Starting Over Page 13

  Angel had to pin the small, chocolate-smeared head fiercely against her hip to win the round.

  ‘Teth!’ Jenna shouted, arms up, all grins now she was full, happy and clean, crowing with joy that it must be her turn to be swung into Tess’s arms.

  Flushed with success after her efforts with Toby, Tess helped her out of the high chair. ‘Toby’s asleep.’

  Angel sighed in relief. ‘You’re a blessing! Toby’s a horrid monster. I’m sure Pete’s working later than usual to avoid the Toby From Hell. All I need now is for Jenna to nap for an hour or two and I’ll be in heaven,’ she hinted heavily.

  ‘Wrap her up, I’ll walk her.’

  ‘Tess, I could kiss you.’ Angel raced for Jenna’s jacket.

  Proud of the talent she was unexpectedly discovering in herself with Angel’s kids, Tess volunteered airily, ‘I’ll keep her for a while, give you a break. Wanna walk, Jenna-babe? With Tess?’

  ‘With Teth,’ Jenna agreed, unfolding the arms she’d clamped to her chest when her jacket appeared.

  And it was a lovely walk, through the ford as the stream was low, up the lane edged with hawthorn heavy with red berries. A loop to rejoin Main Road at Great End, then Tess paused at the garage to display her sleeping cherub before going home.

  Brake on, buggy turned away from the wind, she could work up a few ideas for her new commission. Jenna could stay there just outside the kitchen door until she woke. No point bringing her indoors to overheat, sleeping in her coat. She’d be fine.

  Tess ran upstairs for pencils, her pad and the brief for the Bavarian folk tales book, then checked outside that Jenna was still sleeping peacefully. This would be a good time to try out ideas for decorative borders, she decided, and ran up again for a pot of coloured pencils, watercolours and a couple of fine brushes. She filled a little pot with water at the kitchen sink, glancing out to check once more on Jenna, and finally settled down.

  As usual, she began with her list of things associated with the stories. Feathered hats, horns, cows, flowers, mountains, bells, snow. Plenty to work with, there. Soon she was absorbed in an overlapping pattern of cowbells twined with ribbon. Yellow? No, better green, the green of mountain grass. She played around with the colours at the side of her pad then spent some time trying different combinations to get the beaten look of the cowbells just right. After an hour she felt she’d earned a bathroom break.

  When she came back, she peeped out once more to see whether Jenna was stirring yet.

  And the buggy was empty.

  The blanket was flipped back and the reins hanging.

  Tess jumped so hard that she actually banged her forehead on the glass of the window. ‘Jenna? OhmyGodohmyGod!’ Unable to believe the evidence of her eyes, fumbling with the awkward doorknob, she raced outside, heart hammering. ‘Jenna?’

  At that moment, a moment that seemed to take a month, Angel, Pete and Ratty strode through the gateway, deep in some laughing conversation, a more cheerful-looking Toby being piggybacked by his father. And Tess heard a voice from the lawn beyond the rockery.

  ‘Tess,’ said Olly.

  ‘Teth! Down!’ yelled Jenna, from his arms.

  She jumped around to face them.

  Olly stood at the far end of the lawn, his hair blowing in the wind. Next to him, the rail fence separated the garden from the small rear drive where the Freelander stood. Jenna craned to look at Tess, cross and bewildered, face still creased with sleep. She shouted, ‘Down, down!’ Oh. God.

  The group entering the garden halted suddenly, silence descending as if they’d all been fitted with an ‘off’ switch.

  A silence shattered by Jenna’s first wail as she cast herself backwards, straining to escape. Olly tried to hold her more tightly against him, awkward with inexperience, wincing when Jenna's furious head collided with his. Jenna clutched her forehead and began to scream. ‘Mummeeee! Mummee-eee-eee!’

  Angel, horrified, cast frantically between Tess and Olly. ‘Christ, what’s going on?’ She leapt for the stone steps that led up to the lawn.

  ‘Wait!’ Ratty halted Angel with a swift hand, swinging her round before she made the first step. ‘Don’t let’s spook him into doing anything more stupid than he already has.’ His gaze fastened on Tess. ‘Tess is the best person to sort him out.’

