by Miranda Lee
Gently, he took her hands away from her ears and looked her straight in the eye.
‘I’m sorry, Amber,’ he said firmly, even though his heart was breaking, ‘but I am going to leave. I have to. There’s nothing you can say to change my mind, I’m afraid.’ He let go of her hands and stood up. ‘I’ll go and put away the food first, then I’ll pack my things and make my way. You should be able to manage here on your own now, if you use your common sense and be careful, and move back into this room. I’m sure Tara and Max will help. And your mother, too, if you ask her.’
‘No!’ she cried. ‘Don’t leave me, Warwick. Please don’t leave me.’
‘Amber,’ he said, his eyes tormented, ‘don’t make this any harder for me than it is.’
She saw, then, that there was nothing she could say to make him stay. Saw, also, how much he loved her. So much so that he was prepared to sacrifice his own happiness for hers.
It was a humbling realisation but a strangely empowering one. If he could do this for her, then the least she could do was accept his decision with dignity and grace.
‘Promise me one thing before you go,’ she said softly.
Warwick frowned. ‘What?’
‘You’ll have that gene test.’
‘Amber, I—’
‘It’s not too much to ask, surely.’
‘Very well,’ he agreed, if somewhat reluctantly.
‘Give me your solemn word,’ she insisted.
‘You have it. Now I really must go.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
‘HAVE you heard from him?’ Tara asked.
‘No,’ Amber replied.
They were sitting out on the terrace of Tara’s house, having coffee. They were alone, Max having taken Stevie and Jasmine for a walk along the beach. The strong winds of the day before had abated, and the sky was blue and the sun was out.
It had been two weeks since Warwick had left. Two weeks during which Amber had done a lot of thinking and talking.
Confiding in Tara and Max had been a very wise decision. They’d stopped her from becoming too depressed or maudlin. She hadn’t, however, told her mother yet that her relationship with Warwick was over. Whenever Doreen rang, Amber pretended everything was fine. That was easier than launching into the explanation of why he’d left. One day, she would explain, but not right now.
‘He should have had the results of the gene test by now,’ Tara pointed out.
‘I would imagine so,’ Amber replied with a jagged twist to her heart. ‘Obviously it came back positive.’
Tara sighed. ‘I know it’s hard to accept, Amber, loving the man the way you do. But perhaps it’s all for the best that he’s gone.’
‘No, it’s not,’ Amber replied with a fierceness that betrayed how upset she still was. ‘I could have made him happy, if he’d let me.’
‘You already made him happy. You showed him what love was and taught him how to love in return.’
‘Maybe. But I’m afraid, Tara. Afraid of what he’s going to do when things start to go wrong and there’s no one there to love him and look after him.’
‘You don’t think he’s going to commit suicide like his father did? ‘
‘I know he will.’
‘Oh, Amber …’
Amber stood up abruptly. ‘I have to go to him. I have to make him understand that when you love someone you can’t just forget them like that. I … Oh, my God!’ she gasped. ‘Warwick! ‘
Tara’s eyes whipped up to see the man himself walking across the sand towards them. Max was with him, carrying Stevie, Jasmine having bolted on ahead. She burst through the back gate and ran up onto the terrace, her pretty little face highly animated.
‘Uncle Wawie’s come back!’ she cried. ‘You were wong, Mummy. He hasn’t gone.’
‘So it seems, darling,’ Tara replied.
Despite her heart having leapt up into her mouth, Amber tried not to read too much into Warwick’s unexpected visit.
Maybe he’d just come to say a last goodbye before leaving Australia. Maybe he’d brought her the rest of her things from his Sydney apartment. Maybe he …
No, no. She dared not hope that that test had come back negative. That would be nothing short of a miracle.
Her eyes went to his as he came into the backyard. There was no great joy in them, she noted. He actually looked very tired. Her heart sank again, that foolish heart that couldn’t seem to stop hoping for miracles.
‘Hello, Amber … Tara,’ he said as he stepped up onto the terrace. ‘Sorry to drop in on you like this. But I needed to talk to Amber and I didn’t want to do it over the phone. When you weren’t at home,’ he directed straight at Amber, ‘I guessed you might be here.’
