Christmas Babies for the Italia (Innocent Christmas Brides #2) - Lynne Graham Page 0,3

devastating row that Amy had caused when she was thirteen by demanding to know her father’s identity and refusing to back down had traumatised both mother and daughter.

‘He didn’t want you! He didn’t want to know!’ Lorraine had finally screamed at her. ‘In fact, he wanted me to get rid of you and when I refused he left me. It’s all your fault. If you hadn’t been born, he’d never have left me...or even if you’d been a boy, a son, he might have been more interested. As it was, in his eyes, we were just a burden he didn’t need!’

After that confrontation, Amy’s already strained relationship with her mother had grown steadily worse. She had started hanging out with the wrong crowd at school. She had stopped studying and had got into trouble, failing her exams and ultimately wrecking her educational prospects. She had hung out with the kids who despised swots, had begun staying out late, playing truant, skipping her assignments and lying about her whereabouts. It had been childish stuff, nothing cruel or criminal, but her mother had been so enraged when the school had demanded she come in to discuss her wayward daughter’s behaviour that she had washed her hands of her child. Amy had ended up in foster care until a kindly neighbour and friend had offered her a home if she was willing to follow rules again.

It had taken several years for Amy to recover from that unhappy period when she had gone off the rails and she had never lived with her mother again. Lorraine Taylor had died suddenly when her daughter was eighteen and only afterwards had Amy discovered that the father who had abandoned them both had been supporting them all along. Although they had never lived anywhere expensive and her mother had never worked, Lorraine had still contrived to go on cruises every year and, while she had resented spending anything at all on her daughter, she had always had sufficient funds to provide herself with an extensive wardrobe. In fact, Amy had been stunned by the amount of money her mother had had to live on throughout the years of her childhood but none of that cash had been spent on her. That financial support had ended with Lorraine’s death and the solicitor concerned had reiterated that Amy’s birth father wanted no contact with his child and wished to remain anonymous.

Aimee, she had been named at birth... Beloved, Amy recalled with rueful amusement, but, in truth, she had not been wanted by either parent. Perhaps her mother had thought the name was romantic; perhaps when she had named her daughter she had still harboured the hope that her child’s father might return to her.

Even so, it wasn’t in Amy’s nature to dwell on those negatives. Cordy, the kindly neighbour who had taken her in and soothed her hurts, had taught her that she had to move on from her misfortunes and mistakes and work hard if she wanted a decent future. At a young age, Amy had wandered into the animal shelter next door to the block of flats where she and her mother lived and had stayed on to see the inmates, soon becoming a regular visitor. Cordelia Anderson had been the veterinary surgeon who ran the surgery/rescue charity, a straight-talking, single older woman, who had devoted her life to taking care of injured animals and those who were surplus to requirements. She had nursed the animals back to health, rehoming them where she could.

She had taken in Amy when she was at her lowest ebb, persuading the unhappy girl to pick up her studies again, and had even tried to mend the broken relationship between Amy and her mother but, sadly, Lorraine Taylor had been quite content not to have the burden of a teenager in her life. When Amy had finally attained the exams she had once failed, Cordy had taken her on as a veterinary nurse apprentice at the surgery. Tragically, Cordy had died the year before and Amy had been devastated by the suddenness of her demise. Amy was still doing vocational training as an apprentice for Cordy’s veterinary surgeon partner, Harold, and praying that she could complete her course before Harold retired.

Since Cordy’s death Amy’s home had become a converted storeroom above the surgery because Cordy’s house had had to be sold, the proceeds going to her nephew. Amy used the shower facility in the surgery downstairs and cooked on a mini oven