  Tess swallowed, throat dry, prickles of sweat starting on her face. Oh God. Olly had Jenna! Stupid, idiotic bastard Olly had Jenna! Her mind went blank. She gaped hopelessly across the garden where Olly struggled to hold onto an increasingly distressed Jenna. Her gaze moved to the fence. So low, so easily stepped over by someone Olly’s height. Then he’d be away, out of sight, with Jenna. His car was probably there in the lane ...

  ‘Tess!’

  She looked back at Ratty. His mouth was a grim line, his eyes holding hers.

  ‘Do it,’ he suggested, quietly.

  Her voice, when she tried to use it, faltered and floundered in her throat. She had to cough, and even then it emerged quavering and squeaky with horror. ‘What on earth are you up to, Olly? What are you doing with Jenna? Put her down!’

  He smiled thinly. ‘I need your full attention. This way I’ll get it.’ Jenna prised herself away from his chest, feet kicking into his stomach. He had to raise his voice above her shrieks. ‘We need to talk about us, what’s happened, how we can sort everything out. We need to be truthful with each other.’

  Tess hesitated, her mind spinning. She flung another glance at Ratty as if for inspiration. Beside him Angel was clutching Pete, who was staring, as set-faced as a lion waiting to pounce, at Olly.

  Everyone was giving her time to act.

  She must do something. Think, think, think, how best to steer Olly through this wobbly. Olly didn’t usually have wobblies. He was acting out of character. That meant dangerous levels of stress, didn’t it? She looked back at him, suddenly realising how to wrong-foot him. Calmly, she said, ‘No, sorry.’

  It surprised him into coming a step closer. ‘No?’ he repeated.

  She shook her head, folding her arms. ‘I think we’ll just let the police deal with it. Child abduction’s too serious for me.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, not if it’s my child.’ Olly sounded as if he meant to be bullish and immovable, but the first threads of uncertainty were already lacing his voice.

  She licked her lips. The trick would be to defeat him with cold logic, undermine his uncharacteristic, impetuous action.

  ‘Your child?’ She hoped she sounded scathing.

  Angel’s gasp was loud in the quiet of the garden. ‘But you told him! Didn’t you tell the stupid bastard that Jenna wasn’t yours? She’s ours. Tell him, she’s ours.’ She swung again towards Olly. Both Ratty and Pete shot out a hand to halt her.

  ‘Jenna’s ours!’ Toby shouted angrily. ‘That man’s got our Jenna!’

  Olly frowned at Angel, biting his lip.

  Tess claimed his attention again, making her voice weary. ‘Olly, Jenna’s not our child. She’s Angel and Pete’s daughter. I’ve never had a child. All I had was a miscarriage.’ Then she paused. ‘Did Dad tell you Jenna’s our child?’ A terrible, ferocious anger burst over her at the thought.

  ‘No,’ Olly admitted sulkily. ‘But I thought, well, he might be shielding you.’

  Tess snorted. Then, instead of closing in on Olly, she took a step backwards to the kitchen door. ‘I’m phoning the police, because you’ve gone mad. You’ve stolen a child and it’s too scary. I don’t want to be involved.’

  ‘Tess!’ A shout to stop her. A pause. ‘Isn’t she? Ours? Truly?’

  ‘Don’t be so pathetic, you weasel.’ Deliberately, she turned her back, reaching into the kitchen for the phone. She could hear him clicking his tongue as he did when his brain was speeding. The trouble with Olly was that he was so unused to acting emotionally that he was rubbish at it.

  Jenna’s screams were persistent, desperate, pleading. Tess had to grit her teeth not to hurl herself across the garden to snatch her out of Olly�
��s arms. God alone knew how Angel and Pete were feeling. A sweat of fear trickled from her temple and down beside one eye. Hoping the tremor in her hands didn’t show, she began to dial.

  Focus. Jenna must be claimed back unhurt at all costs. Olly mustn’t be frightened into running off with her. No opportunity must be created for him to become crafty, as he could. She could do this, she just had to out-cool him.

  Tess paused as if struck by a thought. ‘Last chance to hand Jenna over. If you do it now, I’ll try and get Angel and Pete to keep the police out of it.’ She glanced over at her friend. ‘I’m really sorry, Angel. She might be with an idiot but he’s not dangerous.’

  Angel returned a glare of pure acid. ‘He’d better not be!’

