Chapter 12
Finn made no move to come into the kitchen. ‘Are you busy? Would you like me to leave you to it?’ These were the casual words he said aloud, but Jade read the unspoken ones in his eyes.
Are you OK? Or would you like me to escort him off the premises?
‘We won’t be too long, thanks, darling. But I’d be grateful if you could ask someone to man reception. We’re expecting a delivery.’
‘I can do that.’ Finn gave a slight nod, before glancing back at Hector. ‘Apologies for interrupting. Let me know if you need anything, Jade. I’ll be right outside.’
He closed the door and Jade was half relieved and half anxious that she’d let him go so easily. But this was something she needed to deal with herself. And Finn knew that better than anyone. He had read the room perfectly.
Jade went back to the kitchen table and sat in the chair she’d vacated a few minutes earlier. ‘We’re getting married in just over a month.’ It was the first information she’d given him about herself, she realised. So far Hector had been the one who’d done all of the talking.
‘Congratulations.’ His eyes warmed and he leaned forward eagerly. ‘Have you known each other a long time?’
‘Long enough.’ She deflected his question with one of her own.
‘Did you get married again yourself?’ One of the few things Jade knew about him was that he’d been married to Elizabeth for a very short time, and that she’d been a babe in arms when he’d left.
The only thing he had ever given Jade was his name.
Elizabeth had told her that more than once.
‘I’m widowed,’ he said evenly. ‘My wife was killed in a car accident five years ago.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ She realised that she was. He wasn’t that old and he’d had a lot of loss in his life, and if he’d been anyone else she’d have warmed to him by now, but there had been far too much water under the bridge for that. She gathered herself.
‘Did you intend this to be a one-off visit? I’m still not sure why you’re here.’ She folded her arms across her chest, trying to prepare herself mentally for whatever his answer would be.
There was a little pause and she could see he was struggling to find the right words.
‘I’d really like it if it wasn’t a one-off, but I get it if you’d prefer I wasn’t back in your life…’
‘You’ve never been in my life. So it would be difficult for you to be back in it.’ The words were out of her mouth before she could think they might sound rude. But at least they were honest.
He sighed. ‘You’re right. I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t have come.’ He shuffled his feet and again Jade had the feeling he was about to take flight. And she didn’t know whether she wanted him to go or not. She didn’t remember ever feeling this conflicted.
‘But you did come. So I’m guessing there’s a reason.’ She met his eyes. ‘Why did you come back now?’
He swallowed. ‘I came because of your letter. As I said earlier, I regretted sending it back the minute I’d done it.
And I couldn’t get it out of my head. I’ve been here to the cottage, more than once, but I was too afraid to come in any of the other times.
That’s the truth. I’m a coward, Jade. I think if I wasn’t such a coward I’d have made more fuss about seeing you before. ’
She digested this information slowly. She seemed to remember her mother had said he was a coward once too, but there’d been a different reason. Your father was too cowardly for the responsibility of kids, had been how Elizabeth had put it. He had big plans and thought kids would get in the way.
But it was weird hearing him say it himself.
‘What do you mean you’d have made more fuss about seeing me before?’
‘I mean I’d have fought harder to be in your life. But, as you probably know, your mother wasn’t keen.’ He hesitated and she saw the lines of tension in his face. ‘I don’t imagine she’d be that keen to know I’m here now. How is she, by the way? Does she know you wrote to me?’
‘She died four years ago. She had a stroke.’
Shock flickered in his eyes. ‘Oh, lord! I’m so sorry. I had no idea. Elizabeth always seemed so… strong. So capable. It was one of the reasons I respected her wishes about you.’
‘What wishes?’ She looked at him keenly. It felt like he was contradicting himself at every turn. Was there something she wasn’t getting here?
‘When your mother and I split up, she told me in no uncertain terms that she didn’t want me in her life. Or yours. She had big plans and they didn’t include me.’
‘That’s exactly what she said about you.’ Jade stared at him in confusion. ‘She said you didn’t want kids. That you thought they would get in the way. And that as soon as you found out she was pregnant, you left.’
‘If that was true, Jade, we’d never have got married at all.
