by Sophie Brent
“Erin. Uncle Lucien would never forgive me if I spent the day sorting old tax receipts instead of doing something practical to help you today.”
“Fair point,” she smiled. “There is one thing I should be doing today if I wasn’t hosting a lunch party. Sorting out my van. I need that van to make my deliveries. Someone is going to pay for that damage, and I have a good idea who that will be. In the meantime, I need to find a garage that is willing to take it in today and make the repairs necessary so that I can get back to work and be on the road tomorrow. Can you help with that?”
“Leave that to me,” Matt replied and tapped two fingers to the side of his brow. “Consider it done. Have a great lunch.”
He turned and looked over his shoulder. “Please don’t hurt anyone when I’m out. It doesn’t look good on the police report.”
Erin turned to Prisha and blinked innocently. “I have no idea what he could possibly mean.”
Time went so quickly that it was a shock when Prisha leaned in to give Erin a quick shoulder hug. “Righty,” she said. “This deli is now a bistro and it is absolutely amazing. The tables are dressed, and this room has never looked so good. You should be very proud. I know I am, and I only helped to set the tables and get everything prepped. Time for you, young lady, to go and get changed! Your guests will be arriving in half an hour.”
Erin looked up in astonishment. “It can’t be that time already,” she gasped. “How is that possible?”
“I don’t know,” Prisha shrugged. “How about because you been working non-stop?”
Erin scanned the trays and simmering pans on the hob. “I think everything is ready,” she murmured to herself and quickly checked the pasta sauce. “What about the antipasti? How are we getting on with …”
“All taken care of. The buffet dishes are all laid out and ready for people to help themselves, and the food smells amazing. You have officially excelled yourself this time.”
“With your help,” Erin grinned at Prisha. “I hope they like it.”
“Looks like you going to find out sooner than you think,” Prisha replied and nodded towards the front door of the deli. To Erin’s surprise, Fiona Hanson was standing outside on the pavement and peering in through the windows.
“Please don’t tell me I have the time wrong,” Erin groaned. “It can’t be one already?”
“Nope. Looks like she’s on her own. Why don’t you let her and find out?”
“Good idea,” Erin replied and stripped off the apron, hung it on the hook in the kitchen, and strolled over to open the front door.
“Hi, Fiona,” she smiled. “Do come in and make yourself at home. You are a little early for lunch, but feel free to find a seat. Do you remember Prisha Patel?”
“Of course,” Fiona replied with a faint smile and waved at Prisha. “Zoe has told me so much about you.”
“Really? Well, at least some of it will be true.” Prisha shrugged. “Hi, Fiona. Sorry to hear about your wedding and everything. Can I get you a drink before I go? Wine, water, lemonade, arsenic?”
“Prisha!” Erin laughed.
“Thanks, but I think I’ll wait for the others. Actually, it’s you I have come to see Erin. Zoe told me that you had collected the luggage from my hotel room. Would you mind if I had a quick look for something?”
“No problem,” Erin replied. “All of your bags are upstairs. It’s just this way.”
“I think these are your suitcases,” Erin said and dragged the two largest bags out from the stack in her father’s bedroom. “My neighbour Matt Ridley brought them up from the van for me, in exchange for a late lunch.”
“I never was one for traveling light,” Fiona replied in a thin voice and opened up the first case. “It was crazy really, I could easily have popped back home and collected anything I needed. But somehow, it felt imperative to bring all my summer clothes to the hotel. Work was such a rush last week I suppose I didn’t even have time think about what I was going to wear apart from the big day. My plan was to sort out my honeymoon things when I got here, but then things went spinning out of control and... Well, you know what happened next.”
“I’m so sorry,” Erin whispered and sat down on the bed to watch Fiona rummage about inside her clothing.
“Emma’s mother is flying back from her home in Portugal. She had written me this lovely wedding card and I wanted to show it to my dad. Do you remember if you saw one?”
