CHAPTER THIRTEEN

‘YOU see, Bethany, sometimes mistakes are made. Not very often and completely unintentionally, of course,’ Mrs Heavenly quickly added, her kindly face creased into lines of concern. ‘But occasionally they are made—’

‘I know I shouldn’t have left Nick that note,’ Bethany accepted miserably, sitting opposite the elderly grey-haired lady in her ‘office’, ‘that we have to bring everything away with us. But I just couldn’t leave Nick in that cold way, without any sort of word,’ she explained brokenly. ‘Like—like some sort of thief in the night!’ She sniffed emotionally, the tears still flowing two hours after she had arrived.

‘I wasn’t referring to the note, dear.’ Sympathy beamed from the rounded cherubic face. ‘No, no, occasionally—very occasionally, I must stress,’ she fluttered nervously, ‘a little mistake is made, and we—well… Sometimes we can rectify it. And sometimes we can’t. Of course, once the deed is done we usually try to make the best of the situation, but in this case it obviously didn’t work out. You didn’t work out,’ she added kindly.

‘I’ve succeeded this time,’ Bethany protested huskily. ‘Nick is reconciled with his daughter, his ex-wife and his ex-friend. And—’

‘I wasn’t talking about that, dear.’ Mrs Heavenly handed her another tissue. ‘I don’t think you’ve re-ally been listening to what I’ve been trying to tell you.’ She shook her head in gentle reproof.

‘But Nick’s life is fine now.’ Bethany frowned. ‘He—’

‘I’m afraid it isn’t.’ The older woman shook her head.

‘But I… He’ll be all right, won’t he?’ The distress on Bethany’s face deepened at the thought of him not being all right.

‘He’s in love with you, my dear.’ Mrs Heavenly gave an understanding sigh. ‘He’s telephoned the agency at least half a dozen times today, each time leaving a message on the answering machine—the last one pleading with me to tell him where you are.’

Bethany couldn’t stand the thought of Nick being in that much pain. She should have left as soon as she knew he was starting to love her. She should have—

‘Of course, we always knew there was a danger of this happening,’ Mrs Heavenly continued more briskly. ‘As soon as we realised Nicholas was about to make a totally unsuitable marriage to this woman Lisa, we knew that we had to do something about it.’ She shook her head. ‘The poor man—his life has been such a mess the last five years.’

Bethany nodded. ‘Since he and Samantha separated.’

‘Oh, no, dear.’ Mrs Heavenly looked surprised at this assumption. ‘It had nothing to do with his separation from his wife. Well… Only indirectly,’ she conceded thoughtfully. ‘Nicholas didn’t love Samantha in the way that he should have, and Samantha is to be admired for realising that, for making the decision to be with the man she did love—and more importantly who loved her!—at that difficult time in her life. No, no, dear.’ Mrs Heavenly shook her head dismissively. ‘Nicholas’s life hasn’t been a mess because of that; that has been because the woman he was going to love was denied him.’

Bethany swallowed hard. ‘Nick is in love with someone else?’ It would be better for everyone if he were, but it would also break her own heart. But she mustn’t be selfish; she wanted Nick to be happy!

‘I don’t know whether it’s me, dear—’ the normally unruffled Mrs Heavenly was certainly becoming so ‘—or whether your own distress is just making you not listen to what I’m saying. Of course Nicholas isn’t in love with someone else; what sort of, fickle man do you think he is?’ the elderly woman admonished her.

‘The truth of the matter is, Bethany, that someone slipped up five years ago. At the time it was decided just to leave things alone, let them develop—but recent events in Nicholas’s life have shown us that they haven’t developed at all, that without the life that should have been his Nicholas Rafferty has just drifted along, becoming more and more cynical—bitter, even. He was even in the process of embarking on a second marriage that would have been even more disastrous for everyone than the first one was!

‘Well, of course, it was our mistake in the first place.’ Mrs Heavenly frowned. ‘Over-impetuosity on the part of a relative novice. So it was decided that we should see what would happen if Nicholas met the woman he should have fallen in love with five years ago,’ she said with satisfaction.

Bethany shook her head dazedly. ‘And just how did you do that?’ She had no idea what the other woman was talking about.

The elderly lady gave her an impatient look. ‘Why, we sent you back, of course,’ she said dismissively. ‘I’m sure you’ll understand, Bethany, when I say you haven’t worked out too well in your new capacity either—that something always seems to go wrong when we send you on an assignment. The powers that be decided that perhaps it was for the same reason that Nicholas’s life has been such a dismal failure. So we sent you back to him and he fell in love with you, just as he should have done five years ago. So it’s been decided—’

‘Sent me back?’ Bethany burst in incredulously. ‘Sent me back where?’

‘To Nicholas, dear.’ The elderly lady patted her hand soothingly. ‘You see, you were a nanny five years ago, and Samantha was going to employ you to look after her two sons, Jamie and Josh. And—’

And instead she had died, in a totally senseless accident, her own path and Nick’s never crossing after all. God, no wonder Samantha Fairfax had thought she looked familiar that day at the hospital; the other woman had half recognised her as the nanny she had been going to employ five years earlier. But instead Bethany had died.

But if she had lived she and Nick had been going to fall in love, would have married, probably had children of their own. Oh, God, what had gone wrong? How had it happened that they hadn’t even met after all? And what was going to happen now—now that they had met and fallen in love with each other, in spite of all the odds? Surely that couldn’t be snatched away from them a second time? They couldn’t be that cruel!

‘Mrs Heavenly!’ She looked desperately across at the other woman. ‘We’re in love now. You can’t do this to Nick a second time.’ Tears darkened the green of her eyes.

The other woman’s face softened as she looked at her compassionately. ‘You’re such a kind young lady, Bethany,’ she said warmly. ‘You aren’t thinking of yourself at all in this, but of Nicholas. It’s that warmth in you that he loves so much, of course. He—’

‘Please, Mrs Heavenly,’ Bethany cut in emotionally, ‘tell me that Nick isn’t going to be left alone, as he has been the last five years.’

‘Well, of course he isn’t, my dear.’ The elderly woman looked wounded that she should even suggest such a fate for him. ‘How insensitive do you think we are?’ she chided gently. ‘You were never meant to die at that time, Bethany, it was the mistake of a relative newcomer that you were taken in the way that you were. Now you’re to go back, my dear, to the beginning.

‘Of course, the two of you won’t know each other to start with, because you’ve never met each other before, but it won’t take long for the two of you to get to know each other.’ She gave her a conspiratorial wink. ‘And it won’t take long, under your loving influence, for Nicholas to be reconciled to his daughter’s existence and to the relationship between his ex-wife and best friend.’ She sat back with satisfaction. ‘Altogether a much better ar-rangement all round for everyone.’ She nodded her approval.

‘But where will we meet?’ Bethany said desperately. ‘How will we—?’ She broke off as everything around her seemed to be falling away, rapidly spiralling out of focus.

‘Have a good life with your Nicholas, Bethany.’ Mrs Heavenly’s voice seemed to come from a great distance. ‘You were never meant to be an angel. Not for a long time yet, anyway…’