Emma, feeling a little stronger in the legs now, walked ahead of Matthew and pushed open the door to her atelier. How she loved the unique smell of it – new fabric had a smell all its own which Emma found impossible to describe, but she’d know it anywhere. Three dresses – part completed – were wrapped in cheap cotton sheeting, to protect them from dust and fading, hung from the picture rail. They looked, Emma thought, like ghosts – if she believed in the existence of ghosts, which she didn’t. No, more like a depiction of angels on Christmas cards – all they needed was a halo of tinsel to complete the look.
Stella’s wedding dress was on the mannequin in the corner. Would Stella be well enough by February to wear it? At the hospital earlier, Stella had sounded sad when she’d told Emma that her fiancé hadn’t visited her for a few days. ‘I expect he’s busy,’ she’d said, not looking at Emma as she spoke, and Emma had got the feeling she didn’t believe that he was, not really. It had been on the tip of Emma’s tongue to ask her fiancé’s name, but she had decided to let Stella have the pleasure of using the word for as long as she could. But the writing, as the saying has it, was more than likely on the wall and both Emma and Stella had known it.
‘It all looks very organised in here,’ Matthew said, tapping the accounts book on the table.
‘There’s only me to organise things,’ Emma said. ‘Although there are people who need a lesson in organisation.’ She reached for the book, opened it, flipped through the pages until she found the entry for the cheque – still unpresented as far as she knew – she’d sent Exe Motors.
‘Such as?’ Matthew said.
‘Whoever it is who owns Exe Motors. I bought a car from them weeks ago now – Eduardo Cascarini drove me to Exeter because he said he used that garage for his ice cream vans and could recommend them – and my cheque is yet to be presented. How Exe Motors can run a business with such slack practices I have no idea. I’ve even written to them but have yet to receive a reply. But I suppose, in the scheme of things, and what is happening with Fleur right now, it’s hardly life-threatening, is it?’
‘I’m glad you see it that way,’ Matthew said, grinning at her.
Emma couldn’t stop herself grinning back. However big a shock it had been to discover that Fleur had lied to her, had been in some sort of fracas at a cinema and was now in Torquay police station, it was still wonderful to have Matthew with his red-gold hair and his green eyes and his oh-so-kissable lips smiling down at her.
But still she couldn’t help teasing. ‘I expect it’s a man who runs it. One who needs a woman to be his secretary to run things more efficiently for him.’
‘Do you now?’ Matthew said. ‘And is it your opinion that men need women to organise their lives?’
‘Well, we are rather better at things like running homes, and looking after children and, in my case, running a business.’
‘I have a business. A garage business. In Exeter. I could use a secretary.’
Emma felt her eyes widen and her mouth go round with surprise. Stella? Stella had a fiancé who owned a garage. It couldn’t be Matthew who was Stella’s fiancé, could it? She’d asked if he was a free man as she was now a free woman and he’d said he had been. And there had to be more than one garage business in Exeter, didn’t there?
‘That’s taken the wind out of your sails.’ Matthew laughed. ‘And close your mouth – you’re in danger of catching flies. No, better still – I’ll close it for you.’
He enveloped Emma in a gentle hug and kissed her lips and she knew when she was beaten.
‘I think …’ Emma said, reluctantly pulling away because they didn’t have time to follow up where that kiss was leading, did they? Someone from Torquay police station would telephone soon and then she’d need to go and collect Fleur. ‘You have probably got more to tell me about what’s been going in your life since we last met than I have to tell you what’s been going on in mine.’
‘Sharp as ever,’ Matthew replied.
‘I’ve got lots of pins and needles here to keep me so!’ Emma picked up a tin of pins and rattled it at him. ‘But now you know that I sew and I’ve not left my past behind me completely with Caroline turning up and causing trouble, and I know now that you run a garage business of some sort, what else do you have to tell me? You haven’t married again, have you? I did ask you if you were free …’
Not that she thought for a moment that he had. Would he have been so ready to get into her bed and love her with his body and his heart as he had done, if that were the case?
‘And I am. Is that a proposal?’