“Sorry, no. Maya packed your case. I can’t imagine what her mum is going through. That poor woman.” Erin murmured. “Is she staying with you?”
“Mrs. Lucas? No. She has friends in Winchester, so they’re picking her up from the airport, but I plan to meet her tomorrow. She wants to go to Abbotsdown Hall. It’s only right that I go back there with her so that we can get through this together. I only hope that she can forgive me because I still can’t forgive myself.”
Erin took a moment to think through what she has to say before replying.
“There is one thing I don’t understand, Fiona. I hope you don’t mind me asking, but why did you invite Emma to be your bridesmaid? Even I could see that she was difficult.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Fiona replied, her attention totally focused on the contents of the suitcase in front of her. “Emma was very stressed about the wedding planning. That’s all.”
“I know that you want to remember the best about your friend, but please don’t try to deny it. I saw it for myself. You were fighting at the hotel on Friday when I delivered your wedding cakes. It looked to me as though Emma was threatening you. What was that all about?”
Erin could hear Fiona’s breathing grow faster and her shoulders hunched up in distress. Instinctively Erin slid off the bed, took both of Fiona’s hands in hers and looked up into her face.
“Please. You can tell me the truth. I promise that whatever you say will never leave this room unless you want it to.”
Fiona’s gaze locked onto Erin’s face and she slowly raised her head.
“I know that Zoe trusts you, Erin. So, I am going to hold you to that promise. You can never tell anyone.”
Erin replied with a slow nod of her head and waited in silence for Fiona to make the next move.
“Emma,” Fiona started to say, then she faltered and sucked in a couple of deep breaths as though steadying herself before carrying on. Erin desperately wanted to tell her to hurry up and get it over with, but she dared not interrupt this moment.
Fiona sat down on the bed next to Erin and bent over so that she could rest her elbows on her knees, unable to look Erin in the face as she spluttered out the words that were caught in her throat.
“Emma Wilson was my half-sister. That’s why I invited her to my wedding. Emma was the sister I always wanted.”
Chapter Fourteen
Erin shuffled up the bed and leaned against the headboard so that she could give her full attention to what Fiona was saying.
“Emma’s mother used to work in my dad’s accountancy firm. She was the office manager and made sure everything worked smoothly, which was not always the easiest of jobs. My mum had just been made a partner in a law firm in the city and was working crazy hours to keep up with the extra workload that came with the new responsibility. I knew that my dad was a typical workaholic accountant but having two parents who were totally obsessed with their careers is a hard thing to deal with for any child.”
“I know what that feels like! Bottom line. You spent a lot of time on your own.” Erin asked, urging Fiona to carry on speaking.
Fiona nodded. “I was sent away to boarding school when I was nine and only came home for the school holidays. Apart from two weeks of awkward silences in some sunny place, getting to know them again, I was usually left in my dad’s office and told to work on a school project and not to get in the way.”
She smiled up at Erin. “I knew Emma’s mother as Mrs. Jenny Lucas. I think that she felt sorry for me and used to make sure that I was fed and looked after while my d
ad was working. We chatted over meals and walks in the park. Over time, she told me that she was divorced and had a little girl of her own who was my age, who was staying with her grandparents over the school holidays. I liked Mrs. Lucas very much.”
Fiona paused and started chewing her lower lip. “And…so did my dad. In other ways.”
“Your dad and Jenny Lucas. Ah. Right. Got it. So, her little girl...”
“Was Emma Lucas. My half-sister,” Fiona nodded. “My father had insisted that his name was kept off the birth certificate or any other legal document. But she was his daughter. There’s no doubt about it. They had been seeing one another for years before she fell pregnant.”
“How did you find out?”
Fiona pushed up from the soft mattress and walked over to the bedroom window to watch the pedestrians stroll along the street outside in blissful ignorance of the torment raging inside that room.
“You know what it is like at university. There are so many new things to deal with and people to meet. I had just started my accountancy degree and the first term was tough!”
