Chapter Two
‘Daddy met a mummy, Daddy met a mummy!’ sang Ellie as she raced through the big front door, left ajar for her, and through to the sleek kitchen where Chase was doing something clever with vegetables as Angelina poured them both a drink.
‘Never know what’s going to wash up onshore here, but even in my book, that’s pretty quick work!
Here, I’m guessing you may want one of these.
’ Angelina smiled, and as an automatic reaction to having an attractive man in the vicinity flipped her perfectly groomed blonde hair over her shoulder and twinkled as she passed a glass to Alex who, a couple of beats behind his daughter, had entered the kitchen looking a bit frazzled.
‘Tell them, Daddy, tell them!’
‘Hmm, that’s not all Angelina and I have to discuss, Ellie, if you remember?’
Ellie looked blank and then sidled up to Angelina, trying to worm the glass out of her grown-up friend’s hands. ‘Can I have some? Is it gin? I like that, don’t I?’
‘No, not in front of Daddy!’
‘Are you joking? You’d better not have been giving her alcohol!’
‘Relax, it was just a little taste on my finger. We do grown-up-girl things, don’t we, Ellie, when we’re together.
It’s not all drink-based. I was going to teach her how to shave her legs later – it’s never too early to perfect these skills.
And she’s very bright, she much prefers Hendrick’s to Gordon’s and has quite grown-up taste in television, you know? ’
Angelina took an appraising glance at Ellie, winked at her and turned back to Alex.
‘I expect there’s nothing this girl couldn’t do.
I had a phone call from my agent this morning about a new circus-based reality show, look at her…
’ Angelina pinched Ellie’s cheek in an affectionate, not a hurty, way, ‘…she’d look great coming out of a cannon.
Neat little braids flying and sequinny spangled leotards. ’
‘You and I need to talk.’
‘I always find talking is desperately overrated.’
‘Stop winding him up, Ange, he’s been known to take men out with a Vulcan death grip in times of high stress, and I think this might turn into one of these times if you don’t stop!
’ Chase grinned good-naturedly at his girlfriend.
They had been together a few months now and Chase had confided to Alex that he was never sure when she was teasing or whether she was as extreme as her words implied.
He chose to believe it was the former – otherwise there was a chance he was dating a narcissistic, delusional psychopath – a chance that her brother Matt had assured him, and anyone else who would listen, was a strong possibility.
‘What’s a death grip, Daddy, huh? Teach me, teach me!’
‘A death grip is something that happens to little girls who don’t put away their beach stuff the minute they get home.’
‘Well, then, why didn’t I get one yesterday? I want one!’ Her voice took on a whiny tone.
‘Hey, hey, you don’t really. Daddy is just teasing.
Here, have this and then you can go for a bath.
’ Chase slid a cheese-and-tomato omelette he appeared to have just whisked up whilst they had been talking onto her plate, and then fetched a bowl of chop-chop salad and placed it to the side.
‘And I know how much you like this. I even put pomegranate in, just how you like. Can you see it?’
Ellie grinned up at him and wrinkled her nose.
She loved it here. It was the most settled she had been since the adoption, and they had only been here a few days.
Alex was discovering that parenting was a darn sight easier with your friends involved.
There was a Nigerian proverb that said it took a village to raise a child, and if this was the difference two friends (well, one friend and his rather alarming new girlfriend) made then he could see that with a whole village it would be a breeze.
He knew also that he was going to have to make a decision soon, find somewhere to settle.
The nomadic nature of his professional life might have been what brought him into Ellie’s life but he was fairly sure it was unsuited for keeping her there.
Her night terrors were lessening all the time and considerably so since they had arrived at Chase’s, thus he imagined a settled life and routine would be the quickest path to recovery.
Ellie didn’t look particularly traumatized now, although her face did wrinkle as she tasted the odd bit of celery snuck into her chop-chop salad, but it wasn’t stopping her from wolfing her supper down as if she hadn’t seen food for three weeks.
‘Can Angileeena give me my bath tonight? I’ll be extra good and won’t even make a mess or nothin’?’
‘That depends largely on whether Angileeena will be using gin or razorblades anywhere near the tub tonight?’
Angelina looked at him and grinned. He still hadn’t quite got her measure yet, and he was particularly good at reading people and situations. He had to be.