‘She drops in most afternoons,’ Tara said.
Warwick frowned at Amber. ‘I sure hope you didn’t get here by way of the beach. Walking across that soft sand would be much too hard on your newly healed ankle.’
Amber had to smile. He really couldn’t get out of the habit of running her life for her.
‘No, Warwick, I didn’t walk, I drove. And before you say anything more, I am allowed to drive.’
‘Tara,’ Max said as he joined them. ‘Warwick wants to have a private word with Amber, so what say we take these kids upstairs for a bath and leave them to it?’
‘But I don’t want a bath,’ Jasmine wailed when her mother scooped her up. ‘I want to stay with Uncle Wawie.’
‘It’s all right, sweetie,’ Warwick told her. ‘I’ll still be here when you’ve finished your bath.’
‘You will?’ a stunned Amber said once the others had gone.
‘Yes,’ he said and sat down beside her.
Amber swallowed. ‘I’m not sure I understand. Did your gene test come back negative? Is that why you’re here?’
‘No. This has nothing to do with any gene test.’
‘You did have it, didn’t you? You gave me your solemn word.’
‘Yes, I had it done last week. But I haven’t received the results yet, though they should be through any time now. They did say, however, not to get my hopes up. Not with my family history. Frankly, I only did it because you asked me to.’
‘I see.’ Amber was beginning to feel confused. ‘So why are you here, then?’
‘Well you might ask. I really was determined to leave you, my darling. Quite determined. Determined to leave Australia as well, never to return. I’ve already put the apartment up for sale. But then I had this telephone call from Max last night, and he asked me what I’d have done if I had been perfectly well and it had been you who’d had the bad gene. He set me thinking. Actually I stayed up all night. And I finally realised that my so-called noble sacrifice in leaving you was not so noble after all. I mistakenly thought I was saving you from unhappiness in the future,’ he said. ‘Instead, I was condemning you to unhappiness right now, and possibly for the rest of your life. I knew if our situations were reversed I would not want to leave you. So, if you still love me, my darling,’ he said, taking her hands in his and lifting them up to his lips, ‘if you still have the courage … would you do me the honour of becoming my wife?’
Amber could not stop the tears from flooding her eyes.
This time, he didn’t tell her not to cry. Instead, he gathered her close and held her whilst she sobbed quietly against his chest. And it was whilst he was holding her that Warwick heard the sound of his phone ringing.
‘Damn it,’ he muttered. ‘Sorry, darling.’ He disengaged himself from her arms and reached for the handset in his back pocket. ‘It’s probably my estate agent with an offer. He was showing a few people around the apartment today. I really should answer it and tell him I’m not selling after all.’
It wasn’t the agent. It was the professor who’d taken charge of his gene test and who’d been extremely interested in Warwick’s case.
‘The results have just come in,’ the professor said. ‘You left your phone number so I thought I should ring you straight away.’
‘That was most considerate of you.’ Despite knowing what he was about to say Warwick couldn’t help the tightening in his chest.
‘It’s negative, Mr Kincaid. You do not have the early onset Alzheimer’s gene.’
‘What? Are you sure? There couldn’t have been a mistake made?’
‘There have been no mistakes. I double checked everything. Of course this doesn’t mean you won’t get dementia at some stage in your life. But the risk is no greater than for anyone else.’
‘I can’t believe it.’ And he couldn’t: his heart was pounding and his head was spinning.
‘I have to admit that I was surprised after the family history you gave me. I can only think that perhaps the man you thought was your father is not really your biological father. Such things do happen, you know. In any case, it’s good news, isn’t it?’
‘Very good news. Thank you so much for calling me.’
‘My pleasure.’
The professor hung up and Warwick turned his eyes to look at Amber.
‘I still can’t believe it,’ he said, only just managing to hold on to his emotions.
‘What is it?’ Amber asked. ‘What’s happened?’
‘That was Professor Jenkins, from the laboratory where I had my gene test done. The result was negative.’
