She
Page 29
‘Yes.’ Jo followed Charlotte’s gaze to where Emma and her husband, Prash, were sitting. ‘It would be lovely. Though I think they’re still enjoying the novelty of being married and she’s always known it might be more difficult because of her history. And her age, of course.’
Charlotte nodded. ‘And what about you, Jo? How are you bearing up? Days like today must be hard, when everyone’s here, and yet …’
‘… Not everyone’s here,’ Jo finished the sentence for her. She placed the drinks she had prepared onto a large wooden tray, before lifting her eyes to meet Charlotte’s. ‘I have good days and bad, but mainly good now.’ She chose her words carefully. ‘And days like today actually help enormously. Having a full house, like we used to.’ Her eyes misted slightly as she dipped back into her memories, before snapping back into the moment with a smile. ‘Children laughing and everyone having fun … it means the world.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘Peter would have loved it.’ Her voice caught slightly and she cleared her throat. ‘But, do you know what, Charlie? I think he’d be proud of me. For carrying on. Because I don’t mind admitting that there were times when I didn’t think I could.’
Charlotte nodded. ‘I know. And you’re right, he would be proud of you. As proud as we all are of the way you’ve coped,’ she added.
Charlotte still had mixed feelings whenever she thought about Peter. She had loved him like a father and after her own dad died suddenly, she had grown even closer to him. But that was before she knew the truth about what he’d done. And now, even when she remembered the many good things about him, it was always tainted with the knowledge that he could have saved Ben from Bella, if he had just had the courage to admit his mistake and deal with it.
Jo would have forgiven him. Yes, she would have been hurt and angry, but she loved him too deeply to have let him go. She would probably even have accepted Elodie being part of Peter’s life if she had had to. The way she had welcomed the little girl into her home and her life over the past couple of years was proof of that.
Charlotte tried hard not to let the memories of that terrible night encroach on her brain, but it was impossible to banish the images that played like an old film on a loop.
More than the images, though, it was the guilt she felt at having agreed to take Elodie while Ben ‘sorted things out’ with Bella that haunted her. If she had refused, as every bit of her instinct told her to do; if she had insisted that Ben leave with her and Elodie, none of it would have happened.
By the time she reached him that night, she had known immediately that he wasn’t in any fit state to be left. His car door was hanging open and Charlotte could see Elodie still sleeping peacefully in her car-seat.
‘Right,’ she told Ben, who was sitting on the front step, almost catatonic with shock, ‘you’re coming with me. Let’s get you up.’
Ben allowed her to help him into a standing position and they were walking towards Charlotte’s car, when he suddenly stopped and gripped Charlotte’s arms urgently. ‘No! I’m going to wait for her. She’s on her way back. You take Elodie for a drive somewhere and come back for me in half an hour.’
‘No, Ben, that’s not a good idea. We’ll all go to my place together tonight. You can speak to Bella tomorrow, when you’re in a better frame of mind. I’ll bring you back so you can get your car.’
‘Please, Charlie. I just need to speak to her. To sort out a few things. Things I should have sorted out a long time ago.’
Charlotte had hesitated. Ben seemed to have recovered his composure slightly but she still didn’t want to leave him.
‘Please, Charlie,’ he had begged her. ‘Take Elodie. I don’t want Bella being able to get to her.’
‘Why don’t you just come now? We can all go together.’
Ben’s expression had hardened. ‘No. I want to look her in the eye and tell her I know the truth. And I need some answers from her, Charlie. Please just do this for me.’
Charlotte hesitated again, before replying. ‘OK.’
Looking back, it was that one small word that she regretted the most.
But if she had learned one lesson from everything that had happened, it was that no amount of wishing would change the past. It was only the future that you had some control over. The mistakes you made in the past were done. There was nothing you could do about them. But what you could do, was make sure you never repeated those mistakes in the future.
And although it was a cliché, time was a great healer. The pain didn’t ever really leave you, but you did learn how to live with it. How to cope with it. Jo had been the greatest example of that.
‘Are you coming back out?’ Jo asked her now, carefully balancing the tray of drinks, as she headed towards the door.
