‘A bit.’ She regarded him curiously. ‘You’re good at this, aren’t you?’
‘It’s easier for me. My responses aren’t muddied by emotion.’
About to say that was because he didn’t do ‘emotion’ she stopped herself. She was beginning to suspect that it wasn’t a lack of emotion that kept him buttoned up, but a fear of letting it spill out.
‘It’s more than that, Ivo. You seem to know just what Daisy’s feeling.’
‘I have a sister.’
‘That’s it?’ On the point of laughing at the idea of Miranda being an angsty teen, she thought better of it. Ivo had told her a little of what his sister had been through. ‘I’m trying to focus on the early days with Daisy. It’s when we were together,’ she explained. ‘A family.’
‘You don’t blame her, do you? Your mother?’
‘She was trying to protect us,’ she said. ‘And she was my mum. Unconditional love is a parent/child thing.’
Something she’d longed for too. Something a child would have given her. That she’d believed her sister, in her new home, would be able to give, to receive-something precious that would blot out everything else.
‘Daisy’s father was a gambler, Ivo. He ran up debts, mortgaged my mother’s house with three different companies, borrowed money from loan sharks and then disappeared. Mum never saw the letters from the bank or the finance people. I imagine he’d lain in wait for the postman and siphoned them off. The first she knew anything was wrong was when the bailiffs turned up.’
‘That’s fraud. He could have gone to prison.’
‘Yes, well, first you had to catch him. Then you had to prove that he’d done it. All academic, because a couple of loan shark heavies threatened Daisy, held a knife to her throat until my mother handed over her child allowance, issued an instruction to be there every Monday morning for a repeat performance.’
He swore, something he did so rarely that Belle’s eyes widened in shock. ‘Why didn’t she go to the police?’ he demanded.
‘The graphic description of what would happen to both her children if she did?’
He let slip another expletive, betraying just how deeply affected he was. ‘I’m sorry…’
‘No, that describes him perfectly. Mum got us home, packed what she could carry and ran.’
‘Four years? You lived like that for four years?’
‘Something inside her broke, Ivo. My dad was supposed to be the bad one. He drank, he knocked her about, fell into the canal one night-or was pushed-and drowned. Daisy’s dad looked and acted like a gentleman. She thought the sun shone out of his eyes. He told her he was going away on business for a few days and while she was ironing and packing for him, he was emptying her purse. When her world fell apart, she wasn’t capable of putting her life back together. There were people who could have helped; she was just too broken to see it.’
‘And still Daisy wants to find this man? Acknowledge him as her father?’
‘Unconditional love,’ she repeated. ‘It’s given to bad parents as well as good ones.’
‘Not always,’ he said. ‘Not if you don’t know what love is. Not if you’ve never known it.’
Ivo knew that to compare the misery of his childhood with what she’d been through was beyond pathetic. But she’d bared her soul to him. Had told him things that she hadn’t told anyone. She deserved as much from him. The truth; the whole truth. Because, like her, he’d lived a lie, had hidden behind a facade of the perfect life. The man who had everything, including the country’s sweetheart, Belle Davenport. Except that had all been a lie too.
Well, he was done with lies. Belle had been brave enough to confront her past; he could do no less. And if anyone was capable of understanding, it was Belle.
‘My parents didn’t love each other and they sure as hell didn’t love us.’
Belle was frowning, clearly confused. ‘But I thought…you had everything. The wonderful holidays in France, Italy. I’ve heard you and Miranda talk about them.’
‘Did you ever hear either of us mention our parents?’
She thought about it. ‘Well, no.’ She sat back. ‘No, I suppose not.’
‘We barely knew them. Neither of them wanted to be bothered with us, even with a nanny to do the dirty work. We were shunted off to boarding school at the earliest possible age. Learned behaviour. Our grandparents were no different. Forget seen but not heard. We weren’t even wanted for decoration.’
‘I had no idea.’
‘No, well, maybe we both had stuff we didn’t want to talk about, Belle. Didn’t want to remember.’
‘Only the holidays. Who did you spend them with?’
‘Every year we were dumped with some family who took in kids for the summer while they went off on their own affairs. And I do mean affairs. We were just getting to the age when we might have been interesting enough for them to notice when they were drowned. What they were doing on the same yacht has always been something of a mystery to me.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Don’t be. And some of the families were wonderful. Some summers. Those are the ones we remember, talk about.’
‘And the rest?’
‘We survived until a universal aunt arrived to take us back to school.’
‘And you hated that too?’
‘Hate would be too strong a word. It was just all a bit unrelenting. There was never any warmth. No one to give you a hug.’
He realised he was gripping her hand, clinging on to it as if to stop himself from drowning. He forced himself to release it but, before he could lift it away, she caught it, held it, then pushed her chair back.
He rose automatically as she got to her feet, held his breath as she came round the table. ‘No…’ The word, wrenched from him as she put her arms around him, pulled him close, was scarcely audible.
She was soft, warm, against him. He’d tried so hard not to admit to feelings that he knew would break him. Had built a barrier to protect himself. Had not allowed himself to get too close because he knew that one day she would give up waiting for what he could not give her.
Himself. A child…
And with one hug she had brought the whole edifice tumbling down so that he clung to her, held her, felt something that could only be tears stinging his eyes.
Belle leaned back, looked at him, then reached up, wiped her fingers over his cheek. ‘Let’s go home, Ivo,’ she said softly.
Her scent filled him like a warm balm to the spirit and the temptation to accept the comfort that she was offering was almost beyond enduring. The only thing that would be worse would be the aftermath.
‘I can’t.’
He was scarcely able to believe he’d said the words. This was what he’d wanted. Her back in his arms, warming the ice. But he couldn’t do it to her. Not again. He thought he’d loved her too much to let her go. Now he understand the difference between need and love. He’d seen real love in action. It wasn’t about need, about self; it was about giving, about sacrifice, about doing what was best for the person you cared for.
‘I can’t,’ he repeated.
He lowered her into her chair, carefully placed himself on the far side of the table, tried to blot out that confused look of rejection confronting him, a look that he knew from the inside.
‘I thought I could,’ he said. ‘I thought I had it all worked out. You were restless. You’d been thrown out of the groove by your Himalayan trip and you were tired of what you were doing. I thought all I had to do was stick around, point you in the direction of something that would grab your attention, distract you from the emptiness in our lives-’
‘Ivo…’
‘No. Don’t stop me, Belle. I have to say this. Have to tell you the truth.’
She made as if to say something, swallowed, waited, her face set and white.
The waiter arrived with a platter of antipasto. Did something fancy with a pepper mill. Finally left them alone.
They shouldn’t be here, he thought. They should be somewhere quiet. Somewhere private. And yet maybe this was best. A public place where emotion had to be kept on a tight rein.
‘I thought-believed,’ he said, carrying on as if they had not been interrupted, ‘that if you found something new to fill your life, then you’d be able to forget, that a moment would come when you’d slip back into your place in my
