Chapter Eleven

Swimming was a distraction for Theo as he cut through the almost icy cold water of the pool. Since they'd got back from meeting the unexpected new branch of his family he'd struggled to clear his head. As someone who'd been brought up with a very small family, this was all so foreign to him; he had no idea what to do. He had tried to contact Daniel to share things, in the hope that he'd advise him, tell him what he should do, but the mobile phone reception in this damn town was dreadful. He had spotted the pool from the attic window of his bedroom, he didn't have a pair of swimming shorts, and he didn't think Nina would appreciate him swimming commando, so he stripped to his boxer shorts and hit the pool.

And it was starting to work. He was concentrating on the burn in his limbs rather than the confusion in his brain, and after ten lengths his breathing rate was increasing, his mind more focussed and he was blocking out the events of the last few days. Was it only two days earlier that he'd been in London and only concerned with his own world? The trials of his work and the bigger concern of his daughter were more taxing than anything he'd known...until now.

As he pushed length after length his body started to scream, whilst he could run a couple of miles or play football for ninety minutes, swimming was a whole new type of exercise and he wasn't used to it. Propping his upper arms on the edge of the pool he let his body float in the cool water and sighed, there was still no sign of Mansell coming home. He wondered how a man coped with finding out that he was not only a father to a child he had no idea about, but also a grandchild and two great grandchildren, a whole dynasty, a whole branch of the family that he knew nothing about. It was enough to make a much younger and fitter man ill, but Mansell, he wasn't strong, he wasn't fit...this could have a devastating effect on him.

He was about to haul himself out of the pool when the courtyard door opened and in walked Nina. He hadn't seen her since their silent drive home, she'd disappeared. Now she was there in the glorious Technicolor that he'd already come to associate with her, he shook that thought away, she was a nuisance, nothing more. Though stood facing him biting her lip nervously, dressed in what he presumed was just a swimsuit and baggy vest top, she looked anything but a nuisance, she looked vulnerable, young...

"Sorry, I was just..."

He held up a hand to silence her, "my fault, I needed a distraction. I'm intruding." She made to protest, but again he held a hand aloft, when she stopped he dragged himself out of the water, "I didn't realise that you organised this place, I'm grateful for you letting me stay, and for doing this for Mansell of course."

His change of heart surprised her, her mouth fell open slightly and for a moment she was lost for words, this was almost an apology for being a class A bastard, but she wasn't about to back down, "I didn't exactly put you straight. Look, this isn't my deal now, I'm leaving tomorrow. It's your job to be with Mansell at the D-day service, not me."

"He wants you here, he told me."

She shook her head, "no, he doesn't know what he wants anymore; this is all new, unexpected. I just need to leave you and him to your family business."

Theo ran his fingers through his hair, squeezing out the water, then smiled, "I'm sorry I was rude when I met you."

He watched her eyes widen suspiciously, "and that makes your behaviour all ok? Is that it?"

Sighing he reached for the towel and dried his face, "I was rash..."

"You overheard me talking to your granddad this morning, didn't you? That's what this is about, you thought I was getting a free holiday off him, and now you've found out that I actually brought him here...because he wanted to come, it was so important...you should have seen how upset he was. I knew he should be here, but he was nervous about travelling alone. And as a veteran of one of the greatest events in history, he deserved to be recognised, and that shouldn't cost him a penny."

She lifted her vest top and threw it on top of her towel, and as she paused to dive into the water added, "I've never ripped off a pensioner in my life and that insult isn't about to just disappear cos you've said sorry."

With that he watched the pocket rocket with a surprisingly curvaceous body in her black one piece swimsuit dive into the pool, leaving a trail of ripples in her wake.

And despite Mansell's protests, she did leave, true to her word.

Five days later, Nina pulled the Beetle in to the garage at the back of her house, it was amazing to think that she'd only been absent eight days, it seemed like so much more, but then so much had happened in that time frame. She'd been glad to go to her aunt's house, well she was her mother's cousin in reality, but she had called her aunt since she was a baby; they had a bed and breakfast in Cherbourg. Her grandmother's family were from a village just outside the town, but her grandmother had moved to London when her mother Beatrice had married her father.

She'd been her only child, and as a widow and someone highly suspicious of her father's intentions with a woman more than half his age, Anna had come across the channel. She'd never settled in the City, and when her daughter had died, she'd moved out to the coast, where she said she could see the hint of her beloved France in the distance, but also had Britain, her daughter's grave, and the regular visits of Nina, her granddaughter.

On her death a few years earlier, Nina had inherited the house, a three story town house just off the front. It was worth a fortune, and cost a fortune to run, but on days like today, coming home to it, she knew it was worth it. The house was empty, so after a shower and a quick change, she trotted down to the seafront and strolled along the beach.

None of the schools had broken up for the summer yet, so the beach was far quieter than it could have been, perfect for Nina. She waved to a few familiar faces, then stopped at a cafe for coffee, and a sneaky slice of cake.

