Perhaps if she drove over to the house…
The terraced house the students shared was only small, but, as Jessica had earnestly pointed out to her mother when she’d announced that the five of them intended to buy rather than rent the property, it would show a good return on their investment when, at the end of their university days, they decided to either sell it or let it to other students.
Lacey had been faintly awestruck by her daughter’s financial perspicacity. This generation was so very different from her own, so very well aware of financial matters in a way she could not remember being shared by her peers. The money for the mortgage came not from Jessica’s grant, but from what she earned during her holidays, and Lacey had only been able to blink a little and respect her daughter’s acumen while at the same time worrying about her taking on a financial burden which might interfere with her studies.
One of the two boys who shared the house opened the door to Lacey, and told her that Jessica did not have a lecture that afternoon as far as he knew but that she had mentioned spending some time in the university library.
‘She said she would be in for tea. It’s my turn to cook.’ He pulled a wry face, and then added, ‘Would you like to wait here for her?’
‘No. No, I’ll come back later,’ Lacey told him.
He frowned a little as he watched her walk back to her car, wondering what was wrong. He had only met her once before and on that occasion had been surprised by her obvious youth. Then later, when Jessica had talked openly of her birth and upbringing, he had been filled with admiration for all that both Jessica and her mother had achieved.
He wondered if he should perhaps have insisted on Lacey’s staying, on offering her a cup of tea. She had, he recognised, looked very pale.
With time on her hands and nothing to fill it, on impulse Lacey drove out into the country, parked her car, and got out to walk along one of the many footpaths.
It was a silent, secret place; a place where nature was always on hand to reinforce the knowledge that it was she who was the true power that governed man and womankind. Nature. Man could never truly force her to his bidding but merely seek to tame her a little, to harness her power but never to control it. It was nature that was responsible for her being here…nature that was responsible for the news she must break to Jessica.
How had Lewis felt when he had first learned the truth?
How had his mother felt when she had found out? His mother. Lewis had once told her that his relationship with his mother had been far from easy; that she had never allowed him the closeness with her that he had sometimes craved. She had been a very withdrawn person, he had told Lacey, and as he himself had matured he had often wondered if her withdrawal from him had been caused by the divorce between her and his father.
She had never remarried, choosing to remain alone, either because she had still loved his father, as Lacey had always believed, or because she had dreaded having another child…another son.
And Lewis’s father; he had deserted his wife and child when Lewis was very young; had, according to Lewis, emigrated to Australia, where he had effectively disappeared.
With the sensitivity of a woman in love, Lacey had guessed how much his desertion had hurt Lewis, and had tentatively suggested that, now that he was adult, it might be time for him to lay the ghosts of his past, to try to trace his father.
Privately she had not been able to imagine how any parent could turn his or her back on their child. Not then. And she had been quietly convinced that Lewis’s father would welcome an approach from his adult son, had privately believed that it must be the bitterness in the relationship between husband and wife which had been responsible for holding him aloof from his child.
She had never known whether or not Lewis had followed her gentle urging to try to trace his father. Several weeks after that discussion Lewis had told her that their marriage was over; that he had found someone else.
In the distance, a bird rose from the trees, wheeling and circling overhead, its thin, keening cry piercing her self-control. She felt her eyes blur with tears, her throat close in a hard lump of emotion. She had never felt more alone in her life, not even when she’d discovered that Lewis no longer wanted her, not even when she’d known that she was pregnant.
There was no easy way of completing the task that lay ahead of her.
She glanced at her watch. It was time to go back.
SHE HAD TIMED her return well. Jessica was back. She came to open the door even before Lacey was out of the car, running towards her, frowning a little as she demanded, ‘What’s happened, Ma? What’s wrong?’ She stopped abruptly on the pavement as she registered the strain on Lacey’s face, and Lacey felt her heart turn over inside her as Jessica suddenly gripped her arm and said quietly, ‘It’s him, isn’t it? My father…Has something happened? Is he…?’
Lacey wondered if she looked as shaken as she felt.
‘No. No, Lewis is fine,’ she assured Jessica immediately, unaware of what she was betraying in the shock of Jessica’s perception. ‘I…I think we should go back to my hotel, Jess. There’s something I have to tell you, and I think…’
‘Come on, then,’ Jessica said quietly. ‘And, Ma, I think I’d better drive.’
It didn’t take long to drive back to the hotel, both of them silent, both of them gravely serious as they walked upstairs together.
Once they were in Lacey’s room, Jessica stood beside her and demanded huskily, ‘What is it, Ma? I know it must be something serious. I’ve never seen you like this before. You look like…’ She stopped and swallowed. ‘If it isn’t about him, my father, then…’She paused and joked weakly, ‘You haven’t come all the way here to tell me that you’re pregnant or something, have you?’
Lacey shook her head, too heartsick to remonstrate with her. ‘Let’s sit down, Jess,’ she began.
She went through it as quickly and as methodically as she could, telling her daughter everything that Lewis had told her, but omitting Lewis’s suggestion that she might want to be sterilised, saying firmly instead that, while she knew it was a shock, Jessica must remember how many advances medical science had made, and that she mustn’t feel that even if she did carry the malfunctioning gene it would not mean that she couldn’t have children.
‘No, just that I can’t have sons,’ Jessica responded bleakly.
For a moment both of them were silent, and then Jessica said huskily, ‘What I can’t understand is why he never told you this before. Why…’