh—they took everything. They’re after this house too!’

      ‘After Beamhurst!’ Lydie whispered, horrified.

      ‘Oh, we all know you’re besotted with the place; you always have been. But unless you can do something about it, they’ll force us to sell it to pay them their dues!’

      ‘Unless I…’ Already Lydie’s head was starting to spin.

      ‘Your father paid out enough for your expensive education—totally wasted! It’s time for you to pay him something back.’

      Lydie was well aware that she was a big disappointment to her mother. Without bothering to take into account her daughter’s extremely shy disposition, Hilary Pearson had been exceedingly exasperated that, when Lydie’s exam results were little short of excellent, she should take on what her mother considered the menial work of a nanny. Lydie still had moments of shyness, and was still a little reserved, but she had overcome that awful shyness to a very large extent.

      She stared at her mother incredulously. Pay back! She hadn’t asked to be sent to an expensive boarding school. That had been her mother’s idea. ‘There’s that few thousand pounds that Grandmother left me. Dad can have that, of course, but…’

      ‘You can’t touch that until you’re twenty-five. And in any case we need far more than that if we’re not to be thrown out like paupers.’ Thrown out! Of Beamhurst! No! Lydie could not believe that. Could not believe that things were as bad as that. Beamhurst Court had been in the Pearson family for generations. It was unthinkable that they should let it go out of the family. But her mother was going angrily on, ‘I’ve told your father that if the house has to go, then so shall I!’

      ‘Mother!’ Lydie exclaimed, on the instant angry too that when, by the look of it, her father should need his wife’s support most, she should threaten to walk out on him. Anything else Lydie might have added, however, remained unsaid when Mrs Ross brought in a tray of tea and set it down.

      While Hilary Pearson presided over the delicate tea cups, Lydie made herself calm down. Her last visit home had been four months ago now, she realised with surprise. Though with Donna only then starting to get better, but still feeling down and unable to cope a lot of the time, she had wanted her near at hand should everything became too much for her.

      Taking the cup and saucer her mother handed to her, Lydie sat down opposite her, and then quietly asked, ‘What has been happening? Everything was fine the last time I was home.’

      ‘Six months ago,’ her mother could not resist, seemingly oblivious that she was out by a couple of months. ‘And everything was far from fine, as you call it.’

      ‘I didn’t see any sign…’

      ‘Because your father didn’t want you to. He said there was no need for you to know. That it would only worry you unnecessarily, and that he’d think of something.’

      It had been going on all this while? And she had known nothing about it! She tried to concentrate on the matter in hand. ‘But he hasn’t been able to think of anything?’

      Her mother gave her a sour look. ‘The business is gone. And the bank is baying for its money.’

      Lydie was having a hard time taking it all in. By the sound of it, things had been falling apart when she’d been home four months ago—but no one had seen fit to tell her. They had always had money! How could things have become so bad and she not know of it? She could perhaps understand her father keeping quiet; he was a very proud man. But—her mother?