‘I’m glad you came,’ he growled.
‘I want to hear what you have to say, Luca, but then I’m leaving at once.’
‘My God, you won’t give an inch, will you, even now?’
‘No, because whatever you tell me can’t really make any difference. How could you ever imagine that it would, after what you did?’
‘After what I did?’ he echoed. ‘What did I do?’
‘Oh, please, don’t pretend you don’t know. We talked about it the first evening. You took my father’s money.’
‘Naturally. I had every right to it.’
‘Of course you did,’ she said scornfully. ‘After all, you’d given me several months of your valuable time, and I didn’t even reward you with a living child. There had to be some recompense for that. But what do you think it did to me to hear my father crowing with delight because you’d lived down to his worst expectations?’
‘That I…?’ He frowned. ‘What did he tell you?’
‘That you’d taken his money to go away and never see me again. That’s another reason I wouldn’t touch those diamonds. Did you think I’d want to take anything from you after you sold me back to him? Besides, you overpaid. I know what those diamonds are worth, and it must be twice what he paid for me.
For a thunderous moment Luca was so silent that she had an eerie feeling that he would never speak again. Then he swore violently, turning away and smashing a fist into the other palm while a stream of invective flowed from him.
‘And you’ve believed that, all these years?’ he raged when he turned back.
‘What else was I to believe? He showed me the cheque when it had been cashed and returned to him. It was your bank account. Don’t pretend it wasn’t.’
‘Oh, yes, it was mine. He paid me that money, I don’t deny it.’
‘Then what more is there to say?’
‘He lied to you about why. I left because, when Frank had finished, I was sure it was all my fault, the state you were in, the baby’s death-I felt guilty about the whole thing.
‘Then he had you whisked off to England, to a place I didn’t know. I couldn’t reach you. I went back to the cottage, and found him there, setting fire to it.’
She stared at him, trying not to believe.
‘My father burned our home?’ she whispered.
Something flickered across his face.
‘Our home. Yes, that’s what it was. I’m glad you remembered. He burnt it with his own hands. Luckily there were witnesses. On their evidence he was arrested and put into the cells. He could have faced a long stretch in prison if I hadn’t told the police that it was a “misunderstanding” and I wouldn’t press charges.’
‘Why would you do that?’
His grin flashed out again, cynical, jeering.
‘Why, for fifty thousand pounds, of course. That was my price for letting him off. I sold him back his freedom.
‘I don’t believe it,’ she whispered, just as she had done long ago.
‘He got caught in the fire himself and burned his arm. Did you never notice that?’
And it came back to her, the memory of Frank arriving one day with his arm in a sling. He said he’d broken it, but months later she’d seen the ugly mark and thought it looked like a burn. When she’d asked him about it, he’d become angry and evasive.
‘All these years,’ she murmured, ‘he told me that you-’
‘You heard him offer me money once before,’ he reminded her, ‘and you heard my reaction.’
‘Yes, I remember. He said you’d turned against me when I lost the baby and lost my looks.’
‘You never lost them,’ he said simply. ‘Never. And did you really believe that of me?’
She nodded dumbly.
‘You should have had more faith in me, Becky.’
His voice was sad, but not reproachful. He had never blamed her for anything.
‘Oh, God,’ she whispered. ‘All these years, I thought that you-oh, God, oh, God!’
She had thought she’d touched bottom long ago, but now she knew that this was far worse. She went to the window and looked out into the darkness, too confused to think.
‘I should have known,’ she said at last, ‘but I wasn’t myself.’
‘No, you were never yourself after the day your father came,’ he said. ‘I saw you once after that. Do you really not remember when I came to the hospital?’
Distressed, she shook her head. ‘I always wondered why you never came near me again.’
‘Do you think he would let me? He was your father, your next of kin, and I was nothing. If he’d arrived a day later we would have been married, but we weren’t, and I had no rights.’
‘Yes,’ she said, suddenly struck. ‘I remember him saying, “Then I’m in time.” He meant in time to stop us marrying. But you were the baby’s father.’
‘Before he came to our door your father had approached the police chief, and got him in his pocket. I was arrested and held in the cells for a week.’
‘Dear God! On what charge?’
He shrugged. ‘Anything they could think of. It didn’t matter, because they never meant to keep me inside for long, just long enough to suit Frank Solway’s purpose.
‘I thought you were dying. I begged to be allowed to see you, but nobody would listen. And then, at last, your father came to me and told me that the “little bastard” as he called our child, was dead.
‘He said it was all my fault, that I’d caused you to lose the child by my “rough behaviour”-’
‘But that’s not true,’ she burst out. ‘He was the one who was rough. You didn’t fight him back, you just stood there like a rock. I do remember that.’
‘Of course I did, because I was afraid to harm you.’
‘Then how could you have felt guilty when you knew it wasn’t your fault?’
He tore his hair. ‘Why does an innocent man ever confess to a crime he hasn’t committed? Because they torture his mind until he thinks lies are truth and truth is a lie. I was in such torment, with our child dying, longing for you, not able to get near you, it wasn’t hard for him to make me feel that I was entirely to blame.’
She looked at him, torn with pity.
‘And then he took me to see you. I thought my chance had come, that I could take you in my arms and tell you that I loved you. But you weren’t in your right mind.’
‘I had post-natal depression, very badly, and I think they gave me some strong medication.’
‘Yes, I understand that now, but at the time I just walked in and saw you staring into space. I didn’t know what had happened. You didn’t seem to hear or see me.’
‘I didn’t,’ she breathed. ‘I had no idea you’d even been there.’
‘I wasn’t able to be alone with you. There was your father, and a nurse, in case I “became violent”. I begged you to hear me. I told you over and over how sorry I was. You just stared at me.
Dumbly she shook her head. ‘I never knew,’ she said. ‘I must have been completely out of it.’
‘And your father knew the state you’d be in while I was there. I wonder what he persuaded the doctor to give you beforehand, to make sure.’
She nodded. She could believe anything of Frank now. ‘And he never told me that you came.’
‘Of course not. It suited him to have you think I’d callously abandoned you. I went away half-crazy with guilt at the harm I thought I’d done you.’
‘It wasn’t you, Luca, it wasn’t you.’
He regarded her sadly.
‘You can tell me that now, but how can you tell the boy I was then? His agony is beyond comfort. Do you remember how it was between us at the very start, how I tried to resist you, for your sake?’
She nodded. ‘And I wouldn’t let you.’
‘My conscience had always troubled me about taking you away from the life you were used to, making you live