Charlotte shook her head. ‘Not yet. I think I might need to go and have a nap. I’m so tired all the time.’
‘Good idea,’ Jo said, before walking out onto the terrace.
Charlotte sighed happily. It had been an almost perfect day.
‘What are you smiling at?’ said a voice.
Charlotte turned to see Ben coming in from the garden, holding the toy computer console they had bought Bertie for his birthday. ‘Oh, I was just thinking that this is almost the perfect day.’
Ben put the toy on the island and wrapped his arms around Charlotte, nuzzling his face into her neck and kissing her cheek, as always careful to avoid her scar. ‘Only “almost”?’ He looked up at her with his lovely brown eyes, now back to their twinkling best.
‘Well, it’s just that there’ll always be one person missing from these occasions, won’t there? Your dad. Whatever happened in the past, it will always be hard on your mum. She loved him so much.’
Ben stood up straight and stroked her bare arms contemplatively. It had taken him a long time and a lot of therapy, but he had long since forgiven Peter, reasoning that his dad had paid one hell of a price for his mistakes.
‘Well, maybe there is one way we could honour his memory and make sure there’s always a little part of him with us, and I think Mum would like it.’
Charlotte gazed up at Ben, thinking how much he looked like his dad. ‘OK. What did you have in mind?’
Ben took a deep breath, looking nervous. ‘We could call our son Peter … Although,’ he added hastily, ‘I would understand if you didn’t want to.’
Charlotte thought for a minute. ‘Even after everything that happened? You’d still do that?’ Charlotte narrowed her eyes, trying to see into the deepest recesses of Ben’s mind. They had taken the decision not to tell Jo the truth about Peter, not wanting to taint her memories and reasoning that what she didn’t know, couldn’t hurt her. But it had come at a price for Ben, who had struggled to carry the knowledge around, like a dead weight around his neck.
Ben smiled, but there was sadness in his expression. ‘I think it would help me. It’s my way of showing him that I forgave him. That I understand now that everything he did, he did out of love for me.’
Charlotte nodded, feeling like the luckiest woman in the world. She had come so close to losing everything and now she had it all. ‘How can I deny you anything, after all that you’ve been through? OK, my darling husband, Peter it is.’
Ben smiled and Charlotte could see that the years of pain had all but vanished. ‘You’re perfect,’ he said, stroking her face tenderly. ‘The perfect girl for me.’
Epilogue
Jo hoisted herself off the loft-ladder and stood upright, dusting herself down as she did so. The loft was a vast, low-ceilinged space that spanned the footprint of the entire house. She had never come up here when Peter was alive. She said it gave her the creeps, with all the cobwebs and dusty corners, hiding goodness knows what kind of creepy-crawlies.
But with Peter gone, there was no choice. She needed to find some documents relating to the money that Peter had given Ben and Bella to buy a house, just before his death. Unsurprisingly, Ben had wanted to sell the house in Surrey and for reasons t
hat Jo didn’t quite understand, he was insistent that Peter’s money should be repaid to Jo, despite her protestations that she didn’t want it.
Ben and Elodie had moved in with Jo after Bella died in the car crash that night, so she figured that she could spend the money on them anyway, and make sure they wanted for nothing. If it made Ben feel better, then she was happy to go along with it. She had thought that once Ben and Charlotte got married and had baby Peter to complete their little family, they would want to move out into a place of their own. But neither of them wanted to.
They told Jo that they didn’t want Elodie to have any more upheaval in her young life and now that she was so settled, they were more than content to stay living with Jo, for as long as she would have them. It took Jo less than a millisecond to agree. Having them living with her had saved her, in more ways than one.
She picked her way through numerous boxes, distracted by old photos, long-forgotten cards and the children’s childhood certificates and trophies, smiling as her memories tumbled over one another. There was a photo of Emma on the swing in the garden of their first home, Rose Cottage, in Surrey, where they had been so happy, before moving to Suffolk. Family holidays on sun-kissed Greek islands and in the pouring rain on Cornish beaches were all caught in a freeze-frame of time on these now-yellowing cardboard squares. Peter smiled out at her, his sleepy brown eyes still having the power to make her feel weak, even from the distance of so many years. She would never stop missing him.
