‘You’re young. The wisdom of youth is fleeting. Take it from me. I’ll say no more except that I’ll miss you. Maybe you could leave a list of what needs to be done while you’re away.’
‘Ah.’ She paused and waited until her father was looking at her. ‘There won’t be any need for you to worry about anything while I’m away, Dad.’
‘I’ll be out fishing all day.’ He frowned. ‘The haul is good just at the moment. I won’t have time to sort out that business with the rentals. And food. No, forget I said that. I can buy in some tins. Baked beans. Soup. You go and enjoy yourself, Cordy. You deserve it.’
Cordelia thought about the enjoyment lying in wait for her and shuddered. ‘Dad—’ she inhaled deeply ‘—you won’t have to worry about food or the rental because Doris is going to take care of all of that for you.’
She waited for the explosion. She almost closed her eyes. Doris Jones was her father’s arch enemy. Buxom, blonde and with a personality that could send strong men scurrying for cover, she had had her eye on Clive Ramsey’s business for as long as Cordelia could remember.
‘We could be a team,’ she had ventured years ago. ‘My three boats with yours. We could have ourselves a proper little business.’
Clive had been incandescent with rage at the bare-faced cheek of the woman. There and then, she had become his nemesis. As fate would have it, nemesis was going to be taking charge while Cordelia was away, whether her dad liked it or not.
Of course, if he refused to oblige, she told him once he had finished ranting and raving, which made a change from his stoic, barely concealed gloom, she would ditch her plans and stay put...because he certainly wouldn’t be able to cope on his own and she had no intention of spending her one week of the year when she should be relaxing worrying about him.
Cordelia knew that she was taking a gamble. If her father dug his heels in, then what was she going to do? Her ticket was all booked and even though this trip to Italy filled her with sickening apprehension, it was something that had to be done. For better or for worse, the guy who had vanished out of her life and hadn’t looked back would have to be told about the baby he had never expected to father.
Her father caved in.
‘It’ll be fine.’ She hugged him.
It’ll be fine for at least one of us, at any rate.
‘Don’t think I haven’t noticed you and Doris having a laugh now and again at the pub over a pint.’
Clive Ramsey flushed and he glared at his daughter. ‘A man can’t be rude all the time,’ he countered defensively.
She’d won this round. There was no way she intended to let on to her father that she had found herself between a rock and a hard place when it came to Doris. If life were a fairy tale, she would laugh at the crazy coincidence of being caught red-handed emerging from a bathroom clutching a pregnancy-testing box by the one person who shouldn’t have been anywhere near the area. But Doris had been there, larger than life and bursting with curiosity and she hadn’t given up asking questions until she’d got the truth. Cordelia could only console herself with the thought that at least her father would be well fed, if nothing else. Doris was well known for her pies.
‘So it’s agreed, then...’ She looked at him anxiously and she saw him visibly soften.
‘I don’t like it...’
‘Those rentals need to be sorted. I know the timing’s awful, but I had no idea...’
No idea that I was going to find myself carrying a child...that all that longing to see new places would end up as a nightmare journey to deliver a message that was definitely not going to brighten Luca Baresi’s day...
‘I had no idea that that problem would blow up like a squall, just after I’d booked to go away on the spur of the moment.’
‘Well, Ireland isn’t a million miles away, I suppose. And I know you’ve been wanting to do a little research into your mum’s family tree.’
Cordelia didn’t say anything but her fingers were tightly crossed behind her back.
She never ever lied and certainly would never have dreamt of lying to her dad, but the truth, laid bare, would have turned his already grey hair even greyer.
There was only so much she could deal with just at the moment and telling her father the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and then having to deal with the fallout, had felt like a step too far.
She smiled weakly. ‘I promise it’s going to be all right.’ She was tempted to burst into manic laughter because from where she was sitting there was very little chance that anything was going to be all right in the foreseeable future. ‘I’m going away and maybe we should both see that as the start of a changing future. For both of us. Maybe it’ll do you good to not have me around. Now, I’m going to pack. I have a taxi booked to take me to the airport and it’ll be coming very early, so I’ll say goodbye now and poke my head in your bedroom in the morning if you’re not already up.’ She could see tears gathering in the corners of his eyes and her heart restricted.
She had to go. She’d meant what she’d said about changes. Everything was changing and for someone who had spent a lifetime harnessed to the yoke of duty and responsibility, the changes were terrifying.
The future was sprawled in front of her with a frightening lack of certainty. She’d spent her life yearning for what lay out there, beyond the small confines of the village where she lived, and now a door had been opened but for all the wrong reasons and
