And Mother Makes Three. Liz Fielding

and sank down on it. Then she laughed, a touch hysterically, as she reached for Lucy’s letter. She’d tried to tell him that she wasn’t Brooke, but he hadn’t been listening. Well, he’d only had one thing on his mind.

      She couldn’t believe that he hadn’t seen the difference straight away. Brooke was so stylish, so confident, so beautiful.

      It was true that they were superficially alike with matching bones and skin, the same beanpole height, the same streaky blonde hair, but there the similarity ended. Even at school Brooke had always been the elegant, the poised, the perfectly groomed one, while she had been the one with a torn skirt, inky fingers and bruised shins from constantly falling over the furniture. She looked down at her grass stained knees, her hands which bore the scars of her tussle with the garden.

      Then she shrugged. If it had been eight years since they met, if he had only seen her on the television battling against the elements, sweaty, her hair sticking to her forehead, no make-up, if he didn’t know that Brooke had a sister, well, maybe the mistake was not so difficult to understand.

      Eight years was a long time—long enough to blunt the details. Not long enough to dull the passion though. She shivered despite the sun spilling through the window, the open doorway, and rubbed at the gooseflesh on her arms. She had tried to tell him...

      She should have tried harder.

      She glanced at the telephone. She would have to call him, explain. Later. It would take him a couple of hours to get home. Then she swallowed, hard. How on earth could she call a man and tell him that he’d made a mistake like that?

      On an answering machine, that was how. Right now. She would just leave a message explaining about the mistake, explaining that Brooke was abroad. That would avoid what could only be an embarrassing conversation for both of them. She would do it now and then she could put it out of her mind.

      She dialled the number, waited for the tone. ‘Mr Fitzpatrick,’ she began firmly. ‘Fitz—’ She stopped. Suppose someone else listened to the message? Suppose Lucy came in from school and switched it on? She had assumed he would be going straight back, but he might not. She hung up, unwilling to risk it. She would have to do it face to face. Or rather ear to ear. She was twenty-seven years old, a grown woman. She could handle it. In the meantime she went in search of her secateurs. Cutting back the spring-flowering shrubs would help to take her mind off Mr James Fitzpatrick’s hot mouth. Maybe.

      The day dragged interminably, the clock seemed on a go-slow. The last thing in the world she wanted to do was to call James Fitzpatrick and make him listen while she explained that he had kissed her by mistake. Yet in some secret part of her she knew that she was just like a child counting down the endless hours of Christmas Eve, waiting to hear his voice...

      Seven o‘clock came. Lucy’s bathtime? Time for homework? What had she and Brooke done at seven o’clock when their father was alive? Played, talked, laughed. Laughed a lot. Did Lucy and Fitz laugh together?

      Eight o‘clock. Eight o’clock had been bedtime for them. Indisputable. They’d been able to read, they’d been able to listen to the radio for half an hour, but they’d had to be in bed by eight. Old-fashioned rules. Nine o‘clock, she decided. She would be safe at nine o’clock.

      At a quarter to nine o’clock she could wait no longer. She picked up the telephone and dialled the number. Mr Fitzpatrick? she’d rehearsed the casual tone. My name is Bronte Lawrence. We met this morning when you mistook me for my sister... A little gentle laughter. No, no need to apologise, I quite understand... She hadn’t got beyond that part. At that point she was hoping he would be too busy grovelling to recall how eagerly she had kissed him back.

      ‘Bramhill six five three seven four nine.’ A child’s careful voice enunciated the numbers perfectly. ‘Lucy Fitzpatrick speaking.’

      ‘Lucy...’ Bron’s hand flew to her throat as the word escaped her lips. She sounded so grown up...

      ‘Mummy?’ The word was an essay in uncertainty, hope, longing. ‘Mummy? It is you, isn’t it?’ Mummy. The word seemed to echo over and over in her head so that she didn’t know if it was Lucy shouting it or just in her imagination, but as Lucy’s careful telephone answering voice disintegrated into childish excitement Bron froze, unable to answer. In her uncontrollable eagerness to speak to James Fitzpatrick, she had done precisely what she had wanted to avoid. ‘Daddy said you wouldn’t get my letter, that you must have moved but I prayed...’

      ‘Who is it, Lucy?’ James Fitzpatrick’s voice reached her, distantly.

      ‘It’s my mummy. My mummy! Daddy, she’s rung, she’s going to come. I told you she would—’

      Then the mouthpiece was covered so that there was only a distant murmur. Then his voice in her ear. ‘Brooke?’ She didn’t answer. She couldn’t. This was all her fault. She should have made him listen this morning. She should have rung straight away, left a number for him to call back. Suddenly all the things she should have done seemed so obvious, so simple. Why hadn’t she seen? Because she hadn’t wanted to? ‘Brooke, is that you?’ His voice was sharper. How could she have raised the child’s hopes like that when she could only dash them...? ‘Brooke!’

      She came to with a start. ‘Fitz, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—’

      He wasn’t interested in apologies. ‘What the devil do you think you’re doing, ringing here when Lucy might answer the phone?’ He practically hissed the words into the phone.

      ‘She should have been in bed,’ she hissed back.

      ‘Motherly advice? From you?’

      ‘No... I’m sorry... Look, I had to ring. I had to tell you—’

      ‘What? Tell me what? After what you’ve just done, the only thing I’m prepared to hear right now is that you’ll be here on Friday.’

      Oh, Brooke! How could you get me into a situation like this? What on earth am I going to do? And as clearly as if her sister were speaking in her ear she heard Brooke laughing at her dilemma, saying, Do, darling? Why, do whatever you want. If you’re so concerned about Lucy, why don’t you go and play happy families for an afternoon? They already think you’re me and you always were so much better at the caring stuff...

      ‘Well?’ he demanded. ‘What am I to tell Lucy?’

      They already think you’re me. ‘Yes.’ She heard her voice as if at a great distance. ‘Tell her I’ll be there. I—um—I need directions.’

      ‘I’ll fetch you.’

      ‘No.’ Her brain was back-pedalling as fast as it would go. ‘No, don’t do that.’ An afternoon pretending to be her sister just to make a little girl happy would be difficult enough; a couple of hours in a car with James Fitzpatrick would be impossible.

      ‘It’s no trouble.’

      Then she realised why he was offering, more than offering—insisting. ‘You don’t have to worry that I’ll let Lucy down.’

      ‘Don’t I?’ The words sounded as if they had been wrenched from him. She didn’t answer because her brain was yelling in her ear: Tell him! Tell him, now! Before it’s too late. But it was already too late. Lucy had heard her, thought she was Brooke. No explanation, a thousand times ‘I’m sorry for raising your hopes’ could ever make up for that disappointment. ‘Have you got a pen there?’

      ‘What?’

      ‘A pen. For the directions.’

      ‘Oh, yes... No, wait,’ she said as she grabbed for a pen and it skittered from her grasp, slid across the floor. ‘I’ve dropped it.’ He waited patiently while she retrieved it and then, assuming she knew where Bramhill Parva was, explained how to find the school.

      ‘Have you got that?’ Got it? She looked at the notepad with its incoherent scribble, but she didn’t ask him to explain it again, certain if she did he would insist on fetching her, wouldn’t take no for an answer. She’d already had