’ It was his turn to look confused. ‘Yes, it’s true that we married before you were born, but not that much before.
She was six months pregnant when we got married.
Of course I knew she was expecting you. That’s why we got married.
’ He reached for his satchel. ‘But you don’t need to take my word for that! ’
He drew out another piece of paper and passed it to her. It was a marriage certificate. Jade looked at the date and saw that it confirmed what he’d just said. Her parents had got married three months before she was born.
She stared at it in shock. This was so different to what Elizabeth had told her and it had never occurred to Jade to question her. It had certainly never occurred to her to ask to see a wedding certificate.
‘But why would she lie to me for all those years? I don’t understand.’
He closed his eyes and dipped his head briefly. He looked pretty stricken too. There was a small silence during which Jade tried to assimilate these shocking new facts.
It was impossible. The whole of her past, which she’d always seen as set in stone – dishonourable irresponsible father abandons struggling wife and baby – was now in question. It felt as though someone had taken a hammer to the immutable rock of her past and smashed it to fragments.
Hector spoke first. ‘People usually lie because the truth is too difficult.’ He took a deep breath. ‘The truth in our case is that we were totally incompatible. And Elizabeth didn’t want me in her life. We were about to split up when she got pregnant.’
‘But then you decided to get married instead? That doesn’t make sense.’
‘No, it doesn’t, does it. Elizabeth insisted we got married.
And from my point of view, I just thought I’d have to make it work.
I also thought that having a baby would change everything.
Which of course it did, but it didn’t make us any more compatible.
I think she felt the same. I think both of us were in denial and it didn’t work from day one.
To be honest, when Elizabeth asked me to go, I was relieved. At least she was being honest.’
Jade took a deep breath and blew it out again. ‘OK. So I think I understand why you two didn’t stay together. But why didn’t you want me in your life?’
‘I did. But that wasn’t the deal.’ He looked her straight in the eyes.
‘The deal was that I paid your mother a one-off financial settlement, on condition she would never come back to me for more. Which to her credit she never did. But I also had to sign a legal document saying I would stay out of your life.’
‘That can’t be true. I don’t believe such a document exists.’ Jade shook her head and pushed back her chair in the same movement and stood up. ‘There’s no judge in the land who would agree to that. It’s crazy.’
She swept across the small kitchen with her back to him, wanting to put as much space as possible between them. But Hector carried on speaking.
‘You’re right. It is crazy and I’m sure a judge wouldn’t have agreed, but we didn’t go to court. It was a private agreement.’
Jade turned round to face him again. He had another piece of paper in his hand. ‘I have it here if you’d like to see it.’ He put it on the table.
She felt sick. But she knew she’d regret it if she didn’t follow this through. She had to know the truth, however painful it was. My God, what a can of worms she’d opened when she’d sent him that letter introducing herself.
She went back to the table and saw that it was all as he’d said. An agreement in black and white. Signed by them both and witnessed by a third party. The sum of money he’d given her mother was eye-watering.
For a moment neither of them spoke. Jade felt numb and Hector looked pretty solemn.
After a few more seconds, he continued. ‘Elizabeth owned a 50 per cent share in a hotel when we met. The Arleston Court hotel. She said that if she could buy the rest then your future would be secured. She wouldn’t need any more maintenance from me.’
There was a pause as Jade took this in. ‘She did buy it,’ she said at last. ‘But I always thought she’d borrowed the money from investors. That was the story I was told.’ She stared at him, trying to get her head around it all. ‘I was brought up there.’
‘I know you were. I popped by a few times, hoping to see you. And once I did. You were playing outside in the gardens. You were about five.’ His face twisted a little. ‘I obviously couldn’t introduce myself, but it was good to know you were growing up in a beautiful place.’
Jade nodded. She felt slightly less sick now, but it really was like having the whole of her past rewritten and she knew it was going to take some time to assimilate all this. Probably quite a long time.
Her phone pinged with a WhatsApp message and she glanced at it.
Finn was asking if she was OK. Bless him.
Suddenly, all she wanted to do was talk to Finn.
He was one of the few people in the world who might be able to understand how she was feeling right now, having been through something similar last year.
