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‘You see, Rose, sometimes a secret isn’t simple but instead is the result of a complex tangle of things past and done, meaning that the secret can’t be brought out into the open without many innocent people being hurt. None of us can say that Greg could not have been John’s father, but neither can we say that he was. It is my belief that Cassandra hoped to have a son of her own with John’s father and that if she had done so she would have tried to have John disinherited. Without a son, when John’s father died it was in her own interests for John to inherit. John grew up believing himself to be Lord Fitton Legh’s son. The estate is his whole world. Perhaps someone should have spoken out all those years ago.’
‘No,’ Rose said shakily. ‘No. It would have been cruel and unnecessary.’
‘I can see now that you should have been told once you were old enough to understand. Greg was your father, after all.’
‘And I was the child that no one wanted; the half-Chinese embarrassment, that you all wished did not exist.’
‘Rose, that isn’t true. I loved you from the first minute I saw you. You touched my heart as no other child has ever done. Here in my heart you have always been loved, always been mine.’
Against her will Rose could feel the tug on her emotions, but she wasn’t going to give in to it.
‘If that’s true, and you loved me so much, why did you leave me at Denham with a father who couldn’t care less about me and a great-grandmother who would have happily seen me dead? It is true, isn’t it, that Blanche ordered the doctor not to try to save me? And yes, before you ask, Cassandra did tell me. If you had really loved me you would never have left me there. You would have taken me with you.’
‘Rose, I couldn’t. There were reasons. Luc was already at school and you would have been alone in the nursery. Robert…’ Amber’s voice broke slightly as she remembered how hard those days had been. ‘I had a duty to Robert that meant I wouldn’t have been able to be with you.’
‘So you abandoned me, hoping that I would die; that I wouldn’t grow up to ask the kind of awkward questions that might lead to the secrets that had to be protected being exposed. You didn’t love me at all. Cassandra was right, you just pretended that you did. Didn’t you ever stop to think about what you were doing? Wasn’t it bad enough that you had stolen from me the right to know that I might have a half-brother, without taking my love as well in exchange for worthless lies?’
Rose started to get up. She had said far more than she had ever imagined herself saying–too much–and now she felt drained and exha
usted, but somehow still not cleansed of all the old hurt or the pain that went with it. She had loved her aunt with a child’s trusting love, and the hurt her aunt’s betrayal had caused her would always be a part of her.
‘Rose, please listen to me.’ Amber had stood up now as well. ‘I did leave you at Denham, yes, but you were never alone and unprotected just as you were never out of my thoughts. You see, Rose, I entrusted you to the one person I knew beyond any other I could rely on to look after you and be your guardian angel for me.’
Rose frowned. There was so much emotion in her aunt’s voice that she was compelled to listen.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I entrusted you to Jay, Rose. He visited you every day, he wrote to me to tell me how you were. He took photographs of you for me; he was there for you all the time, when I could not be. He carried my love to you, and kept you safe.’
Rose bit her lip, trying to hold back her tears. Amber’s words had put a totally different slant on everything, showing her a care and a commitment she had never known existed and which she knew as an adult could only have come from love.
‘The minute I looked at you, I felt such a bond with you, Rose. For me that bond is still there.’
‘I was so hurt by what Cassandra told me. I felt—’
‘Exactly what Cassandra wanted you to feel.’
They looked at one another, exchanging unsteady smiles.
It was Amber who moved first, reaching out to touch Rose’s hair and then her cheek, and then they were hugging one another, both of them crying and smiling.
There was no going back to the past and what had been lost there–that was impossible–but there was the future and the chance to rebuild their relationship together.
Epilogue
May 1977
‘To Emerald. Many, many happy returns.’
Everyone raised their champagne flutes in acknowledgement of Drogo’s birthday toast, whilst Emerald herself looked ruefully at her own glass of lemonade. She was four and a half months pregnant now, and over the weeks of morning sickness, but the thought of alcohol still nauseated her.
Drogo and her mother had organised a family get-together at Denham to celebrate her birthday and, unexpectedly to Emerald, the whole family were there.
‘That was a wonderful suggestion of Drogo’s to John that we start holding an annual open-air rock festival at Fitton, Emerald,’ Janey told her. ‘John’s thrilled to bits about it. Oh, there’s Ella. I must go and have a word with her to congratulate her. How lovely that both of you are having babies this year.’
As Janey hurried over to her sister, Rose seized her opportunity to have Emerald to herself.
‘There’s something I want to know,’ she announced.
