Chapter 18
HENRY
‘I can’t tell Daddy about how serious we are,’ Marielle said, snuggled up in his arms one Sunday morning while the wind and rain battered the windows of his tiny flat.
‘He wants me to marry someone rich and important.’ He could hear the veneration for her father in her voice and an uneasy feeling began to grow at the thought of losing her.
With Marielle he didn’t have to pretend.
She never made him feel weird or small. She happily listened to his classical music, and took him seriously when he talked about the state of the world.
She made him feel as though he was a proper person, someone who could be liked, admired, even loved.
She didn’t recoil in horror when he talked about his abusive father or his absent mother.
She held him a bit tighter when he detailed the belt lashings his father had readily doled out after his mother left, as though he was taking out on Henry all the fury he felt towards his runaway wife.
‘He doesn’t think what I do is important? I’m saving lives.’
She sat up, propping herself on her elbow. ‘I know and it’s very worthwhile. Daddy knows you’re ambitious. He just needs talking around, that’s all.’
‘But what if he doesn’t ever come around? What if he insists you marry some City hotshot?’
‘I don’t want anyone else and I don’t need his money.’
Henry fidgeted. It was easy for her to say that when she’d grown up with so much.
She’d never known what it was to struggle, to heave yourself out of a life scraping around for every last penny.
Going without food because your father had spent it all down the pub.
Henry knew he was clever and was going places.
He was determined to make something of his life.
And Marielle had a degree in classics. She wanted to be a lecturer.
And, okay, it was never going to earn her a massive income, but that didn’t matter to him.
He’d be happy here, in this tiny flat, with just her.
For ever. But even as he thought it, he knew it wouldn’t happen.
A woman like Marielle Bishop-Smith couldn’t be expected to live a life so small, so modest. Not after the way in which she had been brought up.
But he couldn’t walk away from her. He needed her. She’d entered his life and made him feel whole for the first time. He couldn’t go back to being that half-person. He just couldn’t.
Marielle threw back the covers and stepped onto the cold floorboards while he marvelled at her naked body.
She turned her head to look at him with a coy smile as she whipped on her peach silk dressing-gown, then made her way over to his record-player – one of the things he’d bought himself when he got his first wage packet – and put on a record.
The hiss as the needle made contact with the vinyl sent shivers of happiness through his body as the exquisite notes of Vivaldi washed over him, instantly relaxing him.
‘Come back to bed,’ he said, watching her cross the room. She was wearing a frown now, which unsettled him. ‘What is it?’
‘The problem is my stepmother.’ She climbed onto the bed.
‘What about her?’ He didn’t know much about Violet, except that she was, according to Marielle, a ‘vacant, pill-popping gold digger’.
But she had been married to Marielle’s father for many years, after the death of his first wife, Marielle’s mother, Julia, when Marielle was five.
Violet and Lawrence had a daughter together, the precocious (according to Marielle) Savannah, who was just seventeen.
‘She doesn’t like me much. She wants everything to go to her precious Savannah. And I’m worried.’ He didn’t like to ask her why she was worried when she’d just said that she could live without her father’s money.
She slipped into bed beside him, the silk of her dressing-gown brushing his skin. ‘She’s been trying to get Daddy to disown me for years so that she and her sprog get everything when Daddy dies. It’s no coincidence she married a man twenty years her senior.’
‘Your father wouldn’t do that, though, would he?’ He had met Lawrence only a few times but it was obvious he adored his firstborn.
She rolled her eyes. ‘Who knows? She’s tried so many times to turn my father against me.
It’s never worked, but now, with you … If my father doesn’t approve it could drive a wedge between us that Violet will exploit.
’ Her gaze met his. She looked so sad and lost that it tore at Henry’s heart.
He knew how much her father meant to her, especially with her mother gone.
He wrapped his arms around her. ‘Then I’ll just have to do what I can to get your father’s approval, won’t I?’ She snuggled into the crook of his shoulder, and he kissed the top of her head. ‘I’ll do anything for you.’