Free Balancing Act by Joanna Trollope Page A

website. Told me everything.’
    Grace took a step or two into the room. ‘Does – does Ma know you’re here, in England?’
    He said calmly, ‘I shouldn’t think she even knows her own ma is gone.’
    ‘But,’ Grace said, suddenly intense, ‘what are you
doing
here?’
    He looked surprised. ‘Doing?’
    ‘Yes,’ Grace said. ‘What are you
doing
– after decades of no contact, no responsibility, nothing – suddenly turning up here and imagining that any of us would be remotely interested in seeing you?’
    There was a silence. Michelle and Ben were still staring stiffly at their screens. Morris took his hands off the chair-back and came towards Grace. He had moccasins on his feet, and no socks. He held his hands out towards her, just as Jeff had done earlier, and then dropped them again.
    He said, ‘I was hoping, I s’pose—’ And then he paused.
    She didn’t smile.
    ‘Well?’ she said.
    ‘Grace,’ he said. ‘I’m eighty-one. I just ran out of road.’

CHAPTER FIVE
    D aniel had shut himself in the boardroom. As the office was otherwise open-plan, the boardroom door was the only door in the place, and shutting it made a resounding statement, particularly if you were the only person inside. If closing the door sent a slightly intimidating message to everyone else, then that suited his current purpose just fine.
    His purpose was, in essence, to calm down. He could have gone for a walk, of course – into Bishop’s Park across the road, or over Putney Bridge with its satisfactorily huge view of the river – but something told him that his agitation might only be increased by leaving the office, and it would be better, really, to take his iPad as an acceptable accessory into the boardroom, where he could pace or gaze out of the window or – the most luxurious option of all – have a private
sotto voce
rant about his mother-in-law and her family and the state of the business.
    With, as ever, the exception of Cara. Daniel was truly sorry for Cara. Cara was not in the office today because she had had to go up to Stoke by train with her mother and Ashley, to meet this outrageous old man who had suddenly turned up in Grace’s studio and announced himself to be Susie’s father, Morris. At first, when Grace had rung with this implausiblestory, no one had believed her. It was insane, in these days of worldwide communication, that anyone so closely related could just turn up out of the blue, like a character in a soap opera, all melodrama and improbability. But then the inevitability of the facts began to emerge, never mind the physical presence of the man, and a creeping combination of acceptance and curiosity began to overtake their initial shock and disbelief. The old man in Grace’s spare bedroom – his possessions, such as they were, carried in a huge dusty bag fashioned from something indisputably African, patterned in deep red and black – was indeed, it seemed, Susie’s father, Morris Snape, returning like an elderly prodigal son to the place he had so emphatically and ungratefully rejected half a century before.
    The horror and shock, Daniel had to admit, were – at first, at least – far stronger than the curiosity. Susie was appalled, as were her older daughters. Grace, with this profoundly unwelcome guest in her flat, was said to be despairing. At two in the morning after the revelatory first phone call, Daniel had been aware of Cara lying awake and churned up beside him. He had reached out a hand to take hers, and she’d gripped him as if he were a lifeline and hissed, ‘I don’t
want
this.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘He left Ma. As a
baby.
He
abandoned
her.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘He’s a selfish monster. He’s never grown up. He’s only back because he’s run out of options. He just wants to be looked after. And money. Of course, he wants
money.
’
    Daniel edged further across their kingsize bed so that he could put an arm across Cara and hold her. ‘Your poor mother.’
    ‘She’s in