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‘Some men can never really let go. Their vanity demands that they are the controlling force in a relationship, the most loved. It strikes me that you and your mother had a lucky escape, Star,’ he added wisely.
‘A lucky escape? What on earth do you mean?’ Star challenged him.
‘Look around you,’ Kyle instructed her, ‘and tell me what you see...’
‘My father,’ she responded belligerently.
‘Your father and who?’ Kyle questioned patiently.
‘My father and his children... the ones he really wanted,’ she told him angrily. ‘The children he really wanted and their mothers...’
‘Mmm. Shall I tell you what I see?’ Without waiting for her to answer he continued, ‘I can see a man who cannot bear to be ignored, who must come first—a man who is quite happy to manipulate and undermine those he claims to love to ensure that he is always the prime focus of their attention. Look at the way he plays one person off against another, the same way he played you off against Emily—the same way, in all probability, that he played you off as a child against your mother and vice versa.’
Star immediately opened her mouth to deny what he had said, her eyes mirroring both her shock and her outrage.
He forestalled her. ‘It’s human nature for us to want our parents to be paragons and perfect, Star, especially when our contact with them is limited. I know, I’ve been there and suffered the consequences. It can be devastating for children when they realise that the mother or father they love so much isn’t perfect—devastating enough to turn that love to deep-seated resentment and even hatred.’
Star spun on her heel and walked away from him, angrily reacting to his comments in much the same way as she might have done to someone physically probing a painful wound with a surgical instrument, but thereafter she couldn’t help observing how accurate his assessment had been.
Her father did encourage his different families to compete for his attention, he did manipulate chaos rather than encourage harmony between them, sometimes even between different members of the same family group, and she was shocked to realise that, whereas in the past she had always thought of herself as the lone outsider to the charmed, extensive family unit that he had formed around himself, there were in fact several others who shared her painful isolation and exclusion from the family fold.
Withholding his love and his approval and singling out one particular person at a time for this treatment was something her father was adept at, Star recognised. And she had also recognised something else which was even more disturbing, she acknowledged as she watched the way that Kyle encouraged the smallest of the triplets, the one who had held back as the other two had yet again rushed into his arms, to come forward, deftly hoisting one child onto his shoulders, leaving both arms free to gather the remaining two.
The look of relieved, grateful joy that radiated from the third small face made Star bite down hard on her bottom lip. What she had finally realised was that Kyle would never behave like her father. He would never willingly or wilfully hurt anyone, much less someone he professed to love. Kyle was different... Kyle was—
‘Thanks... for coming.’
The hesitation in Emily’s voice as she came to join her made Star quell her normal hostile response to her stepsister.
‘You look beautiful,’ Star told her, and meant it. ‘Dad looked so proud as he walked you down the aisle.’
‘Did he?’ Emily gave her a surprised complacent look. ‘He wasn’t at all pleased when I told him that David and I were going to get married. David’s been married before, you see, and John made a big thing about him marrying me on the rebound. He knew David’s first wife and, according to him, David was desperately in love with her. It brought it all back for me, of course—how desperately jealous I was of you as a child and how desperately jealous my mother was of yours.’
‘You jealous of me?’ Star stared at her. ‘But you were always his favourite... You were the one he—’
‘No, I wasn’t.’ Emily cut her off, shaking her head decisively. ‘Oh, I know it may have seemed that way, but he was always comparing me with you, saying how much cleverer you were, how much prettier. Everything I did you had done before me and so much better——even though you were younger. Just as everything Mum did your mother had done before her and so much better.’
She pulled a wry face. ‘I didn’t want any of this, you know,’ she told Star, gesturing towards the lavishly expensive marquee thronged with guests. ‘I wanted to get married very quietly...for it just to be me and David...but John made such a fuss... He kept going on about the huge wedding that David and Naomi had had and what people were going to think and say if we didn’t do the same. He wanted me to have all the children as attendants, you know—all of them,’ she stressed meaningfully, ‘including you...’
‘What?’
Emily laughed as she saw Star’s look of revulsion.
‘I told him you’d never agree—thank God. And of course you know what he’s like—he had to make a big thing of it, claiming that I didn’t want you because I’d always been jealous of you and then insisting that if all his children couldn’t be included then none of them should be. Not that I minded. I was more than happy with David’s two nieces as my bridesmaids.’
