You and Me, Always

by Jill Mansell

  Lily was struck by the irony that she’d felt more—so much more—when she’d first met Declan just a few short weeks ago. They might not share a bloodline, but the bond between them, the instinctive connection, had been there from the word go.

  People were stopping to see what was going on, to watch and listen to the family reunion that was being so assiduously recorded by the photographer.

  “Can we move somewhere more private?” Hearing the familiar rhythmic clunk of Dan’s metal crutch on the sidewalk behind her, Lily realized that word of the meeting had spread and he’d come out to support her. Flashing him a look of gratitude over her shoulder, she turned back to Keir. “Follow me.”

  “Can I come along too?” Shaz had her cheery-but-sympathetic face on.

  Lily shook her head. “No.”

  “Darling,” Coral said as Lily led Keir Bourne toward the gates of Goldstone House, “if you want me with you, just say.” Her cool nod in Keir’s direction indicated precisely what she thought of him.

  Lily was grateful, but there were too many customers; they couldn’t all be left to fend for themselves. “It’s OK. I’m taking Dan with me.”

  Shaz said, “Well, if you’re having Dan, surely Keir could have me in with him? I’d be as quiet as a mouse, I promise!”

  The photographer was still clicking away alongside them, muttering yes, yes to himself each time he got a good shot. Shaz was giving Dan a hopeful smile.

  “Oh dear, how can I put this?” Lily said. “Still no.”

  Chapter 35

  “You’re hurt,” Keir said, once the three of them were alone in the kitchen of Goldstone House. “I understand that. You’ve heard your mother’s version of events, but you’ve never heard mine.”

  “Go on, then.” Lily sat down at the kitchen table to keep some distance between them. He was well dressed, wearing a dark-blue crew-neck sweater over a white shirt and dark-gray trousers that looked brand new. Had he made the effort just for her?

  “Look, you have to understand how young we were. I was living at home, working for the family business. My parents went ballistic when they found out Jo was pregnant. And it was Jo’s decision to take the money they gave her and disappear. I was the one who was abandoned,” Keir said. “If she’d stayed with me in Exeter, we could have made a go of things. I know we could have.”

  “That’s not what she told Coral,” Lily said evenly.

  “But Coral wasn’t there, was she? Listen, I’m sorry you lost your mum, but maybe it made life easier for her to tell people she’d been abandoned. Maybe it was her way of getting sympathy… Oh dear, I don’t mean it badly, but perhaps she thought it was the best way to deal with a difficult situation. But she was a fantastic girl, and I did love her.” He gestured helplessly. “I’m just trying to explain that I know you think I’m the bad guy here…but what if I’m not as bad as you think?”

  Wasn’t he? Lily didn’t believe him. She wanted him to leave. But now that he was here, she also wanted to learn more details from him about her mum.

  “Tell me about how the two of you met.” At least she could do this; hearing the stories from Declan about his adventures with Jo in Barcelona had been such a joyful experience, creating brand-new memories for her to treasure forever. Even if her mum’s relationship with this other man had ended badly, their first months together must have been happy.

  “Um…well, I suppose we were in a bar.”

  “And?” said Lily.

  Keir looked baffled. Finally, he shrugged. “We must have gotten chatting somehow. Then I’d have offered to buy her a drink… Then we’d have talked some more.”

  “Do you remember?” Lily asked. “Or are you just guessing?”

  “I kind of remember. It was twenty-seven years ago,” Keir protested. “But when you first meet a girl, that’s what you do, isn’t it?”

  “What was she wearing?”

  He frowned. “Jeans? And…some kind of top?”

  “Well, let’s hope so,” said Lily.

  He began to smile, then saw that she wasn’t smiling back. “Sorry, I’m not great at noticing clothes. But I know we really liked each other. At the end of the evening, we arranged to meet up again, and it went on from there.”

  Lily said, “What did you buy her for her birthday?”

  “I didn’t know this was going to be Twenty Questions.” He half laughed and gestured vaguely. “Um, a box of chocolates, I expect. And some flowers.”

  “What kind of chocolates did she like?”

