The Perfect Sinner

Maddy turned to give Jenny a rueful, watery smile before they both turned back towards the stage where Leo was giving his first public performance in the play school nativity play as one of the ‘shepherds.’

The sturdy house-tame lamb, born late in the year and abandoned by her mother to be hand-reared in the kitchen of a local farm, decided that it was time she had some attention and playfully butted Leo.

Manfully he grabbed hold of her collar, commanding, with the same intonation he had heard his aunt Olivia using to the pretty golden retriever puppy that was the latest addition to her household, ‘Sit …’

Even Ben, seated at the other side of Jenny, had given an appreciative bark of laughter, and as Jenny told Maddy mirthfully later when the audience had stopped laughing, Leo had most definitely stolen the show.

Max, on Maddy’s other side, gave his son a dispassionate, contemptuous look. The child irritated him. Surely he realized that sheep did not ‘sit.’

Leo was beginning to annoy Max. The boy had actually dared to stand in the doorway to Max and Maddy’s bedroom the last time Max had come home, glaring belligerently at him and refusing to allow Max to enter.

‘Make him move,’ he had told Maddy softly, without breaking eye contact with Leo, ‘because if you don’t …’

When the parents went backstage to collect their offspring, it was Jon whom Leo ran excitedly to once the play was over, flinging himself into his grandfather’s arms and then burrowing his face against Jon’s neck as Jon swung him up off the floor.

There was something about one’s grandchildren that made them so infinitely special and precious, Jon acknowledged as he kissed the little boy and ruffled his hair.

Jon had no way of explaining to himself why it was so easy for him to love Leo, when it had been so hard for him to love Max. Leo was Max’s son; you couldn’t look at him without knowing that. Physically he looked exactly as Max had looked at the same age, but temperamentally, emotionally …

It made Jon’s heart ache with compassion for Leo and anger against Max, to see the way Max treated his son. It was no wonder that Leo now refused to go near him. Maddy was very loyal and never criticized Max, but Jon had seen the pain in her eyes as she watched Max ignoring Leo, turning his back on him and deliberately showing the child how little he cared about him.

Initially, when Leo had been born, Jon had forced himself to stand back, to remind himself that he was Leo’s grandfather and not his father, but then he had watched Joss playing with him, seen the bond growing between uncle and child, seen the way Max was threatening to damage his son emotionally by rejecting him, and he had made himself a vow that for as long as Leo needed him in his life, he was going to be there for him.

Jon knew already, without knowing how he knew, that it would be Leo who one day would take his place in the family business, that Leo, like him, would be a Crighton who wanted to stay close to the place that had bred him, that Leo would be his kind of Crighton, just as Jack had also been showing signs of wanting to come into the family firm.

Jack … Jon started to frown slightly as he thought about his nephew. He had believed that Jack was happy with them, that he had accepted his father’s disappearance, but these last few months … Jack’s headmaster had warned them that if Jack’s work did not improve, there was no way he was going to get the A level grades he needed to go on to university. Jon had discussed the subject with Jack, but far from being concerned, Jack had merely told him truculently that he didn’t care—that he’d changed his mind, that he didn’t want to be a solicitor after all.

‘Then what do you want to be?’ Jon had asked him exasperatedly. It would be some years down the line before Jack could possibly join the family practice so could not relieve the pressure both he and Olivia were experiencing currently with so many new cases coming into the Haslewich office. Olivia had joined Jon a few years before and now they were considering taking on a third partner because they were both having to work a lot of extra hours. But that particular route, bringing in someone from outside the family, hadn’t appealed to either of them. And as if work wasn’t enough of a worry, Jon and Jenny were both concerned about Maddy and how she and the two children were being affected by the fact that Max spent so little time with them.

‘She’s such a lovely girl. She deserves so much better,’ Jenny had protested the last time they had discussed their son’s marriage. ‘I feel so helpless to do anything, though. Every time I try to raise the subject, she fobs me off. She’s happy here in Haslewich, she says she likes looking after Gramps. She loves Queensmead, and there’s no doubt that she’s turned it into a proper home, but she’s living the kind of life that’s more suited to some Victorian great-aunt than a young woman, and I’m afraid … It’s so unfair, Jon, she’s got such a lot to give. I know it’s a dreadful thing to say, but I really wish that she could meet someone else, someone who would value her and love her….’

That was as close as either of them had come to acknowledging that Max did not love his wife, but then, why discuss something that was so painfully obvious to everyone who witnessed it.

If Maddy did ever decide to leave Max and make a new life for herself somewhere else, he would lose the special closeness he had with Leo, Jon acknowledged, and he would hate that.

‘I love you, Jon,’ Leo whispered tremulously to him now, as though he had picked up on his grandfather’s thoughts.

Jon hugged him. Just very occasionally, when he was feeling especially emotional, Leo referred to him as ‘Jon.’ The rest of the time he called him Grampy.

On the other side of the room, where he had been deliberately flirting with the nursery class’s pretty young teacher, Max suddenly frowned as he watched the interplay between his son and his father.

What was Jon doing holding Leo like that, as though he was his child, and Leo, what was Leo doing looking at Jon as though … Ignoring the pretty teacher’s mock shy response to his sexual innuendo, Max strode across the room, firmly taking hold of Leo and swinging him down to the floor as he commanded curtly, ‘Leo, stop acting like a baby.’

The combination of being wrenched away from Jon and the frightening presence of his father caused Leo to tense and scream protestingly in Max’s hold.

‘Go away, I don’t like you,’ he told Max loudly, causing one or two nearby parents to stare.

Max looked coldly at his son. No one was allowed to tell Max that they didn’t like him.

‘It’s time Leo went home,’ Max instructed Maddy coldly over his shoulder. ‘He’s behaving badly.’

Maddy shook her head urgently at Leo. There was to be a celebration tea for the children served in the hall just as soon as she and the other hard-working helpers had got everything ready, and Maddy knew how much Leo had been looking forward to this treat. He had talked of it for days, and only yesterday he and Maddy had made special little cakes for the party while he practised the three short sentences he had to say in the play.

Maddy’s heart ached for him as she saw the expression in his eyes as he watched his father.

Another mother, another woman, would no doubt have coaxed and protested ‘Max … no … you know how much he’s been looking forward to the party,’ but Maddy knew that anything she might try to say or do to alleviate the situation would only make things worse. She could see from Max’s expression that there was no way he was going to back down, and she knew, too, that there was something in Max that would give him pleasure in denying his child his enjoyment. She had no idea what it was that had warped Max’s character so badly and made him the man he was, nor, she suspected, did anyone else. He could not have had better or more loving parents … but Jenny had intimated to her that Max had always been a difficult child … some children were.