Leo grimaced. ‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea.’
‘Why not? You have to meet him sometime.’
‘Do I? Is it that serious?’
Rachel hesitated. ‘Possibly. I don’t know.’
She had coloured faintly, not meeting his eye, and Leo could tell all he needed to know simply from her manner. He wasn’t sure quite how he felt. He only knew that he didn’t want to be reminded twice in one evening of his status as the outsider. He would be meeting Gabrielle’s parents later, and having it brought home to him how much he had missed – lost – in the twenty-two years of not knowing about her was going to be bad enough. Making small talk with Rachel’s new boyfriend, of whom Oliver appeared to think so highly, was not something he felt up to.
‘Anyway, I have to be somewhere.’
‘So you said. Who are you meeting?’
Leo knew she assumed he was seeing some lover – man or woman. He glanced at Oliver, making sure he was absorbed in his film. He needed to tell someone about Gabrielle. Rachel seemed like the ideal person.
‘It’s someone I met three months ago.’
Rachel gave a wry smile, twisting her coffee mug in her hands.
‘It’s not what you think. I need you to listen. Please. This is something I haven’t told anyone else. Three months ago this girl, she walked out of nowhere one night as I was getting out of my car, and told me she was my daughter.’
‘What?’ Rachel stared at him.
‘I have a daughter. From an affair I had with a French girl twenty-two years ago. It was just a brief thing. When we split up I had no idea she was pregnant. I don’t think she did either. Anyway, her name’s Gabrielle – my daughter, that is. So Oliver has a half-sister.’
‘Are you convinced it’s true? That she is who she says she is?’
‘Oh yes. We’ve talked. I met Jacqueline – her mother – just a week ago.’ For the next twenty minutes Leo told Rachel the whole story, describing Gabrielle, trying to explain his feelings, the extraordinary, momentous effect of the arrival of this unknown child in his life. Rachel listened, asking occasional questions.
When he’d finished, Rachel shook her head. ‘How extraordinary.’
‘I want you and Oliver to meet her. You’d like her.’
‘So that’s where you’re going now?’
Leo drained his coffee mug. ‘Gabrielle says she wants me to get to know her father and her brothers. I’m not sure.’
‘About what?’
‘About being the spectator, looking in on other people’s happy lives. Realising what I could have had, if I wasn’t so …’ He rubbed his chin. ‘So selfish. Self-absorbed. I suspect it’s rather the reason I don’t want to meet Simon.’
Rachel looked down at her half-drunk coffee. ‘You needn’t feel that way. About Simon, I mean.’ There was a long silence. Leo waited, half-expecting what she would say. ‘If being part of our lives, Oliver’s and mine, is really what you want, that can still happen. Properly. The way it was.’
Her eyes met his. ‘The way it was?’ He reached out a hand and lifted the diamond studded chain that hung at her neck, lightly touching with his thumb the pulse that beat in her slender throat. The sound of Oliver’s cartoon rose in the room and filled the silence between them. ‘I am part of your lives. Anything more than this wouldn’t work. We’ve been there once before. And I’d only disappoint you again. I know it. You know it.’
She let her gaze drop, and Leo took his hand away. Suddenly the doorbell rang.
‘That’s Simon,’ said Rachel.
As she got up to answer the door, Leo joined Oliver on the rug and paused the DVD. ‘Daddy has to go, I’m afraid.’ Oliver wormed his way onto Leo’s knee and put his arms round his father’s neck, still clutching his tube of Smarties. He had chocolate around his mouth.
‘Have you had a nice Christmas?’ asked Leo.
Oliver nodded. ‘Would you like one of my Smarties?’
‘Thanks. Can I have an orange one?’
Oliver inserted a finger into the tube and prised out an orange Smartie. He watched Leo put it in his mouth. ‘Have you had a nice Christmas too, Daddy?’
‘Yes, I have. Very.’
‘Did you like the calendar I made you?’
‘It’s my favourite present. I’m going to put it on my desk at work.’
Oliver nodded, gratified. ‘My fire station is brilliant.’
‘Good. I’m glad you like it. You know you’re coming to spend a whole week with me next weekend?’
‘Yeah, I know.’ His soft smile filled his face, made his eyes glow, and touched Leo to the core of his being. Oliver glanced round as Rachel came into the room with a young man.