‘Oh, my God! Oh, Warwick. Is he sure? They couldn’t have made a mistake, could they?’
‘That’s the first thing I asked him. But no, he said he double checked everything and he’s quite sure.’
‘Oh, Warwick, oh, dear, I know I’m going to cry again.’
‘That’s perfectly all right, my darling,’ Warwick choked out as he pulled her into his arms. ‘I think I’ll join you.’
By the time Max returned downstairs, all weeping had stopped and two joyous faces turned to meet his enquiring eyes.
‘Clearly she said yes,’ Max said to Warwick.
‘Yes,’ Warwick replied, smiling.
‘Sounds like a good excuse to break out a bottle of my best champagne.’
‘Before you do that I have some other good news,’ Warwick said.
‘Really? What?’
‘The results of my gene test came back negative.’
‘You’re kidding me. Wow. This is truly great news. I’ll have to go tell Tara straight away. Tara?’ he called out as he raced back into the house. ‘Guess what?’
‘You do realise what my negative result means, Amber,’ Warwick said whilst waiting for their friends to reappear.
‘Not really. What do you mean? ‘
‘The professor suggested it’s highly likely that the man I thought was my father is not my father. That’s got me thinking. Under the circumstances, I feel I should go to London and ask my long-lost mother a few questions. I know she lives there somewhere. Would you like to come with me?’
‘Just try and stop me.’
‘And whilst we’re in London, I’ll make enquiries about who’s the best man for the job of reversing my vasectomy. I know it’s possible because the doctor who did my original operation thought I might change my mind at some stage so he made sure that it could be reversed.’
‘In that case, why can’t that doctor do the reversal?’
‘Darling, that was twenty years ago. He’s probably an old dodderer by now with shaking hands and bad eyesight. No, I’ll find a younger man, an expert in the field. We don’t want anything getting between you and your babies, do we?’
Till the day he died, Warwick would always remember the look on her face at that moment.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
LESS than a week later, Amber and Warwick were standing on the doorstep of his mother’s very smart town house in Kensington, waiting for someone to answer the doorbell. They had telephoned beforehand, having received the address and phone number from the private investigator Warwick had hired a week earlier. His mother had sounded agitated at the prospect of her long-estranged son visiting her, but had agreed in the end when he’d said it was a matter of some importance, though he hadn’t elaborated further.
‘How old would she be now?’ Amber whispered to him as they waited, hand in hand.
‘Sixty,’ he replied. ‘She was twenty when I was born. Twenty-one when my father divorced her.’
Amber frowned. ‘Goodness. That was very young to be married and divorced.’
The woman who answered the door didn’t look sixty. She didn’t even look fifty: she could have easily passed for forty-five, her handsome face unlined, her figure superb, her obviously dyed red hair exquisitely groomed. But, despite her striking looks, Gloria Madison had never made it big in the acting world, her career having been relegated to minor roles in lesser movies. Nowadays, she rarely got a part at all.
For a long moment she just stared at Warwick.
‘My goodness,’ she said, a red-nailed hand lifting to rest at the base of her throat. ‘You’re the spitting image of him.’
‘Of whom?’ Warwick returned coldly.
Gloria blinked, her gaze shifting abruptly to Amber before returning to Warwick.
‘Your father, of course,’ she said somewhat brusquely.
‘And who, exactly, was my father?’ he shot back.
‘What? What kind of strange question is that? You know very well who your father was!’
‘I know who I thought he was.’
Heat reddened Gloria’s already rouged cheeks. ‘What are you suggesting? If you think I cheated on your father when we were married, then you’d be very wrong indeed. I wouldn’t have dared.’
Warwick’s hand tightened around Amber’s. Suddenly, it worried him that somehow that test result might have been wrong. Mistakes did happen, no matter what the professor said.
‘Can we come inside, Mother? I really don’t want to discuss what is a highly personal situation out in the street.’
‘Oh, very well. But you will have to be quick. I’m expecting a visitor in half an hour.’
