Bring Me Back (B.A. Paris)(74)

‘How old is your sister?’ Esther interrupts.

‘Seventeen.’ I pause a moment, unwilling to face reality. ‘Nearly eighteen.’

Esther raises her eyebrows. ‘She’s something of an attention seeker, then.’

‘No, she’s not, it’s just that…’

‘Well, she must be. I mean, people don’t usually get up and dance in a park, do they?’ She looks around the table triumphantly and when everyone avoids her eye I can’t help feeling sorry for her.

‘Millie has Down’s syndrome.’ Jack’s voice breaks the awkward silence that has descended on the table. ‘It means she’s often wonderfully spontaneous.’

Confusion floods Esther’s face and I feel annoyed that the people who told her everything else about me didn’t mention Millie.

‘Anyway, before I could decide what to do,’ I say, coming to her rescue, ‘this perfect gentleman got up from his seat, went over to where Millie was dancing, bowed and held out his hand to her. Well, Millie was delighted and, as they began to waltz, everybody started applauding and then other couples got up from their seats and started to dance too. It was a very, very special moment.And, of course, I fell immediately in love with Jack for having made it happen.’

‘What Grace didn’t know at the time was that I had seen her and Millie in the park the week before and had immediately fallen in love with her. She was so attentive to Millie, so utterly selfless. I had never seen that sort of devotion in anybody before and I was determined to get to know her.’

‘And what Jack didn’t know at the time,’ I say in turn, ‘was that I had noticed him the week before but never thought he would be interested in someone like me.’

It amuses me when everybody nods their head in agreement. Even though I am attractive, Jack’s film-star good looks mean that people think I’m lucky he wanted to marry me. But that isn’t what I meant.

‘Grace doesn’t have any other brothers and sisters so she thought the fact that Millie will one day be her sole responsibility would discourage me,’ Jack explains.

‘As it had others,’ I point out.

Jack shakes his head. ‘On the contrary, it was the knowledge that Grace would do anything for Millie that made me realise she was the woman I’d been looking for all my life. In my line of work, it’s easy to become demoralised with the human race.’

‘I saw from the paper yesterday that congratulations are in order again,’ Rufus says, raising his glass in Jack’s direction.

‘Yes, well done.’ Adam, who is a lawyer in the same firm as Jack, joins in. ‘Another conviction under your belt.’

‘It was a fairly cut-and-dried case,’ Jack says modestly. ‘Although proving that my client hadn’t inflicted the wounds herself, given that she had a penchant for self-harm, made it a little more difficult.’

‘But, generally speaking, aren’t cases of abuse usually easy to prove?’ Rufus asks, while Diane tells Esther, in case she doesn’t already know, that Jack champions the underdog – more specifically, battered wives. ‘I don’t want to detract from the wonderful work you do, but there is often physical evidence, or witnesses, are there not?’

‘Jack’s forte is getting the victims to trust him enough to tell him what has been going on,’ Diane, who I suspect of being a little in love with Jack, explains.‘Many women don’t have anybody to turn to and are scared they won’t be believed.’

‘He also makes sure that the perpetrators go down for a very long time,’ adds Adam.

‘I have nothing but contempt for men who are found to be violent towards their wives,’ Jack says firmly.‘They deserve everything they get.’

‘I’ll drink to that.’ Rufus raises his glass again.

‘He’s never lost a case yet, have you, Jack?’ says Diane.

‘No, and I don’t intend to.’

‘An unbroken track record – that’s quite something,’ muses Rufus, impressed.

Esther looks over at me. ‘Your sister – Millie – is quite a bit younger than you,’ she remarks, bringing the conversation back to where we left off.

‘Yes, there are seventeen years between us. Millie didn’t come along until my mother was forty-six. It didn’t occur to her she was pregnant at first so it was a bit of a shock to find she was going to be a mother again.’

‘Does Millie live with your parents?’

‘No, she boards at a wonderful school in North London. But she’ll be eighteen in April, so she’ll have to leave it this summer, which is a shame because she loves it there.’

‘So where will she go? To your parents’?’

‘No.’ I pause for a moment, because I know that what I am about to say will shock her. ‘They live in New Zealand.’

Esther does a double take.‘New Zealand?’

‘Yes. They retired there last year, just after our wedding.’

‘I see,’ she says. But I know she doesn’t.

‘Millie will be moving in with us,’ Jack explains. He smiles over at me. ‘I knew it would be a condition to Grace accepting to marry me and it was one that I was more than happy to comply with.’

‘That’s very generous of you,’ Esther says.