by Liz Fielding
They searched the nearest alleyway, then the rest of the street, calling her name, Belle alternately pleading with her and yelling at her to come back.
It was only when her teeth were chattering so badly that she could scarcely form the words that she finally gave in, allowed him to take her back to the car. Even then she insisted on driving around very slowly so that she could peer into shop doorways, hoping for a glimpse of Daisy. She didn’t bother to reproach him. She didn’t need to say the words.
They both hated him.
Which made three of them.
He’d wanted to protect Belle, but all he’d done was hurt her.
It was the early hours before he insisted on calling a halt, not because he was ready to give up, but because she couldn’t take any more.
‘It’s no good. I’m willing to search all night but if she doesn’t want to be found we haven’t got a chance.’
‘You said that she wanted to be found.’
‘She does, Belle. But maybe she doesn’t know it yet.’
Belle’s only answer was a long, painful shiver.
‘I’ll take you home,’ he said, far more concerned about her than the girl who was causing her so much pain. ‘I’ll carry on looking. I promise I won’t give up-’
‘No, you’re right. There’s no point. She knows where I am.’
He didn’t quite trust her quiescence but she waited patiently in the car while he fetched her bag from his house and, when they reached Camden, since she was shaking too much to connect key to lock, she surrendered it to him. He didn’t wait for an invitation, but followed her upstairs, turned up the heating and put on the kettle while Belle got out of her finery, now damp and muddied around the hem, and into a warm dressing gown.
‘Heat, a hot drink,’ she said as she curled up on the sofa and he placed a warm mug of chocolate liberally laced with brandy into her hands. ‘Daisy won’t have that.’
‘Her choice. She could have been here, Belle, but she wants to punish you. Wants to make you suffer,’ he said, kneeling in front of her so that he could wrap his own hands around hers on the mug to stop them from shaking. Holding it while she sipped from it, not allowing her to push it away even when she pulled a face.
‘She’s not the only one. What did you put in this?’
‘It’ll warm you. Drink it.’ Then, because he had to make her understand, ‘She believes that hurting herself will cause you more pain than anything else.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘It’s true, isn’t it?’ he said, avoiding a direct answer. She nodded. ‘She’ll come back when she thinks you’ve suffered enough. Tomorrow. The next day.’
‘And if tomorrow is too late?’
She looked up, all colour had been leached from her face but she was still holding everything in. There were no tears, no outward display of anger. Coming from a family where emotion was repressed to the point of destruction, it had never occurred to him to wonder before at the way she held everything tight within herself-only to be grateful that she didn’t indulge in tears and hysterics.
Now he understood where that restraint came from he would have welcomed a little hysteria, would have been glad to see the dam break, tears flow.
‘She’s so thin, Ivo…’ He waited, hoping she’d let it all out. ‘If I could just have given her something to eat. She needs care. Looking after. I don’t have the first clue about where to find her.’
‘What exactly do you know, Belle?’ Then, because she was famous and wealthy and there were people out there who would use any vulnerability to take advantage of her, to cheat her, ‘Are you even sure she’s the girl you’re looking for?’
‘She had my letter. She’d registered with the adoption search agency and I wrote to her. How else would she know where to find me? My phone number…’
‘You believed that was her calling, didn’t you? The hang-ups?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose so. At least I hoped…’
‘I’m sure you’re right,’ he said, rescuing the mug, placing it on a low table before moving to her side, encouraging her to lean into him, offering his own warmth as comfort. Doing his best not to think about the softness of her hair against his cheek, her scent seeping into his head, a yearning to draw her close and never let her out of his arms again. This was not about him.
This was about the woman he would do anything for. A woman who brightened every room with her presence. A woman he…loved. The word slipped into his mind, filling a vast empty space.
Belle, exhausted, let her head rest against Ivo’s chest. Just for a minute. While she gathered herself.
