She felt better afterwards. ‘Nothing like a good cry to let it all out,’ Bernie had said, giving her a big hug before she and the kids set off for home. ‘And don’t worry. I won’t tell a soul. You can trust me.’
What would she do without a friend like that? One Bernie was worth more than a million Melissas. The woman wasn’t worth bothering about. As for Yannis, Bernie was right. There was no point in dwelling on what she should have done. The best thing to do was to block it out and get on with her marriage.
Meanwhile, Emma felt quite excited about the after-school club opening. They could certainly do with the money. Maybe she’d drop in on Mum on the way home to sound her out.
‘Hello, you two!’ Mum opened the door with a delighted beam, bending down to tickle Willow under the chin and ruffle Gawain’s hair. ‘Give Gran a kiss then.’
Gawain flew past her. ‘Can we have tea in front of the telly?’
Clearly they’d been allowed to, when she’d been away …
He was rifling through the cupboards too. ‘Gawain wants a chocolate biscuit, Gran.’
Chocolate biscuits? Another no-no on the list she’d left her mother.
Willow, meanwhile, was straining in her pushchair, desperate to get out. If she did, it would take ages to coax her back in again. ‘Actually, Mum, I’ve come for a favour.’
Emma felt rather bad about always asking her mum to help out. Then again, she didn’t seem to mind. ‘Is there any chance you could have the kids for two afternoons a week when term starts? Only there’s a job going in the after-school club and we could do with the money. I should be back here by sixish.’
Mum looked as though she’d just been given a present. ‘I’d love to. Although I have to say that if Tom wasn’t just a garage mechanic, he’d be able to provide better for his family.’
Not again. ‘Please, Mum. Can we let that one go, just for once?’
Mum shrugged. She really did look good for her age, Emma thought. Her blonde hair – natural like her own – made her look much younger than fifty-two, and she was wearing a new lipstick (a pale orange) which suited her better than her usual rose. ‘OK. By the way, a letter came for Tom this morning. Don’t know why it got sent here, unless whoever posted it thought you two still lived with me.’
She put the letter in Emma’s hand excitedly. ‘Look at the frank mark. Come from a newspaper, it has.’
So it had. Maybe Tom had won something in one of those competitions he was always entering. Yes! Her heart beating with excitement, she pulled out a cheque. Two hundred pounds! It must have been some competition. There was a chit with it too.
Payment for reader tip.
She stared at the writing.
So it had been Tom who had tipped off the newspaper about Alice and Jack. He’d told them what she had told him in confidence. And he’d asked them to send the money to her mum’s address so she wouldn’t open it. How could he?
‘Won some money, has he?’ demanded Mum, staring at the cheque.
‘Looks like it,’ said Emma dryly.
‘What did he do to get that, then?’
‘I’m not sure of the details,’ said Emma grimly, watching Gawain finish the packet of chocolate biscuits. ‘But I’ll find out more when he gets home tonight.’
TRUE POST-HONEYMOON STORY
‘Seven weeks after we got back, I found myself expecting a honeymoon baby.’
Mary, now pregnant with her third
Chapter Twenty-Nine
ROSIE
The Villa Rosa was virtually empty now, apart from a skeleton staff and a couple who always returned every September. ‘We like to wait until the schools are back,’ the wife said each time as though she hadn’t said it the previous year, and the year before that. ‘Nice and quiet, don’t you think?’
Too quiet, thought Rosie. Jack was still barely speaking to her, save the odd phrase like ‘I’ll be late from school’ or ‘I can’t work in the kitchen today.’
She didn’t blame him. Any teenager had every right to be angry if his mother had lied to him for the past fifteen and a half years.
Now, sitting on the terrace overlooking the sea, Rosie reflected on that awful scene after Charlie – so hard to call him Winston! – had finally left the island, along with his bride and her two ghastly children.
