Chapter 37
CHAPTER 37
Juliet put the bottle of breast milk she had just expressed into the fridge. She’d decided to start coming in to work for a couple of hours a day to get back on top of things, which was easy to do while Hettie was still at the stage where you could safely put her down somewhere in her basket.
So far, Hettie had been a wonderful baby. Much easier than Cassady had been. Juliet glanced down at her new daughter’s beautiful little face, right next to her by the desk, and felt the love that had enveloped her from the moment she had held Hettie in her arms squeeze her heart. She was such an adorable little thing.
With Hettie by her side, it felt great to be back behind her familiar desk, checking the sales figures and sussing out the prices on some special yellow diamonds she was interested in. She would probably use an agent to buy them for her – now her brand was getting such a high profile, prices of raw materials automatically started higher.
Shop sales had been good in her two-week absence and Bob had been doing well, she was pleased to see. Her instincts about him had been right. At the trade show, he’d reminded her of her own early days, trying to get appointments with buyers. She remembered all too well the knock-backs and rudeness she’d experienced from people who now begged to stock her stuff. And it made her want to help him.
Having such a personable young man in the shop also softened Luiza’s ultra-professional but verging-on-scary vibe. They were a great combination. She would send Gwen an email to give Bob a bonus in recognition of his excellent start.
She started to write it, but when she got to the point where she needed to put in the amount of the bonus, she paused. She needed an appropriate figure as a sweetener but since she’d hired him in such a rush on her last day in the office before Hettie’s birth, she couldn’t remember how much they were paying him. She flicked over to the personnel file to check.
Realising she didn’t know his surname, she looked down the first-name column of the wages spreadsheet for ‘Bob’. But there wasn’t one. That was odd. There was no Bob, but there was a ‘Beau’. She didn’t employ anyone called Beau and if she did, she would certainly have remembered that name. It was unusual, and one of Matt’s sons was called Beau. She wouldn’t have forgotten it.
She looked across to see the surname and her mouth dropped open. Crommelin. Beau Crommelin. She felt sick with shock. Crommelin was Matt’s name. Beau Crommelin was his son’s name. Was there any chance there was another young man called Beau Crommelin in London?
But even as she grasped at that scrap of hope, the reality was unfolding in her head. She pictured Bob – just through the security door in the shop – with his full lips, his swagger, his suits...
Then, sitting back in her chair, her heart pounding, a framed picture of Cassady caught her eye.
Bob looked like Cassady. Cassady looked like him.
She glanced down at her darling baby. Was there a family resemblance there too? With a small surge of relief, she thought not. Hettie was fairer, more like her. That was a blessing.
But then the full horror of the situation hit her again and she found it hard to breathe.
The young man who her little girl never stopped talking about was actually her daughter’s half-brother. She had to get Bob – Beau – out of Cassady’s life immediately.
And he must never find out who his little friend’s father was. His poor mother had to be protected.
She stood up and took sleeping Hettie out of her basket, gently rocking her to and fro for her own comfort, and then found some relief in realising that it was actually a good thing that she had found out Bob’s true identity now, before he became any more embedded in her life – or her children’s lives.
Feeling a little more collected, Juliet carefully put Hettie down again, took a sip from the glass of water on her desk and then rang Gwen.
‘Oh, hi, Gwennie,’ she said, turning her chair so her back was to the door into the shop. ‘I was just checking the payroll and I see there is someone called “Beau” on it. Who is that?’
Gwen laughed nervously. ‘I was going to tell you about that when we have our meeting this afternoon. That’s Bob’s real name. He hates being called Beau – he says he was bullied for it at school, so everyone calls him Bob and he asked politely if I could keep his real name to myself in here and I said yes – although, obviously, I was always going to tell you.’
‘Ah, that all makes sense,’ said Juliet, although it didn’t really. Why did he not want her to know his real name? ‘Right, well, I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to stay in the office long enough to have our meeting today, after all. Something’s come up and I’ve got to leave now. So I’ll call you later this afternoon and we can go over everything on the phone, is that alright? I was looking forward to our catch-up and we will have a proper one soon, just not today, okay?’
