Chapter 27
We met in the car park, him not being allowed into the hostel and me not being able to stay sitting down.
‘I hope you weren’t in the middle of some vital action,’ I said, jittering from foot to foot under the solitary tree, which dripped unfelt moisture down my neck.
‘We’re demolishing a building not performing open heart surgery,’ he said, watching me with his head on one side. ‘What’s the matter? You sounded… odd. And you said it was an emergency, but all your limbs appear to be attached.’
‘I don’t know. I think… I mean, I’m not sure,’ I rambled, clutching the rattling tin box to my chest. I hadn’t even put a coat on because I was so wound up, and the cold wind was finding all the nooks and crannies in my clothing.
‘I think… I think… that I should have listened more closely to Isobel.’
‘Come and sit in my car before hypothermia sets in.’ He opened the passenger door.
‘And explain. Please explain, because if I’m meant to be filling in the gaps myself then I have to admit to doing an inadequate job.
And why have you got Isobel’s tin? There’s a café just down the road, you didn’t need to bring your own tea and biscuits. ’
In answer I lifted the lid of the tin and shook it lightly, as though calling a cat in for its tea. ‘Look. I wondered why it rattled, when there’s only a packet of teabags, a box of sugar lumps and a few odd biscuits in there. We didn’t look under the teabags.’ I lifted the packet.
He looked. Then he stared. Then he reached into the tin and pulled out one of the glittering objects. ‘Good Lord. Are these…?’
I nodded, still fidgeting around. I just couldn’t keep still. ‘Diamonds. Yes. I think so anyway, I mean, what else could they be?’
‘Glass?’ Ross held up the stone to the light. It was quite large and prismed the feeble rays of the winter sun around inside the car.
‘Isobel’s father was a mining engineer,’ I said, trying to keep my voice level. ‘Why would she have glass beads?’ I didn’t mention Isobel’s confession about her father buying her silence. That wasn’t Ross’s business.
‘Not a very ethical business.’ Ross was staring into the heart of the stone. ‘Slavery, people dying, all that.’
‘I don’t think he was a very nice man.’ I paraphrased my feelings about Isobel’s father. ‘But I’m fairly sure he’ll be dead now.’
‘So these are… Should we find her? Maybe she didn’t know…’
‘Ross.’ I grabbed his wrist and he lowered the diamond. ‘She knew.’ I reached into my pocket and pulled out Isobel’s letter to me. ‘Look.’ I pointed to the relevant paragraph.
I am leaving my diamonds behind. Well, not quite all, I have my favourite that I shall keep to remind me of those times which were – contrary to your imaginings – not all bad. The rest I leave for you and the child.
‘“The rest I leave for you and the child”,’ I breathed. ‘I thought she was just talking about the crow diamonds. I didn’t know she had any others, because we only saw the black ones.’ I took another diamond from the battered old tin. ‘There’s a fortune in here.’
Ross turned his head slowly. ‘That’s what she meant by using them to level the field between you and David,’ he said, and his voice sounded a bit thick, as though his tongue got in the way of the words. His finger went to his mouth and I watched him bite at a corner of nail.
‘Yes.’ I was a bit puzzled by his reaction.
‘If I sell these then I can buy a house somewhere and he won’t be able to hold living conditions over me.
’ Those middle-of-the-night worryings that David would be able to offer Tilly everything I couldn’t came back to me.
My fears that, in a few years, Tilly might choose to go and live with her father for the riding lessons and the carefree weekends on beaches in Devon, rather than with her careworn mother who had to work odd hours and where holidays were a caravan at Bridlington.
‘So.’ Ross kept his head averted. I waited for the rest of the sentence, but it never came.
‘Ross?’ I touched his cheek. It felt daring; our touches were still restricted to the odd hug, a hand touch. We hadn’t even kissed again since that random moment in the disintegrating house.