‘You’ve got to tell Jack,’ Greco had said gently but firmly, putting his arm around her as they stood watching their guests’ taxi scattering dust down the lane as it headed for the airport. ‘Now that Winston and his wife know, you owe it to your son to come clean. Otherwise they might write to him themselves.’
He’d squeezed her bottom. ‘That’s no way for a boy to find out about his father, is it?’
He was right, but the prospect of breaking the news to Jack was so daunting that Rosie could feel her skin breaking out into a cold sweat. ‘Do you know where he is?’ she asked, her mouth so dry with nerves that she was almost unable to speak.
Greco smiled wryly. ‘Sitting in my boat, nursing his broken heart. He’s just had to say goodbye to his girlfriend, hasn’t he? So I suggested he might like some space.’
This man never failed to take her by surprise. Not only was he bright but he was also kind.
Greco understood, just as she did, that poor Jack was devastated over Alice. She’d felt exactly the same when Charlie had left her at the age of seventeen.
And now she was going to have to break his heart again.
Slowly, Rosie peeled away from Greco’s comforting arms and kissed him lightly on both cheeks. She slipped on her blue canvas beach shoes and began to walk down to the shore where the Siphalonian was anchored.
It was a pretty boat with a red hull and white woodwork which Greco painted every year, after the onslaught of the sun, wind and storms that it valiantly fought its way through. ‘My boat is my escape,’ he’d murmured to her the other evening when she’d asked if he was ever lonely. She’d been touched by his reply. ‘She is my wife. My child. When I am with her, I feel safe.’
Jack, it seemed, felt the same. There he was, sitting cross-legged on deck, staring out at the impossibly blue water with its slivers of green and the odd flash of a silver fish.
She called out to him. Would he mind if she joined him? It was worth the risk. She kicked off her canvas shoes and swam the short distance to where the boat was anchored.
‘You can always write,’ she said, once she was squatting down next to him. ‘To Alice, I mean.’
Her son had nodded, his face set on an unseen spot on the horizon. ‘We use Facebook nowadays, Mum. Letters are so uncool.’
She shrugged, thinking of the letter she had sent Charlie: a letter he had denied receiving. Rosie steeled herself. ‘There’s something I’ve got to tell you.’ She could taste bile in her mouth now. This was even harder than she’d thought. ‘You know how strange things happen, sometimes?’
Jack was still looking at the horizon. It was so difficult to know if a teenager was listening. The next bit would soon tell her. Rosie took a deep breath.
‘I actually met Winston before this summer. It was when I was quite young and living in the UK.’
Her son’s face whipped round. She definitely had his full attention now. ‘No way!’
He was grinning as though this was one of those happy coincidences instead of one that was going to change the course of his life. It’s not too late to come up with another story, Rosie told herself.
‘How did you know him, Mum? And why didn’t you tell me before?’
His eyes were open, waiting. She hesitated. Briefly, Rosie thought of Greco and of Cara who was sitting waiting for her in the kitchen. They were right. She owed Jack this, whatever the consequences.
‘I met him at a dance,’ she replied, ignoring his last question. ‘We … we fell in love.’
That was important. He needed to know it was that and not just lust. Jack wasn’t grinning now. He had his head to one side in that uncertain position he adopted when he wasn’t sure ab
out his maths homework.
‘So what happened?’
‘He … he had to go back to his training camp.’ She could leave it there; she didn’t have to tell him the whole story. But the words were spilling out now, in a flood of relief, and at the same time, a searing, burning guilt. ‘I wrote to him but he didn’t reply. I needed to tell him something, Jack. I needed to tell him I was pregnant.’
Just as she spoke, a large bird flew by, screaming as it landed on the water. Jack was frowning. ‘What did you say?’
This was awful! Forcing herself, she squeezed the next sentence out. ‘I needed to tell him I was pregnant,’ she repeated softly.
Jack leaped to his feet, staring down at her. His eyes bored into hers and his fists, she could see, were clenched by his side. He didn’t look like a youth any more. He looked like a man.
