Arriving home that evening she was greeted by a more than excited Grace, who was almost devastated at the thought of her new friend not being there, over the past 8 months of her life she'd grown to idolise Ric, or as she named him Icky. Connie laughed when she first heard Grace attempt his name; if she and Ric were honest they both did but yet neither of them had the heart to tell her that it was wrong because she was so excited over the fact she managed to say something more than the every day jargon she needed to get by.
Quality time with her daughter for Connie had been few and far between. Yet every time she snuggled down on the settee with Grace she wished she did it more often but though she said she would, she never did. She loved her daughter, she never thought it possible to love someone with as much depth as she did her daughter, her Grace. When she looked down at Grace she felt it was like looking into a mirror, at first she was scared that she would look too much like her father and coming up to her third month of life she was showing signs of it with the tufty black hair and the dark eyes, then it changed when summer came along, her hair lightened in the sun, the colour of her eyes was a more obvious olive green.
Over the next year her hair grew into chestnut ringlets, it was a scary resemblance one that Ric often pointed out to her. Over a few months he started to regularly pointed out that Grace slept with the same facial expression as she did, something she took with a pinch of salt and refused to believe saying that no child of 14 months old can sleep the same way as her mother yet Ric was that adamant to prove how alike they were that he took the care of giving photographic evidence to prove his point. A bit of photographic evidence she has in a frame beside her bed, one of the most natural photos of herself and Grace she possessed, one of the most beautiful photos she possessed full stop.
That's when she realised, even with Grace here beside her she felt lonely, she felt lonely because every good memory she had what had of Grace, her first word, first step they all had something in common- Ric. Ric was there when Grace made her first voyage across the lounge. He was there the first time she called her mummy, he was the one who caught her when she fell down the last two stairs when Connie was cooking their dinner. He shared all those moments with her, shared her smiles and her fear. Something she never thought she'd experience again in her life, yet she had and she now realised she was truly blessed to have that not once but twice in her days was something special.
She knew that in Paris she had to tell him, tell him the reality. Ask him what she meant to him, if anything more than a woman to fill his sexual desires, a plaything for him. This was meant to just be a game, a bit of fun she'd started to fill her time, fill that burning hole in her life yet only when she started it did she find a second burning hole- the desire to be loved by another man. She just hoped with him the games were over, she considered this game won, the next was persuading him that she was more than a toy to play with. She had to play this game seriously because crossing it was a minefield. One wrong step and her life would be over.