With Terrence still calling occasionally to see his “darling daughter”, Megan and Edward were uneasy. They had taken the first steps toward adopting Rosemary, but were hesitant about going further because of the threat of Terrence’s presence. As Rosemary’s first birthday drew near, they decided they would celebrate it quietly, and Gladys and Arfon willingly agreed to have a small family gathering in their home. They called to see Megan’s grandparents one Wednesday afternoon when the sports shop was closed. They sat in the garden of the large old house and watched Rosemary determinedly taking her first wobbly steps across a blanket spread between Arfon and Edward, her plump little arms waving like windmills as she tried again and again to take more than two steps before falling into the protective arms of one of her doting family.
“The garden will be perfect for a children’s party,” Gladys said, happily visualising the event. “We’ll have plenty of room for trestle tables and a play area, I’ll get Mrs Dreese to act as waitress, we can hire a—”
“Grandmother,” Megan put out a hand to stop Gladys’s cheerful plans. “This has to be a quiet affair, we don’t want Terrence turning up. We don’t want him to come and remind us how easily he could spoil our lives. He does have a right to see Rosemary, doesn’t he? And there’s no way to stop him protesting when Edward and I apply to adopt her. The less he sees of her the better our case, can’t you see that, darling Grannie?”
“Grandmother, please.” Gladys frowned.
Edward came forward and put an arm on Megan’s shoulders. “I think we should tell your grandparents what has happened,” he said.
“Terrence has more or less warned us that unless we pay him some money, he will refuse permission for Edward and me to adopt Rosemary. Can you imagine what life would be like with him turning up whenever he wanted, reminding Rosemary that she isn’t Edward’s child? I can’t bear the thought, but I absolutely refuse to pay him to sign the papers.”
“I disagree,” Edward said quietly. “I think we should pay and get rid of my cousin for good.”
“But would it?” Arfon leant slightly back and Gladys and Megan knew that there was a speech coming on. “As I see it, paying, giving in to this blackmail – yes, my dear,” he said to Gladys, who had gasped at the unpleasant word, “blackmail it is, and if we submit, how do we guarantee that he won’t come back again and again? As I see this situation, you have to appeal to the man’s better nature, make him see how important it is for the child he purports to love that she has a happy settled future, and—”
“Once he signs, he won’t be able to trouble us again, will he?” Edward interrupted.
“Nothing to stop him coming to see us, and no guarantee that he won’t talk to Rosemary later and disrupt us all,” Megan sighed.
They walked back to the flat, Edward pushing the little girl who was sleepy after her exciting afternoon in the garden among four doting adults.
“What will we do?” Edward asked.
“Nothing, just go ahead with the adoption and hope that between now and when Terrence returns to London, he will go into the solicitors office and sign the papers. He has been notified that an appointment will be made and we have to hope he keeps it and does what we want.”
As soon as the young people had gone, Arfon put on his coat and announced that he had to go out. He refused to tell his wife where he was going and Gladys sat by the front window and watched him drive away. She crossed her fingers tightly, hoping he was going to sort out the situation and make sure Rosemary’s future was secure.
When he returned more than two hours later he still refused to explain where he had been, but he was smiling and she felt hope and relief settle within her. Dear Arfon, he always sorted everything out. Head of the Weston family he was, and he always would be.
A few days later, when the second post arrived, Edward was serving a customer and Mair was in the kitchen making coffee. It was ten thirty, and usually the steady flow of customers slowed down then for an hour allowing them time for a brief break. Megan came down with Rosemary in her arms and casually opened the mail. She threw envelopes in the waste bin, stacked the invoices and statements in separate piles in her usual organised manner. Then she began looking at the pile of birthday cards for their daughter, smiling as she guessed the senders from the writing, frowning when she did not. Among the private mail she picked up a letter from their solicitor. When she opened it, she shouted angrily at Edward, “What have you done?”
“What is it, darling? Is something wrong?”
“You’ve paid him! You’ve paid that stupid cousin of yours and you promised me you wouldn’t!”
