Alison Fraser - The Mother And The Millionaire

It was a sleek dark green auto, built on racing lines; she didn’t recognise the make or number and, with the inside obscured by tinted glass, it was impossible to see the driver. But she knew all the same. Who else would be sitting opposite the rear gates to Highfield when there was nothing else of interest on this back road?

He had to have spotted her, too, so no point in scuttling back inside. It would smack of panic and fear, and, besides, the bus was due to arrive. She could only stand there and pray he would tire of staring at two rusting locked gates and a six-foot-high stone wall.

Under her breath she muttered the word, ‘Go,’ over and over, as if she could will him to leave, and believed the spell had worked when she heard his engine start up.

She cheered too early, however, as he pulled out onto the road and executed a 180-degree turn to bring his car alongside her.

The driver’s window slid silently downwards and Esme wasn’t certain if she would prefer it to be him or a total stranger lurking for nefarious purposes.

She opted for the total stranger at about the same second as Jack Doyle offered her one of his slightly crooked smiles.

‘Waiting for someone?’ he enquired.

A ‘no’ formed on her lips but thankfully she never got round to uttering it. Because why else would she possibly be here, standing at the roadside?

She limited herself to a nod.

‘Not very reliable, are they,’ he suggested, ‘leaving you out here on your own? Anyone could come along.’

Fake concern? Had to be.

It prompted Esme to retaliate with a dry, ‘They already have.’

A jibe he ignored as he ran on, ‘I’ll give you a lift to wherever you’re going.’

She was surprised into a passing polite, ‘No, thanks.’

‘All right, suit yourself.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ll just hang around until he comes.’

‘No, you mustn’t!’ Esme didn’t have to feign horror at the idea.

He looked at her curiously. ‘Jealous type?’

He had the wrong idea, totally, but Esme didn’t disabuse him. The important thing was for him to be gone by the time the bus arrived.

‘Yes, yes, he is,’ she agreed. ‘I mean really. He’ll be here any second and if he sees you…’

Esme glanced fearfully down the road and left him to fill in the rest.

He did so with darkening brow. ‘Is that why you were so upset when I kissed you?’

Esme nodded. It was too good an excuse to waste. In fact, a little embellishment wouldn’t go amiss.

‘He’s very possessive. Doesn’t like me even speaking to other men. So please, Jack, just go.’ She trained appealing blue eyes on him.

Jack saw traces of the old Esme and was torn. He suddenly felt responsible for her, certain that any man so possessive had to be bad news. But then what right had he to interfere? He had been away too long.

‘Please,’ Esme repeated with genuine urgency as she heard the bus in the distance.

‘Yes, all right.’ He remained a moment longer, holding her anxious gaze, then, putting the car into gear, roared off along the highway.

If Esme felt guilty, she also felt justified as the bus came into view, passing Jack going in the opposite direction. Talk about close calls.

‘What’s wrong?’ Harry asked as she practically pulled him off the bus and hustled him through the door in the wall.

‘Nothing.’ She just didn’t trust Jack not to change his mind and return.

Because that was something else she remembered about him. How protective he’d been at times, looking out for her when she’d been hurt, physically and emotionally. Her hero until he’d proved otherwise.

‘So how was school?’ She tried to sound normal to Harry and it came out forced.

Her son frowned before shrugging. ‘The same.’

‘And those boys?’ This time genuine worry.

He pulled a face.

Esme interpreted that as bad. ‘Look, if you’ll let me go into school—’

‘No,’ Harry cut across her, ‘you mustn’t, Mum. You’ll just make it worse.’

Perhaps he was right. Esme could see his point. Having your mother go wading in on your behalf to complain about Dwayne and Dean, the twins from hell—or at least the roughest housing estate in Southbury—wasn’t going to do his street cred much good, but she felt so helpless.

‘OK, OK.’ She put an arm round his shoulder and gave it a squeeze. ‘But if it escalates, you must tell me.’

He gave a brief nod.

Unsure if he understood, Esme added, ‘By escalate, I mean—’

‘I know, Mum,’ he cut in once more. ‘If they threaten me with an AK47, I have to tell you, right?’

He gave her a wry smile and she smiled back, although hardly reassured.

‘I realise you’re joking, Harry,’ she ran on, ‘but do any of the boys carry weapons—penknives, say?’

He shrugged again before saying, ‘They’re not allowed.’

That hardly answered the question, either. His junior school, City Road, had a nicely printed booklet of rules and mission statements on bullying, but that hadn’t stopped her son becoming the target for boys in the year group above him.

Esme watched as he strode ahead of her now. Nothing visible could mark him down for derision. He was tall for his age and, to her eyes, a good-looking boy with a shock of blond hair and a thin, clever face, but no spectacles or physical weaknesses or strange mannerisms that would single him out.

The teacher had suggested the fault might lie elsewhere. In a school dominated by the local accent, Harry talked differently—in the same regionless precise English that had been encouraged by Esme’s various boarding-schools. But that wasn’t all. There was his cleverness, indisputable and hard to conceal. Harry had tried, very quickly learning not to put up his hand in class or work too hard or say anything to draw attention to it. But it was part of him, the way he was, self-contained and independent, able to absorb everything at a glance without conscious effort.