“I remember,” Erin laughed. “I thought that I would never be on top of all of the project work and essays and assignments that we had to complete by Christmas. To be honest, it was mad.”
“Mad. Yes, that just about describes it. But just when I thought that I was coping, there was a knock on my door one evening and one of the girls in my class was standing there. She said that her name was Emma Lucas and she wondered if I was any relation to Eric Hanson because her mother Jenny Lucas used to work for him. Well, of course, I invited her in, and we got talking, and that’s when it all came out.” Her words were shuddering stops and starts. “My dad… and her mother.”
Erin walked a few steps closer to Fiona and wrapped her hand around the hot thin fingers of the desperately lonely woman who had lost a sister.
“I always wanted a sister to share my life,” Erin murmured, “but it was not to be. I think that’s why I appreciate my friends like Zoe, Prisha, and Carol.”
Fiona turned and looked at Erin for a moment with a gentle smile on her face.
“I know just what you mean. I made tons of friends at boarding school, but Ethan, Harry and Maya will always be the people who are there for me, no matter what. I wanted to be closer to Zoe, you know,” Fiona whispered, “But she said she already had one bundle of trouble to deal with. Her school friend, Erin Kelly.”
Erin smiled back in the bright sunshine.
“I take that as a compliment, but we are very different people. Zoe is capable of giving unconditional loyalty to her friends and family. I’m not sure that I am.”
Fiona turned back to stare out through the open window as the sound of cars and pedestrians filtered up from the street and then nodded slowly.
“You can’t imagine how I felt to be told by a total stranger that I had a half-sister that I didn’t know existed. Shock. Anger. Resentment. Oh yes, all of those things. A sister was the one thing that I had always longed for, just like you. I felt betrayed by my parents, Erin. Betrayed because of some old-fashioned and ridiculous sense of shame.”
“Did you ask your mother about Emma?”
“Of course. I actually called Emma a liar to her face and said that she must have made a mistake. How could they keep a secret daughter from me? That was a totally ridiculous idea.”
Fiona’s voice was trembling, and Erin took a tighter hold of her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.
“There was no mistake. I came home from university that weekend and told my mother about this mad girl who had knocked on my hall of residence door and introduced herself as my sister. I remember sitting at the kitchen table joking about how ridiculous that was, until I noticed that my mum wasn’t laughing. She was crying.”
Fiona turned to look at Erin with tears streaming down her cheeks.
“My mother always knew about Emma, but she refused to talk about it. My dad couldn’t bear to see the damage that he had caused in so many lives, so he paid the child maintenance and school fees for a little girl he knew nothing about. He even refused to see her or legally acknowledge that she was his. Emma was the ghost. The reminder that he was human just like the rest of us, so he blocked it all out of his life as though it had never happened.”
“Did Emma forgive your parents? For keeping her away from you?”
“Never,” Fiona shook her head, her shoulders slumped. Erin could hear the pain in her voice as she squeezed her eyes tight shut. “How could she? As far as she was concerned my dad had rejected her like some inconvenient past mistake. She never expected his love, but she did expect some recognition of what she had achieved in life by her brains and hard work. She never got it.”
Her eyes fluttered open. “Emma came shopping with me a few weeks ago. My mum wouldn’t even talk to her, and I’m sorry for that. It wouldn’t have made any difference, of course, but it would have been generous. Emma wasn’t to blame for my father’s affair.”
Fiona sighed. “That afternoon at the hotel, when you saw us fighting? Emma had just found out that I had invited my mother to the girls’ dinner that evening. She was so furious, I thought she was going to walk out on us. I tried to explain to her that I wanted this to be a new start for both of us, but she wouldn’t listen. There was no getting away from the fact that both my parents were going to be there for my wedding, and she needed to get ready to face them. Especially my dad. Her dad. That’s why I had invited them there. To finally meet up and get over this ridiculous behaviour once and for all. I wasn’t ashamed of Emma and there was no reason that they should be.”