“Megan, I haven’t seen him since the time I told you about, when he asked me to reconsider and pay him. I explained that we wouldn’t, whatever his threats, that no matter how difficult he made it, Rosemary was staying with us.”
“Then someone has.” She handed him the letter and hugged Rosemary as she waited for him to read it.
In the kitchen behind the shop, Mair heard the raised voices and she began to cry. Unaccountably the thought of Edward and Megan disagreeing frightened her. If they had problems, what chance did she have of ever being happy, starting marriage to Frank with this dreadful secret? Staunching her tears by angry rubbing succeeded only in reddening her eyes and blotching the skin around them. Would she ever be happy? Was anyone, she wondered dolefully?
“This only states that Terrence will raise no objection to the adoption by you and me,” Edward said.
“Someone must have paid him. I don’t believe he’d give up when he had such a wonderful opportunity to take money from us. He knows how successful the business is, he’ll see no further than the constantly crowded shop and he’ll imagine we are very rich. I just don’t believe he’d give up such a chance. Not Terrence.”
Edward said nothing more but he decided that at the first opportunity he would go and talk to Arfon. He was the only one he knew with the incentive and enough money to pay Terrence what he asked.
As Megan began to go back upstairs with Rosemary, she was aware that Mair was sobbing. She and Edward looked at each other, startled by the unlikely behaviour of their assistant. Handing Rosemary to Edward she went in and asked what was wrong. It was a while before Mair could calm herself sufficiently to talk. When she did, it all came out.
“I’m expecting,” she began.
“Frank?” Megan asked matter of factly.
“Frank’s promised to marry me.”
“And you don’t want to?”
“The baby isn’t his, it’s Carl Rees’s and Carl won’t have anything to do with it and I don’t know what to do.” Tears fell again and Megan whispered to Edward, took the baby from him and led the girl up to the flat.
Mair told Megan about the nights she had spent with Carl while her father was on duty, and about starting to see Frank in the deliberate intention of persuading him that the baby was his. “We’ve told Frank’s parents and they were so kind and, and now I can’t go through with it. We’d never be happy. I’d ruin Frank’s life as well as mine.”
“Does Frank know yet, that the baby isn’t his?”
“No, I don’t think he’d guess, he isn’t the sort to be suspicious.” She stopped then and covered her lower face with her hands, her red, swollen eyes wide as she stared at her employer.
“Oh, I’m sorry! I shouldn’t be talking to you about all this. I’m sorry Mrs Jenkins, I’m sorry!”
“Because my husband isn’t Rosemary’s father d’you mean? It’s hardly a secret. Edward and I love each other and we love and adore Rosemary. We aren’t the first to begin our marriage in such a way.”
“Should I tell Frank then?”
“You can either tell him, or risk him finding out either by counting the weeks, noting the dates, or by someone else doing it for him. Although I don’t think he’d need that. Whatever you say about Frank Griffiths, he isn’t so stupid he can’t work it out for himself. There are few of us who cannot count to nine! There’s also the risk of Carl appearing, as Terrence has done, spoiling everything with a few words. On consideration, I think it would be better to start straight and honest, but that decision is yours and only yours.”
Megan sent Mair home early, knowing she wouldn’t want to appear in the shop with her reddened eyes and feeling so unhappy. If anyone ought to understand how the girl was feeling it was she.
Instead of going back to the cottage Mair turned down a side street, past the shop where Carl had worked for Jennie Francis, and went along to Sophie Street. Expecting to see Rhiannon she was startled to see Jennie serving a young woman with a birthday card from the selection on the counter. “Where’s Rhiannon? She isn’t ill, is she?”
“No, she’s fine, but she’s leaving Temptations soon, and I’m taking over. Try number seven, her mother’s house. She’s staying there at present. She’s only gone home to put a pie in the oven. Is anything wrong?” she asked, as Mair turned to leave. “You look upset.”
