Kissing Maggie Silver (15 page)

The children kept Maggie very busy the following morning. They were so full of excitement at the prospect of going to the hospital to visit their new brother that they squabbled about absolutely everything. In desperation she found paper, glue and coloring pencils and helped them make cards for him and for June. Then, because there was still time to spare before lunch, she showed them how to cut out chains of paper dolls. Finally quiet, they concentrated on drawing faces and dresses on the dolls while she rustled up a simple lunch of scrambled eggs and beans.

By the time Mark returned from work to collect them, she had dressed them in their prettiest dresses, made sure they had clean hands and faces and that their hair was
brushed, and had also found envelopes for the cards they had made. She watched as they followed him to his car and climbed inside. They waved excitedly as he pulled away. Maggie waved too and then she returned to the house with a sigh of relief and closed the door behind her.

It only took a few minutes to clear up the lunch dishes
, then she was free for the whole afternoon. She smiled at her reflection in the mirror as she tidied her hair. She was looking forward to seeing Jo again. She wanted to learn more about her life and what it was that had made her brave enough to set out into the world alone. She wanted to find out more about Ruairi too. Jo knew him as he was now, her memories were not confused with the boy he used to be, and she needed that. She wanted to know everything there was to know about the real Ruairi. With that in mind she pulled the front door shut behind her, ignoring a sudden sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach that told her that if he didn’t telephone her tomorrow, then anything she learned about him from Jo would just be dust in the wind.

* * *

“Maggie! Come in! I’m so glad to see you,” Jo’s welcome was warm as she led her into the apartment.

Maggie looked around with astonishment.
Jo had only been in the country for forty-eight hours and yet she had already managed to turn the soulless apartment into a home. A brightly colored cotton blanket was draped across the back of the sofa, there were photos on the windowsill, candles and a scatter of small items on every other surface, and a pile of paperbacks on the coffee table. She could smell coffee brewing too, and biscuits had already been piled onto a plate.

“This looks so welcoming,” she exclaimed.
“I thought it would take days for you to settle in.”

Jo laughed.
“In my job, home is wherever I put my rucksack down, so I’ve gotten used to carrying around the things that keep it familiar.”

“It’s lovely. Oh, is this you and Ollie on your wedding day.” Maggie had wandered across to the window and she picked up a photo frame while Jo poured coffee.

Putting the full mugs onto the coffee table, Jo took it from her with a smile. “Yes. It’s the only photo I have that proves he owns a suit and a tie!”

“Have many of your colleagues started relationships at work,” Maggie was eager to learn more about the life that was so much a part of Ruairi, although she hoped Jo wouldn’t think she was being too curious.

“Mmm quite a few actually. I think we end up together because of the amount of time we spend in each other’s company when we’re away on long trips. I often tell Ollie that if it wasn’t for my job I wouldn’t have given him so much as a second look!”

Maggie laughed at her jokey words even though they pierced her heart. How stupid of her to even think she might be in Ruairi’s league. She was far too naïve to interest someone like him
for long. Despite his patience and kindness and the fact that he obviously found her attractive, Jo’s casual remark confirmed what she already feared, that he was just killing time with her while his mother enjoyed her holiday.

She should have realized
he was at a lose end when he told her he had already distanced himself from most of his old friends by spending too many years abroad. He was probably counting the days to when he could leave the Silver family and domesticity behind him and get back to the people who shared his world. Maybe there was already someone in that world who was waiting for him to come back to her; someone far more interesting and experienced than a red-headed primary school teacher whose idea of travel to date was a two-week family holiday in Europe. As the truth hit her, the crack that had started to zigzag across her heart suddenly split right open so that for a moment she could barely breathe.

By the time she started listening again Jo was talking about other things and she forced herself to ask the right questions about the baby and about her and Ollie’s plans for the future.

“We’ve taken this apartment for three months,” Jo explained. “After that, all being well, we’ll be on the move again. We’ll spend a few more months in New Zealand and then it will probably be South America although that will depend on whether we can get joint contracts.”

“You mean, you’ll be taking the baby with you?”

“Well we certainly don’t intend to leave him behind,” Jo chuckled as she refilled Maggie’s coffee mug and pushed the plate of biscuits towards her.

“But won’t it be difficult…I mean what will happen if he gets sick?”

“Then I expect I’ll worry just like all every other parent,” Jo gave a slight frown. Then she smiled. “The thing is Maggie, work doesn’t go away when babies arrive. Ollie and I were in the middle of a big project when I discovered I was pregnant, and if we want to get paid then we have to finish it. I had to come home while I was still allowed to fly but it’s why Ollie is still in New Zealand, and it’s also why he won’t be joining me here until closer to the time the baby is due. Besides, children are very adaptable. I know from personal experience because both my parents are archeologists so I rarely spent longer than a couple of years in any one place when I was small.”

Hearing Jo echo the words about work and babies that Mark had thrown at her the previous evening, Maggie suddenly felt very confused. Brought up in a family where everyone tried to manage everyone else, and where there was always a grandparent or an aunt or an uncle to take over in an emergency, she had never really thought about what happened in other families.
Jo’s matter-of-fact attitude gave her pause for thought as she suddenly realized it was entirely possible to live a very different sort of life perfectly successfully. The model of family life she had been brought up with was not the only one, so her plan to travel and work abroad for a few years before returning home to settle down wasn’t necessarily her only choice.

“Your life is so different from mine,” she told Jo shyly.
“I can’t imagine living like that. How will you cope with six months in suburbia?”