  Ratty’s gaze was still directed at Tess. She paused to connect with it. He nodded slightly. She was doing OK.

  Tess returned her attention to Olly. ‘Well?’ she asked, coldly.

  After a long moment, he began to walk towards her. Jenna was still arching her body to try and escape his clutches. Tess’s heart flipped in anticipation. Bliss, bliss, he was going to cooperate! She moved rapidly to intercept him, aware of Angel shadowing her.

  But Olly halted again, ignoring Jenna’s screech of outrage. His eyes flicked to Pete and Ratty. ‘I suppose I give the baby to you, then your caveman mates rough me up, right?’

  Oh no, he was having second thoughts! Tess stopped, shrugged, turned away. ‘OK, I’ll phone the police, we’ll do it that way.’

  Pete spoke for the first time, scornful and angry. ‘Nobody will rough you up, weasel.’

  A silence. A stand-off. Tess again picked up the phone.

  ‘All right!’ Olly completed the distance between them with an animal-like scuttle. ‘All right, here, take her.’

  Tess dropped the phone as she found the hot and furious weight of Jenna thrust into her arms by Olly and plucked out again by Angel almost in one movement. Olly turned and sprinted across the lawn, scrambling over the rails and out of sight.

  He’d gone! Jenna was safe. The garden executed a fine pirouette around her. ‘Oh thank God, Angel!’ She flung open her arms to hug her friend in joy that it was all over.

  But then recoiled. Because Angel, Angel her best friend in all the world, was looking at her with a stranger’s eyes and yelling, ‘Why couldn’t you look after her? Why did you let that lunatic get his hands on her?’

  And Pete demanding gruffly, ‘How the hell did that happen, Tess?’

  Defences down with the shock of attack from such an unexpected quarter, Tess felt tears well from her eyes. ‘I – I stayed right in the kitchen, pottering about with ideas at the table. I only spent a couple of minutes in the bathroom. When I came back, he’d got her.’

  Aghast, she gazed at Angel, desperate for her to understand. But Angel tossed her hair and swung away, clutching Jenna, leading her family to the safety of home, Pete carrying Toby and pulling the empty buggy.

  They wanted to get away from her.

  She turned beseechingly to Ratty. ‘Leave them,’ he advised, economically.

  The backlash of horror that washed over her was so intense that blackness threatened the peripheries of her vision. She turned and cannoned blindly into her kitchen, kicking the door shut behind her and locking it. She huddled there for most of the evening, through trembling anger that clenched her chest and into an enormous stillness, sitting in the dark, gazing at the clouds passing over her garden, glimpsing the stars and a half-moon. It was a long time before she got up and rang her father.

  ‘Remind me, Dad. Why did you tell Olly my address when I’d asked you not to?’

  An uncomfortable pause. ‘Sorry.’

  Tess gripped the phone. ‘Why?’

  ‘I just felt … well, the name of the village slipped out, so I decided he might as well know the whole thing. I thought …’ Another pause. ‘There’s never any point in trying not to face up to things. You two ought to talk.’

  Tess put down the phone.

  Not a bad summer. Not if you took everything into account.

  Tess sat, her back to the ford, finishing a painting of The Three Fishes that the landlord had commissioned and, she suspected, wouldn’t really want to pay for. Even if her new commission to illustrate Bavarian folk tales was underway, though not as much fun as The Dragons of Diggleditch, these crisp days as summer faded into autumn should be savoured; and this was an opportunity to sit outside, even if swaddled in a fleece jacket.

  Tess did a mental review. In some ways, she fitted in Middledip now; said ‘Hello’ to everyone she passed in the street, gossiped at the shop, strolled into the pub alone.

  It was all much better than the days when she hadn’t known a soul she encountered when she walked up Main Road.

  She rolled a sable brush number nine between her fingers, looking from the pub to her watercolour, waiting for the shadows she’d painted at the gable end to dry. Her work was going well.

  And it could’ve been a great summer – if Lucasta hadn’t died. If Tess hadn’t killed Ratty’s dog and hadn’t let Jenna be snatched by Olly.

  She began to feather in colour on the rowan tree that bowed over the brindle slates of The Three Fishes. It was just beginning to turn to rust and jaundiced yellow, the rowan. Shortly it would burst into the flames of its full autumn cloak. It would be a shame to miss that. And if she wasn’t going to finish the work until then, it was a good excuse to stop now. She had her sketches, anyway. She cleaned her brush, laid it back in the wooden case, poured away the water and screwed the lid on the jar.