“It’s nothing, just a bit of a tummy upset, that’s all,” Mair said half smiling at the irony. Her stomach wasn’t upset, but her belly was getting rather full!
Rhiannon welcomed her, told her she had no more than ten minutes and went on rolling out the pastry to cover the rhubarb and apple pie she was preparing.
“I’ve agreed to marry Frank Griffiths,” Mair began.
“Wonderful. With Basil married to Eleri who’s almost my sister, you’ll be almost a sister too!”
“How d’you make that out?”
“Well, Eleri was married to my brother, Lewis-boy, so she was my sister-in-law. But my brother died. Right? You with me so far? Then she married Basil Griffiths and although she’s no longer my sister-in-law, I pretend she is and she still calls my mother, Mam. So you see, we’ll be almost sisters. Isn’t that exciting?”
Mair laughed for the first time for days, grateful for Rhiannon cheering her with her nonsense. “I’ve always wanted a sister,” she said, hugging Rhiannon.
As they walked back to the shop, they were talking excitedly of how they would walk to the park together, pushing their prams, comparing notes on their and other people’s children. In a happier frame of mind, Mair went home and tried to work out the best way of telling Frank the truth.
Megan was right: to start with deceit was too risky, she could lose everything with a careless or unkind word. She was surprised to realise just how much she wanted Frank’s support and how anxious she was not to cause him pain and disappointment. She would have to be very careful when she told him, make him believe that it was he whom she loved and that Carl had been a brief madness.
The small family gathering to celebrate both Rosemary’s birthday and the news about the adoption had grown so that Gladys’s garden held most of the family. She felt her heart swell with happiness as they arrived in twos and presented the baby with a gift before sitting, talking and laughing in the shade of the tall trees. This was how families ought to be, gathered together, sharing reminiscences and being happy. Ignoring Megan and Edward’s wishes, now the worry of Terrence’s interference was gone, she had employed Carl’s mother to help serve the food and she sat in a chair, with Arfon beside her, and beamed at the lovely scene before her.
“Only four more to come,” she whispered to her husband. Viv Lewis appeared and asked if they needed anything, walking towards them holding hands with Joan. They looked happy, Gladys grudgingly thought. Even though Viv was only a Lewis, he did care for Joan properly. She had unwillingly, but generously, invited Viv’s parents to join them, even though they were Lewises and not really family at all. They had yet to arrive. Typical of the Lewises not to know how to behave. Then she remembered that the other two yet to appear, were Sally and Sian. Sian arrived at the same time as Dora and Lewis. So where was Sally?
Everyone was involved in conversation when Sally eventually came round the corner of the house and waved at her mother.
“Sally, dear. You’re late.”
“I had to wait for Ryan,” Sally explained, and Gladys was startled and reached for Arfon’s hand. “Ryan is coming here?”
“Yes, mummy. He really is much better now and wants to see you all.”
Ryan certainly looked well, Gladys thought, as her son-in-law came forward to kiss her and shake Arfon’s hand. “Well, Ryan, and how are you?” she asked stiffly.
“I am well, thank you, Mother-in-law. You’re looking marvellous as always, and so are you, Father-in-law,” he added, before turning away and reaching for a drink.
“He really is much better, Mummy,” Sally whispered.
“Much better isn’t enough, dear. Don’t take him back, I beg you.”
Ryan heard the whispered remarks and felt the anger, so difficult to control, rising to the surface. This had been a mistake. It was too soon to face them. He wondered whether he would escape before his temper erupted and ruined it all.
He had managed for almost an hour when a chance remark by Sian to Dora Lewis, tipped his fragile balance. He was walking beside Sally to where Rosemary was being coaxed to show off her new walking skills, when Sian was heard to say, “But he can never be trusted. They always revert to type, Dora, there’s no denying that.”
Ryan was unaware that the two women were talking about Terrence, and his attempt to squeeze money out of Edward, which was now common knowledge, after Gladys’s widespread boasting about how the Jenkinses – grand as they were – were no match for the Westons.
