‘So why can’t she sleep in the attic and leave me and Gavin in our own room?’
‘Tom, you know why. Your room was Vanessa’s room. She’s always slept there when she comes to stay with her father…’
‘We always used to sleep in our room when we went to Dad’s, but now it’s Hannah’s room and Gavin and I have to sleep on bunk beds.’
Eleanor checked, frowning slightly. This wasn’t the first time that Tom had mentioned the change in sleeping arrangements at his father’s house, but it was the first time she had been so clearly aware of the resentment and anger she could now see and hear.
‘Daddy got those bunk beds especially for you,’ she reminded him. ‘You went with him to choose them yourselves.’
‘He doesn’t want us any more, not now that he’s got her. He loves her more than he does us. Just like you and Marcus love Vanessa more. Nobody cares about us any more. Not even Nanna and Grandad. All they ever talk about is babies…’
Eleanor stared at him. When had the idea that he was not loved begun to take root in his mind… and how long might it be before he started to convince himself, and perhaps Gavin along with him, that girls were the preferred sex; that parents loved their daughters more than they did their sons? How long before the anger and resentment he was expressing now became suppressed and hidden, distorting his personality and, with it, potentially his life? A cold chill of shock and panic ran through her.
In the hall, the clock chimed the quarter-hour and her stomach muscles automatically tensed.
It was too late now to ring the agent and put her off. She would be here in fifteen minutes, but what Tom had just revealed about what he was thinking and feeling needed dealing with now and could not be pushed to one side.
‘Of course I don’t love Vanessa more than I do you,’ she told him fiercely, adding huskily, ‘Oh, Tom, how could you think that?’ her words almost more for herself than for him as she added emotionally, ‘You and Gavin are my children… my sons. No one, least of all Vanessa, could ever change the way I feel about you… or alter how much I love you.’
‘Not even if you had a baby?’ Tom questioned her.
A baby? Where on earth had he got that idea from? She and Marcus had discussed the question of whether or not to have a child of their own and both of them had agreed that neither of them felt any need to bind their relationship in that way; that their love for one another was more than strong enough just as it was.
‘I know families where the birth of a baby has helped to bring all the stepchildren together,’ Eleanor had commented.
‘Mmm… and I know just as many where it has caused problems. I love you, Eleanor—I’m not a paternal man. I married you because I love you and because I want to spend my life with you, not because I want to start a second family. I’ve got enough problems with Vanessa as it is.’
And she had fully agreed with all that he had said. It wasn’t that she wasn’t aware of the allure of having his child—she was; what woman could not be?—but she refused to allow herself to be seduced by the mirage of perfect glowing motherhood, or adoring stepchildren clustering round the cradle, and most especially of subconsciously using that child as a means of adding cohesion to all their relationships and perhaps unwittingly making it responsible for being the family’s peace-keeper.
‘A baby?’ She focused abruptly on her son. ‘Marcus and I aren’t planning to have a baby, Tom. What made you think we might be?’
For a few seconds he said nothing, and then, when she had thought he wasn’t going to answer her, he turned towards her and burst out, ‘Vanessa said you would. She said that you wouldn’t want us any more; that we’d have to go and live in a place where they send children who nobody wants. She said that we’d have to do what we were told by the other children there, otherwise they’d beat us up, and that we wouldn’t get anything to eat.’
Eleanor could feel herself going cold with shock and anger. How dared Vanessa do this to her children? She must have known what she was doing. She was an intelligent girl, aware beyond her years, sometimes to the extent that the calculating, knowing look in her eyes often made Eleanor herself feel slightly unnerved; and fuelling her anger, heating and swelling it, was also her own guilt, her own awareness that somehow in refusing to confront Vanessa earlier, in taking the softer option, the easier line, in trying to placate her, in allowing her in fact to subtly gain ascendancy over her, she herself was indirectly responsible for what she was doing to her sons.
‘Vanessa is talking nonsense,’ she told Tom robustly, but she could hear the tremor of anger underlying her words, and knew that, had Vanessa been there, she would have been hard put to it not to confront the girl and demand an explanation for her behaviour.
Vanessa might not be her child and as such it was not perhaps permissible for her to criticise or correct her—the role of a step-parent was always complex and difficult, fraught with potential hazard and danger—but when it came to Vanessa deliberately trying to hurt and upset her own children… And it was not as though Vanessa had not known what she was do
ing…
As she felt the anger twist and coil inside her, demanding release, surprising her both with its force and its intensity, Eleanor heard the doorbell ring.
‘I’ve got a business meeting now, Tom,’ she told her son as she got up. ‘But you mustn’t worry about anything Vanessa says to you. The next time Vanessa tells you something, just ignore her… and don’t worry about your room. It won’t be long before both you and Gavin will be able to have your own rooms, and I promise you that no one will share them; they will be your rooms.’
As he smiled at her, she found herself silently cursing Louise for the second time that morning. If she had taken a more responsible attitude towards the ending of their partnership she would have been able to spend more time with her sons, instead of rushing around trying to fit far too many things into far too few hours. Why had she not noticed before what was happening between Vanessa and her sons? She had known that they did not get on, but, as Marcus had pointed out, it would have been odd if they had; at fourteen she had virtually nothing in common with two boys of Tom’s and Gavin’s age. Given the fact that Vanessa was very much her daughter, Julia had told Eleanor once, ‘It’s a pity she’s got Marcus’s nose, though. A strong nose looks good on a man, but not on a woman. I’ve told her not to worry too much about it. I know this marvellous plastic surgeon…’
Eleanor had been so taken aback by what she was saying that she had made no response, but afterwards she had wondered if some of the disruptive behaviour Vanessa exhibited might not be caused by her mother’s unthinking personal criticism of her; but she had warned herself that it would be wrong of her to criticise Vanessa’s mother, and that it was not up to her to interfere. She only had to think of how she would feel if Julia started trying to tell her how to bring up her sons.
The interview with the agent took longer than Eleanor had expected, and it was the middle of the afternoon before Eleanor was able to ring the surveyor to ask for his views on the house.
‘I would describe it more as an expensive luxury than a good buy,’ he told her. ‘It’s a lovely house, in an idyllic setting, but it needs a lot of money spending on it and then there’s the upkeep…’
‘What do you think we should offer for it?’ Eleanor asked him quickly, not wanting to listen to the doubt he was raising.
He named a figure that was rather more than she had expected and then pointed out that, while at the moment there was no question of any of the land being used for building purposes, no one could guarantee what might happen in the next decade, and that the possibility that the land could be developed was bound to send the price up.
‘And what in your view is the essential work that needs to be carried out?’ Eleanor asked.