Eloise would tell him he was driving her away and that he needed to make more of an effort, but James was too set in his ways.
“Stop nagging me, woman. I’m doing my best but she’s a difficult child to love. There’s not a bit of her mother in her and she does nothing but defy me.”
Eloise was near to tears, “You vowed you would look after her and love her. You promised you would do the same for me and all you do is sit on your behind and drink whisky. No wonder she won’t talk to you.”
James would mutter something under his breath and pour himself another drink. Eloise would give up and leave him to it. She had come into this marriage with her eyes open, but she hadn’t thought he would turn into such a grumpy, bitter old man quite so soon.
The years on the fishing boats and in the oil fields had taken their toll on James. He was wracked with arthritis and in constant pain. He had also become increasingly forgetful.Eloise would come back from the shops and find him out in the street looking frightened and confused and calling her name.
“Where were you?” he would demand plaintively. “You left me alone for so long and I couldn’t get into the house.” She’d grab the front door key hanging from a stout strap she hadfastened around his neck and tell him for the hundredth time that he could let himself in. At first, she had felt deeply sorry for him, but that soon turned into guilty exasperation.
By the time Amelia was ten years old, it was clear her father was deteriorating badly. One terrible night, Eloise realised that his mind was going when he kept calling Amelia by another name: ‘Cara’. He was holding onto his daughter’s hands, weeping and begging for her forgiveness.
“James, what’s going on, you’re frightening her,” said Eloise, and she was all the more perturbed when James turned to her, his eyes suddenly lucid, and whispered he had to confess something. Eloise sent Amelia from the room.
“What on earth is the matter?” she whispered. And James finally told her he had another daughter. A daughter he had never met, and whose very existence was an accident, the result of a one-night stand.
Eloise hadn’t expected this. She couldn’t believe he had never told her about something so important. She clasped her hand over her mouth, her thoughts reeling. He had kept this daughter a complete secret. From her, from Marge, and now from Amelia. Her half-sister.
“I should have gone back to Orkney and tried to be her father,” James was weeping. “But it’s too late now.”
“It’s never too late, James. Why don’t you try and contact her?” said Eloise, her mind running to what might be possible. She was picturing a family reunion, a happy ever after with herself in the middle accepting praise as the one to have made it all happen.
James shook his head violently.
“No. No! This has to be kept secret. No good will come of it, too much time has passed. It’s better for Cara and for Amelia that they don’t know.”
He lapsed into a stubborn silence leaving Eloise in turmoil.
Surely Amelia had a right to discover she had another family, even if her father didn’t want her to find out.
Recently, Eloise found she was worrying constantly about Amelia and now she would have the added stress of feeling guilty about keeping this enormous secret. She had no idea what to do.
Amelia had grown into a strange, intense child. The rest of her classmates at school found her odd and cold, but even the bullies were too scared of her to make her life a misery. Everyone just gave her a wide berth. Perhaps stung by the isolation, she could be sneaky and snitched to the teachers on the kids who smoked cheap cigarettes under the bleachers by the football field.
She treated James with complete disinterest, but she showed a softer side with her step-mother when it suited her. It was Eloise who told Amelia the story of how her mother had died giving birth to her, turning the very real tragedy of Marge’s death into a sort of turgid soap opera embellished with every retelling, complete with heavenly choirs of angels clasping Marge to their bosoms, and weeping medical staff proclaiming Amelia to be an angel.
Eloise was a decent woman, but she was the worst possible influence on a child like Amelia. She was forever telling the little girl she was far more beautiful and clever than everyone else.
With his drinking and his bad temper, James had proved to be such a disappointment to Eloise, she poured all of her affection into Amelia, who in her eyes could do no wrong. The more Amelia misbehaved, the more Eloise defended her.
When Amelia pushed the neighbours’ five-year-old son off his bike, his enraged father turned up at the door after work only to be met with a furious Eloise falsely claiming his childwas a menace who had started it by chucking stones at her precious step-daughter.
Earlier that day, Eloise had readily accepted Amelia’s tearful explanation that it was all the little boy’s fault even though deep down she knew the truth. She continued haranguing the poor man, “My Amelia would never do anything so terrible. She’s a good girl and she’s been brought up properly, unlike your son.”
He walked away muttering that she had better stay away from his boy or there would be trouble. Eloise then darted upstairs to comfort Amelia, insisting on giving her hugs and treats and painting poor Amelia as a precious victim of other people’s jealousy. So Amelia grew up neglected by her father and smothered by Eloise. All of which made for a very mixed-up girl.
Chapter Twelve
Kirkwall Airport
Evie was waiting nervously at the airport for the morning flight from Edinburgh. She had barely slept the night before, going over and over in her mind whether she had done the right thing.
Three cups of strong coffee had left her jittery, clammy and queasy. She kept looking at the arrivals board and hoping the flight would be delayed indefinitely, but the weather was fair and mild with no wind and the plane was due to land on time.
Amelia had wasted no time in taking Evie up on her offer, booking a flight for the very next week and telling Evie in an email dotted with exclamation marks about her excitement.
She would arrive in Heathrow in the wee small hours of that morning from her flight from Seattle to JFK in New York, sleep at Heathrow and take the first flight to Edinburgh and then on to Kirkwall.
