'I promise,' he told her.
Annalise's hand shook as she put down her own mobile. All she wanted to do now was to forget how frightened she had been and why and for her life to go back to normal.
THE MOMENT Jenny saw Jack's face when he walked into the kitchen she could see how much happier he was. She knew that he had seen Annalise the previous day and she guessed that they had made up their quarrel. Even so...
'You look a lot happier this morning,' she commented.
'I am,' Jack agreed, going over to her and giving her a fierce hug as he told her in a muffled voice, 'I'm sorry, Aunt Jen, but I had to come home and see Annalise.... Please don't worry, though, everything's fine now and I'll be going back to uni tomorrow.'
'Everything's fine now,' Jenny repeated wryly. 'But what happens the next time you have a falling-out, Jack? This mustn't happen again,' she insisted firmly.
Jack released her, his eyes unhappy. He ached to be able to explain to her that it was no mere quarrel that had brought him home but something far more serious, but he had given his word to Annalise and he could not break it.
'It won't,' he assured her.
Jenny wished she could be as sure.
'How's Maddy?' Jack asked her.
'Improving,' Jenny replied.
Max had told her that he could manage without her help today, which meant that she could have a much needed day in her own home and the first thing she intended to do just as soon as she had stripped the beds and filled the washing machine was to go for a supermarket shop for both herself and Queensmead.
'DAVID,' Jon exclaimed in pleasure as his brother walked into his office. 'I wasn't expecting to see you today.'
'No,' David agreed. 'I was up at Fitzburgh Place earlier and Frederick asked me if I would drop some papers off with you.'
'Got time for a coffee?' Jon asked as he took the papers from him.
'Mmm...I wouldn't mind.'
'You look rather distracted. Is anything wrong?' Jon asked.
'Not wrong exactly,' David told him, taking a deep breath before saying hesitantly, 'The fact is—' a rueful almost boyish smile of pride and pleasure curled his mouth '—Honor's pregnant.'
Outside Jon's half-open office door Tullah, who had just been on her way into Jon's office to ask him something, came to an abrupt halt.
'Pregnant... You mean with a baby?' Jon demanded in bemusement.
'Pregnant...with a baby,' David confirmed straight-faced. 'It wasn't something we'd planned,' he confessed, 'but I have to say that as accidents go, this one is pretty wonderful. We're going to organise a family get-together to make an official announcement.'
A new love, a second family, a whole new role and purpose in life. Jon couldn't help but be pleased for his twin, whose happiness he now felt was set fair to match his own.
Embracing him warmly he told him, 'Congratula-tions.'
But then he frowned. 'I take it that neither Livvy nor Jack know as yet?'
'No,' David confirmed soberly. 'God, Jon, I hope I make a better father this time around than I did for them. I've tried to talk to Jack about it, to explain to him. He listened to me like an adult listening to a child, politely but unconvinced. But then, why should either he or Livvy care about my guilt? From their point of view, I haven't done much caring about them.'
Outside Jon's office door Tullah suddenly realised that she was eavesdropping. Quickly she hurried away.
She felt as shocked as Jon had sounded by David's news.
'How is Livvy?' David asked Jon anxiously. 'I wish there was something I could do to help her.'
'Well, she's obviously very unhappy,' Jon acknowledged. 'Although what with Maddy being so ill and Jack coming home unexpectedly from university, there hasn't been the opportunity to talk in any depth to Livvy about anything.'
'Jack's home?' David questioned sharply.
'Yes, but he's going back tomorrow,' Jon reassured him. 'He and Annalise had a falling-out apparently but everything's okay now.'
As David listened to him, his feeling of guilt increased. His daughter was battling on her own with the trauma of her broken marriage. His son had had a row, serious enough, with his girlfriend, to bring him home from university and yet neither of them had made any attempt to turn to him for help or comfort.
But then, when had he ever indicated to them that they could do, when had he ever made time for them or their problems? When had he ever let them see that he cared...that he loved them?
Heavy-hearted, David acknowledged the extent of his own failings. He ached to make amends, to build a closer relationship with Jack and Olivia, to be a proper grandfather to Olivia's girls and to Jack's children when he should have them, but he couldn't blame Jack and Olivia for holding him at a distance.
He had changed so much since his cowardly flight from Haslewich, grown so much, but proving that to himself was not enough where his children were concerned. They needed, especially Olivia, to have it proved to them. But how could he do that, he wondered in wry frustration, when Olivia wouldn't allow him anywhere near her?
'What about Maddy? How is she?' he asked Jon, momentarily putting his anxiety for Olivia to one side.
'Getting better—slowly,' Jon told him. The news that Honor and David were expecting a child had brought a problem to the forefront of his mind that needed to be addressed.
'Dad is giving Max and Maddy a hard time at the moment,' he confided. 'We're all anxious about Maddy with this pre-eclampsia problem. She's home now but only on the strict understanding that she doesn't overdo things, but the fact that Dad keeps threatening to leave Queensmead to someone else isn't exactly helping.'
'To me, you mean,' David responded. 'Look, Jon, I've already told you, so far as I'm concerned I have no right whatsoever to Queensmead...I don't e
ven want the place.'
'Mmm...I know that, but Dad...'
'Do you want me to have a word with him?' David offered.
'Well, you could try but once he knows that you and Honor are having a child it will probably make him worse than ever. Jenny is furious with him. No one could have looked after him better than Maddy.'
'No, Honor was saying that he's lucky to be in the position he is in,' David agreed.
OLIVIA LOOKED at the baguette she had just bought.
She wasn't really hungry even though she hadn't had a proper breakfast and the small quiet garden overlooking Haslewich's churchyard was hardly the place to sit and eat at this time of year. Huddling deeper into her coat she started to re-wrap her unwanted lunch.
She could have taken it back to her office to eat, of course, but she had felt in need of some fresh air—
and an escape from the distracting and unwanted images of Caspar that had been coming between her and her work all morning.
It had been spotting his fishing basket that had done it, made her remember and see them as a loving couple again through the surely far-too-rosy-tinted lenses of the early days of their relationship.
Jenny was crossing the church's small garden on her way back from visiting the grave of her first child.
The sharp sadness of his long-ago death was gone now and she found it comforting to sit and talk to him, updating him with their family news as she tidied his grave. Then she saw Olivia, seated on one of the benches, apparently staring sightlessly into space.
Immediately she started to hurry towards her.
'Jenny!' Olivia couldn't keep the shock or the guilt out of her voice when she felt her aunt's hand on her shoulder. 'I didn't see you coming.'
'No. You were miles away,' Jenny agreed.
Olivia bit her lip as Jenny sat down next to her.
'I feel dreadful about the way I behaved...and what I said,' Olivia confessed. 'I had no idea about Maddy, but that doesn't...' She stopped and shook her head, her voice suddenly thickening with tears.
'Livvy, it's all right,' Jenny reassured her. 'I can imagine how you must have been feeling. I felt dreadful myself that I didn't explain properly.'