As Adam got out of the car and viewed the front of the house in the morning sun, he knew he would be placing Lolita in a bit of a quandary. She had always meted out special treatment to him but after the murders and the way in which Joseph and Christina’s attitudes changed towards him, Lolita’s loyalties became divided for obvious reasons. He had only visited Forestgreen Lodge once in the months since the murders and Lolita had been cold and distant, her eyes darting from him to Joseph.
But now Adam had little choice but to visit again.
The door opened before he had time to ring the bell.
Lolita stood just inside the door, her jet black hair scraped back from her forehead and a look of great concern on her face rather than the welcoming smile Adam remembered so well.
‘Hello, Lolly,’ he said, using the name Charlotte and Timothy gave her and which was adopted by the rest of the family.
‘Master Adam!’ she replied, her eyebrows lifted in surprise. ‘But -’
‘I know, Lolly, no warning. I thought it best this way.’
‘Master, he in garden and Madam, she upstairs.’
Adam smiled. ‘Where else would either of them be at this time of day?’ Lolita was still barring his way and his mind flashed back to Doris barring his route up the staircase a few days before. But it wasn’t Doris who had been on his mind most of the last forty-eight hours, it was Gabrielle.
‘They not know you coming -?’
‘No, Lolly, but don’t worry. It’ll be all right.’
Lolita stood back. ‘You better come in and I tell Master.’
Adam moved into the house. ‘No, Lolly, I’ll go into the garden and tell my father I’m here.’
Lolita’s eyes opened even wider. ‘Oh, if Master Adam say so.’
‘It’ll be all right, Lolly, I promise.’ He bent down and pecked her on the cheek as was the custom. Lolita lifted her fingers to her face and watched as Adam crossed the hall, went through the open double doors leading into the sun-room and then towards the French windows that opened out onto the stone balcony with steps leading down into the garden.
Joseph was at exactly the spot Adam had expected him to be.
He had on his grey coolie suit - which Charlotte and Timothy always said looked like pyjamas - black silk sandals and the white headband with 晨課評語指健全 (Fitness means Health) written on it.
He had his back to the house, with the exercise mat under his feet. Adam watched him stretch his arms, rotate his neck and bend his knees. The view over the small lake to the fields beyond was magnificent and he remembered Joseph commenting that the view was as therapeutic as the exercises.
Adam looked at his father from a few yards away. His approach had been undetected. He knew that Lolita would now be watching him from one of the back windows. She may have gone upstairs and woken Christina. Both might now be observing him from the same window, full of apprehension. Christina had never been as bad as Joseph, indeed Adam felt that she held no grievance towards him at all. What had happened was unequivocally tragic and horrific and he was just as heartbroken as they were.
Joseph, on the other hand, felt that a husband and a father was as responsible for his wife’s and children’s behaviour as he was for their welfare and safety. If dishonour was brought on the family as a result of an action, or even the spoken word, the man was to blame; but similarly, if anyone in the family came to harm, the man was equally to blame. In Joseph’s eyes, Adam should have been there to protect his daughter and grandchildren and therefore their gruesome deaths were ultimately Adam’s fault.
The opportunity had arisen but had never been taken up by either man to discuss the tragedies. Adam knew there was little point in raising the subject; he would never change his father’s mind because family culture was too deeply embedded. Joseph, on the other hand, would have said there was absolutely nothing to discuss.
But now there was.
Adam knew the next thirty minutes, or even few hours, were going to be very difficult, but if Hong Kong was his destination and he wanted his parents’ blessing, he had little choice but to bring all of their feelings into the open. He had hidden away from his own feelings for so long. Even when he’d reached Loch Lomond he did his best to stay in denial. That was until Gabrielle Brooks entered his life and turned it upside down. Now he had every reason to want to discuss the situation; it was no longer a possibility, it was now a necessity.
‘Hello, Father!’
Joseph Yong stopped in mid-movement. He recognised the voice behind him straight away and no doubt with the recognition recent memories would be flooding back.
He did not turn round nor did he speak.
Adam looked at his father’s back. He seemed smaller than Adam remembered him but maybe it was just a trick of the light and the slight slope they were on. The grey in Joseph’s hair had only appeared after the murders.
‘I’m sorry to interrupt your morning exercises but I need to speak with you.’
Again without turning, Joseph slowly lowered himself onto the exercise mat and sat in the lotus position, his forearms resting on his knees, his fingers pressed together.
Adam moved round so that he was in front of, and a few yards from, his father, then he squatted down. Although he looked straight into Joseph Yong’s eyes, his father seemed to be looking through him at the lake beyond.