She was fond of Gwen, who had been with her from the start, and they had a little tradition of a weekly meeting with tea. Gwen was very good at her job and Juliet wanted to hold on to her, which was why she always took that bit of time to make her feel special, but this was an emergency. She had to get out of the building right away.
She texted Ligaya, who was waiting up in the staff room, asking her to come down, ready to leave immediately, and started packing up.
Then she called her parking garage, asking them to bring the car to the front of the building and when the text alert that it was there pinged, she picked up her coat, her phone in the other hand. As she walked through the shop, with the nanny bringing up the rear carrying Hettie, she pretended to be having a tense conversation with someone on the phone, sweeping past Luiza and Bob – Beau – with just an upwards nod of her head in acknowledgement.
But as she went out of the door, she realised her eyes had fully registered Beau’s face. How had she never realised how like his father he was?
When they got back to the house, Hettie was awake and fretful, so Juliet left Ligaya to change and feed her and went into her study, closing the door. She rang Gwen’s direct line.
‘Hi Gwennie,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid I don’t have time to go over all the figures now, I’m in the middle of negotiations for some rather special stones, so I thought we could catch up with all that on Friday instead, with our tea, but there is one thing I urgently need you to sort out today.’ She paused to take a breath. ‘It’s about that young chap Bob... or rather Beau. I’ve decided not to extend his contract. His trial period is up this week and I would like him to leave today.’
Gwen said nothing and Juliet found herself filling the gap.
‘I know he’s doing alright in the shop, but I’ve got some big plans on the go that will mean digging in deep for a little bit, so I don’t feel we can afford an extra staff member at the moment. Luiza can manage on her own for a bit longer.’ She knew it wasn’t convincing as she said it.
‘So, I would like you to tell him, Gwen, that today is his last day – and because it will be a bit of a shock for him, I’m prepared to give him a month’s extra money as a goodwill gesture. And I will give him a good reference too. Tell him we are very grateful for the way he covered during my maternity leave, but we don’t need him now.’
‘What about the unpaid work experience he was doing up in the workshop?’ said Gwen. ‘He might ask if he can carry on doing that, even if he’s not working in the shop.’
Juliet hadn’t thought of that. Larry had been very impressed with the way Bob – Beau, aargh – had finished the tasks he’d set him. And she had genuinely liked the pieces he’d shown her at the trade show, they’d been well made with some interesting ideas in them. She did actually need someone else in the studio, but not him. No way.
‘I’m afraid you’ll have to tell him the same thing applies up there,’ she said. ‘Do please tell him that Larry is impressed with his work, but with the big overheads I’m about to take on, I’ve got to keep costs pared down and another person in the building is always a cost. Please tell him I’ll give him a separate glowing reference for each job. That should soften the blow for him.’
She put down the phone and allowed her head to sink into her hands. Of course, she remembered now, Matt had told her one of his sons made jewellery. She also remembered one of them reading a poem at the funeral, but he’d had a mass of black hair like Matt’s. Although now she realised that as Bob/Beau’s closely cropped hair was beginning to grow back, it was exactly that jet-black Irish hair that Matt had.
That Cassady had.
Juliet shook her head, almost dizzy with relief that she’d found out before Beau’s hair had grown just a little bit more and someone realised how oddly alike he and her daughter were. It had been such a close thing, but if it had happened once, could something like it happen again?
And with pictures of her and Cassady now circulating in Her magazine, what if Matt’s wife saw them, remembered Juliet from the funeral, saw how like her late husband Cassady was and made the connection?
Yet again, she wondered if it might be better to do what she’d tried to do that day at the funeral? To go and see Sophie and tell her the truth? That she’d an affair with her husband – and deliberately got pregnant without telling him – but there had categorically never been any plan for them to be together, or for him to any active part in the children’s lives. Child, as it had been while he was still alive.
And just like every other time Juliet had gone over it in her head, she couldn’t decide which was the better thing to do. To speak out or just keep hoping that the secret had died with Matt.