A man, no doubt, Amber thought as she looked Warwick’s mother up and down. You didn’t wear an outfit like that for a woman friend.
Gloria led them into an elegantly furnished reception room where she waved them over to the cream sofa that sat beneath an elaborately dressed bay window. She then lowered herself stiffly into a matching armchair that faced them. Warwick introduced Amber, but Gloria didn’t say anything to her.
Amber could see the woman was very nervous. Why be so, unless she was lying?
‘Warwick wants to have a DNA test done,’ Amber invented suddenly, despite knowing that was impossible, since there was no one on his father’s side left alive to get samples from. ‘That way it can be confirmed that his father really was his father.’
Alarm flashed into the woman’s face. ‘But, why, for heaven’s sake?’
Amber leaned in to Warwick. ‘I think she’s lying about having cheated during her marriage,’ she murmured.
Warwick was beginning to think so too. Maybe if he told her the truth.
‘You probably don’t know this, Mother, but there is a gene in the Kincaid family which produces early onset Alzheimer’s. Dad inherited it. But I don’t think he realised this fact till after I was born. It’s the real reason he committed suicide. The symptoms usually start around fifty.’
‘Good Lord!’ Gloria gasped. ‘Oh, how awful! No, I never knew. Honestly.’ A frown gathered on her high forehead, her blue eyes clouding with real distress. ‘But I … I think you’re wrong about James not knowing this before you were born, Warwick. He must have known. It’s why he did what he did. Why he—’ She broke off, her feelings of being flustered filling her face.
‘What did he do?’ Amber jumped in immediately.
Gloria stared at her before her eyes swung suddenly to Warwick’s. ‘Are you saying you’ve believed all this time that you’ve inherited that dreadful disease?’
Warwick’s heart skipped a beat as he heard the inference behind his mother’s words. ‘Are you admitting that James Kincaid wasn’t my biological father?
‘
‘I … I promised to never say anything,’ Gloria cried. ‘I signed a legally binding contract. James paid me a lot of money to do what he wanted me to do.’
‘And what was that, exactly? ‘
‘To marry him and have you, but then to divorce him and give you up. He said he wanted a child, but not a wife.’
Warwick’s confusion was acute. ‘So James Kincaid was my biological father.’
‘No, no, he wasn’t!’ she confessed. ‘I didn’t even meet James till I was four months pregnant with you.’
Amber and Warwick just stared at her.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Gloria blurted out, ‘so terribly terribly sorry. But how was I to know? James never said a word about inheriting Alzheimer’s to me.’
‘I see,’ Warwick bit out as shock over her revelations set in. His hands actually began to shake. ‘Do you think Mother, that I might have a spot of whisky, or brandy? Whatever you have.’
‘Yes, of course.’ And she jumped up.
‘Me too,’ Amber said, her hand tightening around Warwick’s.
His mother returned with two balloons of brandy—very good brandy, actually. Considering the lack of success in her acting career she must have received an extremely generous settlement for giving up her son. Strangely, this thought didn’t upset Warwick. He wasn’t at all bonded with the woman, or the man who’d fathered him.
Though he was curious.
‘When you said I was the spitting image of him,’ he began after swallowing a reviving gulp of brandy, ‘you meant my biological father, didn’t you?’
‘Yes,’ she said with an almost wistful sigh. ‘Though you’re not unlike James. I was always attracted to the tall, dark and handsome type, usually with blue eyes. So when you were born people readily believed you were James’s son.’
‘Who is my real father, then?’ Warwick asked.
‘A man called Alistair Johnson. He was an actor … a married actor. I met him when I was only nineteen. He was twenty years older than me and I was crazy about him. When I fell pregnant, I thought I could get him to leave his wife and marry me. When I didn’t go through with the termination he’d arranged, he still refused. Said his wife knew he slept around and didn’t care.’ Remembered distress flickered across her face. ‘I didn’t want to have a baby by myself. It was hard back then, being a single mother. I knew my family wouldn’t help me. I’d run away from home when I was only fourteen to become an actress. They told me to never go back, and they meant it.’