‘On Wednesday I returned to Ashbourne after a few days in Loch Lomond. I went to Loch Lomond with one specific aim in mind and that was to kill myself. Whether it was a cowardly and selfish action to contemplate I don’t know. You may consider it would have been the honourable thing to do, but whatever, the thought of one more day on this earth without Lucinda, Charlotte and Timothy was more than I could bear. Accompanying the loss of my wife and children was also the loss of the respect you and Mother still had for me. I know I am no more than your adopted son and you may have only gone through with the adoption because it was a matter of honour, a promise to a man you never expected to die while I was still so young, but you and Mother are the only parents I know. For me you are my only mother and father. I know you hold me responsible for the deaths of your daughter and my wife, and your grandchildren and this, in all of our eyes, may always be the case if no other person is ever brought to account for their loss. I also know you have never forgiven me, and if Lucinda were still with us you would never have forgiven her either for bringing shame on your house all those years ago. After we were married, and even after the children came along, when Lucy and I were alone we often still talked about what we did when we were so young. At the time and for a long time afterwards we could see nothing wrong in what we were doing but when we had children of our own we began to understand. It was something the four of us never got the opportunity to discuss because the subject was forbidden. I’m sure if you’d been able to you would have thrown me out completely rather than just sending me away to school. I’m also sure the last thing you wanted was for Lucinda and me to get married. In the case of the former it was your honour once again which forbade you doing what your head said was right. In the case of the latter there was nothing you could do about it. We were both over twenty-one and legally entitled to get married without your permission. However, I’m not here to apologise for anything I may have done that in your eyes was wrong and nor am I here to criticise any of your actions I may have thought were unfair. I’m here because while I was in Loch Lomond I met a most incredible young woman.’
Adam sensed a slight narrowing of his father’s eyes and he understood why.
‘No, although she was young and, I admit, very attractive, she was incredible because she was a minister in the Scottish Episcopal Church. How she found me sitting by the lake is another story, but find me she did and she spent the next twelve hours listening to me. ‘I told her everything. Nobody has ever spent twelve hours of their life listening to me before. Yes, I learnt a little about her as well, but she made it very obvious I was her focus and that she had one aim in mind. I told he
r about every moment of my life. As I was telling her all about Lucinda, you and mother, and Patrick and our lives in Hong Kong, it slowly dawned on me that taking my own life was not what Lucinda would have wanted, and it was not what the children would have wanted. Perhaps my selfishness was the easy way out. Perhaps I did have responsibilities to live up to. Perhaps there were situations I had to face head on and try to sort out. That’s why I’m here. I’m here because I’m returning to Hong Kong shortly and I may be away for a number of months, but before I go I needed to come and see you and Mother. I feel we need to talk. There are things both of you have wanted to say to me before and after Lucinda died but never have and there are things that I also need to say. It’s not just a question of clearing the air. It’s more a question of stating and discovering where I am with you.’
Adam’s legs were getting stiff so he stood up before sitting down on the grass. It was important that he was not physically above his father if and when he decided to speak. Adam took a furtive glance towards the house. He couldn’t see whether they were being watched but they undoubtedly were. It was a massive house - far too big for the two of them - and the grounds were impeccable. The Yongs had retired from the restaurant business just over a year earlier but the legacy was that they wanted for nothing. There were times when they both had implied they would have liked to return to Hong Kong but they knew such a move would be impractical.
He and Lucinda had enjoyed some very happy times at Forestgreen Lodge. The children had loved it. The house, the grounds and the surrounding countryside were perfect for young minds - and not so young minds - to explore. They had all walked for hours soaking up the beauty of the flora and fauna, learning so much from their grandfather who spent most of his time reading about the English countryside. There were picnics and barbecues, parties and formal dinners, and then when Christina and Joseph went on holiday Lucinda and the children would move to Forestgreen Lodge to look after it. For Adam it had simply meant a change in direction for his commuting and he had to admit that travelling into London from Dorset was often a lot easier than from Derbyshire.
Adam’s reverie was brought to a halt when he realised his father was no longer looking through him. His eyes were focussed on Adam’s face but other than that there was no change in his expression.
Joseph Yong then spoke. ‘I did not regard the promise I made to your father as an obligation to be filled regardless of the circumstances, because he had made the same promise to me. If your mother and I ever met with an accident then your real mother and father promised they would do the same for Patrick and Lucinda as we did for you. Of course, we did not expect either of us would ever need to discharge so soon afterwards the promises we’d made. I took you into my home as my son not as a child who needed looking after. You became my second son, I treated you as my son and therefore I expected you to behave as my son. You kept your family name because you would not have thanked me in years to come every time you had to explain why a European was called Yong. The -’
‘I would have been proud to -’
Joseph glared at his son. ‘Adam, I allowed you to speak without interruption. Please grant me the same courtesy.’
‘I’m sorry, Father.’
Joseph nodded curtly. ‘For over nine years Patrick, Lucinda and you made us so proud. Your mother and I were working very hard but we were so full of pride we took every opportunity to parade the three of you. Of course there were those who were jealous and who would try to stir up trouble by telling stories about you and why you were part of the family. One of the stories was that you were not adopted at all, you were the result of an affair your mother had with a white man and you’d been hidden away until we could come up with a plausible story people would believe. There were other stories but at the time they generated more amusement than concern.’