  “Um…dark?”

  Definitely the wrong answer.

  It was like trying to drag memories out of a brick wall. Shaking her head in disbelief, Lily glanced across the kitchen at Dan, who murmured, “Romantic.”

  “Look, I’m sorry if I’m not saying the right things here, but I’m doing my best. And I’m still your father.” Keir took a deep breath. “Can I just say, I’m glad you’ve had a good life. I’m sorry your mum died. And I’m so proud of you. Seeing you in the paper with Eddie Tessler was just… Is he here, by the way? I’d love to meet him. Shaz says if we could get a couple of photos of you, me, and Eddie together, that would be—”

  “Oh my God.” Anger flared in Lily. “Is that why you’re here? Is that all you care about—meeting Eddie?”

  Hastily, he shook his head. “No, no… That was Shaz’s idea, not mine. She was the one who wanted me to ask that.”

  “Of course she was,” Lily said tightly.

  “This isn’t fair,” Keir said. “You’re my daughter. I’ve wanted to get to know you for years.”

  “But you didn’t,” Lily retaliated.

  “Because your mother thought it was for the best. I stayed away for that reason, for your benefit. She’d arranged your life and decided it wasn’t going to include me. But that wasn’t my fault… I’d have done anything to get to know you.”

  “I don’t believe that for one minute.”

  “Well, it’s true.”

  Lily said coldly, “Handy for you too. If you’d been that interested, I’m sure you could have made some effort.” She didn’t even care; God only knew why she was arguing the point. The sooner he was out of here, the better.

  “I did make the effort.” Keir’s jaw jutted out. “I came down here, remember? Twelve years ago.”

  “Allegedly,” said Lily. Who was to say he hadn’t been lying about that too?

  “I did. It was in December. I met you for a few minutes.” He glanced over at Dan. “I met you too.”

  Dan raised an eyebrow.

  “Right here? Was I working out in the yard?” said Lily.

  “No. You’d just arrived home from school on the bus. You”—Keir pointed at Dan—“were pretty sarcastic. Then you both headed off, and I heard all about you from this girl I’d met in the café.”

  “You asked a load of questions about me, and she told you everything you wanted to know. Why would she even do that?”

  “Honestly?” He broke into a smile at the memory. “Because she liked me. A lot.”

  “But this girl never told me you’d been here,” Lily said. “That makes no sense. Why wouldn’t she?”

  “I don’t know, maybe because she was embarrassed? Because she regretted what she’d done?”

  “This is bullshit,” Dan broke in. “None of it’s true. He’s bluffing, making the whole thing up.”

  “I’m not,” Keir said. “We spent the night together at the Valentine Hotel.” The veneer of charm was sliding away. “Had a very nice time, if you know what I mean.”

  What a lowlife. “So what was her name?” asked Lily.

  “I can’t remember.”

  “That’s handy, isn’t it?” said Dan. “It’s almost as if this mystery female never even existed.”

  “Oh, she existed all right.” The note of triumph was audible in K
eir Bourne’s voice; he was almost smirking now. “And I may have forgotten her name,” he went on, directly addressing Dan, “but I definitely remember that she was your sister.”

  A stunned silence reverberated through the kitchen. Lily heard her own heartbeat thundering in her ears. She waited for Keir Bourne to say “Ha, fooled you,” for it to have been his idea of a sick joke.

  But he wasn’t laughing. Instead, he was looking decidedly pleased with himself.

  Across the room, practically vibrating with fury, Dan said, “You’re a disgusting human being.”

  “And a liar,” Lily said.

  “Ah, you’d like it not to be true.” Keir Bourne shifted on his chair. “But it is.”

  “You don’t even know her name,” said Dan.

  “Oh, come on. From the look of you, I don’t imagine you remember the name of every girl you ever slept with.”

  “Fuck off,” said Dan. “How dare you? Patsy wouldn’t touch you with a barge pole.”

  “Patsy. That’s it; that’s her name. She was the one who introduced you to me at the bus stop. I was wearing dark-rimmed glasses,” Keir said. “She was wearing a red coat. It was just starting to snow.”

