A Fall from Grace, Maggie Ford [best english novels to read txt] 📗

blue, short-sleeved dress, her soft little arms smooth and pink and healthy.

She was so pretty that it took Madeleine’s breath away and unable to stop herself she let go of James’s hand and made towards the window. The man immediately drew back a fraction as though fearing she might be contemplating running into the house to pluck the child from him.

The woman too had leapt to her feet, was instantly beside Madeleine. ‘You can see she’s bonny and well cared for.’ The voice was sharply protective. ‘She’s well loved. She knows where she is here. She knows no other life but this one – no other parents but us. All her little friends are here and at her school. They come to her birthday parties. You can’t take her away from all that. You couldn’t be so cruel.’

Madeleine found herself weeping. She turned to the woman to beg for some understanding of how she felt, only to find the woman too had tears in her eyes.

‘Please…’ the tone was soft yet beseeching in its strength. ‘You mustn’t take her from us. You mustn’t spoil the life she has here for the sake of your own happiness at the expense of hers? You couldn’t be that selfish. You can’t give a child up and then claim it back when it suits…’

‘But I didn’t give her up. She was taken from me. I had no say…’

‘Neither has she – taken away and not understanding why.’

‘She is right, Madeleine.’ James’s voice seemed to come from afar. He had come to stand beside her without her realizing it. She ignored him.

‘But I’ve no children of my own. I never will…’

‘Nor will we have, if she is taken from us,’ the woman said quietly. ‘And we can give her everything she needs.’

‘So can I…’

‘Except the only life she knows, the friends she’s made at school, the family she loves. Don’t you see? To her I’m her mother, the only mummy she knows.’

A tiny voice was making itself heard in Madeleine’s head as she stared at the strained, tearful face of the woman the little girl knew as Mummy: You cannot do this to her… She is happy here… Maybe if you had permission to visit her from time to time…

But that would never be enough, would it, pretending to be an aunt, or a friend of the family and watch her own child grow up not knowing her?

James was standing at her elbow. ‘Come, my dear, we’ve done all we can here,’ he was whispering in her ear. ‘We’re upsetting these good people. If you insist on doing this, it should now be done through solicitors.’

She shrugged away from him, but the fight had gone out of her. Even James was against her. But she’d known that all along despite him having gone out of his way to trace her child. Yes, a child, no longer the baby of her dreams, a child she couldn’t recognize; didn’t even have her looks; more like those who’d adopted her, or maybe not. Then suddenly as James’s limousine bore them away, she knew whom she resembled: the one who’d seduced her, the child’s real father who, so she’d heard, had been killed in the war.

Sinking back in her seat, feeling suddenly exhausted, she knew she could never take back the child, his child, without cringing at the way his smooth talk had misled her, only to abandon her the moment she’d found herself pregnant. She was glad he’d died – sorry for his fiancée although she was probably happily married to someone else after all this time, but him, he had got all he’d deserved and that at least was satisfying.

But the child – no, she couldn’t take her back, not now. Visions of the baby she had once held had seemed strangely to have faded. She told herself now as she sat back in the car that the child was happy where she was, cared for by parents – yes, they were in a way her parents – who loved her; had given her everything she could wish for. The woman was right.

Besides, having her back, under her feet, even with a nanny, could mar her social life, her world in which a small child had no place; but more, could mar her relationship with Anthony. Madeleine glanced at James and as if on cue he turned his face to her.

‘Are you all right, my dear?’ he asked gently.

‘I’m all right,’ she echoed.

‘Really it is the best thing all round, to leave her where she is,’ he murmured, almost hopefully, patting her hand. ‘Don’t you think, my dear?’

She nodded.

‘So we will let the matter drop, my dear? Leave that little family to get on with their lives?’ She nodded again.

‘I do think it is for the best, my dear,’ he furthered. ‘And you’re not upset, are you? Perhaps thinking you might change your mind later?’

‘No,’ she said abruptly, wishing he would cease badgering her.

‘I’m glad,’ he said, his tone betraying his relief that the matter was done and dusted as far as he was concerned. It was what he had wanted all along but he had been gracious enough to give her a choice. She was grateful yet felt a little rattled that it had been so easy for him. But yes, the decision had been hers in the end, yet in a way she felt a sense of loss and of having been cheated somehow. She knew she would be telling herself all the way home that it had been another man’s child, a man she wanted nothing to do with, wanted not to remember and that little face would have always forced her to remember. Best left alone.

He gave her hand a final pat then settled back in his seat, a weight off his mind, Madeleine thought as she closed her eyes and let the limousine carry her towards home to the life she knew, back to Anthony, now with no awkward situations over children.