He’d been so strange tonight. Loving, caring, awful. All mixed up. Like her. There had been that moment when she’d been so angry with Daisy for wanting her father. Proud of her when she’d challenged Ivo. Five thousand pounds? What was all that about?
‘How many letters did you write?’ he asked.
She caught a yawn. ‘Letters? To Daisy? Just one.’
‘I’m not talking about how many you sent. How many did you write?’
‘Oh, I see. A few,’ she admitted, remembering all the drafts.
‘And what did you do with them? Have you got a shredder here? Or did you put them into the rubbish where anyone could find them?’
‘No…’ Then, ‘No!’
Not ‘no’ to the questions, but ‘no’ to what the question implied. That this was a set-up, that someone had been through her trash, had found one of the drafts and was using it.
Ivo tightened his arm around Belle’s shoulder as she pulled away, recognising in that cry of anguish a need that he couldn’t fulfil.
All he could do was hold her, say, ‘I know.’ Be there for her. ‘I know what you hoped for,’ he said as her head fell back against his shoulder. ‘It took me a while, but I knew there was something bothering you. Something that you didn’t think you could share with me…My fault, not yours,’ he said quickly. ‘Then, when I remembered that you were searching for adoption websites, it all fell into place…’
‘Ivo-’
‘Tonight,’ he said, before she could deny it, ‘when I told you that someone had collapsed, you didn’t ask who. You knew. You said “she”. So…’ Her eyes were wide, anxious. ‘So I’m telling you that I know. You had a baby girl. Gave her up for adoption…’
‘Daisy?’ The colour had returned to her cheeks, she’d stopped shivering. ‘You think that I…that she…’
She was finding it so difficult to speak that he said it for her. ‘You’ve been looking for her. Tonight you believed you’ve found her.’
‘Believed?’ A sound, something between a shudder and a sigh, escaped her and she closed her eyes as if to blot out pictures in her head that were too painful to bear.
Dark smudges were imprinted beneath her eyes. How long had it been since she’d slept properly? he wondered. How long had she been searching? Longing? Why hadn’t she come to him, asked him to help?
No, scrub that last question.
This was a marriage without emotional baggage.
They could have just stayed with the hot sex, two individuals who shared a bed, no strings attached. But Belle had wanted security and he’d just wanted her so they’d made a deal, formed a mutually beneficial partnership. Quite possibly the perfect match. They both had got what they’d wanted and, without any of those messy emotions, who was there to get hurt?
Too late to whine when he’d discovered he didn’t like the answer.
‘I know this is not what you want to hear now, but I have to ask if you’re absolutely sure she’s the girl you’re looking for.’
He anticipated an angry reaction, expected her to shout at him, tell him that he didn’t know what he was talking about, but, although her lips parted, the words didn’t make it. She just pulled away from him as if touching him would contaminate her with the same vile suspicions.
It hadn’t even occurred to her to doubt the girl, he realised. She wouldn’t have checked or run
any tests.
Maybe that made her a better person than him. It also made her vulnerable, at the mercy of the unscrupulous.
Right now it was more important that she trusted him and he gripped her shoulders, turned her to face him. ‘Look at me, Belle.’
For a moment she resisted.
‘Belle…’
Slowly, reluctantly, she raised her lashes. Her eyes were glistening liquid bronze, but still the tears did not fall.
‘She didn’t want me,’ she said, as if that answered all his questions, all his doubts. ‘It was her father she was looking for, hoping for…’
And that hurt more than he’d believed possible too. That out there somewhere was a man who’d given her what he was unable to-a child. A fool of a man who didn’t know how lucky he was…
‘We’ll find her, Belle. I’ll find her for you. I’ll find him too, if that’s what she wants. If she’s really your daughter…’ And suddenly he was the one having trouble getting the words out. ‘If she’s really your daughter, then that makes her mine too.’