“What are you saying?” Ryan demanded, standing in front of the two startled women. “How do you know whether I can be trusted? Experts on everything are you? You Westons have a lot to answer for, I’ll tell you that, you pompous, insensitive woman!”
“Ryan, what on earth is wrong?” Sian stepped back and grasped Dora’s arm for comfort. “We weren’t discussing you.”
“Don’t take me for a fool, Sian! Although how you, of all the damned Westons, have the affrontery to discuss my situation, with your husband living with another woman, I’ll never know. Brazen you are and you haven’t the right to preach to my wife about me or my marriage!”
Everyone had fallen silent and it was Mrs Dreese, employed for the day in spite of Megan’s entreaties to keep the day a family affair, who calmed the situation down. She went into the sitting room and put a record on the turntable and hissed instructions to Edward and Arfon. “Start some dancing, make a bit of noise.”
Her ruse worked, and within the length of the first dance tune, several couples were dancing on the lawn, and were being joined by others. Sian stood silent, still grasping Dora’s arm, her face pale with shock. Her son Jack left his wife and came over to her.
“Mummy? May I have this dance?” A few minutes later, when a third record sent out its cheering melody, it was though nothing had happened.
Ryan had returned to Sally’s side but he pushed her arm away as she tried to comfort him. He was terribly afraid he might strike her. Control was there, but he didn’t know how long he could hold it in place, here, surrounded by the Weston family. Losing his temper and hitting poor gentle Sally had originally put him in hospital and he was still unable to be trusted to go home. Glancing down at his wife now, a silly smile on her face as she pretended the incident hadn’t occurred, he wondered whether he wanted to go back to her, or if a solitary life would suit him better. It would certainly be less stressful than living with this nervous woman who looked at him as though he were a mass murderer.
Why was he struggling to get strong enough to return to her, Megan and Joan, and the guesthouse that was no longer a home? To pretend that was what he wanted, that the achievement showed his success? It was a nonsense. Going back to the situation that had caused his breakdown in the first place was no longer important. Happy with the low-paid job Edward had found him, living in the flat in the basement of the sports shop, he had all he needed. Perhaps he’d ask Edward if he was allowed to get a dog.
“What are you smiling at, Ryan?” Sally asked, trying in vain to hide her nervousness.
“I’m going home,” he said. “I want to buy a dog.”
Convinced that his illness was causing confusion and he was not aware of what he had said, she asked, “You said a dog, don’t you mean a newspaper or something?”
“What are you talking about, you stupid woman? I said dog and dog I meant.” He put the glass down with a bang and hurried away from the puzzled looks of Sally and the rest. “Good riddance,” he muttered as he pushed past those still dancing to find Edward. “Good riddance.”
Mrs Dreese walked away from Arfon and Gladys’s party still smiling from the happy hours she had vicariously enjoyed, but as she approached her rooms her smile faded. Since being discovered with Bernard Gregory, their relationship had changed. It was as though the secretiveness had been the greater part of the attraction. Now that he could knock on the door and walk in without the subterfuge of the tap on the window and the hurriedly closed curtains, he no longer felt at ease. They had little to say to each other any more. It was as though, after all these months, they had gone back to being strangers. The irony of the reversal was difficult to understand. They had been polite strangers when they had first met, after he had pulled her from the path of a car one dark evening, then there had been the slow development of friendship and the relaxed, comfortable, easy companionship. To revert to behaving like strangers, so formal and polite, was heart-breaking. She braced herself to face the fact that they were finished, that she would have to get a decent job, somewhere better to live, find a life for herself and help Carl to find his way, too.
Her brave decision to work to pay off her husband’s debts would have to be forgotten. At this moment, it was that which she found most distressing. She had let them both down.
Jennie thought she would enjoy working at Temptations. In the first week she began to get to know the regulars and, with Rhiannon to fill her in on their background, began quickly to feel a part of the place. She knew her successful beginning was due to Rhiannon’s kindness.
“Thank you for being such a help,” she said one morning as they were opening up. “With you showing me how everything works and introducing me to the customers, I know I’m going to be happy here.”