She was there when her phone rang. She couldn't contain her grin when she saw Lilah's name on the screen.

"Girlfriend, where are you?"

Nina grinned, "sat at a certain little cafe that does THE best carrot cake."

"You're home!" Lilah squealed. "Perfect. We have SO much business. I'm in London sorting things out, but can you check your email? I've sent you a schedule."

Groaning Nina turned her face up to the sun, "ok. You home later?"

Lilah agreed with a grunt, "got to meet the last prospective customer in an hour, then I'll be home. Shall we go out for dinner?"

Nina groaned, "I'll cook us something, I need a night chilling out. I'm all travelled out."

"Your cousins?" She could imagine Lilah's waggling eyebrows at that, her cousins were almost hedonistic in their desire to live life to the full.

Nina chuckled, "you know how wild they are!"

Her great aunt had five grandchildren, each around her age, and they lived life for today. She had spent many a drunken evening partying with them, and they always viewed her arriving to be reason to party for days solidly, she'd need days to recover, that was without all the torment over Mansell and his family.

"Ok, I'll be home by seven."

"Spaghetti bolognaise and several bottles of Chianti?"

Lilah gasped, "was it THAT bad a week?"

Nina groaned, "it's a THREE bottle of wine story darling, I assure you!"

Three hours later they were sat opposite each other with huge bowls of steaming spaghetti. And Nina slowly filled Lilah in on the events of the last few days.

"He had a child?"

Nina paused from eating and nodded, "yep, Leon. Died when he was twenty one, but his grandson was brought up by Mansell's ex lover and had twins. Claudine was there, and spent time arguing with Theo...who is her cousin of sorts. The brother...Gabriel, he was there by chance apparently. He didn't get involved, buggered off whilst he had the chance. After that I don't know. I left Mansell and his grandson there to sort it out."

"Hence the wild days in Cherbourg with the cousins."

Nina nodded, "isn't it funny though, how those decisions made seventy years ago have such HUGE knock on effects decades later, affecting SO many people. I find it crazy."

Lilah reached for her glass, "that's why you have to live life to the fullest, and make every day count. Yet ALWAYS use a condom!"

Grimacing she looked at her friend, "why does that comment scare me?"

"Well you know we've got the Wootton wedding?" Nina scowled and gave a confirmatory nod. "Well, just before that, Amelia has asked us to go to a launch night, it's a new fashion being launched by Madonna of all people, but Amelia has lined up a big red carpet interview thing before it. It'll be huge." As Lilah saw her grimace again, she reached out and took her friend's hand, "you need to do this, you need to make as much of this as you can. I know you don't want to expand things too quickly, too rapidly, but hey, it'll mean you can pay off Amelia, be back to being your own boss."

Nina twirled another fork full of spaghetti and ate it silently. When she'd finished chewing she stared at her friend, "you know I hate PR shit right? That's why I've let you and Amelia, an actress and a model, may I remind you, do all of it."

"Which is fare enough, but the interviewer wants to know technical stuff, only you can answer the questions. Plus it's about time you started getting some accolade for all your hard work. You hide your light under a bushel, to quote my old gran."

Nina laughed, "I hate you, I hate Amelia, can't you just pull my finger nails out instead?"

Lilah giggled then shook her head, "did I tell you that Amelia's lined up clothes for us to wear?"

Nina dropped her head to the table and moaned, "can we pretend this isn't happening?"

Theo looked at Melody smiling up at him and his heart broke. He'd missed her more than anything in the five days he'd been away. He was still waiting for Sadie to screw up, still wanted his daughter in the safety of his home permanently. She skipped across the wooden floored lounge and stood in front of him.

"I LOVE my present Daddy!"

The teddy he'd bought her on the ferry home from Normandy was bigger than her, and it cost a fortune, but she was more than worth it, in fact the gift was an empty gesture compared to him abandoning her as he had.

"I'm glad! What did you do since I last saw you?"

She stood in front of him her finger on her bottom lip in pondering thought, "Auntie Tara took me swimming, and we saw Frozen three times..."

"And Mummy?"

Melody shrugged, "she's been tired."

He grimaced, that wasn't the best news. "OK," he changed the subject, "we have four days. What do you want to do this afternoon?"

He saw her coy face and groaned, "Really?"

Nodding Melody took his hand, "let's make a den, and then watch Frozen. You can be Olaf!"

Despite the thought of two hours of the sickliest sweet Disney, being with his daughter with no one interrupting made him smile, he could almost forget the trauma of the last few days.

A week had passed since coming back from Normandy and the meetings lined up by Lilah had been thick and fast, it now meant that Nina had three projects to work on, three vastly different ones, and there were another two couples who were due to contact Lilah if they chose the designs for their wedding.

She threw down her sketch pad and stood up, she hadn't been to Oakdale since she'd returned, and she wanted to see Mansell, she'd been worried about him. A lot.