Esme had never been able to decide whether it was a curse or a blessing, but she didn’t pride herself on it. She knew it didn’t come from her.

Her contribution was his shock of blond hair and fair-skinned looks but otherwise he was someone else’s child. It wasn’t a striking likeness. It was there, however, in the eyes, solemnly grey to her sky-blue, and some of his expressions. There, if you cared to look. Enough to feel a need to keep him and his father apart.

When they reached the cottage, Harry immediately excused himself. He left his bag in the hall and went up to his room built into the attic space.

Esme knew he would be already logging on to his computer, his intellectual mainstay. She might have tried to stop him if she could have offered an alternative, but, without brothers or sisters or children to play with, it was difficult.

Her mother had suggested boarding-school more than once but Esme had neither the money nor the inclination to send Harry away, having hated boarding herself.

Besides, she couldn’t imagine life without him. Not that it had been easy in the early years. She’d been a frightened teenager, back at school when she’d realised she might be pregnant. Morning sick, then simply sick with anxiety, she had actually lost weight, so her bump had gone unnoticed almost to the seventh month. Then discovery had been followed by disgrace and dispatch homewards.

Recriminations had given way to arrangements. A cousin of her mother’s in Bath. Adoption at birth. Forget it ever happened.

Esme had gone along with it all up until a twenty-hour labour had thrust her rudely into adulthood. Everything had changed after that. She’d looked at her newborn son and, from somewhere, had found the courage to defy her mother’s ultimatum: come home minus baby or don’t come home at all.

Social Services had helped to get her into a mother and baby hostel. It had been a steep learning curve. On top of her new-found responsibility for a tiny human had come the shock of being out in the real world. She’d ceased feeling hard-done-by when she’d heard the other girls’ stories. While they’d talked of bad-news boyfriends and abusive stepfathers and drunken mothers, her childhood had seemed a fairy story.

In the hostel she’d learned to cook and clean and wash; she’d also learned to curse and swear and stand up for herself. From there she’d moved to a flat in Bristol, ten flights up with a lift that rarely worked.

She’d stuck it out until a two-year-old Harry had fallen on the stairwell. A grazed knee—no big deal. But in the corner, inches from his hand, a discarded syringe.

It was at that point she’d swallowed her pride and taken the bus home. Her mother had been speechless for the first thirty seconds, barely recognising her younger daughter in this stick-thin, badly dressed young woman, then, drawing breath, she’d launched into a tirade of I-told-you-sos before eventually allowing Esme through the door.

In this respect Rosalind Scott-Hamilton had behaved pretty much as her daughter had anticipated. The true surprise had been her reaction to Harry. While bundled up in the pushchair and covered by a rain-hood he’d been an anonymous lump, but when he’d woken and climbed out of his pushchair to stand silently gazing at his grandmother it had appeared even she wasn’t immune to his charm.

‘What a perfectly beautiful little boy!’ she’d exclaimed in utter surprise.

Esme hadn’t known whether to be gratified or insulted. She’d certainly understood the implication—how could someone as ordinary as her younger daughter have produced such a son?

Still, it was Harry who had helped bridge the gap. Not that her mother acted the part of fond grandmother—she wouldn’t even allow Harry to use the term—but there was an affection there that allowed her to ignore his ignominious start in life.

Thus, Esme had rejoined the fold, but only partly, setting up home in the cottage and trading some of her acquired domestic skills for petty cash from her mother until her twenty-first birthday had brought a small trust fund from her godmother.

It was hardly an exciting existence but she’d been content enough till today. Now it seemed under threat and she couldn’t wait to phone her mother.

‘Darling—’ Rosalind Scott-Hamilton called most female acquaintances that, having lately taken on the persona of an ageing film star ‘—I was going to ring you tonight. How did it go, the viewing?’

Esme breathed deeply before ignoring the question and demanding instead, ‘Mother, are you aware who the viewer was?’

‘Who the viewer was?’ Rosalind gave herself time to think. ‘Some internet millionaire, I believe. Cash buyer, according to the agent. Why?’

‘It’s Jack Doyle,’ Esme told her bluntly.

‘Jack Doyle?’ Her mother was clearly trawling through her memory for the name.

‘Mrs Doyle’s son,’ Esme prompted.

‘Mrs Doyle!’ Her mother echoed this name, too.

Esme sighed heavily. ‘Mrs Doyle. Our cook. Lived in the cottage.’

‘Yes, yes,’ Rosalind Scott Hamilton dismissed, ‘I do know who Mrs Doyle is, or was. I was expressing surprise…Jack Doyle. Who’d have thought it? After all these years and in the market to buy Highfield… Did he say if he was interested?’

‘No, Mother, he didn’t!’ This conversation was not going how Esme had planned.

‘Well, he must be,’ her mother ran on. ‘I mean, he knows what the place is like and it hasn’t changed much from when he was a boy. The question is whether he can afford it—or was he just on a sentimental journey? Perhaps Robin can make a few enquiries in the City.’