She wiped her eyes, then blew her nose, trembling with relief. ‘Pull yourself together,’ she scolded herself. ‘Daft old bat, getting in a state like that.’ She put a hand to her chest, feeling her heart pumping too fast. ‘It’s all right now. Come on, you’re okay. You’re okay.’

Chapter Six

Chapter Six

In stressful times there was something about having a young, inquisitive child that was very grounding, Frankie thought over the next few days. Like all four-year-olds, Fergus lived completely in the now: exuberant one moment, asking a string of complicated questions in the next, and then completely ignoring the answers in order to squat down and examine a crawling beetle or an interestingly shaped puddle a second later. He demanded attention in such a sweet and innocent way, Frankie was happy to give it to him. As a result, by the middle of the week she was almost starting to feel as if the disastrous Yorkshire trip was a strange dream rather than something that had actually happened. Flashes of the experience would come back to her – Harry Mortimer’s stunned expression as their eyes met, his unexpected height, the disbelieving way he’d said her mother’s name . . . all with a rowdy version of a Tom Jones song in the background. None of it seemed quite real any more.

‘What will you do now?’ Craig asked gently when two days had passed and she hadn’t revisited the subject of her father. ‘Are you going to try again? Write him a letter or something?’

‘I don’t know,’ she’d replied, wrinkling her nose. ‘Maybe. I probably should. But then again, what would I say? I don’t want to make everything worse for him.’

‘How could someone as glorious and delightful as you make things worse for anyone?’ Craig had asked.

Frankie wasn’t convinced she wanted to answer that. While she appreciated his cheerleading support, she was pretty sure her surprise appearance hadn’t exactly made things better for Harry’s wife. Or Harry himself, judging by the look on the other woman’s face.

She would do what she always did, she supposed. Nothing. Let the whole situation drift to a distant horizon, allow it to become sidelined by the real and more pressing matters of everyday life. Who needed a biological father anyway? Her mum had married Gareth Carlyle when Frankie was twelve – amiable, easy-going Gareth who’d been a good enough substitute dad, even though he had jetted off for a sunny retirement in Palma earlier this year; his way of coping with widowerhood, Frankie guessed. Perhaps at some point in the future she’d feel like trying again with Harry, but for now she would plump for denial and not dwell on it.