‘I should think you were,’ Star said feelingly, unable to stop herself from mentally counting up all her father’s children and then looking at the triplets who were still with Kyle.
‘I know; it doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?’ Emily murmured, reading her mind.
‘No, it doesn’t,’ Star agreed.
They looked at one another and then burst out laughing, the laughter in Emily’s eyes suddenly turning to bright tears as she reached out and hugged her fiercely, saying emotionally, ‘Oh, Star, I so much wanted you as my sister, but somehow we never got it quite right did we?’
‘No...no, we didn’t,’ Star said grimly, and then to her own surprise she heard herself saying, ‘But that doesn’t mean that we still can’t.’
‘No, it doesn’t, does it?’ Emily agreed, giving her another fierce hug.
‘Ready to go?’ Kyle asked a few minutes later, deftly avoiding a would-be rugby tackle from someone’s child as he crossed the hotel lawn to join Star.
Heavens, he was like a modern-day Pied Piper, Star decided in fascination; none of the children, it seemed, could keep away from him.
‘What on earth is it about you?’ she asked him distastefully. ‘Your aftershave?’
‘Nope.’ Kyle laughed good-humouredly. ‘Nothing special; I just like kids.’
‘So I see,’ Star responded disdainfully. ‘Let’s hope your wife, when you do marry, is equally enthusiastic; after all, she’ll be the one who ends up playing the major role in their upbringing.’
‘Not necessarily,’ Kyle corrected her. ‘I’m quite happy to be a house-husband father if things work out that way.’
Star digested his statement in silence as he drove them back to their hotel. Her tension headache had spread to her neck and the muscles of her shoulders and upper back now and she instinctively tried to ease the stiffness out of them.
Kyle frowned as he saw her discomfort and asked her in concern, ‘Are you OK?’
‘I’ve just got a bit of tension, that’s all,’ Star answered him brusquely. She wasn’t used to anyone showing concern about her health; her relationships with men had never included that type of intimacy.
‘Don’t worry, I know just the thing for it,’ Kyle assured her as he turned into the drive that led to their hotel.
‘So do I,’ Star snapped.
Typically Kyle refused to take offence or retaliate, simply smiling at her as he parked the car. Uncharacteristically, Star let him take the lead in dealing with the receptionist.
The day had drained her both emotionally and physically—as she had guessed it would—but for very different reasons from those she had imagined.
She was amazed at how easily and how dispassionately she h
ad been able to watch her father ignore her and turn to fuss with the triplets instead. And she had felt for them, rather than experiencing her normal sense of humiliation and shame at being passed over in favour of her father’s other children.
Their suite was large and comfortable, with two bedrooms and bathrooms and a shared sitting room. Star, like Kyle, carried her own overnight case, and she was just about to put it in her room when Kyle told her quietly, ‘I’ve arranged for the bill to be made out to me; we can split the cost later. I thought you’d prefer it that way rather than have your father pay.’
She stopped and stared at him, unable to say a word, her eyes filling with quick, irrational tears, and virtually stammered a low, ‘Y-yes...thank you...I would.’
How had he known that she would feel like that? she marvelled as she walked into her room. That she would want...? She put down her case and closed her eyes. From the other side of the half closed door she heard Kyle saying, ‘I’ve ordered a room service meal—if that’s OK? I didn’t think you’d want to bother going down to the restaurant, but if—’
‘No...no, that’s fine,’ she assured him wearily. Her head had started to ache really badly; all she wanted to do was to get undressed, have a warm, relaxing bath and then lie down.
She closed the bedroom door and started to remove her suit.
‘Star?’
Groggily Star opened her eyes. She was lying on her front. Kyle was standing at the side of the bed, looking down frowningly at her. Her room was in semi-darkness and as she glanced automatically at her watch she realised that she had been asleep for over two hours.
‘What happened to dinner?’ she demanded huskily, wincing as she moved and discovered that the tension from her headache had remained in her neck and shoulders.
‘I cancelled it,’ Kyle told her drily. ‘We can always reorder later. How do you feel?’
