‘It would certainly give us a lot of common ground.’
His words hung in the air, but Maggie was too tired and emotionally wrung out to continue the contest. She simply stared at him with deeper shadows etched beneath her eyes and her face very pale.
He frowned, then he got up and came round to her. He took her hand and drew her to her feet.
‘You’re extraordinarily brave and feisty, Maggie, but you don’t have to bear this burden on your own. No,’ he said as her lips parted, ‘don’t say anything now. But I do have your welfare, just as much as the baby’s, very much at heart. Think that over, but, in the meantime, get a good night’s sleep.’
His lips twisted, then he went on, ‘It may have been equivalent to slamming the shed door, but you certainly cleared the air.’ He kissed her gently. ‘I’ll see myself out. By the way, don’t forget to eat. It’s important now.’
Maggie inhaled deeply as he walked away from her, and closed her eyes. The brush of his lips on hers had taken her right back to Cape Gloucester and the times she’d spent in his arms and his bed.
‘I really loved you, Jack McKinnon, but I don’t believe you will ever really love me because if it hadn’t been for—fate—you would never have come back to me,’ she whispered. ‘That is so sad.’
Despite the deep well of sadness she felt, after taking the phone off the hook, she went to bed and slept like a top, the first time for ages. This was just as well since her mother and father arrived on her doorstep early the next morning.
Over the next days Maggie continued resolutely along the course she’d set for herself.
She told Jack that she still couldn’t see her way clear to marrying him because—apart from anything else and there was plenty of that!—if he hadn’t seen himself as the right man for her before, a baby wasn’t going to change things.
He took it with surprising equanimity, although she intercepted one tiger-like little glance from him that seemed to say, We’ll see about that. But she didn’t see it again and she decided she’d imagined it.
She told her parents that they had to accept the fact that she’d come of age in her own way and she’d made her own mistakes. She told them that Jack would always be a part of her life now because of their child and would they please, please make the best of it.
It was her mother who surprised her. To her intense relief none of the new closeness between her parents seemed to have been lost beneath the weight of her news. But while her father’s face changed and hardened at every mention of Jack’s name, Belle, if she felt any animosity towards the man responsible for this contretemps, didn’t show it.
Then she took Maggie aside and said to her quietly, ‘I know all about it now.’
Maggie stared at her. ‘You mean… you mean…?’
‘Sylvia McKinnon?’ Belle nodded. ‘Your father, well, we’d been at odds for some time before it happened. I felt inadequate and angry because I knew how much he longed for a son, he felt guilty and defensive and it coloured our whole relationship. I knew he was restless and unhappy six years ago and that there was probably another woman in his life although I didn’t know—I didn’t want to know who it was.’
Belle paused and Maggie spoke. ‘You’re making it sound as if Dad—as if you were the one at fault; that’s crazy!’
‘Darling…’ Belle smiled a little painfully ‘… I know that, but sometimes these urges are so powerful in men you can’t fight them. The important thing is, your father finally fought it himself and he’s come back to me. In many ways we’re happier now than we’ve ever been.’
Maggie stared down at her hands a trifle forlornly.
‘There is still,’ Belle said, ‘the problem of Jack McKinnon.’
‘I know. Men don’t part with their grievances towards each other lightly.’
‘You’re not wrong!’ Belle looked humorous. ‘Tell me about him? By the way, I may not get your father to do this yet, but I intend to meet him.’
Maggie hesitated, then she told her mother everything. ‘Of course this is only between you, me and the gatepost,’ she finished.