‘No!’ Belle pulled away from him, wrenched herself from his arms. ‘No, Ivo-’
No. Of course not. What kind of fool was he to imagine…? ‘My responsibility, then,’ he said, before she could tell him that it was nothing to do with him. None of his business. Said the words that excluded him for ever.
‘No! Ivo, you’ve got this-’
‘I’ve seen her, Belle. It’s not going to be easy. You’re going to need support. That’s something I can do for you. I can help you both if-’
Her eyes widened a little at that, and this time all she could do was shake her head.
His fault. Exhausted though she was, she’d picked up on his hesitation. That word ‘if’. If she’s your daughter. If she wasn’t some con artist homing in on a desperate woman. For her sake he wanted it to be so. For his own too…
But someone had to be responding with their head rather than their heart and it was so much easier for him. He’d never clogged his up with the silt of emotional cholesterol.
Hard though it was, as little as she’d thank him, as her husband, her friend, he was the one who had to lay it on the line for her. Even if she never forgave him. That was what you did for the woman you loved.
‘She doesn’t look much like you,’ he said.
Belle blinked. ‘Oh, I see. Yes, well, it’s true that I haven’t got blue hair.’
‘Or blue eyes,’ he persisted, knowing that she didn’t want to hear this, that she wouldn’t thank him for pressing this. Not now. Maybe later, when she’d had time to think, when her emotions weren’t in a turmoil. ‘It’s not impossible, I know…’
‘But you’re suggesting that it’s genetically unlikely?’
She was too calm.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Why should you be sorry for pointing out the truth, Ivo? You’re absolutely right.’
He frowned. The fact that she was agreeing with him did not fill him with optimism.
‘But, then again, you’re completely wrong.’
‘Sweetheart…’ The rare endearment slipped out. For a moment he thought she’d got it, understood the danger…
‘Daisy is not my daughter, Ivo. She’s waif-thin, looks like a kid, but she’s only ten years younger than me. She’s my sister. Half-sister, anyway. We had different fathers. Mine died, hers deserted. Same result.’
And for a moment he was the one momentarily bereft of words.
Not?
Not her daughter?
He’d been so sure. And, without warning, there was a gap where some unrecognised emotion had briefly flared, lodged. An emptiness that had been briefly filled…
‘She’s your sister?’
‘You sound almost more shocked,’ she said.
‘No…’ He shook his head. It wasn’t shock. It was far worse than that. ‘No. I…’ The words died.
‘Don’t feel bad, Ivo. You have every right to be shocked. She was all I had and I turned my back on her.’
He’d been so sure; now he was struggling to get to grips with this unexpected twist. ‘But you were searching for her. I saw the adoption website.’
‘She was adopted. I wasn’t.’
‘What? They separated you?’
‘She was four. The perfect little girl. White-blonde curls, blue eyes. A smile that could light up a room. I was fourteen. An angry teenager who’d lived rough for the best part of three years, on the run from my mother’s demons, from Social Services. Scavenging to live, seeing things that no child…’ She shivered, did not resist when he pulled her back into his arms, rocking her as if she were the child. ‘Daisy was whisked off to a foster family. I was admitted to hospital with the same chest infection that killed my mother. A cough that a smoker would have been proud of. Hence the husky voice.’
He let slip a rare expletive as his imagination filled in the gaps. The reality of what she’d suffered.
‘How did Daisy escape? The infection?’
‘My mother gave what little food she had to us. I gave most of mine to Daisy. She was always warm. Always fed. Always came first.’
‘And you did what you thought was best for her.’ Not a question. More to himself than her. How could he doubt it? He’d seen the fervour with which she’d embraced her chance to do something for other children in that position. Understood now why the charity trip had been so important.
He’d always known that there was something in her past. It was too much of a blank; there were no links that went back beyond her time in television. No emotional ties. He’d thought that made them equal, but it didn’t. She’d been loved once. Had been part of a family who took care of each other, made sacrifices to keep each other from harm.