Carl was one of their first customers that day, buying a small box of chocolates.
“Jennie? What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I’ll be taking over when Rhiannon leaves to have her baby,” she replied. “And what about you, have you found a job yet?”
“There’s something in the offing, which I hope will work out,” he said and there was a closed look on his face that discouraged further questions.
“It looks as if my old shop is reopening,” she said, as she took the money for his purchase. “I wondered what it will be? If only I’d done what I wanted to do and not listened to Peter and his parents, I might still be there.”
“Didn’t you intend to sell paint and paper then?” Rhiannon asked.
Carl excused himself and left, as Jennie explained that her original idea was to make it into a gift shop selling unusual items so people would come there for birthday and Christmas presents. “I still regret not following my instincts and doing what I’d always wanted to do,” she said. “Although it was an out of the way spot, I believe that if I’d selected the right stock, people would have found me and come back again and again for things they wouldn’t find anywhere else.”
“We sell small gifts, specially at Christmas, so perhaps you can use your ideas here,” Rhiannon said.
“It won’t be mine though, will it?” Jennie said sadly.
When the time drew near for Rhiannon, Charlie and Gwyn to return to their home across the street, Lewis watched Dora carefully. He wondered whether she would be upset, after seeing the house full, then slowly emptying again. She particularly loved having Gwyn there, and even though he only lived across the road she had enjoyed him being in the house, cooking his favourite meals and buying him the extra treats.
Lewis had been helping Charlie with the most urgent decorating, and he and Dora had taken a few hours off to carry back some of the furniture. At last he collapsed into his favourite chair and said, “A thousand pounds for a cup of tea, Dora love,” he pleaded. “It’ll have to be an IOU, mind.”
As they sat drinking tea, the silence of the house settling around them, he asked, “Are you going to be all right?”
“What d’you mean all right?” Her blue eyes blazed. “Of course I’m all right!”
“We’ll both miss the noisy lot, won’t we?”
“There’s another noisy lot wanting a home, Lewis.” She looked at him, wondering how best to say what was in her mind. “Eleri and Basil have been given notice. They only have two weeks to get out of their flat and Basil hasn’t found anything they can afford. In desperation, he’s thinking of moving them all into the old shed place at the Griffiths’s place, where Frank and Ernie used to sleep.”
“So that was what all this was about, getting me to mend the fences and put up a swing, setting the lawn where I wanted to grow potatoes next year.”
“It would only be for a year, while they saved for a place of their own. Eleri could work in the evenings. We’d keep an eye on the boys, if you agree. Lovely boys they are.”
“Noisy, demanding and we’d have no peace.”
“Just for a year, Lewis. We could cope for a year couldn’t we?”
“Have you told them?”
“Of course not. I had to see how you felt first.”
“Well ask them over for supper one night and we’ll put it to them.”
“Worried sick, poor Basil is. Tomorrow night?”
“Don’t I even get a few days to recover from that lot?” he sighed, waving an arm in the direction of their daughter’s family. But he was smiling and she hugged him.
“We could go round tonight?” she coaxed.
“Tomorrow they’ll all be at the Griffithses celebrating Joseph-Hywel’s fourth birthday, let’s tell them then.”
“Ask them you mean, they might not like the idea.”
“Fat chance of them turning down a chance of some of Dora Lewis’s Maldod, spoil them rotten you will. The problem won’t be will they come, but in persuading them to leave!”
In Temptations, when Rhiannon and Jennie were closing the shop for lunch, Rhiannon invited Jennie to go back with her.
“For a bite to eat, a sandwich or a salad?”
“Thank you, I’d love that.”
“Our place is still a mess. Charlie is painting the new wall, so we’re still living with our Mam.”
“What about looking at those old newspapers?” Jennie suggested. “If your Mam won’t mind.”
In Dora’s kitchen, they found a plate of sandwiches and some small cakes. Rhiannon laughed. “Mam must have known! She and Dad have been home this morning, cleaning up for us after the painting, taking the furniture and boxes back. We’re moving back home at the weekend.”
