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His voice became hoarse. ‘When? Why?’
She was silent for a few moments, as if weighing up whether or not to confide in him. ‘My mother abandoned me to Social Services when I was five.’
Blood rushed to his brain, the pressure inside his head pounding with the weight of a dozen hammers. ‘Your mother abandoned you?’
It took guts for him to keep you. He must love you very much. Her words echoed around his head. Why hadn’t he paid attention to the wistful tone in which those words had been delivered?
‘I thought you were an orphan.’ He raked a hand through his hair as he distinctly recalled her stating when they’d married that her parents were both dead. He had never questioned her on this—had assumed she had been an adult when they’d died.
‘My dad died when I was a baby,’ she said, and the light in her voice that had been so prevalent throughout the day had diminished into a dispassionate tone he recognised but could not place. ‘My mum died a couple of years ago.’
‘Did you go back to live with her?’ he asked hopefully. The thought of Rosa living in the care system tore at something inside of him.
‘No. She never came back for me.’
Silence rent the cabin, the proportions of which seemed to have shrunk into a tiny bubble. The only movement was his fingers, running through her hair like a comb.
He knew he should leave it there. They had made love. That did not mean he had to know her innermost secrets. He did not know what had compelled him to question her in the first place.
‘Tell me,’ he commanded in a voice that was not quite steady.
Her chest lifted as she expelled a long sigh. ‘There isn’t much to tell. My parents were really young when they had me—only sixteen. Dad was a bit of a hothead, by all accounts, and died in a motorbike accident. Then her own mother died and my mum couldn’t cope raising me on her own.’
He swallowed. ‘They told you this?’
Her head moved, her thick hair tickling his chin. ‘I was allowed to see my file when I turned eighteen.’ A touch of sadness crept into her voice. ‘I always thought—hoped—I was dumped because she couldn’t afford to keep me. I thought the social worker was protecting me from something terrible, like drug abuse or...or something. But money and drugs didn’t have anything to do with it. She just didn’t want me back. Social Services held out for three years in the hope she would take me back before approving me as a candidate for adoption.’
Nico swore under his breath.
‘Unfortunately eight-year-olds aren’t at the top of any potential adopters’ wish-lists.’
He closed his eyes at the matter-of-fact, fatalistic tone to her voice and wrapped his arms around her, as if the very act could protect her and keep her safe. How could anyone treat a child in such a manner?
And what kind of a monster was he, to live with someone, to forge a life with them—yes, an unconventional life, but a life all the same—and not know something so fundamental about her?
‘Could your mother have been suffering from depression?’ he suggested, his brain scrambling to think of something that would explain such heartless behaviour. ‘She had lost your father and her own mother in a short space of time.’
‘I tracked her down five years ago.’
There was that catch in her throat again—a catch that leapt out and jumped right into his heart.
‘She was embarrassed to see me. I think it shamed her, having me on her doorstep, reminding her of a life she had tried to forget. She’d remarried and had another child. A boy. A brother I never knew existed. She was polite, but...’ Her voice was fading, becoming little more than a whisper. ‘She didn’t want me there. It was obvious. I gave her my details but I never heard from her again.’
‘I’m sorry.’ His words sounded ridiculous to his own ears. How could a mere sorry compensate for a lifetime of abandonment?
‘What for?’ Surprise laced her husky voice.
‘I never knew.’
‘It’s not something I shout about.’ She disentangled herself from his tight hold and rolled onto her back. He could see her profile, her snub nose pointing upwards as she gazed at the ceiling. ‘Us care-home kids have a bad rep. Most people think kids in care are drug-addicted no-hopers. We’re expected to fail. And for the most part we do.’
‘You didn’t fail,’ he said, outraged on her behalf.
‘I was lucky. I had a social worker who believed in me, and at one point I was placed with a foster family who were fanatical about the need for a good education. It was through them that I learned I had a good brain and a talent for languages—Dacha, the foster mum, was Russian.’
