With a sigh I push myself out of bed, leaving Millie sleeping, and make my way downstairs for a cup of tea. It’s still dark outside, but the kitchen is warm from the Aga, its beautiful duck-egg blue front now giving me a sick jolt of recognition. Am I going to have to change the colour, or can I get over it? Another question to which I don’t know the answer. All I know is that I want to eradicate every reminder of that woman from our lives.
As I put the kettle on I hear a noise behind me and turn. Ash is standing in the doorway, dressed just in his boxers and a T-shirt.
‘I thought I heard you come down. Is there enough water in there for another cup?’
I nod, and he pulls out a chair at the table while I make a big deal out of making two mugs of tea. In the end, I have no choice but to give one to him and either sit down and join him or walk right past and take mine up to bed.
‘We can’t keep ignoring each other, Jo. Talk to me, or let me talk to you.’
To be fair, he hasn’t been ignoring me. It’s the other way round, so I take a seat at the far end of the table.
‘I know there’s nothing I can say that will put right what I did,’ he begins. I’m waiting for a ‘but’ – the point at which he will put some of the blame on me – but it never comes. ‘It’s entirely my fault, my weakness,’ he says, ‘and I’m not going to offer one single excuse to mitigate the damage I’ve caused.’
I can’t speak. My throat is tight with unshed tears for all that we’ve lost, and I take a sip of tea to ease the ache. It doesn’t work.
‘Jo.’ He reaches a hand across the table but doesn’t seem surprised when I don’t take it. ‘I love you, and only you. I made a mistake, which under any circumstances would have been dreadful, but which escalated out of control, and I didn’t know how to stop it without you getting hurt. In the end, the consequences were beyond anything I could ever have imagined.’
‘She thought you were only staying with me because of Millie,’ I blurt out, unable to stop myself. ‘You must have told her that.’
He rests both forearms on the table and leans towards me, willing me to believe him. ‘No, darling. I promise you I didn’t. I told her you wouldn’t marry me, and I was scared that at some point in the future you might find someone else – someone with a lighter spirit who made you laugh, someone altogether better than me. And then I might lose Millie as well as you.’
For the first time, I lift my eyes to his and really look at him. He means this.
‘I have never wanted anyone else since the moment I met you, Ash. There was nothing about you that I wanted to be different. But asking me to marry you so you could be sure I wouldn’t leave and deny you access to Millie showed so little faith in me.’
Ash looks at me with a bewildered expression.
‘That’s not why I wanted to marry you. Yes, if we were married, I could have sought an agreement which would give me some responsibility for Millie, but I wanted – still want – to marry you because I love you more than you can possibly imagine. You make the world a better place for me – for all of us.’
I know he’s telling me the truth.
‘Did you love her?’ The words are out before I’ve had a chance to stop them.
‘Christ, no! She made me feel good about myself at a time when I was feeling crap. She was good at playing a part – you must know that now.’
He’s right, of course. I was taken in by her, but Tessa wasn’t. She knew there was something, just nothing quite as evil as the reality.
‘Can you ever forgive me, Jo, or is it too soon to ask?’
I love this man. I know that, just as I know for sure there is no one better for me than him, but right now it’s all too raw, and I’m not ready to give him an answer.
And there’s one other thing that neither of us has mentioned. She is pregnant, and I have little doubt that Ash is the father.
93
Thursday
Louisa and Harry had been home for two days, and every moment had felt precious to Tom. He had struggled to push the previous few days from his mind, and thoughts of the horror that Jo Palmer had experienced while her daughter was missing caused him to spend too long staring at both of his children as if they might disappear at any moment. He knew he would relax back to his normal self soon, but it was still fresh in his mind. Jo had broken all the rules by following Ash, then Ruth, but he couldn’t blame her. As he had thought, she’d been a warrior when it came to her child, and he would have done the same and more.
Tom hadn’t been able to resist checking to see how the case against Ruth Vickery was progressing and had heard twice from Paul Green. It seemed Jack had been right: the person responsible for recruiting for the gangs was indeed close to offenders, although not a judge or a policeman. Who better to assess criminals’ suitability for various tasks than their psychologist? How much could be proved, he didn’t know. And there were things that still didn’t quite add up, especially with regard to the murder of Finn McGuinness. But the abduction of Millie was enough to send Vickery to prison for a long time.
Since the arrests, Jack had been proving elusive. Tom had tried his usual strategy of leaving messages in a folder on his laptop, knowing that his brother could access them at any time. It had been his favourite trick for years. Particularly when Jack was in deep cover, he simply hacked into Tom’s personal laptop – fortunately not his work computer – and left messages. Maybe it wouldn’t be necessary to employ such subterfuge for much longer now McGuinness was dead.
The kitchen felt warm and cosy, the light fading as afternoon turned into early evening. Lucy was due home from school at any moment, and Tom was busy preparing dinner while Louisa watched from a rocking chair, where she was nursing a sleepy Harry.
The peace was shattered by the ringing of the doorbell. It couldn’t be Lucy – she had a key. Tom turned down the gas under the food and smiled at Louisa.
‘More visitors!’
Since she’d been home, people had been popping by with presents for an unaware Harry and a grateful Louisa. And most of them had been careful not to overstay their welcome, realising that no one was getting much sleep at the moment.
Tom pulled open the front door, a smile ready on his face, but was totally unprepared for the man and woman standing on the doorstep, holding a baby of their own. He stared into the intense, pale blue eyes of his brother and for a moment said nothing. Then, as if by instinct, they both reached out to each other at the same time.
‘Jack, I can’t believe you’re here, knocking on my door! Emma! Come in.’
He stood back.
‘I thought Louisa wouldn’t appreciate me letting myself in like last time,’ Jack said with a grin. ‘And can you please remember that we’re Pete and Clare now. We thought little Sophia should meet her cousin Harry.’
Tom had no idea how Jack knew that Louisa was home, or that their son was called Harry. He’d long given up wondering about such things.
‘Come into the kitchen. Emma – so sorry – Clare. It’s great to see you.’
Tom hadn’t seen Emma for three years. She had been completely traumatised when her own child was snatched as a baby, and suddenly – with the Millie Palmer case – it all came rushing back to him. Now the woman in front of him seemed serene, healthy and happy.