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Автор Fielding Liz
Dear Miss Lawrence,
It is my school sports day on Friday, June 18th, and I am writing to ask if you could possibly come.
When I told my friend Josie that you were my mother, she didn’t believe me. And now all the girls in my class are saying I made it up about having a famous mother.
I know you’re really busy saving the rain forest and the poor animals, and I don’t want to be a nuisance, but if you would just do this I wouldn’t ask anything ever again. I promise.
Your loving daughter,
Lucy Fitzpatrick.
Bronte turned over the envelope for a moment, wondering if she’d misread the name. Miss B. Lawrence. Then the penny dropped. “A famous mother... saving the rain forest... ” The letter was not meant for her but for her sister, Brooke. Brooke had a daughter—and she, Bronte, had a niece!
Born and raised in Berkshire, England, Liz Fielding started writing at the age of twelve when she won a hymnwriting competition at her convent school. After a gap of more years than she is prepared to admit to, during which she worked as a secretary in Africa and the Middle East, got married and had two children, she was finally able to realize her ambition and turn to full-time writing in 1992.
And Mother Makes Three
Liz Fielding
CHAPTER ONE
‘FITZ, thank you for stopping by. I know how busy you are. ’
James Fitzpatrick took the small, perfectly manicured hand extended to him.
‘Any time, Claire. I’m never too busy for anything that concerns Lucy, you know that. ’ But Claire Graham’s response to his smile was the closest she ever came to a frown. More trouble, then. ‘Has she broken another window?’‘Nothing so simple. ’
‘A window and a washbasin?’ Lucy, tall for her age, with arms and legs that seemed to have a life of their own, had been causing chaos since she had first discovered that she could climb out of her cot. She didn’t mean to break things, it was just that anything within a three foot range of her was likely to spontaneously disintegrate.
‘Not even the drinking fountain. It’s been a peaceful term. ’
‘It’s not over yet. ’
‘Please, do sit down, Fitz. ’ Beneath her slightly prim and spinsterish exterior, Claire Graham was as soft as butter and could usually be teased to a smile; after a school governors’ meeting with a glass of sherry inside her she could even be teased to a blush, but not today it seemed.
‘So. What’s she done?’ Fitz enquired, lowering himself gingerly onto the elegant chair fronting her desk. He’d come with his cheque-book in his back pocket, prepared for a catalogue of Lucy’s latest string of accidents; Claire Graham’s reassurance about school property, far from easing his mind, suggested that this summons boded something far worse. ‘Her last report suggested that she was doing well enough,’ he said, ‘so I don’t imagine this is about her schoolwork. ’
