Susan sat in total silence, as if struck dumb, and then suddenly stood up and went out of the kitchen. Jack heard her running up the narrow stairs and into their bedroom overhead. He could hear her pacing.
I’ll pay towards his keep, he thought as he sat down again. Delia’s had to manage alone all these years; how has she coped, looking after a child and having to find work to pay rent and put bread on ’table? Unless – he was struck by a thought – has there been another man in her life? Mebbe one who doesn’t want her son around any more so she decided to off-load him? But then he dismissed that idea. She wouldn’t have brought him all the way from London, or wherever they were living, and just left him in the way that she did. He didn’t seem scarred at all; he was a well-adjusted lad, and didn’t he always say that she would come back when she could, as if he was totally sure of her? And, he thought again, she wasn’t to know that we’d be in the Sun Inn that day.
Then he thought of his parents; had they suspected something? Did Ma put two and two together? Delia said that she’d come to our place when she’d found out she was pregnant. She’d be in a state, I expect; she’d not have had any sympathy from her parents. Davis Deakin is nowt but a bully, everybody knows that, and his wife … well, who knows what she’s like, for nobody ever sees her.
He heard Susan’s footsteps on the stairs and she came back into the kitchen. She looked pale and shaken but she’d brushed her hair and tied it into a bun at the back of her neck. It looked nice like that, he thought.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, but she just gave a shake of her head.
‘Can you be sure?’ she asked. ‘She’s not just looking for somebody to blame?’
He grimaced and huffed. ‘I’m sure. Would she have waited ten years? And ’timing is right; he’s not far short of Louisa’s age. Besides, I remember it clearly and I remember how ashamed I was afterwards. She was frightened, poor lass.’ He looked up at her. ‘Not like you,’ he said. ‘You weren’t frightened.’ He paused. Quite the opposite, in fact; it was Susan who had made up to him, enticing him just as Ralph Pearce had said that girls did.
Susan licked her lips. ‘I was frightened,’ she said, ‘but not for ’same reason. I thought you might reject me.’
Jack frowned. She’d been eager to kiss and cuddle and then offered more, and he couldn’t believe how lucky he was. It was his first time, but it was unexpected and awkward and not quite as marvellous as he’d been led to believe, and Susan seemed in a hurry for it to be over and done with. It was not long afterwards that Dorothy happened to come by and he was tempted because Susan hadn’t come back as she’d promised. At least not until later, when she came to tell him she’d been caught and was expecting and he’d have to marry her.
‘We’ve had our ups and downs, Jack,’ Susan’s voice cut into his thoughts, ‘but I have to say I’m shocked. I thought I’d married ’perfect man, which you are in your ma and da’s eyes.’
‘Not any more,’ he said grimly. ‘I’m right at ’bottom of ’barrel now.’
‘Well, once you were,’ she said impatiently, ‘and I was ’girl who’d led you astray, so in a way it’s a relief to know that you’re not perfect after all, but just as weak and flawed as ’rest of us.’
He got to his feet and took hold of her hands. ‘I’ve never considered that I was perfect; I’m just an ordinary man trying to get through life without mekkin’ too many mistakes.’
Susan looked him in the eyes. ‘I’ve something to tell you, Jack. If we’re to make our marriage work without hating each other, we’re going to have to be honest with one another.’
‘I thought I was,’ he said miserably. ‘To my shame I’d forgotten about Dorothy – Delia. I never gave her a single thought after ’first few weeks when I was racked by my conscience; she was ’sort of girl who blended into ’background. I think she must have been frightened of her own shadow, poor lass.’
‘Well, I wasn’t honest and I tricked you,’ she said softly. ‘Like Delia I was terrified, but in my case it was of being found out.’
‘What do you mean?’ He frowned. ‘How did you trick me?’
‘With Louisa. She isn’t yours, Jack. Her father is Ralph Pearce.’
Fear showed in her eyes, but relief too, and it was as if a cloud had lifted. ‘That swine! He told me he loved me and forgot to mention that he was already engaged to be married to someone else; someone more suitable, from a better family than mine. When I told him I was pregnant he said he couldn’t get out of it, that ’banns had been read. He suggested that you might be a good proposition, that you were gullible and wouldn’t guess, and that’s why I came to you. I was so frightened of my parents finding out. So I’m sorry too. I’ve lived in fear these last ten years that you might guess, or that Ralph Pearce might boast about it.’
Jack swallowed and then nodded. ‘I think I’ve always had a feeling that Louisa might not be mine,’ he murmured. ‘That first night with you, I didn’t know what I was doing; it was my first time and I did wonder afterwards how I’d managed to father a child, and I knew that you used to see Ralph Pearce. So I was afraid to love her to begin with. I thought that one day if you were