“Wait,” Erin frowned. “Emma must have known that your parents would be at your wedding when she agreed to be one of your bridesmaids. Was she okay with that?”
“You have to understand, my mother told me everything about my father’s relationship with Jenny Lucas, but she made me promise her that I wouldn’t tell any of my friends that Emma was my half-sister. The only person who knew was Ethan. We had just started dating so it was only natural that I told him about what Emma had claimed. I had no idea at the time that it was true.”
“You didn’t even tell Maya or Zoe?” Erin asked in disbelief.
“Not a word. My mother was quite insistent. Ethan agreed to go along with it, but I know that he wasn’t happy keeping up the pretence and he’s almost given the game away a few times over the years.”
“You wanted Emma to meet her father at your wedding?” Erin gasped. “Is why you invited her? So that they would be forced to communicate?
Fiona gave a quick nod and sniffed. “It seemed like a good idea at the time. But that was before I realized how much Emma had changed. The girl I met at university was intelligent and reasonable. But that was before she married our friend Harry.” Fiona stopped and waved her hands in the air. “How was I to know that she had become so bitter about her life and was determined to show us all how very superior and clever she was?”
“Zoe told me that she was quite cruel to Maya until Rebecca stepped in. That must have been so hard for you.”
“Hard?” Fiona cried out. “You have no idea. It was one of the most humiliating nights of my life. My mother had insisted on sitting at the end of the table as far away from Emma as possible, but then she had to listen to Emma going on and on about how successful her business was. And the more Emma had to drink the louder and more aggressive she became. Maya didn’t even try to fight back when Emma started to pick on her, calling her every kind of loser under the sun. I was almost grateful when my mother left with Zoe, claiming that she had a headache after drinking too much champagne.”
“An imaginary headache or a real one?”
“She has never had a hangover in her life.”
“Ouch. As bad as that.” Erin sucked in air through her teeth.
“Worse. Did Zoe tell you about Rebecca? I’ll take that nod as a yes. You can imagine what Emma felt like when Rebecca dropped the bombshell that she had been totally lying about
her fantastic career. I didn’t know whether to feel sorry for Emma or challenge her for being a total liar. It was totally confusing.”
“I think Maya knows more about that than she is prepared to tell you,” Erin sighed.
“What you mean?” Fiona frowned.
“I saw Maya with Harry Wilson today at the Manor House. It’s obvious to me that they’re still very fond of one another. Maya thinks that Emma was deliberately taking a low-paying job to get a bigger divorce settlement. Do you think that’s even likely?”
Fiona closed your eyes and waited a few moments before giving a slow nod. “Actually yes, it’s very likely. I knew that Emma was going to divorce Harry when Ethan wanted to invite him to our wedding. Emma told me that if Harry was here, she wouldn’t come. So, she made me choose between them, I suppose. That’s the kind of person she was, Erin. The thing is, I knew her, and I accepted her as that person. Good and bad. That was the hardest thing. She couldn’t accept that anyone would love her and care for her as she was.”
Fiona turned back to face the open window and when she spoke her voice was trembling with emotion. “Now no one will. That’s the tragedy, that’s what I can’t get over. Emma never had the chance to really join our family.”
“She knew that you had tried. Surely that was important to her,” Erin whispered.
Fiona gave a small nod. “I suppose that was something.”
“No. It was a lot more than that, Fiona. You reached out to her and treated her like one of the family. You couldn’t change the mistakes that your parents made in the past, but in time they would have come around to accepting her. You gave her that chance. That’s special.”
Fiona looked over her shoulder at Erin with a faint smile. “Thanks. You’re a good friend. I’m sorry that we haven’t seen much of each other since you moved back.”
“No worries,” Erin shrugged then paused for a moment before drawing Fiona back to sit on the corner of her dad’s old bed.
