Breaking the Chain by Maggie Makepeace

Author:Maggie Makepeace [Makepeace, Maggie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 1995-12-18T20:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Fay had never felt so glad to get away. Conrad was impossible these days and it was having a disastrous effect on Jack. She had hoped that his stammering over Christmas was just a copycat thing, but he was still doing it. Perhaps it ran in families. Conrad strenuously denied this, saying it was just an affectation and the sooner the child snapped out of it, the better. Fay knew that this was nonsense.

It was for Jack’s sake that she had decided to go to Cornwall; to see if he would be happier there with his doting grandparents. Her business would have to do without her for a while. Mid-January was a quiet time anyway. They would manage. Staying with Duncan and Phoebe had seemed a bonus, an opportunity to get to know Phoebe a little. Conrad had argued about this too.

‘You’re worried about the boy stammering, yet you’re taking him to visit Duncan!’ he’d said. ‘You might as well take a first-time gambler to Las Vegas! It makes no sense at all.’

‘It’s only for a couple of days,’ Fay said. ‘It won’t make any difference.’

‘You think not? It’s not something I’d risk.’

‘He’s your brother, Con!’

‘So what? That doesn’t make me want my son to take after him. Jack’s at an impressionable age, Fay. Now is not the time.’ Yes, Fay thought, he is impressionable and that’s the trouble. He already knows he can’t live up to his father’s expectations, just like Duncan couldn’t with Peter. Now’s the time to get him away from Conrad, before he gets completely demoralized as well.

It was not an easy journey. Jack seemed to be incubating a bug and he was grumpy and argumentative. The weather, which had been just grey and cold in London, got gradually foggier as they drove westwards. Fay was glad finally to get off the M5, with only a twenty-minute drive to go, along country roads to Duncan’s cottage.

Phoebe must have heard them coming, because she was waiting at the front door with her ready smile. She looked fatter, Fay thought, and it was time she had her hair cut properly, but her welcome was warm and genuine. Her kitchen was humid with the sharp citrus smell of marmalade, and ten newly capped jars of it were cooling on a pad of newspaper on the elm table.

‘Don’t touch!’ Phoebe warned Jack. ‘They’re hot!’

‘Ow!’ Jack said, flapping his hand ostentatiously.

‘You won’t be told, will you?’ Fay said, laughing.

‘Where’s D.D. Duncan?’ Jack asked, scowling.

‘Outside,’ Phoebe said pointing, raising her eyebrows at Fay, ‘in his shed in the garden.’ Jack made for the back door. ‘Yes, you go and find him. Good idea.’ After he had gone out, she said, ‘I assumed his stammer was only temporary.’

‘So did we,’ Fay said, sitting down by the kitchen table with a sigh, ‘but it seems not.’

That weekend Phoebe thought that Fay appeared very tired. She had been looking forward to talking to her but discovered that conversation was all but impossible with a four-year-old child around.

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