Finally, Jo found the box she was looking for and the bank documents she needed were right at the top. It really was the last thing he did before he died, she thought sadly, as she removed the documents and placed the box back on the floor, wondering why Peter had kept all this up in the loft, rather than in his office downstairs.
She stood up and sighed, thinking that the next time anyone would be up here would probably be after she was dead. She shuddered at the thought, imagining Charlotte and Ben clearing it all out, maybe when they were old themselves.
She was just about to turn around and make her way back to the loft hatch, when a white envelope that had been underneath the financial documents she had just removed caught her eye. It stood out because it was newer than the other documents in the box and therefore a brighter shade of white. On the front was written one word in Peter’s handwriting: Elodie.
Jo frowned to herself, wondering why he would have hidden something that was meant for Elodie, up here? Maybe he had intended to give it to her, but never got the chance?
Jo lifted the flap and removed the folded piece of paper within. She gently unfolded it and read the handwritten note:
To my dear daughter
You will never read this letter but I needed to write it all the same.
I am so sorry for everything. If I could turn back time and change the past, I would. But the one thing I would never want to change is you. I’m sure your mother will have told you things about me and I will admit that some of them, to my shame, are true.
But, whatever she may have told you, I promise that from the moment you were born, I loved you. I know that you will grow up into a lovely young woman. I’m certain that you will be as beautiful as your mother – maybe even more so. I hope you will be a good person and that one day you will be able to find it in your heart to forgive me and understand that every single one of us is flawed and anything I did, I did out of a father’s love for his child.
Love always,
Dad
Jo swallowed hard and carefully folded the letter back up, before replacing it in the envelope. She sank down onto the dusty floorboards, not caring any longer what creepy-crawlies might be hidden in the gaps between them.
She had known all along, of course. She had overheard Peter and Bella arguing, that first day when Ben brought Bella home to meet them. But she had made a decision there and then to forget what she had heard and do what she had done in the past, by wiping any memory of it from her brain, for Ben’s sake.
To do anything differently – to act on what she knew – would mean the end of Ben’s relationship with Peter and she couldn’t risk that. So she had wiped the truth from her mind all those years ago and lived her life convinced that what they didn’t know, wouldn’t hurt them.
And it had been the right decision. Ben had loved Peter and Peter had loved Ben with a powerful and fierce love, which is why he had allowed Bella to blackmail him. He was protecting Ben. As he said in the letter, anything he did, he did out of love for his child.
Jo clambered to her feet and looked at the letter in her hand. She would take it downstairs and burn it, so that the next visitors to the loft never found it.
Yes, she decided, as she set light to the paper and watched it disappear into a small pile of ash in the fire grate. What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.
Acknowledgements
I could not have written this book without the help of Nikki Shepherd, who read numerous early drafts, made many plot suggestions and provided endless encouragement (and bottles of wine!) to pull me through a very difficult year. Cheers to you, my lovely friend.
Huge thanks, as ever, to my fabulous agent at Curtis Brown, Sheila Crowley, who is always on hand with her wisdom, insight and tireless support. I am so lucky to have her in my corner.
I am also truly fortunate to be published by the inspirational Lisa Milton at HQ and to have the equally inspiring Kate Mills as my editor. Kate’s steady guidance and brilliant ideas have steered me in the right direction and made me feel that I am in safe hands.
Love and gratitude are due to some very special friends: Jane Moore, Gary Farrow, Sarah Caplin, Robert Rinder, Leanne Clarke and Jacqui Moore. Thank you all.
Thank you to both the Warner and Duggan clans, especially my mum, Ann, who continues to be my biggest cheerleader.
And finally, thank you to the loves of my life, Alice, Paddy and Rob. You are everything.
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
http://www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
Bay Adelaide Centre, East Tower
22 Adelaide Street West, 41st Floor
Toronto, ON, M5H 4E3, Canada
http://www.harpercollins.ca
India
HarperCollins India
A 75, Sector 57
Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201 301, India
http://www.harpercollins.co.in
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
http://www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
http://www.harpercollins.com