‘Certainly not!’ Emma said, mock-outraged. ‘I expect a proposal to be done in the right and proper way, on one bended knee and promising undying love.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ Matthew said, but the teasing had gone from his voice and a little bit of spark had vanished from his eyes.
And Emma knew there was … something … something he wasn’t divulging. And she also knew it was always best not to ask anything of Matthew she knew in her heart he didn’t want to tell her. Leopards rarely changed their spots. He’d said he ran a garage business that he needed a secretary for, but might that be a cover for something else? Emma was afraid to ask.
‘You’re certainly very good at what you do,’ Matthew said, pointing to Stella’s wedding dress.
Changing the subject.
‘Thank you,’ Emma said. ‘I ought to have covered that up as well before I went out. It’s a wedding dress.’ She unfolded a clean length of cotton sheeting and shook out the creases.
‘I guessed it might be.’
‘It’s not for me, if that’s what you were thinking. Oh, I know Eduardo has thought along those lines but I certainly haven’t. No, this is for a friend – well, that’s how I think about her now, although she began as a client. I visited her in the hospital this afternoon. Stella – she’s called Stella.’
‘Stella?’ Matthew said.
‘You know her?’
Please, please, tell me you’re not Stella’s mysterious fiancé who runs a garage in Exeter? I don’t think I could bear it if you’re Stella’s fiancé – the man she loves so much and is expecting to spend her future with. And I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself for making love to a friend’s fiancé if you are.
But before Matthew could answer the telephone began to ring and he raced off to answer it.
He was back in seconds.
‘We can go to her now. Come on.’
Within minutes they were in Matthew’s car and heading for Torquay.
Emma was itching to ask if Matthew knew Stella because she was his fiancée, and if his business was called Exe Motors, but was afraid to. She didn’t want that to be true. She would leave it to Matthew to clarify matters.
Sometimes it was best not to know things, wasn’t it?
‘Does he have to stay?’ Fleur said.
Her ma had turned up at the police station with a man. A man Fleur had had no idea her ma even knew. Certainly she’d not seen him at the Grand Hotel when they’d been staying there, and neither had he been to Romer Lodge before, to her knowledge.
‘This is my friend, Matthew,’ her ma had said. ‘Matthew Caunter.’ Fleur instantly recognised the name. Caroline had told her that her ma and … this man … had been lovers.
And he was here again now. Sitting in the chair opposite her ma’s in the sitting room of Romer Lodge with the ankle of his right leg balanced on the knee of his left. Relaxed. As though he had no intention of leaving soon. If ever.
How could she? At the police station Matthew had gone off to another room – cell? – somewhere to talk to a senior police officer leaving Fleur and her ma in the cell she’d been in for hours. She’d been cold and tired and frightened. And angry. It hadn’t been a nice feeling to learn that the woman who had turned up claiming to be her birth mother was a confidence trickster. Or that her ma had arrived with a previous lover. How had she kept him so secret? How many times had her ma seen him since she’d
been back in England? Or had she been seeing him in Canada too? Behind her pa’s back?
While she’d been expecting her ma to bawl her out for lying to her – not being at the ice cream parlour when she’d said she would be – she had done nothing of the sort. She’d hugged Fleur and kissed her and told her she believed all the things she’d told the police about the afternoon’s incident. And she’d told her she loved her over and over.
Perhaps she’d said all that because the policewoman had been standing in the corner, arms still folded across her chest, eyes everywhere like a hawk’s.
‘His name is Matthew, Fleur,’ her ma said now, looking – Fleur thought – rather soppily at the man and not at her. ‘Matthew Caunter. I introduced you in the police station. And yes, he is staying. For now.’
‘I knew Emma a long time ago,’ Matthew said. ‘Before you were born—’
‘She’s not my ma. Not really.’
‘I think you’ll find she very much is your ma. But whoever gave birth to you, Fleur,’ Matthew said, ‘doesn’t alter the fact I did know Emma before you were born. And Seth. I met him a time or two. I worked for his pa.’