  Lily was barely breathing. The tiniest memory was beginning to unfurl, like a sprouting seed sending a tendril of green up through the earth. Patsy, greeting them at the bus stop with a stranger in tow…a man in glasses who had said something trivial to them…and Dan had given him a typically cheeky answer. It had been a cold afternoon, and Patsy had protested that they should be wearing coats. That was as far as Lily’s memory went. She and Dan had run off down the road. Since that day, she hadn’t given the chance encounter another thought.

  Dan had evidently been dredging up details of that same afternoon. He said suddenly, “You were there because you were waiting to meet someone off the bus. But they weren’t on it.”

  Pleased, Keir Bourne said, “Well done. See? I knew you could do it if you tried.”

  “So you lied about that. And you lied to Patsy as well. She had no idea who you were.”

  Lily felt sick. It was hideous enough to think of this man flirting with Patsy, let alone anything more intimate happening between them. But it was beginning to seem as if it might actually be true. God, poor Patsy when she found out; she’d be devastated. Maybe they wouldn’t tell her. If she were to discover she’d once slept with this vile man, she’d just die.

  “Putting it all together now? And yes, we spent the night at the Valentine,” said Keir Bourne. “Pretty nice place; expensive too. So you see, there’s no need to look down your noses at me and accuse me of lying.” There was a definite edge to his voice. “Because I haven’t lied about anything at all.”

  Dan had already said it; now it was Lily’s turn. Icily she reminded him, “Except Patsy didn’t know who you were.”

  “And that’s where you’re wrong again,” said Keir Bourne. “You really shouldn’t jump to conclusions. She knew.”

  “How fucking dare you?” Dan’s spine was rigid, his face closed with fury.

  “Don’t believe me? Again?” Keir was enjoying himself now. “Go on, then. Ask her yourself.”

  Chapter 36

  It was called “facing the music.”

  Except there wasn’t any music.

  Not that it would help if there were. This, Patsy knew, was the very worst time of her life, and all she could do now was endure it and suffer the consequences.

  She had known what was going on the moment her cell phone had rung and Dan had said, “He’s here. We’re in the kitchen. Will you come over and join us?”

  And Dan, in turn, must have known at once that she knew when she simply said yes without asking why.

  Now she was walking down the road in the direction of Goldstone House, about to explain why she had done something for which there was no excuse.

  How many times had she gone through it in her mind, desperately attempting to justify her decision? The years slid backward all over again as Patsy relived the initial outrage when she’d discovered Keir’s true identity. Her disgust and fury had been visceral. He’d lied to her, seduced her with his charms, and persuaded her to have sex with him because she’d believed he genuinely liked her.

  Yet again, needless to say, she’d been wrong.

  And then what was she supposed to do? It had been snowing heavily outside. Her security-conscious mother, having double-locked and bolted the front door of the cottage, would be fast asleep in bed. If she walked home, she wouldn’t be able to get in. At three o’clock in the morning, she could hardly start banging on other people’s front doors either.

  Although now, of course, Patsy wished more than anything in the world that she had. Curling up on the bench next to the bus stop and spending the rest of the night getting covered in snow would have been so much better than staying in that room, in that huge, velvet-canopied four-poster bed.

  With an adulterer whose name happened to be Keir Bourne.

  But finally, because there simply hadn’t been a viable alternative, she had fallen into a miserable, guilt-racked, exhausted sleep.

  At seven the next morning, she’d slid silently out of bed, washed and dressed herself while Keir Bourne slept on, then finally prodded him into wakefulness.

  When he turned and saw her standing there in her red coat, he said casually, “You off, then?”

  “You need to leave here and never come back. I mean it,” she instructed, her knuckles white as she gripped the straps of her handbag. “Never, ever. Lily doesn’t want to know you. She’s happy as she is. Coral and Nick are her parents now.”

  “Fine. Suits me.” As he said it, Keir smothered a yawn.

  “Promise me you’ll stay away.”

  “Is this about Lily? Or about you?”

