Single Dads Collection. Lynne Marshall

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      He was glad that he had agreed when he saw Lily’s face as the news was broken to her that Alice was going to stay with them for a while. She was never a demonstrative child, but there was no mistaking the way her dark eyes lit up with surprise and delight.

      ‘You’re going to live with us?’

      ‘Just for a little while,’ cautioned Alice. ‘Until your dad can find you a new nanny.’

      ‘Why can’t you stay always?’

      Will waited to see how Alice would handle that. It was a question he had wanted to ask her himself in the past. He had never understood why she had been so determined to end their relationship when they had been so good together. It was as if she had been convinced that everything would go wrong, but she hadn’t been prepared to give it a chance to go right.

      ‘Because I have to go home, Lily,’ Alice told her. ‘My life is in London, not here. But until I do go back we’ll have a lovely time together, shall we?’

      Lily seemed to accept that. ‘OK,’ she said.

      Alice was more nervous than she wanted to admit about how Beth would react to the news that she was moving out that night to live with Will and Lily. The last thing she wanted to do was to hurt Beth’s feelings. But, once the situation about the missing nanny had been explained, Beth was very understanding, and even surprisingly enthusiastic about the idea.

      ‘It sounds like the perfect solution,’ she said, smiling, her gaze flickering with interest between Will and Alice. ‘I’m sure you’re doing the right thing.’

      ‘I’m doing it for Lily,’ said Alice pointedly. She didn’t want Beth getting the wrong idea.

      Beth opened her eyes wide. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Why else?’

      Roger was less convinced that it was a good idea. ‘Are you sure about this, Alice?’ he asked under his breath as they came to say goodbye.

      ‘I’m sure,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry about me.’

      Roger glanced at Will. ‘Maybe it’s not you I’m worrying about.’

      ‘We’ve talked about it,’ said Alice firmly. ‘It’s going to be fine.’

      ‘Well, you’re a big girl now, so I guess you know what you’re doing.’ Roger swept her up into a hug. ‘Look after yourself, though.’

      ‘I’m only going up the road!’

      ‘I’ll still miss you. I’ve got used to coming home to find you drinking my gin.’

      ‘I’ll miss you, too. I always do.’ Alice hugged her dearest friend, holding tightly onto his big bear strength, and her eyes were watery when he finally let her go.

      ‘Oh, good God, she’s going to cry!’ exclaimed Roger in mock horror. ‘Take her away, man!’

      Will, who had observed that tight hug, thought it would not be a bad idea to get Alice away from Roger for a while. He was worried about Beth. At first glance, she seemed as bright and cheerful as ever, but on closer inspection Will thought there was a rather drawn look about her. It might be best all round if Alice came with him.

      ‘Come on, then,’ he said to Alice and Lily. ‘Let’s go home.’

      They had decided that Alice might as well start her new role straight away, so she had already packed a bag by the time Beth and Roger got home. Now Will slung it in the back of his four-wheel drive and hoped to God he was doing the right thing.

      Will’s house had no pool, no air-conditioning, and was some way away from the exclusive part of St Bonaventure up on the hill where Roger and Beth lived in manicured splendour, but Alice felt instantly much more at home there. An unassuming wooden house set up on stilts, it had a wide verandah shaded by a corrugated-iron roof, and ceiling fans that slapped at the air in a desultory fashion.

      It was set on a dusty, pot-holed road and an area of coarse tropical grass at the rear led down to a line of leaning coconut palms. ‘The sea’s just there,’ said Will, pointing into the darkness. ‘Go through the coconuts, cross a track and you’re on the beach.’

      He carried Alice’s cases inside and put them in what had been Dee’s bedroom. ‘I need to make some calls, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘I want to ring the hospital and see how the boys are, and then I’ll have to talk to our head office in London. Lily, perhaps you could show Alice the house?’ he suggested.

      ‘That was a good idea, getting Lily to show me round,’ Alice said to him later when they had eaten the light supper left by his cook and Lily had gone to bed. They were sitting out on the back verandah, listening to the raucous whirr of the insects in the dark and, in the distance, the faint, ceaseless suck of the sea upon the sand. Alice could just make out the gleam of water through the trunks of the palms. ‘Knowing more about the house and where everything was made her realise that she was more at home than she thought. It was good for her to be able to explain everything to me,’ Alice told Will. ‘She might not have been talking much, but she’s certainly been taking it all in.’

      ‘I’m glad about that.’ Will handed her a mug of coffee that he had made, unthinkingly adding exactly the right amount of milk. He hadn’t forgotten how she took hers any more than she had forgotten how he liked his tea, Alice thought with an odd pang. She took the mug gingerly, taking care that her fingers didn’t brush against his.

      ‘This is going to be her home for a couple of years at least,’ he went on, picking up his own mug and sipping at it reflectively. ‘So she needs to feel that it’s where she belongs.’

      He paused to look sideways at Alice, who was curled up in a wicker chair, cradling her coffee between her hands. The light on the verandah was deliberately dim so as not to attract too many insects, but he could make out the high cheekbones that gave her face that faintly exotic look and the achingly familiar curve of her mouth. It was too hard to read her expression, СКАЧАТЬ