‘So you’re a smuggler, too!’ Fleur snapped.
At the police station – before they’d left – a sergeant had sat down with them all in an office and told Fleur that her grandfather, Reuben, had died in police custody, put there for smuggling. Her ma had just told her the same thing, but she hadn’t believed her. But Fleur had wanted to know if it was true what Caroline had said – that her uncle Miles had been hanged – and the sergeant had confirmed that it was. And, it seemed that Miles’s brother, Carter, had also been hanged. Both for murder. What sort of blood did she have in her?
‘No,’ Matthew said. ‘I’m not, and never was, a smuggler. I worked for His Majesty’s Customs, now His Majesty’s Customs and Excise. I suppose you could say I was, in those days, a sort of spy.’
‘A spy? You came back to England, Ma, to rekindle your friendship with a spy?’
‘I didn’t come back to England to rekindle anything, Fleur,’ her ma said. ‘I didn’t know Matthew was here until this afternoon.’
Fleur saw her ma glance at Matthew briefly before looking away again. And she saw a flush pink her ma’s neck. What had they been doing all afternoon while she’d been in police custody? What?
‘Excuse me,’ Fleur said, ‘but you came waltzing into the police station, arm in arm, with a spy.’
‘Surveillance,’ Matthew said, quickly, casting a worried look at Emma. ‘That would be a better word for what I did.’
Fleur shrugged. She didn’t know what – or who – to believe. She knew what surveillance meant and it was one and the same as spying really, wasn’t it?
‘Did Pa know about this … friendship?’
‘Yes,’ her ma and Matthew said at the same time.
Well, that was a surprise – that neither had hesitated in their response.
‘Pa’s only been dead two years, Ma,’ Fleur said. She knew she was making it sound as though she was blaming her pa for being dead, which in a way she did because if he hadn’t played the hero and jumped into a freezing sea and lost his arm and then got gangrene for his pains, he’d be alive now and none of this would be happening.
‘I know,’ Emma said, her voice low. Sad even. ‘And he’s not coming back.’
‘But you don’t miss him enough not to rekindle a friendship so soon …’
‘That’s enough, Fleur,’ Matthew said, standing up.
‘You can’t tell me things like that,’ Fleur said. ‘You’re not my pa.’
‘Indeed, I’m not,’ Matthew said. ‘Emma has been beside herself worrying about you—’
‘I don’t know why,’ Fleur interrupted, pretty certain she was going to get a telling off in some way for doing it, but she didn’t care. What did this man know! ‘She’s not my ma.’
‘Isn’t she? Isn’t she the one who washed you, dressed you, fed you, nursed you when you were sick? Isn’t she the one who I’m pretty certain sat up in the night with you at times? Isn’t she the one who helped you learn your lessons? Isn’t she the one who has started up a business so you can live comfortably in a lovely home in a very beautiful part of the country? Isn’t she the one who risked her life defending you from a kidnapper before you were potty-trained? And got beaten black and blue for her efforts? Well, Fleur, that’s all true, n’est-ce pas?’
With every sentence he spoke Matthew’s eyes seem to darken, his body become stiffer. She was on the wrong side of him and she didn’t like it one bit. She could believe now that he would have pursued a murderer until he was caught.
He’d even thrown in a French phrase to let her know he knew all about her.
Fleur struggled for something to say. And then she looked at her ma, who was sitting, hands clasped in her lap, legs crossed neatly at the ankle, back straight as a ballerina’s. And she was silently crying. Tears were running down her cheeks and she was doing nothing to wipe them away. But Fleur knew she had caused those tears by her outburst and that everything Matthew had said was true.
She went to her ma and knelt down on the floor, put her head on her knee the way she’d done countless times over the years when she, herself, had been sad.
‘I’m sad, too, Ma,’ she said. ‘And frightened.’
‘Frightened? There’s no need to be. You’re safe now.’
‘I don’t mean that,’ Fleur said. She was more frightened than sad really but tears wouldn’t come. She wished they would – tears could heal, but could they heal all this?
‘What, then? Tell me.’