Joseph’s eyes drifted away from Adam’s as he carried on.
‘And then you dishonoured me, and the rest of the family, by corrupting and deflowering my daughter. You took everything I had given you and threw it back in my face. There’s no need to dwell on the disgrace because you are very aware of the outcome. It breaks my heart to even mention her name but if you had adopted another son of Charlotte’s age and then when they were just fourteen you had discovered that he had taken away Charlotte’s innocence, I think you’d have felt the same rage inside you. It was your mother who stopped me from disowning you completely.’
Adam wanted to interrupt but dared not. Trying to explain that it was Lucinda who instigated the physical side of their young relationship would achieve nothing. He would not have been blaming her because the opposite was true, but he would have hoped his father would understand he was as innocent as Lucinda. Would Adam have understood if, as his father suggested, Charlotte had done the same thing? It was a question he could not answer.
‘During your absence at school, we were able to regain some of the self-respect you’d taken away from us. The stories about why I’d sent you away to school in the UK and yet kept Patrick and Lucinda in Hong Kong were numerous and, I regret to say, very close to the truth. However, time is a great healer and during the intervening years we were able to give the family back some of its stability.
‘Moving to the UK was a necessity. We feared our business would be taken from us and therefore we would lose so much of what we’d worked for. By the time we realised this was all a fallacy it was too late, as it was too late for so many other Hong Kong Chinese who made the exodus with us. You didn’t see Lucinda for seven years and I have no idea what she told you but during those years she learnt to understand why I had to send you away. Of course for the first few months she sulked a lot but eventually she came out of it. She worked hard at school in Hong Kong and then in the UK. As she approached the age of twenty-one, and with no mention of your name for nearly two years, she announced she was going to your graduation ceremony and if you wanted her, she was going to be with you in whatever capacity you both decided. You will understand that this announcement caused a great row but once again it was your mother who made us all see sense. As she’d seen when you were both so young that what happened was inevitable, she had also watched her daughter’s patience with understanding. It is your mother you must thank for you and Lucinda ever getting back together again. I’ll tell you now that if I’d had my way it would never have happened and if it had never happened my daughter would still be alive today. And now I’m going into the house for a shower and to get dressed. I will speak with your mother and if she agrees we will carry on this conversation, if that’s what it is, in the house.’
Without waiting for a reaction Joseph stood up and made his way towards the house. Adam watched him walk slowly across the lawn.
If it had never happened then my daughter would still be alive today.
Nothing was ever going to change his father’s mind.
Chapter Ten
‘This is most unusual, my child,’ Bishop Archibald Stephenson said as he sat back in his ornate cherry-wood chair and steepled his fingers. ‘I could understand if it was for some form of justifiable cause but when you won’t even tell me what it’s for ...’
‘It’s a very personal matter, Your Grace.’
‘But not one you can sort out or solve or whatever you have to do with it while still filling your other responsibilities?’
‘That makes me feel very guilty for even asking.’
‘I’m sorry, my child, but you must see that if I were to agree then it’s not just a question of filling the gap for a few days.’ The Bishop stood up and went over to the window. It was a gloomy day but even so he never ceased to admire the beauty that existed in much of the Edinburgh architecture. He put his hands behind his back and began rocking on his toes, a mannerism that those close to him would have read as a good sign. ‘If I were to say no, what would you do?’
‘There is nothing I could do, Your Grace, other than miss out on an opportunity that may come along only once in a lifetime.’
Gabrielle Brooks lowered her head. It was nearly a week since Adam Harrison had left Loch Lomond and she had not been able to think of anything or anybody else. It was as though he had taken over her very soul. When she woke in the morning he was the first person she thought about; her thoughts during the day were centred round him, and then as she settled down for the night she prayed she would dream about him.
She could not tell the Bishop the way she felt. She could not tell anybody about the way she felt. If her request for three months unpaid leave was refused, maybe in time she would learn to cope but while she was in her current state her work was suffering. Nobody had commented although she had caught Doris watching her a couple of times. She had not believed there was anybody on this planet who could have this affect on her but to all intents and purposes he had consumed her.
What if she found him and he didn’t want her? That was a risk she would have to take. Anyway they weren’t at that stage yet. She wasn’t going to throw herself at him. That would be silly and immature, but she did want to get to know him properly. It had not taken only twelve hours of his company for her to be totally besotted because it had happened the moment she saw him. He had become an obsession and unless she did something about it she knew she would not be able to carry on fulfilling her responsibilities. It was a silly, very silly, attitude to adopt but she had no choice.
‘Is he worth it?’
Gabrielle jerked her head up. ‘I ... I’m sorry, Your Grace?’
The Bishop had turned round and was facing her, his hands clasped in front of him. ‘I asked whether he was worth it?’ he repeated, smiling.
‘How did ...? I don’t know, Your Grace, but I have to find out.’
In Denial Page 11