When the Lights Go On Again. Annie Groves

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       SEVEN

      Things hadn’t gone as well in Neston as he had hoped, Charlie admitted as he drove through Wallasey, heading for his mother’s. His father had flatly refused to give him any money, demanding to know how Charlie expected him to be able to afford to give him money when he was having to support two households. And that despite the fact there had been two cars parked on the drive of the fancy house his father was renting, and Pauline had been tricked out in what looked like three strands of real pearls and a ruddy great solitaire diamond ‘engagement’ ring. Charlie had tried flattering her, hoping that by buttering her up a bit she’d weigh in on his behalf with his father, but he hadn’t reckoned on how hard-faced she was, Charlie admitted, scowling as he remembered how his father’s mistress had waited until his father wasn’t there before telling him that any spare cash his father had would be going into her bank account and not Charlie’s.

      Hard as nails, that’s what she was, and now he’d wasted almost the whole of Saturday and his precious petrol driving out to Neston to no purpose. He couldn’t wait to get back to his base and then into London for some decent fun.

      Charlie started to turn into the road where his sister’s house was, intending to take a short cut down it to his mother’s. A young woman wearing a swing-back brown coat, a neat-fitting hat perched on her dark hair, was walking along the pavement, her child in a pushchair. Charlie recognised Lena immediately, with a feeling like a violent punch in the chest.

      God, but she was pretty. Pretty, willing, married to another man, and Bella had warned him off her. Any combination of two of those facts would have been enough to have Charlie itching to break the rules and have some fun. Throw in his bad temper and his boredom, and seeing Lena was exactly the antidote he needed to cheer himself up.

      Lena was aware of the car on the road behind her slowing down. Automatically she turned round, assuming it must be one of their neighbours, the colour coming and going in her face as Charlie brought the low-slung MG alongside her, slowing it down to match her walking pace as he leaned towards her and gave her his best smile, stopping the car and telling her cockily, ‘Hello there, gorgeous. Remember me?’

      She should have ignored him, Lena knew that. He was nothing to her after the way he’d treated her. She had a good husband now in Gavin, and in another few months she and Gavin would be giving Janette a little baby brother or sister – a baby that would have a father who had wanted it right from the word go. Not like Charlie.

      Her legs had turned to jelly and she was glad to have Janette’s pushchair to hold on to. She’d forgotten how confident Charlie was, and how good-looking. She waited for her heart to react to him with the excitement it had done when she had first known him but instead of thudding with excitement it was thumping with dismay and anxiety. She wished he wasn’t here, she wished he hadn’t seen them; she wished he hadn’t stopped and most of all she wished that Gavin was with them, Lena acknowledged.

      It was a funny feeling knowing at last, after all the times she’d secretly worried about how she might feel if she ever saw him again, that she was truly safe, and that she felt nothing at all other than deep gratitude for the fact that Gavin loved her and she was safely and happily married to him. In fact, it was a marvel to her now that she had ever found Charlie attractive at all, despite his good looks. Good looks were nothing when compared to a kind and loving heart.

      ‘Pleased to see me, are you?’ Charlie grinned at Lena. ‘I’m here all weekend; I could come round and we could have a bit of fun together, just you and me.’

      ‘We’re both married now,’ Lena pointed out firmly.

      ‘So what? Come on, Lena, you remember how good it was with you and me, don’t you?’ Charlie coaxed, moving close to her, putting his hand on her arm and looking down at her breasts, feeling his body harden in anticipatory eagerness.

      High up in the old oak tree at the bottom of the garden, sawing off one of the branches, Gavin had a clear view of the bottom of the street and what was happening there. He’d been on the point of climbing down when Charlie had first stopped his car, but now, with Charlie holding Lena’s arm and his wife showing no signs of moving away, Gavin felt too heartsick to do anything. Lena had really fallen for Charlie – Gavin knew that – and although she’d told him that she hated Bella’s brother now for the way he’d treated her, in his own heart Gavin had secretly worried that Lena didn’t love him as much as she had done Janette’s father. Now it looked as though he’d got proof that he had been right.

      ‘I’ve got to get home. My Gavin will be waiting for his tea,’ Lena told Charlie, pulling away from him. ‘And little Janette will be wanting to see her daddy as well,’ she added pointedly.

      Charlie frowned. ‘Her daddy? The kid’s mine, not his,’ he told Lena, her refusal to play along with him making him belligerent. Charlie hadn’t given a moment’s thought to the child he had fathered, apart from being relieved that his parents had flatly denied that it could be his, and yet now hearing Lena refer to someone else as its father, a dog-in-the-manger possessiveness took hold of him.

      ‘Gavin is Janette’s father,’ Lena contradicted him. ‘He’s the one who’s provided for her and he’s the one she loves.’

      Before Charlie could stop her she had wheeled the pushchair past him and was walking away from him as fast as she could.

      Ruddy women, Charlie cursed her under his breath. Well, there were plenty more where she’d come from. And as for the kid, why should he care about someone else being her father? He didn’t want to be saddled with her or any other kid. The man who’d married Lena was a proper fool. You’d never catch him taking on another man’s kid.

      Getting back into his MG, Charlie slammed the door and roared off at speed. He’d had enough of Wallasey, and he couldn’t wait to leave the place and the people in it behind him, he decided as he drove past Lena.

      ‘See anyone whilst you were out?’ Gavin asked Lena as casually as he could. Lena had called him into the kitchen for the cup of tea she’d made for him.

      Lena hesitated. She desperately wanted to tell Gavin what had happened but she knew him and she knew how protective of her he was. If she told him there was no saying that he might not go straight round to Bella’s СКАЧАТЬ