Read Mothers and Daughters for Free Online

clutching his hand. Alice guessed that she hoped Nick would love her more than anyone else, and perhaps even move in when their baby was born. Cecily’s idea of Evie moving back to London with the child, where she wouldn’t be tormented by waiting for Nick to call, seemed a good one, but now was not the time to discuss it.
    ‘There’s so much psychobabble about raising children these days,’ Nick went on. ‘Children need love, masses of it. My old dad wasn’t one for sitting around at home and I was lucky enough to have a succession of beautiful women spoiling me, hoping that by doing so they’d get closer to Dad.’
    ‘Where was your mother in all this?’ Alice asked. Perhaps she’d died and so there might be some slim excuse for Nick’s behaviour.
    ‘They realized their marriage was a mistake at once. My mother and I lived happily together in the country when I wasn’t at boarding school, and I saw my father often. I didn’t know any different. In fact,’ he smiled disarmingly, ‘the other boys at school envied me. They just had two dull old parents struggling to pay the fees and being strict and difficult.’
    Alice was about to remark that he was lucky not to feel abandoned, when she glimpsed a flash of pain under his bravado and guessed that he too had suffered, which perhaps had a lot to do with him not being able to settle down with one woman, however loving she was. She said lamely, exhausted by it all, ‘I don’t want my daughter and grandchild hurt.’
    ‘No one is going to hurt your daughter. I certainly am not.’ Nick unlaced his hand from Evie’s and got up, saying he was late for his next appointment, but Alice was not to worry, he’d never let Evie and the baby down.
    ‘Make sure you tell Freya today,’ Alice said, moving away when he tried to kiss her goodbye.
    Evie was grumpy when he’d left. ‘Why did you have to be so rude, Mum? I wouldn’t blame him if he never wanted to see you again.’
    ‘He needs to face up to his responsibilities; Dad would have been the same, worse even. I know you and Laura miss him terribly but I wish you hadn’t got mixed up with such… well,
unsuitable
men.’
    ‘So you didn’t like Douglas, then?’ Evie sat down in the place Nick had just left as if clinging to the last traces of him.
    ‘I didn’t mean that,’ Alice was afraid her displeasure would get back to Laura and cause trouble. ‘I just feel that a divorced man with two young, possibly traumatized children and an ex wife is a lot for anyone to take on and Laura is still young and has no experience with children.’
    ‘I think she’s mad taking on someone else’s kids,’ Evie said, relieved that her older sister – who’d always been so sensible – was now in trouble too. ‘Do you think he’s only marrying her because she’ll be cheaper than a nanny?’ she added, watching Alice for her reaction.
    The same thought had crossed Alice’s mind but she wasn’t going to say that to Evie. She worried that perhaps Laura feeling so lost without her father was relieved to fall into the arms of such a dependable man as Douglas.
    ‘They seem very fond of each other,’ she said lamely.
    ‘Have you met them – the children I mean – I haven’t, being stuck here and having all my work to do.’
    ‘No. I’ve only met Douglas once, at that lunch. He seems…’ She racked her brains for some flattering description of him.
    ‘He’s deadly dull,’ Evie said. ‘I’ve met him a couple of times, but he’ll look after her.’ Her mouth tightened and Alice thought she might add, ‘At least he’s marrying her,’ but she didn’t.
    Dull though she thought Douglas was, she felt he could be relied upon and that’s what Laura seemed to need now her father had gone, but later, when the pain of his death became easier, would she become bored, wished she’d waited for someone more exciting?
    ‘I wonder what the children are like,’ Evie went on. ‘I think the older one is all right,