  Sometimes she just didn’t feel up to working and this morning was one of them. Since mislaying Jenna, the light had sometimes gone out of her days abruptly and for one enormous reason.

  Angel hadn’t attempted to patch things up.

  Tess kept to herself, worked long hours, taking her walks across the footpath over Carlysle land to Port Road so she needn’t pass the garage. Though, unavoidably, she’d run the gauntlet this morning – it was either pass the garage or walk across the fields to the ford, which was just stupid.

  There had just been Jos, de-poxed presumably, bending over a Jeep on the forecourt, throwing back his ponytail and casting her a grin and a wave.

  Now she walked home quickly, hiding herself behind her board with the paper taped on.

  Being ostracised was a lonely business.

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘I don’t know what to think.’

  ‘You do,’ he needled, watching Angel washing lettuce irritably at the kitchen sink. Her sleeve kept slithering down and she had to jerk it up with her teeth, making little urrrgh! noises of aggravation. Toby propelled a fully laden toy car transporter carefully in and out of the chair and table legs. ‘Vrumm, vrumm, beep,’ he played softly, managing somehow to hotch on one knee and pinch Nigel against his body with the other.

  Angel tossed the lettuce down and began an energetic assault on the cucumber. ‘You haven’t got kids, Ratty.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You don’t understand how terrifying it was!’

  ‘I can only guess. And sympathise.’ Angel had always been super-protective. He’d known her since she was a teenager berating strangers about leaving their dogs tied up too long outside shops and crying when her grass snake died. All that caring had, naturally, devolved upon the kids to make her a tigerish mother. Jenna’s recent escapade must’ve constituted her very worst nightmare.

  Snick, snick, Angel cut matchstick carrots with aggravated precision. ‘What if he’d actually disappeared with her? You hear about these things.’

  ‘I know.’

  The handle of the food mill, being wrenched round to grate cheese, broke mid-turn, and Angel slammed it down with a tiny scream. The glass worktop saver snapped. After a pause long enough in which to count to ten, she shook out a bin bag and tipped everything in; cheese, mill and three pieces of worktop saver. Began to unwrap substitute cheese slices with such a murderous expression that Ratty felt his chest tu
ck up on a silent laugh. Dear Angel. Normally too nice to be successfully angry, this time she was mega-pissed off.

  He got the better of his laughter and asked dispassionately, ‘Was it Tess’s fault?’

  Angel threw a cheese slice onto a plate. It landed with a flap. ‘Who else’s?’

  ‘Was it Tess’s?’

  Toby, from under the table, asked, ‘Is Tess coming?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Angel answered her son. ‘Yes, I think so,’ she flashed at Ratty.

  ‘How?’

  Indignant hands on hips, transferring cheese crumbs onto black trousers, Angel stared. ‘She was supposed to be looking after Jenna!’

  ‘Right, she took her out. With your permission?’

  ‘Yes, but ...’

  ‘And to Honeybun?’

  ‘Yes, but ...’

  ‘Then she left Jenna outside the kitchen door, strapped in her buggy, till she woke. Don’t you do that?’

  ‘Yes. But ...’

  ‘She went for a pee whilst Jenna was still out there, do you do that?’

  ‘Occasionally, but ...’

  ‘So. Tell me – how was it Tess’s fault?’

  Only a small woman, Angel, but she could slam drawers shut with surprising resonance, it quite made Ratty’s ears ring. ‘She ought to choose her company more carefully, for one thing! That moron Olly, thinking Jenna was his, taking her. He wouldn’t have been anywhere near, if not for Tess!’

  Ratty felt the car transporter collide with his boot, heard it shed its load and Toby mutter, ‘Oh fishcakes!’

  He shifted his position, tucked his feet obligingly under the chair. ‘And she controls him, does she? We all heard her tell him quite clearly that Jenna wasn’t his, nor hers. As I understand, Olly’s in financial straits and looking for access to Tess’s bank account. Tess asked her father not to give her address to Olly but he did, and I suppose if her father hadn’t then her dappy cousin would have. And that, and Olly’s leaping to conclusions, if anything, set the whole catastrophe in motion.’