continue to make his life a misery.”
The spark of anger faded from Eugenia’s eyes, and her face settled into a frozen mask. “I will not discuss this with you. Now, get out of our house.”
“Why can’t you face the truth? Is it because you still blame me for Vic’s death?” He realized he was shouting and made an effort to lower his voice. “Eugenia, please. Listen to me. I understand how you feel. I understand that every time you look at Kit you see Vic, and that it hurts you terribly, but that you can’t bear the pain to stop because that’s all you have left of her.
“But you have to let him go. Kit is not his mother, and he deserves to live his own life. You have to let him go… and you have to let her go. It’s the only way you’ll heal.”
She stared at him in silence, her eyes hollow, and for an instant he thought he’d reached her. Then she said, “How dare you tell me what I feel? You always were an arrogant bastard. You know nothing,
Bob cleared his throat, a nervous stutter of sound. “You’d better go now, Duncan. You’d better do as she says.”
Kincaid stood. “All right. But let me tell you this. I will do whatever it takes to keep my son with me – whatever it takes. And if you keep on with this, you will rue the consequences. Do you understand me?”
When neither of them replied, he turned away and let himself out of the house. As he got into the car and pulled away from the curb, he realized his hands were shaking from the flood of fury and adrenaline.
He felt oddly and surprisingly liberated, as if he’d crossed some unexpected Rubicon. He had meant it. He would do whatever it took to keep Kit with him, even if it meant sacrificing his job, or his life as he knew it.
He would never know, now, if Tony Novak had been justified in taking his daughter, but he knew that were he faced with giving Kit up to his grandparents, he would do the same.
It was evening by the time he reached Notting Hill again. Dusk was stealing round the brown house with the cherryred door, and a welcoming light shone out from the windows.
The dogs barked as he came in, then leapt at his knees, tails wagging. He greeted them and went through to the kitchen. Gemma stood by the table, still in her workclothes, going through the post.
“Where are the boys?” he asked, kissing her cheek.
“Upstairs.” She looked up at him, frowning in concern. “Where have you been? You didn’t answer your phone, and Doug said you were out.”
“I went to see Bob and Eugenia. They’re not going to budge, Gemma. They mean to take him away from us, and I won’t let them do it. I don’t care what it takes, even if it means giving up the job. If we have to go away somewhere, make a fresh start, would you-”
“You would do that for me?” It was Kit, standing in the kitchen doorway.
Kincaid turned and saw his son’s face lit with surprise, and a wondrous dawning hope. “Yes. You’re my son, Kit. I won’t let you go.”
“What…” Kit hesitated, then seemed to come to a decision. “What if I had the test? Would that help?”
“It might. But I thought you didn’t want-”
“And if it’s not true, if I’m not really your son, will you still-”
“Kit, do you think I love Toby any less because we don’t share genes?” He glanced at Gemma and saw that her eyes were bright with tears. “What matters is that we’re family. We stick together, okay?”
Kit took a breath and grinned. “Right. Okay. Then I’ll do it.”
They celebrated with the boys’ favorite takeaway pizza and a riotous game of Scrabble in the sitting room, the boys’ shouts punctuated by the dogs’ barking. Kit radiated an infectious joy new to Kincaid, and he wondered if he was seeing his son for the first time as he’d been before grief entered his life.
Toby, charged up by an excitement he didn’t understand, bounced round the room like a table-tennis ball, until Gemma laughingly shepherded him upstairs for his bath.
Later, when both boys were in bed and Gemma lay curled in Kincaid’s arms, she said, “Will the test be enough, do you think?”
“I hope so. We’ll see.”
She turned a little, until he could just make out her profile in the dark. “And did you mean what you said, about being willing to give up everything?”
Kincaid felt he’d stood at the edge of a chasm and found himself willing to leap. If he’d been given a reprieve by Kit’s decision, at least he knew he possessed enough courage for the plunge. “I think so, yeah.”
“Even the job?”
He traced a finger along her bare shoulder. “I’d like to think I’m more than the job.”
“Oh, I think you’re much more than that,” she said softly, and kissed him.
It was only much later, as he lay drowsily beside her, listening to her breathing steady into the slow rhythm of sleep, that the realization struck him. When he’d asked her if she would be willing to give up the life they’d built, for Kit’s sake, she had not given him an answer.
Harriet had had to stay two days in hospital, for observation. Her arm had been set, and the doctors had said she needed fluids and rest. She didn’t remember much of the first day, only her father, sitting beside her bed, gaunt and unshaven. He’d cried when he’d told her about her mum, gripping her good hand as if it might keep him from drowning, but Harriet couldn’t find anything to say.
It seemed to her that she’d known, somehow, that her mother was gone, when she’d cried for her as she lay on the bed in the dark house. Now she just felt numb, as if it had all happened to someone else, or to her a long time ago. Her mind wouldn’t go any further than that; she couldn’t visualize what her life was going to be without her mother in it.
She slept again, and when she woke she had visitors. Her father spoke to them, then went out, leaving her alone with the newcomers. She recognized the policewoman with the pretty red hair who had found her, and the priest who’d been with her, with her kind face and funny collar.
With them was a small Asian woman in a wheelchair. When the others had greeted Harriet, the woman rolled her chair up to the bed and took Harriet’s hand. Her thin face bore lines of pain, as if she’d been ill, but there was also something calm in it that Harriet found comforting.
“I’m so sorry about your mother, Harriet,” the woman said, her soft voice strained with the effort. “And I’m so sorry about what happened to you.”
Harriet didn’t understand who she was or why it should matter to her so much, but she nodded as if she did.
The woman looked relieved and smiled. She pulled something wrapped in tissue paper from her bag. “This is for you – not for here, of course, because you can’t light it – but for when you get home.”
Harriet couldn’t manage the tissue paper with one hand, so the woman helped her pull it away, lifting out a candle in a square of pale green glass. It smelled sweet and made Harriet think of something nice, but she couldn’t quite remember what it was. “Thank you,” she said, and the woman seemed pleased.
“We’d better let you get some rest,” said the priest, and as they moved towards the door her father came back into the room.
“Have you – Is there any news of her?” he asked the policewoman in a low voice.
“No, nothing yet,” she answered.
“And-” Her father shifted uneasily and rubbed at his chin. “Will I – Will there be… charges?”
“No,” the policewoman said again. “No, I don’t think so. You only took your daughter out of school, after all.”
When they’d gone, Harriet thought about asking her dad what he’d meant, but instead she drifted off to sleep again.
She had one more visitor, on the second day. Her dad had gone down to the canteen for coffee when Mrs. Bletchley sidled in the door, looking warily round the room. She wore what Harriet knew to be her best dress, and a smear of orange lipstick like a gash across her mouth.
She gave Harriet a brusque nod, then stood awkwardly at the foot of the bed. “Just came to say sorry about your mum,” she blurted at last. “A good woman, your mother. You shouldn’t forget it. She remembered them as
