A Daughter For Christmas. CATHY WILLIAMS

      CHAPTER ONE

      THE decision to contact Nicholas Kendall had been a difficult one, arrived at after months of soul-searching and after every other option had been exhausted.

      Or at least as far as Leigh could see.

      And then there had been the big question of how precisely to establish contact. Should she telephone him? It was too big an issue to deal with over the phone. Should she just find out where he lived and pay him a surprise visit? No, he might die from shock. She had no idea how old he was or, for that matter, what the state of his heart was. So she was left with the ubiquitous letter.

      But, then, how much should she say? Enough to arouse his curiosity but not so much that he dismissed the situation without a second glance. After all, she knew precious little about the man.

      Jenny had told her about him in one shocking emotional outburst, but a hospital bed had been no place to ask all those questions that had forced themselves to the surface, shattering in ten charged minutes the calm, contented surface which had comprised her sister’s life. And now there was no Jenny around to tell her anything at all.

      She had posted the letter ten days ago. Now, holding his reply in her hand, she felt exactly as she’d imagined she would. Unsure. Had she done the right thing? Had she betrayed her sister’s confidence or would she have understood? She stared down at the sheet of thick paper, at the black handwriting and wished she hadn’t found herself forced into this corner.

      ‘What’s the matter?’

      Leigh looked up from the letter and hurriedly stuffed it into the pocket of her cardigan, then she shook her head and smiled down at the child, staring earnestly up at her.

      ‘Nothing. Have you brushed your hair, Ames? You can’t go to school looking like that.’ She looked fondly at her niece and tried to eliminate the traces of worry from her face. Children could be unnervingly clever at picking up shades of feeling, and the more Amy was spared the better. She had already been through enough.

      ‘It’s the house, isn’t it?’ Amy said in a small voice. ‘They’re going to take the house away from us, aren’t they?’

      ‘What on earth makes you say that?’ Leigh felt her heart sink.

      ‘I heard you talking to Carol about it on the phone last night.’

      They stared at each other and, not for the first time, Leigh felt an overwhelming sensation of helplessness. Helplessness in the face of events over which she had no control. Helplessness at being caught up in a cyclone. Helplessness at being unable to run away because there was Amy, her sister’s daughter, who needed looking after. Oh, God, how on earth was she ever going to explain what was going on?

      ‘You should have been asleep, Army!’

      Amy didn’t say anything. She just stood there in her winter school uniform. Seven years old, with long dark hair and solemn, green eyes.

      ‘Yes, darling, there are a few problems with the house. I’m working on it.’

      ‘Will we have to move out?’

      ‘We’ll see.’ She paused and sighed. ‘We might, yes.’

      ‘But you won’t leave me, will you?’ she asked in a high whisper, and Leigh knelt on the ground and took the child’s face between her hands. It wasn’t the first time that she had had to do this—to persuade her niece that she wasn’t about to disappear, that she’d be there when evening came and when the following morning rolled around as well. The school psychologist had told Leigh that it was a reaction she could expect and one which could last for years after the deaths of Amy’s parents—a need to be reassured and a tendency to cling like ivy to the support systems that remained in her life.

      ‘No chance, dwarf,’ Leigh said soberly. ‘You’re stuck with me, like it or not. Now, your hair. Then breakfast, then school. At this rate we’ll never get this show off the road.’ She smoothed back the long hair from Amy’s face and kissed her forehead. ‘And hurry. You know what Mrs Stephens is like when it comes to punctuality! I shall have another lecture on time-keeping and then I shall be late for work.’

      She went downstairs and prepared breakfast, acting as normally as she could, and all the while that little letter burnt a hole in her pocket.

      Nicholas Kendall had agreed to meet her. In two days’ time. At his club in the City. There had been no questions asked, and she assumed that he was waiting—wait—ing to see what turned up. He must be curious, but there had been no hint of it in his note. No hint of anything at all, in fact. Nothing to tell her what sort of man he was.

      She wished she had had the foresight to ask Jenny a few more questions at the time, but the circumstances following the accident had been so overwhelming and the confession so startling that all she had done was listen in amazement.

      ‘I’m sorry, Leigh,’ her sister had said weakly, her breathing shallow. ‘I know that this is a shock