‘No, not tonight. I’ll be saving them for the next time Chase tries to take me fishing.’
‘Are you happy to give her a bath?’ Alex mouthed this over Ellie’s head.
Angelina didn’t look the mumsy type, in fact she looked about as opposite as one could get, but for some reason Ellie had taken to her and spent far too much of her day chanting ‘Angileeena says…’ which was usually followed up with something so heinous that he expected Dr Barnardo’s to pound through the door the second she stopped speaking.
They hadn’t yet, but it could still happen. Angelina nodded back.
‘She’ll have to hurry up with that food though. I reckon I only have about ten minutes of nice left in me today, and that’s drawing on tomorrow’s reserves.’
Ellie walloped the last bit of omelette into her mouth and jumped up, then quickly stuck her finger in the salad bowl and scooped out a bit more.
‘Come on then. Let’s go!’ She jumped around on the kitchen floor, hopping from foot to foot.
‘Angelina, is that top silk? It could get a bit splashy.’ Chase had been on bath duty the day before and Alex knew that ‘a bit splashy’ was characteristically understated.
‘Well, I’m hardly going to be wearing polyester, am I? God, you ask some daft questions sometimes.’
‘I told you not to call me that!’ Chase shouted after her as she left the kitchen, Ellie hoppity-skipping in her wake, and gleefully imitating the harrumph that Angelina responded to Chase with, all the way down the hallway.
Alex watched as Chase tidied up the omelette mess and then gathered a stack of ingredients from the super-sized American fridge that dominated the kitchen with its cherry-red door and began washing and chopping.
‘You weren’t this skilled when we were at school and we had to live off oranges and toast stolen from the sixth form. It always amazes me how good you are in the kitchen.’
‘I know. An all-round renaissance man, who would have thought it? Especially as, let’s face it, our school was all about churning out entitled Neanderthals who could run a country but not wash a dish.’
‘You’ve let the side down by being such a thoroughly decent human being.’
‘I figured someone needed to balance out Hector!’
‘Ha! I haven’t seen him for years, are you still in touch?’
‘Of course, he’s in Morocco at the moment. Actually he’s coming to stay next month.’
‘Really? For all his evil, I’d like to catch up.’
‘Well do, then.’
‘I won’t be here next month.’
‘Interestingly, I wanted to talk to you about that. Maybe you could be. More importantly, maybe you should be.’
‘Eh?’
‘You surprised us all when you adopted Ellie. None of us saw that coming.’
Alex grimaced. Neither had he, truth be told, but life threw curveballs and that day, the day he had set eyes on Ellie, turned out to be one of those times.
He had been covering a story in South Sudan, about the civil war that had been raging through the country and the ceasefire that had just been agreed.
It turned out to be the first of many. As Central African correspondent for a British news organization, Alex was used to being in dangerous situations, very dangerous situations, and relying upon his instincts to keep him and his team safe.
However, as he was getting older, he was beginning to wonder how much longer he could, or should, keep doing the things that had won him the reputation for cutting-edge journalism.
And that regularly involved him putting himself in situations that could go badly wrong.
He wasn’t sure if it was maturity or experience that was making him slightly more trepidatious in his line of work, or if he was just developing a bit of a cowardly streak – he really hoped it wasn’t that.
But finding Ellie as he had, that seemed to embed these concerns even deeper, and he knew the time had come for some serious reassessment.
‘It was a shocker for me as well, mate. But you know the situation, I had no choice in the moment. Then afterwards, well, you know how it turned out, that little madam got her hooks into me, the minute she bunched my jacket in her little hand and stared up at me. It was like falling in love as I never had before. I fought a good fight, but I didn’t have a chance.
It certainly wasn’t part of my life plan.
’ Alex answered his friend honestly, although he knew Chase knew the ins and out of the story already, how he had lain awake thinking of the little girl for months, literally months, before he made the decision he had.
And the wrangling to ensure that he made this adoption happen, and with no loopholes, that had taken years.
‘Ha! No, I imagine it wasn’t! And you’re a man that likes to plan, have every eventuality covered. Even when we used to have midnight raids on the tuck shop, do you remember? You’d insist we had a Plan A through to at least a Plan D, leaving nothing to chance.’
‘It saved both our arses more than once. And it helped me later. Always know your exits… it’s a good motto. For all parts of life.’