‘So I have a brother? Or a sister?’
She shook her head. Jack ran to the side of the boat and grabbed the railings. For a minute, she feared he might throw himself over. Scrambling to her feet, she joined him. ‘Please don’t say you had an abortion,’ he was muttering.
‘No.’ She put an arm around him. ‘I didn’t.’
His face was shining. ‘Then I have got a brother or sister. It’s what I’ve always wanted. It’s OK, Mum. There’s someone else at school whose mum had a kid before she got married. She was really young too.’ Then he stopped. ‘Did my dad know about this before he died?’
Yes. All she had to say was yes. But lies were too complicated. They had a way of forcing themselves out of the woodwork over the years. She’d started. She had to finish.
‘Jack, love.’ She took both his hands. ‘Winston is your dad.’
‘No!’
At first she thought the howl came from the large bird which had now flown onto the handrail next to them. Then she realised it was Jack, bending double as if racked with pain. He was glaring at her now with a fury that reminded her of someone else’s face. Her own father’s.
‘You’ve been lying to me all these years! You told me my dad was dead, killed in a motorbike accident. You even told me the date – November the twelfth! Every year we say a prayer for him!’
That had been the priest’s idea. Rosie had been unable to find a reason to turn it down, despite Cara’s disapproval. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.’
There was a crack as her son brought down his hand on the handrail, frightening the bird so that it flew off, squawking madly. ‘Is that why he came here? To check me out? To see if I’m the kind of son he wants after all these years?’
‘No, it wasn’t like that.’ She reached out her hand but he angrily pushed it away. ‘Winston didn’t write back to me all those years ago because he didn’t get my letter.’
There was a disgusted sound. ‘Or so he says.’
‘It was as big a shock to him to find us here as it was for me to see him. You’ve got to believe me.’
Jack was regarding her now with the disdain that she’d seen on Alice’s face when talking to Winston. But worse. ‘Why should I believe anything you say? Fuck off, Mum. I never want to see you again.’
Then he’d leaped off the side of the boat and swum to the shore. She’d followed him, of course, but although they were so close to the beach, he got there before her. ‘He’ll come back,’ soothed Cara when she eventually returned to the villa, dripping wet, both from her tears and the sea. ‘My daughter, she was the same at that age.’
But your daughter didn’t come back, Rosie almost said. For two agonising hours, she waited for him to return. Then, just when she was about to call the police, the door swung open and Jack stomped in with sand all down his legs and shorts.
‘Get off.’ He pushed her away as she went to greet him; marching instead to the sink and washing his hands before starting to prep the veg for dinner. ‘I don’t want to talk to you, Mum. Got it?’
It would pass, Cara said. And maybe it might have done, if not for the next instalment of Winston’s life story which the Mail ran the following day.
WINSTON’S SHAME
Winston King has built his reputation on being a fearless Royal Marine. But the truth is very different.
Four years ago, Winston was in charge of escorting convoys through Afghanistan. It was an operation fraught with dangers – and one that demanded great care. Winston, then known as Charlie, allowed one convoy to pass through a route renowned for landmines.
Tragically, part of the convoy was blown up, leading to the death of Nicola Thomas, a 36-year-old Wren with whom Winston was in a relationship at the time.
In an official report, Winston was exonerated from blame for the incident. It was claimed that, in the circumstances, the risk was justified.
However, both the mother and sister of Nick Thomas still feel very bitter towards Mr King. ‘He should have waited for confirmation that the route was clear of landmines,’ says Pamela Thomas, Miss Thomas’s 72-year-old mother. ‘If he had, my Nicola would still be alive today. It makes me sick to see the man on our television screens every morning, telling us how to get fit. It’s about time everyone else knew the truth about him.’
Rosie had read the newspaper article with a mounting sense of dismay. During her long heart-to-heart with Winston, she’d been taken aback to find that he seemed a decent, honest sort of man. He had really appeared shocked that she had been pregnant. Unless he was a very good actor, he hadn’t received that letter.
