And Mother Makes Three. Liz Fielding

said, rubbing his thumb over the dog’s nose. Then, ‘And we can stick his ear back on.’ He picked up the ear and it crumbled in his fingers. It was a sensation that was rapidly becoming familiar.

      When he finally looked up, dared to face her, Lucy was standing exactly where he had left her. He had never seen her so still.

      ‘I took the key to your desk from your dressing table,’ she said. ‘We were doing a project about family history and Josie brought in her birth certificate. It had her mother’s name on it and I realised...’ She stopped. ‘I’m sorry, Daddy.’

      Oh, no. He was the one who was sorry. She should never have been reduced to taking keys, hunting in drawers to find out what she should always have known. ‘You saw the photographs, the custody papers?’ She frowned, not understanding the word, but of course she had found them. How else would she have known where to write?

      ‘She will come, won’t she, Daddy?’ She looked so desperate, so needy. How long had she been feeling this way? Why hadn’t he noticed? ‘I told her you wouldn’t be there, that she wouldn’t have to meet you.’

      ‘Did you?’ He almost smiled at her bluntness. Almost. ‘In that case I’m sure she will. If she can. But she might be abroad, making one of her films.’ Please, God... ‘Had you thought of that?’

      Lucy’s face fell momentarily, then immediately brightened. ‘No, she can’t be. I saw her on television last week.’

      Yes. He’d seen her too, trailing a new series that was starting next month. But they were clips from the series and meant nothing. Except of course that a new series meant a book tie-in, the endless round of the chat shows, breakfast television, the whole publicity circuit.

      He would have to find out, because Fitz, despite a cast-iron certainty that Brooke wouldn’t want to come within a country mile of her daughter, found himself making a silent promise to the child that if it was humanly possible, even if he had to hog-tie the woman and bring her in the boot of his Range Rover, she would put in an appearance at sports day.

      CHAPTER TWO

      SHE couldn’t put it off any longer. Bron bit into her toast, putting it off. She would have to call Lucy’s father and tell him about the letter.

      The idea was sufficient to dull her appetite and she abandoned the toast. If only she hadn’t opened the letter. If only she could forget she’d ever seen it. It hadn’t been meant for her, after all. If it hadn’t been for the coincidence of their initials, if her mother’s first gift to her father hadn’t been a hand tooled leather bound edition of the complete works of Rupert Brooke and if he hadn’t responded with an equally beautiful copy of Wuthering Heights, she would never have opened it...

      She’d drink her coffee first. She reached for her mug, sent the jar of marmalade flying, flinched as it hit the quarry-tiled floor and smashed. She spent the next few minutes carefully picking out the glass, cleaning up the sticky mess. It had to be done, she told herself, but she knew she was simply prevaricating. Putting off the moment.

      The important thing was that she had opened the letter; whatever the truth, Lucy Fitzpatrick was a child who needed help and maybe she was the only person in the world who knew that

      She’d spent the long wakeful hours of the night—still unable to get used to the silence, the fact that no one needed her—telling herself that getting involved in other people’s domestic problems was simply asking for trouble. Telling herself was one thing, however, convincing herself something else.

      At first light she’d given up the struggle for sleep and taken herself into the cool, early-morning garden and tried to forget about Lucy in a furious blitz on the weeds that seemed to leap out of the ground in full flower at this time of year. She had her own problems. Like what was she going to do with the rest of her life?

      She had no job skills: all she knew was caring for her mother. The thought had led her back to Lucy, to wonder who was caring for her. A housekeeper or nanny, perhaps? Or did she go home to an empty house after school while her father worked?

      Eventually hunger had kicked in, reminding her that she had had no breakfast and she straightened, easing her back, dead-heading the roses as she walked slowly back towards the empty house, she finally acknowledged that nothing was going to drive Lucy from her mind. The need to do something was at war with common sense and common sense didn’t stand a chance. She could not possibly ignore the letter.

      But that decided, what was she going to do about it?

      She had taken the envelope from her pocket, smearing it with green that had adhered to her fingers from her weeding. She had wiped her hands on her shorts before she’d taken out the letter. Lucy hadn’t put a telephone number. Well, she wouldn’t. From the comment about not having to meet her father, Bron guessed that Lucy was hoping to keep the whole thing a secret from him.

      She had unhooked the telephone, dialled 192. ‘Directory Enquiries. What name please?’

      ‘Fitzpatrick. I don’t have an initial. Bramhill Bay, in Sussex.’

      ‘One moment, please.’ Then, ‘Would that be Fitzpatrick Studios?’

      Fitzpatrick Studios? What kind of studios? Film studios? ‘That could be it,’ she said, her heart sinking. That could very well be it She’d all but managed to convince herself that Lucy had chosen Brooke because she was well known, admired. Saving the rain-forest was such a big issue these days, but if her father was a filmmaker the coincidence was just too much... She stopped herself.

      What kind of film studios would be in some tiny village in Sussex? A place called The Old Rectory was far more likely to be an artist’s studio, or a pottery, or both. She could just imagine a picturesque tithe barn housing some artists colony... ‘The address is The Old Rectory,’ she said quickly.

      There was a click and then she heard the recording, ‘The number that you require is...’ Bronte wrote it down, double-checked it and then hung up. She stared at the number. Well, it seemed to say, you’ve got me, now what are you going to do with me?

      The child’s father needed to know what was going on, she rationalised as she made coffee, dumped the bread in the toaster. She couldn’t just ignore it. If Lucy was so desperate for love that she needed Brooke as a fantasy mother... And if she wasn’t fantasising?

      It made no difference. She would have to ring. But after breakfast. No one could be expected to deal with something like this on an empty stomach.

      Bronte stared at her empty mug, the abandoned toast. Now. Do it now. Delaying was not going to make it any easier. And it might be all right. Lucy might do this once a week, or whenever her mother refused to be blackmailed into more sweets, later TV, a day off school, and she’d get a resigned apology from an embarrassed parent. Maybe. Why didn’t she believe that?

      Whatever she believed, she could no longer put off making the call. She picked up the telephone, dialled the number. It rang once. It rang twice. Three times. There was no one there. Relief surged through her and she had the receiver halfway back to the cradle when she heard it being picked up. She couldn’t just hang up...she just hated it when people did that...

      ‘James Fitzpatrick.’ James Fitzpatrick had a voice like melted chocolate. Dark, expensive chocolate. It rippled through her midriff like a warm wave of pleasure and left her gasping. ‘I can’t come to the telephone right now but if you leave a message I’ll get back to you.’ There was a click and the long bleep of an answering machine. She was still holding the receiver when there was a long, insistent ring on the doorbell.

      

      Fitz had found it impossible to talk to Lucy about her mother. The other way round would not be so difficult, he assured himself, yet when he pulled up outside the steeply gabled house with a large garden overgrown with blowsy midsummer roses, he still wasn’t certain that he was doing the right thing.

      It might be wiser to let sleeping dogs lie. Brooke knew where to find him but in nearly nine years had never once bothered