When he turned to me, his eyes were huge and clouded. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, sounding slightly more normal. ‘I know how this bit goes.’
I suddenly saw. ‘No, you don’t.’
A sideways twitch of his head made his hair cover part of his face. ‘Your life is on the up now. You can sell the diamonds and then the world is your oyster. I’ve seen it a lot, bad life and then recovery.’
‘And you get left behind?’ I made my tone soft. I almost wanted to laugh. All that therapy hadn’t really helped Ross at all, had it?
Another head twitch. ‘It’s fine. Honestly.’
‘And you think I would do that? You think so little of me that you expect me to dump you and run off into a future of…’ I looked down at the diamonds glittering as they rolled around amid the biscuit crumbs and spilled tea. ‘Whatever,’ I finished. ‘You really think that?’
Now it was his turn to touch my cheek. ‘I don’t want to, Libby,’ he said softly.
‘But I’ve been here before, remember. Not, admittedly, to quite this extent.
’ He held up the diamond again. ‘Coming into a fortune in diamonds is a new one on me, but the principle is the same and it means you can have a whole new life. You and Tilly and David.’
‘And you.’ I took the diamond from between his fingers. ‘I want you to be part of it all too, Ross. Don’t let what happened before ruin this.’
It felt as though everything went still then. The pathetic car park tree ceased to waggle its skinny branches in the wind, the permanent background rush of sound stopped. The world froze.
And we were kissing. Proper, heated kisses, as though Ross and I were suddenly acknowledging one another as actual people rather than roles and situations.
He was this incredibly hot man, and I had become the me that I’d been before I’d been a stressed-out mother.
In fact, we became a bit teenager, and had to straighten up, clearing our throats and tidying our clothing before we got arrested.
‘Well, that seems like a positive reaction,’ Ross said eventually, tidying his hair. ‘Once common sense cut in. Looks like I really did listen to my therapist.’
‘For which I am very glad,’ I said, still rather breathless. ‘Wow.’
‘Much as I would like to take you to bed right now, common sense still has the upper hand and I’ve got a camera crew and a team of twenty stuck in the middle of woodland waiting for my return.
’ The look Ross gave me now sparkled more than a thousand diamonds in full sun.
‘So you may have to excuse me for a while.’
‘I’m going to take these to the man who looked at the crow diamonds for me.
’ I put the lid back on the tin to distract myself from my desire to fling myself on to Ross and not let him leave.
Besides, the steering wheel was in the way and passers-by had begun to stare.
‘I might at least find out what I’m dealing with here.
We might be jumping to conclusions and they’re only worth a couple of grand. ’
He was breathing heavily too, I noticed and we grinned at each other. ‘Don’t be bloody daft, I saw smaller diamonds during the Coronation.’ Now his smile was so radiant that the inside of the car shone. ‘You’re going to be all right, Libby.’
I touched his cheek again, mostly because it felt wonderful to be able to.
‘I was always going to be all right,’ I said softly.
‘It was just the nature of the all-rightness that was in question, and these’ – I shook the tin, which rattled slightly but only a little because the teabags and biscuits were still in there, buffering the diamonds nicely – ‘are the icing on the cake.’
‘And Isobel?’
‘Knew what she was doing.’ I remembered Isobel, her words of advice, her desire for freedom.
‘I might have some explaining to do as to how I came into the diamonds, but I’ve got her notes and enough people knew she lived in Elm Cottage.
I suppose they might want to trace her to make sure I didn’t steal these? ’
Ross smiled. ‘Trust you to think of the problems first. You’re right though, provenance will have to be proved and all that, it’s not going to be a speedy process.
In the meantime, well. We can sort ourselves out.
It might be nice to at least start off our relationship without money being a huge factor.
Now, I really ought to go back and sort out my demolition men. ’
I climbed out and his jaunty hand wave as he drove away reassured me that Ross and I could have a very nice thing going between us. That kiss had also been a bit of a giveaway.