Home Is Where The Heart Is (Kendric House #2)

Chapter One

Sunday, November 3, 4pm, Kingston

I’m never coming home for Christmas. Ever. I’ll make sure I’m busy every single holiday from now till I’m seventy.

“You can’t be working on Christmas day,” my mum calls from the open front door as I hurry to get into my car. “Theatres are closed.”

“We’ll be too far to travel for one day.” The lie comes easily. And in a minute, so will the tears. Better be out of sight before that happens.

I turn on the engine with one hand and clip on my seat belt with the other. Hopefully, I’ll be on the M3 before she discovers that I’ve accidentally on purpose forgotten my birthday presents on the bed.

“Bye, Mum.” I wave while putting the car into gear.

“Leonie!” Mum tries to delay me. “What about New Year’s? Surely you’ll be home for that?” she insists.

Home? What a joke.

Waving quickly, I drive away just as the first tears overflow and drip down my face. My tears have always been quick. I hate them; they make me appear fragile. Which I’m not. What I am – what I want to be – is a survivor. A fighter. A crusader. It’s just a pity I look like a sweet damsel in distress, and circumstances keep forcing me into places where I need rescuing.

Ding!

My phone on the passenger seat besides me has a new message. I bet it’s Mum.

A quick glance proves me right. But also twists the knife because it’s just one word.

MUM: Leo

Mum only ever uses this nickname as a last resort. Normally she insists on Leonie, a name she originally hated but later discovered it made her baby sound interesting.

Only Dad ever called me Leo.

Dad.

My breath escapes on a shaky whimper

Oh Dad.

His wonderful, kind face swims into my imagination. His eyes crinkling with humour. His voice full of love. Leo .

How could my mother go from a man like him to a brash pompous git like Howard?

Then again, Howard isn’t her only unexplained attraction. Throughout her marriage, all the men she cheated with, not one of them held a candle to Dad. He put up with it. For my sake. More than put up with it, he tried to excuse her. “You can have love in your heart for more than one person,” he said whenever I complained about her. “What really matters, Leo, is our family, our home.”

The car in the right-hand lane swerves in front of me so suddenly I have to slam on the brakes hard enough to make the seatbelt tighten painfully on my shoulder.

“Wanker!” another driver shouts out of the window at the offending car.

Sunday afternoon traffic is often like this. You’d think people driving back from an outing or a weekend away would be in a more cheerful mood.

Then again, look at me. Who knew a family lunch could be so crushing. Until last year, Sunday lunch had been fun, full of good food and laughter. It was from Dad I inherited my love of cooking. Mum was always being taken out to restaurants. He cooked at home so there’d be a hot meal waiting for me. We sat together, talked and laughed. Even after I moved out, whenever I visited, he cooked and made sure we had a wonderful time.

It’s why I went home every weekend. Except that final year.

When Dad hid the truth from me.

I’d been touring with Snow White , eleven months going round every seaside town in the UK. By the second month, I was getting bored of playing this incredibly gullible girl whose only talent was for getting herself nearly killed.

“Why don’t you play around with it a bit?” Dad suggested on one of our weekly calls. “Pantomime is supposed to be fun.”

“What, refuse to eat the poison apple?”

“Think about the parents sitting with their kids. They too deserve entertainment. Why not give them a little nod and wink? Something like” – and he put on a surprised, doubting voice – “you want me to eat this ? Because every night in this season, it’s made me very ill. Are you sure I can trust you?” He mimicked. “Then go back into the script. Make it fun for you and the adults in the audience.”

He was right. I started to enjoy the tour and even managed a bit more acting than just being the girl that needs rescuing. He laughed with me every time I phoned to tell him of a new joke I’d slipped into the play. And not once did he let on about the cancer spreading inside him.

Afterwards, Mum said she didn’t know either. That he hid it from her, too.

Except that…Well, how could she have missed it? The doctor told me that Dad had been in so much pain, he couldn’t sleep without strong medication. Mum would have known all about it if she’d slept in the same bed, in the same room. In the same house.

Six months later, she and Howard were married. Trying to talk her out of it was like talking the rain out of falling. Howard and I have been in love for a year. I’ve waited long enough.

Horrible Howard, as me and my friend Emma call him in private, is just the kind of man Mum likes, handsome in a rich, car-salesman kind of way, good teeth, or at least good dentistry, and a year-round tan.

For her sake, I try to be nice to him. Believe me, it takes a lot of acting skill to hide my revulsion every time he slings an arm round my shoulders and gives me what he calls ‘fatherly advice’. I smile through clenched teeth and don’t tell him to eff off because he’s not my father.

It usually works.

Until this afternoon.

Just after lunch, the table still cluttered with the remains of roast pork, he moved to sit beside me and put a heavy arm over my shoulders.

“Playing the genie in Aladdin . Why the hell are you playing ugly characters in small provincial theatres?” he asked. “Movies. that’s where you have to be, where the money is. You know your trouble, girl? You don’t know how to play your ace cards right.” And his eyes crept down my neckline to steal a peek at what my ‘ace cards’ apparently were. “What’s with the baggy clothes? Look at your mum, learn from her. You’re a beautiful girl, you could be really successful.”

Did Mum tell him to take his arm off me? No, she pulled out the long knife and stabbed me.

I really, really should not think about this anymore.

Watch the road, the street lights have just come on and traffic stretches ahead of me. Every traffic light seems to punctuate the arguments in my mind. Even when I’ve arrived, parked in front of our block of flats, I can’t get out. I sit here, engine off, the car getting colder and relive the scene with mum and Howard.

“It’s Stephen’s fault.” Mum threw blame at my dad as if he never mattered to her at all. This ridiculous love of theatre. And failure.”

Failure?

Dad.

I yanked myself from under Horrible Howard’s arm. “My father was a talented man. Mum never went to see any of his productions. But I did. And I saw how good he really was, how his actors loved him and looked up to him. He would have been a great director if he didn’t have to work twelve-hour days as a driving instructor to support his family.” I couldn’t help giving Howard a pointed look. “He was a good father.”

“No, he wasn’t.” At last Howard showed his temper.

“What would you know about it?”

“Girl,” he interrupted me. “Stephen wasn’t your father.” Then, turning to my mother, said, “Tell her.”

And it all came out.