Chapter 2
JAMIE
I’ve felt so much anger towards April Darlington-Hume over the years, it’s impossible to quantify it.
At least, I think it’s anger.
It certainly feels like it most of the time.
Except for the times it doesn’t.
I’ve never known what to do with those feelings, though, so I’ve mostly tried to ignore them.
Which hasn’t been easy.
I fucking adored her ten years ago, imagining that we’d stay together after we graduated from university and make a real go of it.
It would have been challenging, sure, with me travelling the world one way to take part in tennis championships and she the other to build her career in the business world, but we could have done it. If she’d been brave enough.
It was her father that got in the middle of us.
I’m pretty bloody sure of it. He never thought I was good enough for her and in the end, she clearly gave in and decided he must be right – even after I tried so hard to be there for her after her mother died.
I knew exactly how much pain she was in because I’d been through the same thing in my teens when I’d lost my own mother – who had chosen her love of alcohol over her desire to stay alive and in my life, and had succumbed to liver disease.
I did nothing but send April letters, gifts, and offer support, generally putting my life on hold for her in case she needed me.
But she didn’t.
Instead, she dumped me, without even giving me a decent reason, then proceeded to act as if I didn’t exist any more.
She wouldn’t take my calls or come down and meet me at the door when I turned up at her house.
And, when I finally managed to confront her when she left the house one day on her own, rather than hiding away in her chauffeur-driven car, she refused to talk to me, telling me to leave her alone and that it was over between us.
That she didn’t love me and she was moving on. That I would be a hindrance to her family responsibilities and her career.
That was all the explanation I got. After a year and half of growing so close to her I seriously thought we’d get married one day.
Because she’d been my best friend as well as my lover. My other half.
But it turned out I’d meant nothing to her. Less than nothing.
It’s no wonder I lost the plot for a while after being treated like that. I’m not especially proud of my actions at that time, but I was hurting, and so fucking angry with her I could barely think straight.
And now we’ve gone and raked it all up again.
I’ve not been able to stop thinking about her since that night at the fundraiser. Her words have turned over and over in my mind, especially the part about her faking her orgasms with me. I don’t believe that’s true. It can’t be. I would have known. I’m sure of it.
Wouldn’t I?
I’ve never had any complaints from women before.
But, despite being 99 per cent certain I’m not misremembering our time together, that 1 per cent has planted a seed of doubt in my mind. Which has been fucking with my head ever since – so much so I’ve had trouble thinking about anything else.
That is until the letter from my father was handed to me by the executor of his will.
I’d been summoned to the solicitor’s office in Kensington a few weeks after I’d buried my father in the De Montfort family plot on a cliff-top graveyard just outside St Ives – where we’d laid my mother to rest fifteen years before.
The solicitor, Phil Clary, was one of my father’s oldest school friends and it was he who handed me a thick cream envelope with a sad, supportive smile.
‘Your father wrote this after his first heart attack a year ago and wanted you to have it a little while after he’d been laid to rest.’ He nodded towards the envelope. ‘I think he wanted to give you a bit of time to grieve first.’
I have to admit, I was intrigued. He’d already willed everything he owned to me, including the entirety of his prosperous software business, so I was at a loss to think what could be in this letter. It had to be something seriously important for him to have had it delivered to me in this way.
After ripping it open and sliding out a single sheet of paper, I took a breath before starting to read my father’s achingly familiar handwriting, my heart in my mouth.
Son,
If you’re reading this it means my damaged heart has finally given up on me and I’m in the ground.
In a lot of ways this will be a relief. There have been many times in my life when I’ve prayed for an easy way out of the despair I’ve often found myself sucked into, particularly since losing the woman I loved more than life itself.
Please don’t think for a second that this means I ever wanted to leave you, though. You are the one and only thing I did absolutely right in my life and I’m so proud to call you my son. You turned out to be a better man than I could ever have hoped for.
I’m sending you this letter now because I need you to do something – something I was never able to ask of you while I was alive. Go and ask April Darlington-Hume to tell you what really happened to her mother.
What they reported in the papers wasn’t the whole story. Not even half of it.
I’ve wanted to tell you about it so many times, but it’s proved impossible for me.
You’ll understand what I mean by that when you finally hear the long-buried truth. Even though it may be distressing to hear, I’ve come to realise that you knowing everything is the most important thing in the world.
It will finally give me peace and hopefully you too, eventually.
Take care of yourself, Jamie.
Be happy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted for you.
Your loving father,
Cliff
I stared at the piece of paper in my trembling hand, holding back an onslaught of emotion that brought back the memory of the excruciating mental agony I’d experienced as I’d watched his coffin being lowered into his grave.
Despite the distracting weight of my grief, I was still intrigued by this posthumous missive.
Why on earth did I need to know what had really happened to April’s mother?
And why couldn’t he have told me when he’d been alive?
Had April’s father, Maxim, been blackmailing him all these years so he hadn’t been able to tell me what he’d obviously felt I now needed to know?
As far as I knew, Maxim had taken great pleasure in bankrupting my father’s first business not long after Isabella Darlington-Hume had died, but was there more to the story than that?
And, if so, why hadn’t April told me about it at the time?
Why, instead, had she cut all ties with me? Had her father forced her to do it?
It seems incredible that something like that could have happened. But then, you never did know with Maxim Darlington-Hume. He’d probably happily use his daughter as a shield if he thought it would let him get away with something.
Is that why my father wrote me this letter – to ask me finally to get justice for him? Or for me – so I can finally get closure?
But, of course, that means connecting with April again.
Something I’m reluctant to do after our last clash.
Being inside her again, so physically close when my feelings about losing my father were still so raw, had been electric.
I’d needed it so badly, that intimacy, that primal, life-affirming connection.
But I hated that it was her I’d needed it with.
In those moments I’d let my emotions control me, something I’m very careful not to do any more, and it had scared the crap out of me, how good it felt to fuck her.
To be close to her. To connect with her again.
I was on a razor edge of ecstasy and despair.
And it was dangerous. Really bloody dangerous.
Which is why I’d forced myself to turn the situation back into a game. Perhaps it had been a way of punishing her for making me feel like that. I don’t know. It was a fucked-up situation through and through.
And not one I should consider revisiting.
But I know my father would hate to think she’d beaten me into submission and that I was just moping about, feeling sorry for myself, now that he’s gone.
I’m the last living De Montfort without a steady partner or children and perhaps he was afraid I’d never be able to commit to someone if I was still hung up about my disastrous relationship with April.
That I would spend the rest of my life alone.
So I’m going to take his challenge and run with it.
To be the man he was so proud of and get him the justice he deserves.
I’m finally going to make April tell me the truth then nail that bastard Maxim to the wall for what he put my father through – even up the score between our two families.
Then maybe I’ll finally be able to move on from my hang-ups about April Darlington-Hume.
But all this means I need to find a way to see her again.
I need some sort of bait. But in order to make that work I’ll have to offer her something she can’t refuse. Something she has no choice but to deal with herself.
Maybe then I’ll finally be able to put this thing between us to bed once and for all.
I choose to roll out my plan on my private island off the coast of Greece, deciding it’ll be the best way to secure her complete attention for as long as I need it.
Now I’ve retired from professional tennis and I’m in a position where I can run my sports clothing company remotely, I like to spend a lot of time here on Palioph.
It’s small compared to the rest of the Greek islands, with only three miles between its coasts, but to me it’s six and a half square miles of paradise.