After they had eaten, they pulled out the box of old papers and began to browse through them, spreading them on the floor, commenting on the various discoveries. Small town news mostly, telling of fines for riding a bicycle without lights, not having a dog licence, poaching, causing an affray, house-breaking, drunk and disorderly.
“Dull stuff really,” Rhiannon said. “They must have been kept for the references to this Molly Bondo woman, her name appears regularly and the pages are folded to show the cases involving her.”
“I wonder who she was.”
“Who she is, you mean,” Rhiannon said. “According to Dad, she’s still cause for gossip. She’s a prostitute,” she said in a whisper, even though there was no one else to hear. She delved deep in the box, turning the papers over with care. “There were a couple of photographs here too. I wonder – ah, here they are.” Pulling out a tattered envelope she slid out some faded sepia, and black and white photographs and handed them to Jennie. “Have a look through, while I make another cup of tea, then we’ll have to be going.”
“Rhiannon!” Jennie gasped a few moments later. “I know these people! This is a photograph of Peter’s parents!”
“That’s strange. They must know this Molly Bondo, but I bet they keep that quiet!” she laughed.
“Can I borrow these?” Jennie asked. “I’ll ask Peter if he knows anything about them. If I see him,” she added, with a sigh.
“There’s no chance of you two patching things up then?”
“Not when he does everything his mother tells him, there’s not! I’d be a fool to settle for that, wouldn’t I?”
“Why not phone him at the office? You could ask him to meet you and look at the photographs,” Rhiannon suggested.
“I might.” She packed the papers carefully back into their box. “Now we’d better open up. Typical if Barry decides to come on the one day we’re late back!” She put the photographs into her handbag, debating in her mind whether or not it was worth phoning Peter. If she did ask to meet him he’d be sure to make her angry by having to check with Mam first.
Barry was pleased with the first of his bird studies and taking the photographs of the fighting cats as well as the ones taken with his shutter-release method, he went to show Caroline.
“Barry, they’re excellent!” she gasped. “You have a real talent for seeing the right moment to take the picture. They look almost as though they’re moving. You’ve found something you could develop into a profitable line. Calendars and birthday cards perhaps? Even a book.”
Her enthusiasm was so enormous and so unexpected, he spoke almost without a thought and asked, “Will you come back and help me? Give up your job in the wool shop and be my partner?” He was smiling excitedly at his impulsive question, but the smile faded as he saw from her expression that the answer was going to be no.
The news of an engagement spread quickly, as Mair and Frank told their friends. The announcement was met sometimes with humour and sometimes with disbelief. Sympathy for Mair was a regular utterance, as was the conviction that neither Mair as his wife, nor PC Gregory as his father-in-law, would stop Frank’s regular court appearances for fighting and poaching. There was constant discussion of how soon Mair’s father would move away from the embarrassment, or even emigrate.
In the usual way, news of the engagement party at the Griffithses spread without the need for invitations. The television and any piece of furniture not needed as either seat or table, was taken out of the small living-room and stacked in the shed. Hywel and Frank made sure that there was plenty of wood for a fire, which was to be lit outside for baking potatoes which they dug from Farmer Booker’s fields. Janet made food, helped by her silent daughter.
“You’d better have a bit of a chat to Frank,” Janet said to a startled Hywel.
“What about? Not the birds and bees, Janet? The boy knows more than I do. He should be talking to me!”
“About responsibility, and all that. You know,” Janet coaxed. But Hywel had another subject he felt he ought to discuss.
“Frank,” Hywel began, wondering how to broach the subject of Mair and her baby, “I don’t want to spoil things, boy, but this baby, sure are you, that it’s yours?” He watched as his son continued to push and pull the saw through the lengths of wood as though he hadn’t spoken. “Sorry, son. It isn’t my business. But there’s soon it happened. One minute it was that Carl bloke she was seeing and the next there you are, smiling like a couple of kids, saying you’re getting married and having a child. I only wondered, like.”