Fleur took a deep breath. ‘My world turned upside down on my birthday when Caroline showed up and I don’t know how to make it get the right way up again. She mesmerised me with talk of Hollywood and films and I thought I ought to be dazzled because she was my real mother and she’d brought me into the world. She drinks. In the daytime. In the cinema she was drinking. They both were. And I know I’ve been sharp with you, and very rude at times since we came to England, and I’ve lied and lied to you when I ought not to have done. Now I’ve been alone with Caroline and know her true colours, I’m frightened I’m more like her than I want to be.’
‘Oh, darling. I’m sorry you’ve had to go through all this. It’s not what your pa and I wanted for you.’
‘I want to be more like you, Ma.’
Fleur felt her ma’s hand on her head, felt her run that hand down to the nape of her neck and massage it gently, the way she’d done so many times and which Fleur had always taken for granted. Would Caroline ever have done that? Fleur doubted it.
Mumbling into her ma’s knees she told her about seeing Paolo with another girl in the cinema. ‘I nearly turned tail and came back home but I didn’t. I wish I had now,’ Fleur finished.
‘Paolo would still have been seeing someone else behind your back. I’m sorry you had to find out that way,’ her ma said.
‘Yes, but all that stuff in the cinema and the police station afterwards wouldn’t have happened.’
‘We can only learn from our mistakes,’ her ma said. ‘I know finding Matthew here has been a shock to you – and possibly not such a big a shock as it was to me – but thank goodness he was. Thank goodness he knew what authorities to contact, who to speak to, to make things happen when I discovered you weren’t with Paolo.’
And by those words Fleur could tell her ma really liked Matthew and that he was going to stick around.
She yawned.
‘Bath and then bed?’ her ma said, gently lifting Fleur’s head from her knees. ‘Both of us, I think.’
‘I’m going to write a letter to Paolo first,’ Fleur said. ‘Tell him I saw him at the cinema with that girl, and that’s the last I want to see of him. It won’t take much paper. I could get it all on the back of a postage stamp.’
‘That’s my girl,’ her ma said.
‘And that’s my cue,’ Matthew said.
Fleur got to her knees, but h
er ma stayed where she was. Matthew walked over to her, leaned over and kissed her ma on the cheek, and then – for good measure – on the top of her head.
‘I’ll telephone you in the morning, Emma,’ he said. ‘Hopefully, by then, Caroline and her accomplice will have been apprehended.’ He turned his gaze from her ma and looked at Fleur. ‘I’m glad you’re safe. For everyone’s sake. I’ll see myself out.’
Chapter Twenty
‘Well, Emma, you stirred up a hornet’s nest coming back.’ Matthew was talking to no one but himself as he filed paperwork in his office, but just saying her name brought her sharply into focus in his mind.
Although he had telephoned Emma every day to check that she was well, he hadn’t seen her for over a week now – and that by design.
Both Emma and Fleur needed time alone, he knew that. They needed space to get used to the new situation. Caroline and her man friend had been apprehended. The police – tipped off by Matthew who had given them Caroline’s late mother’s address – had lain in wait. At two o clock in the morning, they’d crept up through the back garden by lamplight and got the surprise of their lives to find themselves surrounded by police. Both were now in custody. What happened to them Matthew didn’t care, but he realised that whatever sentence they were given they would be released sometime. And that ‘sometime’ could again be dangerous for Emma. And for Fleur.
He couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for Fleur finding out that Emma wasn’t her mother – well, not the one who had given birth to her but she’d done the mothering all the same. And then for Fleur to discover exactly what sort of person the woman who had given birth to her really was must have hurt her to the core.
Court case? Matthew slapped a hand to his forehead. Why hadn’t he thought of that? Fleur was still a minor and it was highly unlikely she’d be asked to take the witness box and give evidence against Caroline and her man friend. That Fleur’s watch had been stolen by one of them was good and bad in equal measure – bad that she had lost the watch Emma had so recently given her for her birthday, but good that it had been found in Caroline’s possession when she’d been searched by the police.
Emma and Her Daughter Page 26