Marriage Reunited. Jessica Hart

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СКАЧАТЬ could never tell. She might be in prison, or simply have abandoned her child to go off and live in a commune, and either way it would no doubt fall to Georgia to clean up the mess she had left behind her. Becca had always relied on Georgia to help her out of whatever trouble she was in. Mac hadn’t liked the emotional blackmail she had exerted, implying that it was somehow Georgia’s fault that she hadn’t made a success of her life.

      ‘Just let her sort it out herself,’ he used to tell Georgia. ‘She’ll never learn to look after herself if she knows all she has to do is pick up the phone to you when things go wrong. I’d let her stew.’

      But Georgia never would. ‘She’s my sister,’ she would protest, but Mac knew she felt guilty about being their parents’ favourite, guilty about having the brains and the beauty, guilty about the fact that Becca had never really been able to struggle out from under her shadow.

      And now it seemed Becca never would.

      ‘She’s dead,’ said Georgia tonelessly.

      Mac stared at her, shocked. ‘Dead? How? What happened?’

      Georgia sighed and ran her fingertips under her eyes. ‘A car accident. She’d been out at a nightclub in Leeds, and she’d been drinking. She should never have been driving at all, but you know Becca.’ Shaking her head, she blew out a breath. ‘It was just fortunate that no one else was involved. Sometimes she could be so…so…’

      ‘Irresponsible?’ Mac suggested, watching Georgia’s hands clenching and unclenching with frustration.

      Her grey eyes met his and then slid away. ‘She was my sister, and I loved her, but sometimes I feel so angry with her for what she’s done to Toby,’ she confessed in a low voice, not looking at him.

      ‘It’s normal to feel angry at times when you’re grieving,’ said Mac in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘You shouldn’t feel guilty about it.’

      He was wasting his breath, of course. He didn’t need to look at her face to know that. Georgia was bound to feel guilty. She always had felt guilty about Becca, and Becca dying wasn’t going to change that.

      ‘I’m sorry about Becca, Georgia,’ he said sincerely. ‘It must have been a shock for you.’

      ‘Yes.’ Georgia remembered that terrible phone call, more than a year ago now. Her mother’s distress had been so acute that it had taken ages before Georgia could understand what had happened and, when she had finally grasped what her mother was trying to tell her, she had known at once that her life would never be the same again.

      ‘Yes, it was,’ she said. ‘It was terrible, but not as terrible as it was for Toby. He was only seven, and he’d lost his whole world. Becca might have been irresponsible, but she did love him, and she was his mother. No one else will ever be able to take her place.’

      ‘But you’re trying?’

      Georgia looked up at that. ‘I’m doing the best I can,’ she said quietly. ‘But it’s never going to be enough.’

      ‘Why you?’ asked Mac after a moment. ‘Where’s Toby’s father?’

      ‘Who knows?’ Georgia lifted her shoulders helplessly. ‘I don’t think Becca did. He took off before Toby was born, and she never tried to find him. Even if it were possible to somehow track him down, I couldn’t hand Toby over to a perfect stranger. That’s why I adopted him.’

      Mac shifted restlessly in his chair. He wanted to get up and prowl around, but the office was simply too small, so he was stuck there, struggling to assimilate what she had told him. It was totally unreasonable to resent Georgia for doing the right thing by her nephew, but he still did. He didn’t like the fact that she had gone ahead and changed her life for her sister’s child when she hadn’t been prepared to change it for a child of his.

      He didn’t like himself for not liking it. He knew he was being unfair and unkind and unreasonable.

      But that was how he felt.

      ‘What about your mother?’ he said. ‘Couldn’t she have taken Toby?’

      ‘She couldn’t cope, Mac. She used to babysit him when Becca went out, but he was really too much for her. And anyway—’ Georgia stopped as she felt her voice wobble treacherously.

      Damn Mac. There was something about him that brought all her emotions to the surface and left her feeling raw and vulnerable. She hadn’t cried for ages, and she wasn’t about to start again in front of him.

      Fiercely swallowing down the tears, she cleared her throat. ‘Anyway,’ she said again, more strongly this time, ‘Mum never got over the shock of Becca’s accident. She had a fatal stroke three months later.’

      ‘Oh, Georgia.’ Mac half rose out of the chair, then checked himself. Her father had died before they were married, and it was Georgia who had supported her mother and sister ever since.

      He looked at her sitting behind her desk, her chin lifted defensively as if to ward off any attempts at sympathy for the fact that she had recently lost all her family. And he hadn’t been there to help her through any of it.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ he said inadequately.

      Georgia gave a brief smile of acknowledgement, and then went on. ‘Mum did her best with Toby, and I came down every weekend, but it wasn’t really working, and the social services were suggesting that they tried to find him a foster family when she died. I was due to have a meeting with them after the funeral, but I just looked at Toby that morning and realised I couldn’t go through with it. I was the only family he had—and he was the only family I had.’

      Her eyes darkened with the memory of those dreadful days. ‘I told them that I would take him.’

      ‘So that’s why you’re here in Askerby?’ said Mac after a moment.

      She nodded. ‘I tried taking Toby to London, but he hated it. I had a super-cool loft apartment by the Thames, but no garden and there were no other children there. He was miserable at school and childcare arrangements were a nightmare…

      ‘Toby just closed down,’ she told him, shuddering at the very memory. ‘He stopped talking, and I realised I was either going to have to give up on him or give up on my career.’

      She mustered a smile and looked at Mac. ‘I didn’t really have a choice. He’s been better ever since I brought him back. I’d sold Mum’s house, but I’ve bought a new one, and he’s back at his old school. I thought I might have to try freelancing, but then I got this job…and look at me now.’ She waved grandly around her tiny office, her expression ironic. ‘I always did want to be an editor.’

      Of a national newspaper, maybe. Georgia’s plans had never included a dusty little local rag like this, Mac knew. She had given up a lot for Toby.

      ‘It can’t have been easy for you,’ he offered. ‘We all thought you were going far and that you would be editor of The Times at least by now!’

      ‘Oh, come now, why would I want The Times when I can have all this?’ said Georgia with a wry smile. Through the glass wall she could see the shabby newsroom whose only occupant, Kevin, the sports reporter, was leaning back in his chair reading a tabloid. God only knew where the others were. They seemed to drift in and out at will, as СКАЧАТЬ