Starting Over

'I haven't been a good father to you, Livvy, and for that...' David drew in a harsh breath. 'For that I shall never cease to feel guilty. But you are my child...my daughter...and you are very precious to me.'

As she searched his face David held her gaze and his own breath. Olivia didn't know what to think.

Somehow just talking to him like this had shifted the whole focus of her own feelings. She couldn't say that she forgave him for her childhood or even that she understood, but somehow her bitterness and sense of pain had softened, loosening its stranglehold of her emotions.... Somehow she felt she could look at the past in a gentler and less harsh light.

'Love doesn't always manifest itself in the way we expect,' David was telling her slowly. 'The girls miss their father,' he informed her almost abruptly, taking a deep breath before he asked her, 'Do you still love him, Livvy?'

Livvy. For the first time since she had grown up, Olivia actually found that she didn't get that familiar rush of resentment and bitterness when he used the shortened form of her name.

'No...I don't know.... Yes,' she acknowledged helplessly when he continued to look at her. Tears filled her eyes.

'But it just wasn't working. Caspar didn't understand how I felt. He was always accusing me of being more concerned about the past and you and Gramps than I was about him and the girls. But that just wasn't true.

'I needed him to understand, to help me, not criticise me.' Her eyes filled with tears and she turned her head away from him, but slowly she found she was telling him about her feelings, her marriage, her fears and her pain and that it seemed the most natural thing in the world to do so.

Just before dawn as she started to drift into an exhausted sleep, David leaned over and kissed her gently.

He ached so with love for her and like any father he ached, too, to put her world to rights for her.

Caspar was only a telephone call away. Surely as her husband he had every right to know that she was ill...that his daughters missed and wanted him... And that Olivia missed and wanted him, too?

That, David decided, was a decision he could only make once he had actually spoken with his son-in-law.

METHODICALLY, Olivia had stored Caspar's mobile number in her telephone's address book. David had made sure she was asleep before making his call.

CASPAR FROWNED as his mobile started to ring. It was late at night and Molly was in her room sleeping.

When he saw his Cheshire home number flashing up on his mobile, his first feeling was one of such piercing emotional intensity that it caught him off guard but when he heard the voice of an unknown man on the other end of the line that feeling quickly evaporated, his own voice tautly hostile as he responded to his caller's, 'Is that Caspar?' with a terse, 'Yes.'

'I'm David Crighton,' David introduced himself.

'Olivia's father.'

Olivia's father! Caspar's tight grip on his mobile relaxed slightly only to tighten up again even more tensely as David informed him, 'I thought I'd better ring and let you know that Olivia isn't too well.'

Not too well— The shock of hearing such news so soon after speaking to Jenny filled Caspar with sharp anxiety.

'What's wrong with her?' Caspar demanded—a moment of unthinkable, unbearable horror seizing him as he rasped, 'Has there been an accident? Is she—'

'It's nothing like that,' David was quick to reassure him. 'She's actually contracted a particularly vicious brand of flu that's going round at the moment and her doctor has decreed that she's got to stay in bed for a few days.'

'Stay in bed—Olivia!' Caspar's voice betrayed both his shock and his cynicism at anyone's ability to make Olivia comply with such a restriction.

David allowed himself to smile a little.

'Well, she wasn't too keen on the idea but to be honest it hasn't been that difficult enforcing it—she's hardly been conscious most of the time, although it looks as though she's over the worst of the fever now....'

As he listened to David's quiet revelations, Caspar was filled with a rush of conflicting emotions. The very thought of Olivia being ill enough to agree to remain in bed was one that upset him far more than he could have imagined. Unwilling to examine what he was feeling too closely, he asked David urgently,

'What about the girls?'

Not even their births had kept Livvy in bed for more than twenty-four hours.

'Oh, I suppose they're with Jon and Jenny,' he added, answering his own question.

'Actually, no, they're here at home with me.

They've been asking for you, Caspar. They miss you,'

David told him poignantly before continuing, 'I've moved in for the duration until Olivia is well enough to manage on her own.'

'Livvy has let you move in?' Once again Caspar's voice betrayed his feelings.

'Well, she really didn't have much of an alternative,' David confessed, driving home the point he wanted to make by adding gently, 'You see, there wasn't really anyone else. Maddy hasn't been well and has needed Jenny's help, so Livvy didn't actually have anyone else she could turn to.'

David knew that he was being unfair and he could feel in the ensuing silence humming along the telephone line just how Caspar was reacting to what he had said.

'Just how ill is she?' Caspar asked abruptly.

The scenario David was describing to him was so out of character for Olivia that he could feel his anxiety gauge rising with every word David uttered.

'Well, if the hospital hadn't already been full...'

David began.

'The hospital!' Olivia was ill enough to be taken into hospital. 'Why the hell have you left it this long to get in touch with me?' Caspar exploded.

'Perhaps because I needed to make sure that Livvy wanted me to, first,' David checked him softly.

Caspar stared incredulously across his room.

'Livvy asked you to ring me?'

'You're her husband—the father of her children. Is it really so surprising that she should want you?' David hedged.

Caspar's normally quick intellect was for once sub-ordinate to his emotions so that he didn't pick up on the evasive maimer in which David had answered him.

Livvy wanted him. Livvy needed him!

Closing his eyes he told David gruffly, 'I'm out in the middle of nowhere at the moment, but I'll be on the first international flight home I can get...and...

David...'

Though he stumbled a little over his use of his father-in-law's Christian name, David himself was too relieved to care.

'Yes,' David responded carefully as he finally allowed the pent-up breath he felt he had been holding for the entire duration of their conversation to leak away in shaky relief. Olivia would never forgive him for this piece of outright manipulation and interference he suspected, but if he hadn't done it he knew he would never forgive himself. She was his daughter and her happiness was of paramount importance to him.

Far, far more important than Livvy herself could know.

'Thanks,' Caspar told him gruffly.

As he ended the call, Caspar looked towards the closed door of his room. Across the hallway from his room lay Molly's. Was it really only a matter of hours ago that she had warned him that they needed to talk about his marriage and that he... He closed his eyes and squared his shoulders, grimacing as he opened them again. There was no way he could leave without explaining to her, and no way either that he wanted to.

When she opened the door to his knock she looked adorably rumpled and sleepy and he had to fight against taking her in his arms and holding her whilst he told her. Was it possible for a man to love two women?

'Can I come in a minute? There's something I have to tell you.'

Molly knew immediately that Caspar's 'something'

involved his wife and she had to turn away from him so that he couldn't see the fear in her eyes. She had known him for such a short time and she had known all along that his marriage was far from over as he had tried to claim.

'Olivia's ill,' he told her. 'I—I have to go home...the girls...my daughters...have been asking for me....' he added, unable to look at her as he did so.

As she listened to him, a fierce wild sense of loss invaded Molly but she refused to give in to it. After all, hadn't she known all along that something like this would happen; that all the best men were inevitably already spoken for? Hadn't she known just from the way he said her name that he still loved his Olivia, even though he himself had tried to deny it?

Summoning up all her courage and all her professionalism, she touched him gently on his arm.

'You're doing the right thing,' she assured him. 'A marriage as good as yours deserves a second chance.'

'How do you know that?' Caspar asked her ruefully.

Beneath his gruffness was relief and gratitude that she had not reproached him or made things difficult for him, and a sense of sadness and guilt as well.

'I just know.' She smiled.

As she watched him leave, she continued to smile but inside she was already warning Olivia, "This time I'm letting you have him back, but if you're ever fool enough to let him go a second time I sure as hell won't be so generous.'