She said, "I'm Gina."
"I'm five years old," Cammie told her, demonstrating her age with her fingers as Meredith lifted her to her hip. "I'll be six years old next, but not for a long time cos I jus' turned five in May. We had a party. D'you have parties on your birthday?"
"I haven't in a long time."
"That's too bad. Birthday parties are lovely, especially if you have cake." And then, typically, she was off in another conversational direction. "Mummy, Gran's cross cos you didn't ring her and say you'd be late. You're meant to ring her."
"I'll apologise." Meredith kissed her daughter with the loudest smack of her lips that she could manage, the way Cammie liked. She set her on the ground. "Could you run inside and tell her we have company, Cam?"
Whatever pique Janet Powell might have been feeling thus was dissipated when Meredith ushered Gina into the house. Her parents were nothing if not hospitable, and once Meredith told them the spurious tale of the gas leak at the Mad Hatter Tea Rooms, nothing more needed to be said.
Janet murmured, "Terrible, terrible, pet," and patted Gina on the back. "Well, we can't have you stopping there, can we? You sit right here and let me fix you a nice plate of ham salad.
Cammie, you take Gina's bag to your mum's room and put out fresh towels in the bathroom.
And ask your granddad will he scrub the tub."
Cammie scampered off to do all this, announcing that she'd even let Gina use her own personal bunny towels and calling out, "Granddad! We're to clean the bath, you an' me," as Gina sat at the table.
Meredith helped her mother put together the ham salad. Neither she nor Gina was actually hungry - how could they have been, considering the circumstances? - but they both made an effort, as if with the mutually unspoken knowledge that failure to do so would arouse suspicion where further suspicion was unwanted.
Gina went along with the idea of the gas leak with an ease that Meredith found herself admiring greatly, putting aside her worries about Gordon Jossie in a way that Meredith herself could never have managed in the same situation. Indeed, she soon had engaged Janet Powell in a conversation on the topic of Janet herself, her long marriage to Meredith's father, motherhood, and grand-motherhood. Meredith could tell her mother was charmed.
Nothing disturbed the evening and by the time darkness fell, Meredith's guard had melted away. They were safe, for now. Tomorrow would be time enough to consider what to do next.
She began to see that she had been wrong about Gina Dickens. Gina was just as much a victim in this as Jemima had been. Each of them had made the same mistake: For some reason that Meredith herself would never be able to understand, each of the women had fallen for Gordon Jossie, and Gordon Jossie had deceived them both.
She couldn't comprehend how two intelligent women had failed to see Gordon for what he so obviously was, but then she had to admit that her distrust of men wasn't something that other women would naturally share. Besides, people generally learned from their own encounters with the opposite sex. People didn't usually learn from hearing tales about others' relationships gone sour.
This had been the case for Jemima, and it was undoubtedly the case for Gina. She was learning now, that was true, although it still seemed that she didn't want to believe.
"I still can't think he hurt her," Gina said in a low voice when they were alone in Meredith's bedroom. And then she added before Meredith could make an acidulous comment about Gordon Jossie, "Anyway, thank you. You're a real friend, Meredith. And your mum's lovely. So is Cammie. And your dad. You're very lucky."
Meredith considered this. She said, "For a long time, it didn't feel that way." She told Gina then about Cammie's father. She recited the whole wretched tale. She finished by saying,
"When I wouldn't have an abortion, that was that. He said I'd have to prove in court that he was the dad, but at that point I actually didn't care to."
"He doesn't help you at all? He doesn't support her?"
"If he sent me a cheque, I'd set fire to it. Way I see it, he's the one losing out. I have Cammie, and he'll never know her."
"What does she think about her dad?"
"She knows that some kids have dads and others don't. We reckoned - Mum and Dad and