True Colours Read Online Free PDF Page A

fête.’
    I walked out on to the landing to see him standing at the foot of the curving staircase, his dark hair tousled and his brown eyes eager as they looked up at me. He’d been to the village fête with two of his friends and it was clear that they’d had an enjoyable afternoon.
    ‘Mum, can Paul and David stay to tea?’
    ‘Of course.’ I ran downstairs and hugged him, feeling him stiffen slightly in my arms. Charles had instilled into him that at eight he was far too old for hugs from his mother, too old for bedtime stories and certainly far too old for teddy, who had been put out with the stuff for the ‘bring and buy’ sale at the fête.
    I let him go and looked around. ‘So – what did you win – were is it?’
    The cheeky grin that I loved so much lit up his face and he picked up a plastic supermarket carrier bag from the floor. Opening it he held it out for me to look inside.
    ‘Tadaah!’
    I could hardly believe my eyes. ‘It’s a teddy –
your
teddy.’
    ‘I know. They’d put him on the tombola stall. I bought a ticket and I won him. Dad’s got to let me keep him now, hasn’t he?’
    I wasn’t so sure. ‘Well – maybe we’d better keep him out of sight for the time being,’ I suggested. ‘Just in case. Where are Paul and David?’
    ‘Waiting outside. I said I’d ask you first.’
    ‘Well you’d better go and get them,’ I laughed. ‘Is fish fingers and chips OK?’
    ‘Great!’ he called over his shoulder on his way out.
    As I peeled potatoes I thought about Charles, away at a conference. He was away an awful lot of weekends for one reason or another. The business, Grayson Electronics, was doing very well and it was the price one had to pay for success, or so he was always telling me.
    Ever since we moved into Crayshore Manor he’d been urging me to engage a housekeeper or at least someone to cook and do the housework but so far I had held out against it. He refused point blank to allow me to go back to work for him, which is what I would have preferred. What else would I do with my time? With Charles working long hours and very often weekends and Harry off to boarding school soon life was going to be pretty empty and aimless.
    There had been endless arguments about Harry going away to school. In my opinion he was too young.
    ‘Why can’t he go at eleven as he would if he stayed at home?’
    Charles had laughed. ‘That’s Irish!’
    ‘You know what I mean,’ I argued. ‘He’d move on to secondary school at eleven, so why can’t he wait till then to go to your precious old school?’
    His face set in the determined lines I’d come to know all too well. ‘He’s an only child and he’s getting hopelessly spoiled.’
    ‘No he’s not!’
    ‘Admit it, Fran, you baby him. Do you want him to grow up into an effeminate ninny?’
    ‘Plenty of boys go to the local grammar school without growing up into ninnies.’
    He threw down the newspaper he’d been reading. ‘Maybe not, but they don’t have you as a mother, do they?’
    His words hurt. When Harry was born there had been complications and I was told that it was doubtful that I’d be able to conceive again so Harry was especially precious because of that. They must have known at the hospital that Harry wasn’t my first child, but no one mentioned the fact, something for which I was infinitely grateful. When Mum came to see me and her new grandson she asked me if anyone had enquired about my previous pregnancy. I was surprised. After it was over it had never been mentioned again – till now. I told her nothing had been said and she was clearly relieved. Obviously she wouldn’t have wanted Charles to know about my guilty secret and she wasn’t alone in that.
    I was sixteen and in my GCSE year when it happened. Pete and I had known each other since primary school. It was only when we reached puberty that we started seeing one another as boyfriend and girlfriend. I adored him. He was such fun. His parents, unlike mine,