He’d also had to process the fact that some things in his past had been totally different to what he’d been led to believe.
She gave Hector a direct look. ‘I don’t know what to say. There’s so much I didn’t know.’ She hoped her voice wasn’t as wobbly as she felt inside.
‘I’m sure. And I’m sorry to be the one to spring it on you. It must be a tremendous shock finding out like this.’ He began to gather bits of paper and photographs. ‘I totally get it if you want me to go.’
‘I think I do. But not permanently. I mean, I would like us to have another meeting.’ She wiped a hand across her forehead, which felt damp.
A strand of dark hair was sticking to her brow.
She freed it, and blinked a few times. ‘I always thought you didn’t want to be part of my life.
That’s what Mum said. I had no reason to question it. ’
‘Until you wrote to me?’ He paused from gathering things.
‘I wasn’t really questioning it then. I just thought that maybe somehow there was a chance she’d got it wrong.
Or you might have had a change of heart in later life.
You know. Like people do.’ She felt utterly vulnerable and raw and on the verge of tears, so she stopped speaking before she gave herself away.
But he must have heard something in her voice because now he was blinking too, and she saw his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed twice in quick succession.
‘OK. I need to say this. The biggest regret of my life is that I missed your childhood, Jade. But I thought I’d managed to come to terms with it.
I really did. Because I knew I couldn’t rewind the clock.
But then when you wrote to me… I realised…
I realised that maybe I hadn’t come to terms with it as much as I thought.
’ He blew out a breath. ‘That’s the truth.
But I am so, so sorry that I didn’t fight for you.
I am so sorry that I spent so many years abiding by that agreement.
I should have broken the rules, but I’ve never been a rule breaker.
That’s what I mean about being a coward.
I should have just thought to hell with the rules.
Some things are more important than rules. ’
He looked at the table and then back up at her face.
His eyes were full of pain and Jade thought about him being parked up outside the Arleston Court, twenty-five years ago.
A father trying to catch a glimpse of his estranged daughter in the hotel gardens.
And she ached for him. Ached for the pain he must have been in then, and was clearly still feeling now.
She blinked away tears as another memory flicked into her head.
A blue Astra had been parked outside the sanctuary gates last Christmas Day. She asked him about it.
‘Were you here on Christmas Day?’
‘Yes, that was the first time I came. It was an impulse but I realised as soon as I’d got here that it would be a mistake to disturb your festivities. I could see you had company.’
‘Yes, my best friend and her partner were here.’ She remembered how they’d all gone out to the yard to walk the dogs, Finn, herself, Sarah and Ben. What would she have done if Hector had strolled in and introduced himself?
‘So you just drove back to Devon again?’ she asked him now.
‘I did. I saw you with another young woman. At least I thought it was you. And I decided not to disturb you.’
Jade nodded. The ache in her throat had grown huge. And her tears were threatening to overspill. There was a hot tightness behind her eyes. She wanted to sob and sob. It must be the shock of it all. She forced calmness into her voice.
‘Why weren’t you with your family on Christmas Day?’
‘Because Mum went to Beatrice’s to see the grandchildren, and I had a quiet one last year.’
‘Do you, um… do you have any more children? Do I have any brothers or sisters?’
‘No.’ He hesitated. ‘We would have liked some, but it didn’t happen. Maybe that’s a story for another day. If you’re sure that you would like there to be another day.’
‘I am sure.’
‘Good.’ He stood up and Jade took a couple of steps towards him so they were face to face.
Tentatively, she reached out to touch him.
She couldn’t hug him yet, but she brushed her fingers briefly across his arm, across the rough tweed of his jacket, and he nodded as if he understood completely, and made no move to reciprocate the touch.
‘We’ll need to swap numbers so we can arrange it,’ she told him. ‘Let’s do that now.’
‘Great.’
So few words to make such a momentous change in both their lives, Jade thought, because she had no doubt it was momentous.
From not being in each other’s lives at all, to the possibility of a relationship.
It was huge. It was gargantuan. It was monumental.
It was also the biggest shock she’d ever had in her life.
And she didn’t have the faintest idea how to process it.