Free Three Weddings and a Baby by Fiona Harper

them—father, mother,two older brothers—were all petty criminals, and had been in and out of prison more times than Becky had been able to count.
    Jennie tried to sit back and listen to the story impassively, tried not to get emotionally involved, but the tale of a child whose only value had been as a lookout when a corner shop was being robbed or as a mule to carry anything her relatives didn’t want to be caught with if the police turned up, touched her heart.
    ‘Her father was already doing time when her mother was remanded in custody for cheque fraud,’ Alex said. ‘Becky wasn’t immediately taken into care because she had older brothers who could act as guardians, but they didn’t stick around for long. She tried to manage on her own for a few weeks but eventually she ended up at my parents’ house.’
    ‘That’s awful,’ she said, leaning forward.
    At least her own father had tried to do the right thing after her mother died. It hadn’t been his fault that he hadn’t been able to connect emotionally with a sad little girl. It was the way he had been brought up himself—stiff upper lip, none of that sissy talk about feelings. Those were the kind of things his generation left to the women.
    But poor Becky. She’d had no one. Not one person on her side—until Alex and hisfamily had come along. Suddenly Jennie felt incredibly proud of the young man her husband had once been, proud of him for looking deeper where others had probably only seen a troublemaker.
    ‘That’s not the worst of it,’ he said grimly. ‘She had followed the only example she’d ever had to deal with the chaos in her life. By the time she came to my parents’, she was recovering from a drug problem. At fifteen!’ He shook his head. ‘She wouldn’t talk about some periods of her life at all, but once I’d qualified I filled in the blanks. I met many, many people like her father and her brothers over the years. I’ve heard stories that would make your hair stand on end…truly.’
    She asked another soft question, urging him on, glad that he hadn’t noticed that she’d turned the tables and that it was she who was cross-examining him. There was a heartbreaking look in his eyes—one she had yet to define—and she wondered if he was letting her do this because it felt good to finally say some of these things out loud.
    He started to tell her how, over the next few years, Becky had fought hard to turn her life around. With the love and support of Alex’s parents, she’d beaten her addiction, started going to school again. He didn’t have to tellJennie why he’d fallen in love with Becky, she could see it in his eyes. Despite her awful background, Becky had shown inner substance and strength. It was clear Alex had admired her for that and admiration had gradually blossomed into love. And it was hardly surprising he’d rushed to Becky’s side when he’d heard she’d been injured.
    Jennie tried not to make comparisons, but it was impossible and, with each word that Alex spoke, her mood sank lower and lower. His new wife had grown up with all the privileges a girl could ask for and what had she achieved, how much inner substance had
she
shown? Not much. It had taken her until the grand old age of thirty to work up the guts to stop living off her father and strike out on her own.
    No wonder nobody respected her. She’d made her teenage years stretch way into her twenties, and nobody had expected her to do much with her life except be a drain on her daddy’s platinum card. And, while she was starting to prove them wrong, she’d discovered that it took a lot more than a few happy clients and some money of her own in the bank to change people’s opinions. In her family’s eyes—and probably those of most of the people she knew—she was the leopard whose spots were well and truly tattooed on.
    She drained her glass and filled it again from the open bottle on the coffee table. It probably wasn’t a good idea, seeing as