She bobbed down to the little boy’s level. ‘Your mummy is actually my sister.’
His eyes widened. And then his face fell. ‘But I’ve never seen you. Is that because you live here? It’s a long way on the train.’
‘Yes, it is a long way.’ It was all she had for now.
‘Giles, how about we get going, leave this lady… Nadia in peace.’ Whether Archie appreciated her divulging her identity or not, she couldn’t tell.
‘I haven’t stretched my legs,’ Giles pointed out. ‘You said when we got out of the car that I could.’
‘We’ll go to the beach tomorrow.’
Nadia had been so busy feeling the past twenty years catching up on her that she hadn’t spotted the exhaustion on Archie’s face until now.
‘Can I practise my forward rolls?’ Giles wasn’t asking his dad this time; he was asking Nadia. ‘Is that allowed here?’
‘I’m sure that would be fine, just away from the entrance to the marquee.’
‘Okay.’ He almost took off but paused. ‘Will there be doggy do-dos?’
Archie interrupted. ‘This seems a pretty high-class establishment and I haven’t seen any dogs around.’
Giles started practising. One roll after another, on he went.
‘I don’t know where he gets his energy,’ said Archie. ‘The last few days I’ve been dragging him around so much, we’ve been in the car a lot, he’s done well not to moan more than he has.’
‘How old is he?’
‘He’s four.’
Nadia couldn’t watch the child any more, even though her gaze was drawn to him: to his little smile, the way his eyes had shone with enthusiasm at the thought of being allowed to be out here at night and roll across a lawn that wasn’t his.
‘Archie, I really have to go. I hope you find Monica, I really do.’
His calm demeanour took leave. ‘Nadia, this isn’t just Monica taking a holiday; this is Monica travelling to another country, coming here and not letting me know exactly where she is, Monica not checking in every day with her husband and her son who she adores. This is Monica putting herself and our baby at risk. Monica who might well have left our baby at your airbase. I mean, it’s possible, isn’t it?’
She couldn’t deny it. It sounded ridiculous, and yet…
But then she thought about Monica. Needy and demanding Monica with the desire to be the centre of attention; it had always been her way. And Nadia had never been able to forget it either – Monica struggled at school, Monica got away with rudeness and wild behaviour, Monica did what she wanted and she was rarely pulled into line. All her actions, her decisions, they took centre stage and nobody else really got a look in, least of all Nadia. Monica’s selfishness had taken time from Nadia and their mother; it had cost her Archie. Her best friend.
‘Monica is a grown woman,’ she told Archie firmly. She couldn’t let this destroy everything she’d built up here: her stability, her sense of belonging, something that was hers and hers alone. ‘This seems like another drama surrounding my sister, so what’s new?’ She sounded so harsh, so unlike herself. She felt like a teenager all over again, but for so many years, she hadn’t had to deal with Monica and she wished she didn’t have to now either. ‘Call the police, Archie. Let them deal with it.’
‘You don’t even care?’ He hurled the question at her when she turned her back on him.
She stopped in her tracks and spun round to face him. ‘How can you even throw that at me? I always cared, I cared for years, and it didn’t get me much in return.’
Desperation laced a voice that shook. ‘She’s not in a good place, emotionally.’
‘She never was!’ Luckily, Giles was still giggling so didn’t respond to the raising of her voice. He’d moved on from forward rolls to doing what looked like an attempt at the long jump even though he had no sandpit.
‘This is bad, Nadia. I wouldn’t have shown up otherwise. Don’t you think we both know that you want nothing to do with us? It almost broke Monica when you left. Your parents were both gone and you left without looking back.’
‘Brokeher? Over the years, she almost brokeme, Archie. And so did you.’
‘I know things happened between us all, things we might like to go back and change if we had the power to do that. But believe me, I wouldn’t be here if this was a silly drama. She’s changed, a lot. She’s not that same person. And I really am worried about her. About my baby.’
She shivered, rubbed the tops of her arms and rejected his offer of his jacket. She didn’t want anything from him, not any more.
‘Did you know she came to England to look for you once before?’ he asked.