Nor did he seem the kind of man who would carelessly allow a convoy to cross dangerous territory without making the right safety checks.
She couldn’t help wondering how he would be taking the news, back in the UK. Part of her wanted to email him and tell him that she was sorry he was having such a tough time. The sensible part told her to forget it. His wife might take it the wrong way, interpreting it as a move to get him back. Besides, why should she worry herself about Winston King?
Because he was Jack’s father, that’s why. Rosie closed her iPad quickly. There was no reason for Jack to read the papers. Like most teenagers, he was far more interested in Facebook. With any luck, he might not see this. Her son had only just found his father. It didn’t seem fair that he should be turned against him.
After all, as Cara kept telling her, there were usually two sides to a story. The problem was knowing which one was true.
Now, as Rosie scrubbed down the patio table, making a start on all the post-season jobs that she did at this time of the year, she still couldn’t get rid of that feeling of unease.
If Jack had read that final story about his father and the Wren, he hadn’t mentioned it. ‘Best leave sleeping cats lie,’ Cara had said, nodding toothily to make her point.
Rosie couldn’t be bothered to correct her. There were more important things to worry about.
Meanwhile, there had been one email from Winston, asking her to let him know if he could ‘do anything’.
I think you’ve done more than enough already, she’d emailed back. We don’t need your help. On the other hand, if you want to email your son, that’s up to the two of you.
Did they keep in touch? she wondered as she scrubbed the table harder, letting out her anger and fear. If so, that was another thing that Jack was staying silent about.
Suddenly she felt a warm breath on her neck, followed by a pair of strong arms around her. Before she knew it, Rosie was being lifted into the air. ‘Please,’ she laughed, breathless. ‘Put me down!’
Reluctantly, or so it seemed, Greco did so. ‘Leave this,’ he declared, gesturing towards the bucket and scrubbing brush. ‘Come on the boat with me.’
It was tempting. Since she and Greco had got together, they had made several wonderful boat trips. Sometimes it seemed it was the only time they could have together, away from prying eyes and Jack’s sullenness.
‘Not now,’ she said, nestling her chin on his shoulder. ‘I need to be here for when Jack gets home from school.’
Greco gave her a comforting squeeze. ‘I think he may b
e some time. I saw him at the bar when I was coming over here.’
Her heart filled with unease. That was another thing her son had started to do, since the summer. Drink. All the other teenagers did it but she still didn’t like it.
‘It’s just a stage,’ said Greco softly. ‘He’ll get through it.’
But would he? Rosie wondered, looking out over the horizon where the sea merged with the sky in a dramatic indigo-blue line.
And even if he did, what about her? Would she get through it too? A memory of Winston’s mouth on hers in that crowded dance hall came back to her. As clear as the carved heart on the leg of the patio table, in its teenage capital letters.
ALICE LOVES JACK.
The girl must have done that, before she’d left. However hard she scrubbed, the heart wouldn’t come out. And why should it? There was something about your first love that could never go away.
Maybe, Rosie admitted to herself, that was why she was still unable to banish her own memories, especially now they had been rekindled.
In fact, after this summer, could anything ever be the same again?
ADVICE FOR TODAY’S NEWLY MARRIED BRIDE
Start as you mean to go on – providing it’s your idea.
Stash a secret pile of ‘running away’ money in case things get tough.
Be selective with your past history.
Never be rude about his mother, even if he is.
From Charisma’s bridal special
Chapter Thirty
WINSTON
‘Where are my football boots, Mum?’
‘Who’s hidden my laptop? I know it’s you, Freddie. Give it back or you’ll never see your football boots again!’
‘Buck up, you lot! You’re going to be late!’
Winston paused, mid-exercise, to shut the door of the spare room which Melissa had allowed him to convert into a gym. He should be at the television studio now. Not listening to this awful pre-school argument that went on every day with minor variations.
After the Honeymoon Page 27
