Delivered: One Family

‘I said I could learn—and I only promised you wouldn’t get salmonella,’ she reminded him. ‘I never said you’d like it.’

His mouth twitched, and she cleared the plates away and sighed. ‘Dare I ask about a dessert?’ he said from behind her. She had the feeling he was getting ready to duck, in case she threw something at him. She stifled a smile.

‘Not had enough sugar yet?’ she teased, and he growled softly. She laughed and patted his cheek consolingly. ‘You’re all right. I bought a chocolate gateau. I didn’t think even I could ruin it, unwrapping it, and I promise you Missy hasn’t been near it!’

He chuckled, and she put the gateau and their plates down on the table with a pot of cream, a knife and two spoons, and between them they ate it all. At least he didn’t seem angry, Liv thought, and wondered yet again why a man as genuinely nice as Ben still wasn’t married. The girls in Suffolk must all need their heads checked, she decided.

‘Do you think a cup of normal coffee to finish is expecting too much, or should I resign myself to Turkish?’ Ben asked wryly, and she chuckled and flapped him with a teatowel.

‘Don’t push your luck. Where do you want it?’

‘In the drawing room? I hardly ever use it, but it’s a nice room. Or my study. That’s cosier, but it’ll remind me of all the work I should be doing.’

‘Or we could stay here. I love those chairs.’

His eyes crinkled. ‘Me, too. Let’s do that.’

He helped her clear up, and when the coffee was done they settled down in the chairs with a sigh and talked about nothing in particular for hours.

They’d always been able to talk, she mused as she fed Kit in her room just before she went to bed. In all the years she’d known him, they’d never been lost for words, or awkward, or distant.

Well, only once.

When she’d told him she was moving in with Oscar. Then he’d been distant, and she had the strangest feeling he’d been hurt, but she couldn’t imagine why. He had no interest in her—if he had had, he would have said so, and he always seemed to have a bevy of girlfriends hanging round him like bees round a honeypot.

It was the only time in ten years that she’d felt that he disapproved of her, and it had hurt her terribly. She’d treasured his friendship ever since she and her parents had moved in next to his family when she was fifteen and he was twenty-two. He’d been away at university and had come back, and was working in his father’s firm.

They’d moved in the same circles, mixed with the same people, and she’d always known she was too young to interest him, but he’d been endlessly kind to her and patiently escorted her to a host of parties. Then, when she’d grown older, he’d been just the same, good old Ben, her best friend and confidant. He’d taught her to drive, taken her out to celebrate when she’d passed her test, and again when she got her first major modelling job.

She’d dropped out of university to pursue her career, and he’d turned up one day on the set of a shoot and taken her out to lunch. He was there for her when she’d had her first disastrous affair, and he’d never criticised or interfered.

Till Oscar. Then, he’d just taken himself away for a while, and she’d missed him horribly.

She wondered if he even realised she was a woman and not just a person, and then she laughed at herself. How many of her friends had wailed that their partners didn’t realise they were people and not just women? And she was complaining that Ben was the other way round.

Well, not complaining. Of course not. She and Ben were very dear and close friends, nothing more, nothing less, and she knew that he would never see her as anything else. Not after all this time.

It was a curiously saddening thought.

CHAPTER THREE

THE following day she put the children in the double buggy, warmly wrapped up and covered with the hood, just in case it rained, and headed off to the centre of Woodbridge.

There was an up-market second-hand shop there that dealt in nearly-new designer clothes, and when she told them what she had to sell, the owner was ecstatic. ‘May I come round, to save you dragging everything down here? I can go through them with you and tell you what will sell.’

‘OK,’ she agreed, hugely relieved that she wasn’t going to have to struggle with the clothes and the children.

‘It’s coming up to the ball season, as well—have you got any evening wear?’

‘Masses,’ Liv assured her drily. ‘Are there any skinny women in Woodbridge?’

‘Lots,’ she said with a laugh. ‘I hate them all. When would you like me to come? Day or evening?’

‘Day’s better,’ Liv said, thinking of Ben coming home from work and the chaos of supper and bath-time, and they arranged a time the following day. Then Liv strolled up the main street, window shopping, and thinking what a pleasant, pretty town it was. She went into the chemist and bought vitamins for the children, and then couldn’t resist the bread shop.

They had big hedgehog loaves in the window, and Missy screamed because they weren’t for sale and she couldn’t get one.

‘Never mind. We can make one,’ she promised rashly, and was wondering how on earth she could achieve it when she clashed wheels with another buggy.

‘Sorry,’ she said, smiling, and looked up to see the familiar face of Kate, an old college friend, staring at her in amazement.

‘Liv? Liv Kensington? What are you doing here?’

‘Shh,’ she said with a smile, conscious that her name, if not her face, would attract attention. Nobody would notice a woman with two children, but her name had once been as well known as Liz Hurley’s, and she didn’t want to be reminded—not when she was two stone overweight and her hair was on end! ‘I’m staying here for a while with a friend. What about you, Kate? You look wonderful! Tell me all about yourself.’

Kate laughed. ‘Nothing to tell. I’m married to Andy—you remember Andy, he was around at college—and I’ve got three children—these are the youngest—and I live in Woodbridge. Where are you staying?’

She told Kate the address, and her jaw dropped. ‘But that’s next door but one! We’re neighbours! How amazing. You must come round—what are you doing now?’

Liv shrugged. ‘Nothing. I have to get back because Kit’s going to wake up soon, and he’ll scream all the way home.’

‘Why don’t you come round?’ Kate offered. ‘Have coffee with me—or lunch. Both. We can catch up. That would be so good.’

So they pushed their buggies back up the hill, and she went into Kate’s chaotic but friendly kitchen, and while Kate made coffee she fed Kit and watched the children playing together. Missy was thrilled to have new toys to look at, and there was a smidgen of hope that she’d forget the hedgehog bread!

‘So you’re staying with Ben, are you?’ Kate said, settling down at the table for a good gossip. ‘Do tell all! How come your hubby’s let you slip the leash and stay with a guy like that? He must need his head examined! Andy gets the hump if Ben so much as sets foot on the drive while he’s out—he says all that testosterone is bound to go to my head!’

She laughed good-naturedly, and Liv gave a polite chuckle.

Testosterone? Ben?

Was she missing something—or had that shiver of awareness when his lips had accidentally clashed with hers been more than just a fluke?

‘I don’t have a husband,’ she confessed, dragging her mind back to Kate’s question. ‘Oscar and I never got married.’

‘Oh, Lord, Oscar Harding—I remember reading about you in one of the glossies. But that was years ago!’

‘Four,’ she confessed with a wry smile. ‘I’m old news now.’

‘Four years. Heavens. I suppose it would be; I was at home with Jake. That was how I had time to read a magazine, I guess! Wow. I never thought I’d see you again. So where’s Oscar now?’

She shrugged. ‘In London. I’ve left him.’

‘With the babies and everything? Gosh, I expect he was gutted.’

Liv gave a hollow laugh. ‘No. Not gutted. Not Oscar.’

‘Oh, love, I’m sorry,’ Kate said sincerely. ‘So how will you cope?’