“Very well indeed.” Jo smiled at her. “Just because I spend most of my life camping in the middle of nowhere doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the fleshpots of civilized life when I get the chance.”

“I don’t think you’ll find many fleshpots around here,” Maggie said with a laugh, and after that they talked about other things, including June and the baby. Jo was very enthusiastic about the thought of meeting her and she wanted to see Sophie and Amy again too.

Despite her original plan, i
t wasn’t until Maggie was getting ready to leave that they talked about Ruairi.

“Isn’t it great news about Ruairi’s documentary?” Jo called out as she carried the empty coffee mugs through to the kitchen. “He phoned me last night to tell me about it.
He was so thrilled. He deserves it too. He’s worked so hard for this.”

Maggie, following her with the remains of the biscuits, almost dropped the pretty china plate she was carrying when she learned Ruairi had phoned Jo with some exciting news. Although she was glad for him she couldn’t shake off a feeling of jealousy. She wanted to be the one he talked to when something happened that was important to his career and yet, far from sharing things with her, he had
even refused to make any arrangements for the following day. The misery she had been keeping at bay while she talked to Jo deepened. What if he really did fail to phone her tomorrow despite his half promise? How would she deal with it when she could feel jealous over such a trivial thing as this? Not wanting Jo to know how she felt, nor that she didn’t know a thing about Ruairi’s exciting news, she forced out an ambiguous reply.

“It sounds wonderful.”

“Yes it does, although I guess it will cut his holiday a bit short because the Production Company is sure to want him to go back to New Zealand as soon as possible so he can get things moving.”

She looked at Maggie then, having finished sliding the uneaten biscuits into a plastic box.
Maggie met her blue gaze with level eyes and kept her voice steady as she replied.

“
Well I hope he doesn’t plan on going before his mother has finished her holiday because I don’t think she likes travelling on her own.”

* * *

Later, when she visited the hospital, she kept her mind focused on her sister-in-law and her new nephew.

“He’s absolutely gorgeous,” she told June.
“And you too. I thought you would be looking tired and ill but you look wonderful.”

“That’s all the hormones surging through me, I expect,” June replied with a smile as she lifted her tiny son from his cot and handed him to Maggie.

Cuddling him, Maggie asked if they had chosen a name for him yet.

June grinned at her. “Yes. We talked to Sophie and Amy about it today. It took us a while to persuade them that Mickey, Donald or Pluto weren’t really what we were looking for
and eventually they agreed to settle for John.”

Knowing how pleased her Dad would be that they were naming the baby after him, Maggie squeezed her sister-in-law’s hand.
Then she told her about Jo and how much she was looking forward to introducing them to one another. Just before she left, June thanked her, yet again, for looking after Mark and the children.

“And I believe I have to thank Ruairi and his mother too,” she said.
“Sophie and Amy hardly stopped talking about him and Mrs. O’Connor the whole time they were here.”

“Yes. Ruairi and his mum have been marvelous,” Maggie agreed.
“I’m not sure how we would have coped without them.”

Chapter
Twelve

Both Maggie and Ruairi spent a lot of time looking at the phone the following morning; Ruairi because he wasn’t sure what he was going to say; Maggie because she was willing it to ring.

When it finally did ring, however, she was outside pegging out wet towels, so Sophie answered it.
Maggie could hear her excitement from halfway down the garden. She hurried back to the kitchen and found her small niece perched on a kitchen stool with her legs crossed, looking like somebody’s miniature Personal Assistant.

“That will be fine,” she was saying in a voice that was a fair imitation of her mother’s.
“I’ll tell Auntie Maggie to be ready by one o’clock.”

Then, before Maggie could seize the handset or Ruairi had time to ask to speak to her, she cut the call and returned the phone to its receiver.

“Ruairi is taking us to the cinema,” she announced. “He’s collecting us at one o’ clock.”

“How kind of him.” Maggie, who knew that a newly released Disney film was on at the local cinema, forced a smile, even though she was irritated he hadn’t thought to check that the arrangements fitted with her own plans.

And how clever of him too, she thought, as she returned to the garden to finish pegging out the laundry.
We won’t be able to talk in the cinema with the two children sitting between us and then, after that, they will be so full of chatter while he drives us home, that we might well manage to say goodbye without a single word of any real importance passing between us.

She was preparing an early lunch when the phone rang again.

“I’m…um…I’m just calling to check that the cinema trip is okay with you. Sophie rang off in such a hurry that we didn’t have a chance to speak.” Ruairi’s voice at the other end of the line was more tentative than usual and the note of underlying laughter was missing.

“It’s fine. In fact it’s very kind of you. The children are really excited. They have been asking Mark to take them for days.”

“You’re okay with it then,” she could hear the relief in his voice.
“It just felt a bit high handed to arrange everything with Sophie without her giving me a chance to talk to you.”

Despite everything, Maggie’s laughter was genuine.
“You don’t need to worry about that. Sophie is not my mother’s granddaughter for nothing. She’s a natural organizer so if Sophie says we’re going to the cinema, then we’re going to the cinema!”

She didn’t receive the expected chuckle in return, however.
Instead Ruairi just confirmed he would pick them up at one and rang off, convincing Maggie even more that he was getting bored with the whole Silver family scenario that had unwittingly enfolded him, and that he couldn’t wait to return to his work and to the peace of New Zealand.

* * *

As she had anticipated, Maggie didn’t have a chance to say anything personal to Ruairi in the car, nor as they made their way to the cinema with the excited children skipping and hopping beside them. Instead she had to wait until they were ensconced in their seats, with Sophie and Amy between them, before she could congratulate him on his documentary.