  “Both.” Her armpits grew damp. It was shameful enough that she’d allowed herself to be picked up by a stranger and had ended up spending the night with him, let alone that he’d turned out to be Lily’s father. “You have to promise. Nobody’s ever going to know you were here, and they must never find out about…this.”

  He was smiling, unconcerned. “Us sleeping together, you mean?”

  Patsy wanted to cry but she couldn’t allow it to happen. She wanted to peel off her own skin. She’d betrayed Lily and betrayed herself. She was a disgusting human being.

  “I mean it,” she told Keir Bourne. “Or I’ll tell your wife.”

  Not that she ever would have, but he didn’t know that. He’d hastily agreed with her and made the promise. The snow had stopped falling, a salt truck had already trundled past, and the road was now passable. Keir would leave the hotel, leave Stanton Langley, and she had his word he would never return.

  Twelve years on, he’d broken that promise.

  Oh God, she’d arrived at Goldstone House. Patsy braced herself. It was all about to go off.

  * * *

  Lily knew the moment the kitchen door opened and she saw Patsy’s face, white with terror rather than illness.

  Because of course Patsy hadn’t been taken ill last night; she’d simply gotten the shock of her life.

  Well, she wasn’t the only one.

  First Keir Bourne turning up, having sold his story to the paper. And now this.

  This.

  “He says you spent the night together at the Valentine.” Dan wasted no time in getting to the point.

  “We did.” Patsy was looking as if she wanted to be sick.

  “And you knew who he was.”

  “Not at first. Not for hours. Not until after…you know…”

  “Then you found out,” Dan continued, “but you still stayed there with him.”

  Patsy opened her mouth to protest, then closed it again. She nodded miserably.

  “Even though you knew who he was,” Dan went on, the disgust evident in his voice.


  “I’m sorry.” Patsy shook her head miserably. “It was snowing and too late to come home. But I still shouldn’t have stayed.”

  “See?” Keir Bourne said. “I told you I wasn’t lying. And then she made me promise I’d never come back, never try to contact you again. Not for your benefit,” he added, addressing Lily with an air of vindication. “She just wanted to make sure her guilty secret was safe.”

  “Oh God,” Lily said. “You knew he came here to see me. You knew he was interested enough to do that, to see how I was doing, but you never told me. You decided I didn’t need to know.”

  Still too ashamed to cry, Patsy said wretchedly, “You must hate me.”

  Lily stared at Patsy, and it was like looking into the eyes of a stranger. Oh well, since everyone else was being honest all of a sudden, and since she was feeling about as hurt and betrayed as it was physically possible to feel…

  “Do I hate you? Right now? Honestly?” All of a sudden, she had to say it. “Yes, I do.”

  There was a moment of charged silence, then Patsy said, “You can’t hate me more than I hate myself.”

  * * *

  Dan watched as Patsy left the kitchen, stifling a sob as she closed the door behind her.

  Lily saw the faint smile on Keir Bourne’s face. “You’re a pretty unpleasant human being, aren’t you?” she said. “Do you still cheat on your wife?” Her dark eyes blazed. “Doesn’t matter. I don’t need to know. Anyway, I never want to see you again. You’re nothing to me. Never have been, never will be.”

  It was her turn to stand and walk out.

  “And then there were two,” Dan said. “In case you’re wondering, however much Lily despises you, I despise you more.”

  Keir Bourne shrugged and said nothing.

  “Seriously, why the fuck did you do this? You don’t care about Lily, so what’s the point?”

  “I needed the money.”

  “Oh, great.”

  “It’s all right for people like you. You couldn’t begin to understand. My marriage ended a few months ago. My wife kicked me out of the house, and I’m living in a crappy studio apartment. Not having enough money to enjoy yourself is depressing,” Keir said. “When I saw the photos of Lily in the paper and realized who she was, I was pleased she’d done well for herself. Then I happened to mention it to one of my mates down at the pub, and he said I should call the newspaper, ask them how much they’d pay for a story. But I didn’t, because I told myself I wasn’t that kind of person.” He stared down at the table for a couple of seconds.