“I know it isn’t mine, Dad,” Frank said, when he had thrown yet another log on the growing pile. “I guessed almost as soon as she told me, but I went on acting pleased, like.”
“You don’t mind?”
“How else would I find a girl like Mair and persuade her to marry me.”
Hywel was so upset by the plaintive, yet casually spoken words, that he couldn’t speak for a long, long time. There was a hint of tears on the grizzled and bearded face when he told Janet later what their son had said. “God love ’im, Janet. I’m telling you, if that girl causes him grief I’ll kill her.”
“Somehow, I don’t think she will,” Janet said comfortingly. “I’ve talked to her and she is genuinely fond of our Frank. We have to support them and hope for the best.”
It was a day for surprises for Janet and Hywel. When Caroline and her mother had finished preparing food for the people they expected, Janet told her about Frank’s revelation. “It seems to be the pattern around here,” Janet smiled. “Even those high and mighty Westons have had the same. Megan marrying that Edward Jenkins and her with a child belonging to someone else. Then there’s you and Barry, now our Frank.”
Then came the second surprise.
“Barry and I have decided to divorce,” Caroline said quietly. “Don’t start an argument, Mam. My mind is made up. We’ll never be happy, I should have accepted that a long time ago instead of hanging on, hoping for some magic to transform a failure into a wonderful success. It isn’t going to happen, We both know it.”
“Is that why you’re so quiet? So sad, love?”
“No, I’m not sad. I’ve been so worried about telling you and Dad. I’m happy now I’ve told you.” She looked at her mother, her round face rosy and happy, and to Janet’s eyes so gentle and so lovely. “You aren’t upset, are you, Mam, having a divorce in the family?”
“Caroline, love, I’m so relieved I can’t tell you! Come and let me give you a hug then we’ll go and tell your dad.”
The final surprise came when Lewis and Dora arrived and offered Basil, Eleri and their small boys a share of their home.
“You mean it, Mam and Dad? We can move in with you?” Eleri hugged Dora and then Lewis. “After all that’s happened, you’ll let me come back?”
“Losing our Lewis-boy was tragedy we’ll never recover from, love,” Lewis said, “but sharing you with Janet and Hywel, you still calling us Mam and Dad, like you did when you and Lewis-boy were married well, it makes our loss just a little bit easier to bear.”
“Come and welcome.” Dora smiled.
“And, apparently,” Lewis said in mock dismay, “we’ve volunteered to baby-sit for you if you want to work, as well as suffering the noise of your wild boys. Kind of me, eh?” he teased, glancing at his wife affectionately.
Looking at the photographs borrowed from Rhiannon, Jennie decided to telephone Peter’s office. Predictably he sounded agitated. “Is something wrong? It isn’t Mam, is it?”
“Hello, Jennie, and how are you?” she said sarcastically. “Peter, why should there be something wrong?”
“Well, you wouldn’t ring unless it was important.”
“I want to talk to you. Is that so unimportant? Can we meet?”
“You rang to ask me that?”
Holding her irritation in check she replied, “I rang to ask you that.”
“Tonight?”
“Will you come to my room at the Firs?”
“No, better not. Can you come to the house? Mam and Dad will be there of course, but we can go in the kitchen if we need to talk privately.”
They arranged to meet at seven and Jennie took the envelope of photographs with her. Perhaps, if she was in a good mood, Peter’s mother might help explain them.
Very formally, her mother-in-law offered her a cup of tea. She didn’t get up to make it, but nudged her husband to deal with it, Jennie noticed.
“Mother-in-law,” Jennie began, “what was your maiden name?”
The woman stared at her before asking, “What’s that to do with you?”
“It was Bondo,” Peter contributed.
“The Lewises found some old papers in their loft, following the court cases of someone called Molly Bondo. There were photographs, too, and they might be something to do with you.” Jennie pulled the photographs out, showed them to Mrs Francis, who promptly fainted.