And Mother Makes Three. Liz Fielding

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      CHAPTER ONE

      ‘FITZ, thank you for stopping by. I know how busy you are.’

      James Fitzpatrick took the small, perfectly manicured hand extended to him. ‘Any time, Claire. I’m never too busy for anything that concerns Lucy, you know that.’ But Claire Graham’s response to his smile was the closest she ever came to a frown. More trouble, then. ‘Has she broken another window?’

      ‘Nothing so simple.’

      ‘A window and a washbasin?’ Lucy, tall for her age, with arms and legs that seemed to have a life of their own, had been causing chaos since she had first discovered that she could climb out of her cot. She didn’t mean to break things, it was just that anything within a three foot range of her was likely to spontaneously disintegrate.

      ‘Not even the drinking fountain. It’s been a peaceful term.’

      ‘It’s not over yet.’

      ‘Please, do sit down, Fitz.’ Beneath her slightly prim and spinsterish exterior, Claire Graham was as soft as butter and could usually be teased to a smile; after a school governors’ meeting with a glass of sherry inside her she could even be teased to a blush, but not today it seemed.

      ‘So. What’s she done?’ Fitz enquired, lowering himself gingerly onto the elegant chair fronting her desk. He’d come with his cheque-book in his back pocket, prepared for a catalogue of Lucy’s latest string of accidents; Claire Graham’s reassurance about school property, far from easing his mind, suggested that this summons boded something far worse. ‘Her last report suggested that she was doing well enough,’ he said, ‘so I don’t imagine this is about her schoolwork.’

      ‘Lucy is a bright child. She has a particularly vivid imagination, as I am sure you know.’ Claire’s confirmation of something he already knew only increased his uneasiness. ‘You’ve done a good job, Fitz.’ Then she paused, as if searching for the right words. ‘I’ve never asked you this before, but under the circumstances I think I have to now. Is there any contact at all between you and Lucy’s mother?’

      The apprehension took form and, despite the summer heat that was drying up the playing fields beyond the window, balled like ice in the pit of his stomach. ‘None.’

      ‘Could you contact her? If you had to?’

      ‘I can think of no reason that would make any contact between us likely.’

      ‘Not even for Lucy’s sake?’

      ‘She has no interest in Lucy, Claire. If it had been left to—’ He stopped himself from even thinking the name. ‘If it had been left to her mother, Lucy would have been adopted.’

      ‘Then this is going to be very difficult.’ She regarded him with steady grey eyes. ‘I have to tell you, Fitz, that Lucy has begun fantasising about her mother.’

      ‘Fantasising?’

      ‘She’s been making up stories about her, pretending that she’s someone famous.’

      The ice ball swelled like a snowball rolling down a hill but he couldn’t let his concern show. He attempted a smile. ‘You did say that she has a vivid imagination.’

      ‘Yes, I did, but this isn’t like her usual flights of fancy. She’s very intense about it. You haven’t noticed anything?’ He shook his head and Claire Graham regarded him sympathetically. ‘Under the circumstances I’d have to say that this is a fairly normal response. It’s something that most adopted children will go through—’

      ‘But Lucy is not adopted.’ Did he sound as desperate as he felt?

      ‘I realise that, but in the total absence of the birth mother, the situation becomes somewhat similar.’ Fitz was too busy searching his mind, trying to think how his daughter could possibly have discovered what he had taken such trouble to hide, to respond СКАЧАТЬ