He’d lived with her for three years and didn’t know a thing about her, he realised, as the questions crowded into his head.
What had her mother been running from? Three years with two children, one little more than a baby. How on earth had they survived?
The only question he didn’t have to ask himself was why she’d never told him.
But all that would wait. Some things wouldn’t-not if he was going to find out if this girl was genuine. What had happened to her.
‘The authorities separated you when your mother died?’
‘Poor Mum. She was so afraid of Social Services. She knew that she’d lose us if they took us into care. Even when she was too sick to stand, she wouldn’t let me get help. Then one morning I couldn’t wake her. I knew she’d yell at me, tell me I was a fool, but I panicked, called an ambulance. I didn’t want her to die.’
‘You did the right thing.’
‘No, Ivo. I should have done it a week before, when there might have been a chance. I wouldn’t have cared how much she shouted at me. I would have run away from care to be with her.’
‘You blame yourself?’
She roused herself, turned on him. ‘Wouldn’t you?’ she demanded. Her lovely eyes, usually so full of warmth, life, were bleak with exhaustion. Something more.
He shook his head, unable to express what he was feeling, imagine what she’d been through. ‘They shouldn’t have separated you.’
‘Years ago they used to routinely split up entire families. Twins even. I’ve read some heart-rending stories, Ivo. Brothers, sisters reunited after half a century. It wouldn’t happen now,’ she said, reaching out as if to reassure him. As if he was the one who needed comfort. This was the warmth that her viewers responded to. She genuinely cared for people, even him, and he used that now, shamelessly, to draw her close, bring her back within the compass of his arms, as if he was the one in need of comfort. ‘It probably wouldn’t have happened then if there hadn’t been such an age gap,’ she said. ‘Daisy was young enough to forget, have the chance of a decent life, Ivo. A real family. It was already too late for me.’
‘It’s never too late,’ he said as another yawn caught her by surprise. She’d been on the go since before dawn and the warmth of the flat, t
he brandy-laced chocolate was seeping into her system, doing its job. She was both mentally and physically exhausted and soon she’d sleep, but she fought it, needing, he suspected, to get it all off her chest. ‘I was so angry,’ she said. Then shook her head, so that her short tawny hair, corkscrewed by the rain, brushed against his cheek. ‘No. That’s too clean a word. It wasn’t anger; it was jealousy. I was jealous of a little girl who still knew how to smile. Knew how to make people love her. I couldn’t forgive her for that so I walked away.’ She sighed. ‘Clever Ivo,’ she said. ‘You’re always right.’
‘No…’
‘Oh, yes. You said she wanted to punish me and tonight she did it in the only way she knew how, the way I taught her, by turning her back on me and walking away.’
‘She’ll come back.’
‘Will she?’ She looked up, seeking assurance. ‘She said she was looking for her father.’
‘You could help her. She knows that.’ She shook her head just once. ‘She had your address in her pocket, Belle. If she didn’t want to know you, why did she keep it?’
Belle didn’t answer, but closed her eyes as if to blot out a world of pain.
Ivo wanted to move mountains, change the world for her. Wanted to crush her to him, take that pain into himself, but he knew she would not, could not surrender it. That she was living in a world of guilt that only she could work through.
Power, wealth meant nothing here. For the moment all he could do was hold her, be there for her, no matter how many times she pushed him away.
Maybe, in the end, that was all anyone could do.
Maybe, for now, that was enough, he thought, as the tension finally melted from her limbs and, finally claimed by exhaustion, she softened into him, dropping away into sleep.
It had been weeks since she’d lain against him like this when, all passion spent, she’d fallen asleep in his arms. It was a moment he’d always treasured.
There was an almost unbearable sweetness in the way she surrendered consciousness to him and he felt a selfish joy in the moment-to be, if only for a moment, this close, this trusted.
‘It will be okay, my love,’ he said softly. Brushed his lips against her forehead. ‘I’ll make it okay.’