The home was quiet, but then it was a Friday afternoon, and there was bingo in the local church hall too, that absorbed most of the residents. Mansell was sat on the first floor veranda looking out to sea, and his eyes didn't waiver when she sat on the bench next to him.

"I saw you on TV. Looked great with all your polished medals!"

He smiled, but still didn't look her way, "I met the Queen, and William and Kate...she told me I was charming!"

Nina leaned back against the bench, "you are!"

Again he laughed, "really?" Finally he looked up at her, "you sure?"

Nina placed a hand on his arm and smiled, "you are. Was it ok, after I left?"

He sighed, a long exhalation of air, "I feel so hurt, that I knew nothing. Me in London with a wife who knew that I had lost my heart to someone else and a son who hated me...and all the time, the woman I love was bringing up our child...it doesn't make sense. Does it?"

It was Nina's turn to sigh, "life is never easy, but my grandmother always said from every pain, from every hurt grows something good, though we don't often know about it."

"So she'd think the fact that Hélène brought up my family well was my sacrifice."

Nina shrugged, "my mother watched my mother, her only daughter kill herself with post natal depression, but she had me, and all my family shit afterwards...well it drove me closer to her. So she loved that. She saw that as the positive for losing her, I suppose. If my mother had lived, my father may never have let my grandmother be so involved with me...who knows?"

He turned to study her slowly, "so you grew up without a mother?"

She nodded, "an evil step mother, an uncaring father...I am like Cinderella, hey?"

He chuckled, "waiting for your Prince Charming!"

That caused her to scoff loudly, "yep. But unfortunately the man of my dreams preferred the temporary attention of said evil step mother."

"So ex boyfriend is your step father? That's messed up!"

She shook her head, "nah, my glamorous step mother enjoys the chase, she rarely wants more than the hunt. Once she ensnared the love of my life into bedroom antics that I walked in on, she tossed him to the kerb and started on my brother. Sick." No one knew this other than Lilah, but for some reason, knowing Mansell's deepest secrets, seeing him exposed, made her happier to open up to him.

His hand covered hers, "what a cow."

"Completely. And so unlike Hélène...who did what she thought was right...at the time."

They both sat there in silence, thinking about that for a moment.

"I was horrible to Hélène. For most of the day you left, and the next one."

Nina nodded, "she won't blame you for that, and I saw that she was sat in my seat at the Memorial thing. She was on TV too."

"That's what she said, that I was entitled to feel that way. But I was wrong. Seventy years ago...things were different. I hate what we lost. But you didn't have babies unmarried, she'd have been ostracised if she hadn't married her husband, and once she'd done that, I had no place in the family."

She placed a hand on his arm, "who knows if it would have worked for you both then, you may have spent a few years together then ruined it all on a whim. You were brief acquaintances."

He nodded, "but my son...my grandchild, and then the twins...I missed out on all that. And what I had instead," he looked at her, "I have an evil useless son, and whilst I can't deny Daniel is great, despite his father, Theo...He's screwed up because he didn't meet any of until he was in his teens, all his life wanting to meet a father...who turns out to be my son, someone who doesn't give a shit."

That piqued her interest, "so you didn't know Theo when he was growing up?"

He shook his head, "he had a loving mother, a nice childhood, but I suppose boys always want to know who their Dad is."

Things made so much more sense knowing that, because she couldn't understand how or why he didn't immediate help him grandfather, and she'd chastised him for that, this made it so different, it made such a difference to the way he'd acted.

She digested that before she responded, "must have been strange for him."

Mansell nodded, "oh yes, he didn't grow up with as much as a cousin, it's all been so new to him. Just as he's started to feel like part of this family, finally, and he finds out that there are more people to threaten his place the poor man."

"Claudine and Gabriel?"

She didn't miss the hardness in his stare at the name of the twins, "well Claudine yes, haven't met the other reprobate, but by all accounts he caused nothing but hassle to Hélène. Not something that a pensioner needs."

Gabriel had told her he was the black sheep, it seemed he wasn't lying. Nina smiled to herself remembering the handsome, angry man she'd met on the doorstep of that cottage in France. "I hope you'll at least give him a chance."

He laughed at that, "like you have Theo?"

"Theo deliberately chose to be horrible to me. He prejudged me the way you are your other grandson."

"Gabriel is my GREAT grandson, and let's not be foolish here; he has made Hélène's life hell. He is trouble apparently."

She gave a shrug, "he seemed ok to me."

That made his head snap up in surprise, "how do you know? You met him?"

Nodding she turned to meet his stare, "I met him, outside Hélène's house...he didn't want to come in. But he knew you were there. He'd been told about you."

Mansell ran a hand over his face and sighed, "I didn't know that..."

Nina didn't want to upset him, so she tried to change the direction of the conversation, "so are you going to see Hélène again?"

He nodded, "it's like we've never been apart...once I got past my anger."

She smiled, "you deserve happiness Mansell, and I have a feeling this is the first time, really."