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‘Yes,’ he breathed. ‘I imagine you did.’
‘I remember we used to have to stay very quiet whenever she had clients round. I remember the sounds they used to make.’ She pulled a face. ‘That was probably what put me off sex for so long. We used to sit upstairs in our bedroom and I would whisper little games for Pansy to play to keep her amused. We always kept the door locked, of course. And it wasn’t all bad. If...’ Her voice wavered again. ‘If mum had had a particularly good night, then she used to go to the corner shop next day and buy us a cake, for tea. Ch-cherry was our favourite.’
‘Go on,’ he said grimly.
Marnie nodded, but the bitter lump which had risen in her throat was suddenly making it very difficult for her to breathe. ‘Then she got pneumonia. It was all very quick. One minute we were being taken into care while mum went into hospital and the next we were told she’d died.’ She shrugged. ‘And it was as if she had never existed.’
‘You didn’t go to the funeral?’ he said, as though this mattered, as though he were remem
bering the secrecy surrounding his own mother’s illness.
‘No. Things were different then. As you know yourself. Apparently they thought we would get over the whole experience more quickly if we moved on. So we did. We were sent to a children’s home and from there we were farmed out to various foster families, but nobody wanted to adopt us.’
‘Why not?’
She shrugged. ‘We were too damaged, I guess. Too suspicious and too close and too much of a handful. They tried to split us up but I made sure that was never going to happen.’
Marnie’s knees felt wobbly and she would have loved to have taken Leon up on his offer and to have sunk into that squishy sofa, but that would mean she was looking up at him and would definitely put him at an advantage. And he certainly didn’t need any more advantages. Besides, how would she be able to leave quickly and with dignity if she had to haul herself up? ‘It’s okay, Leon. You don’t have to worry about how to tell me. It’s over. I know that. Who wants a girlfriend with a past like mine?’
He stood up then and she could see the shadows which were flitting like dark clouds across his face, making him look like a Leon she didn’t recognise. His blue eyes were boring into her with a coldness she’d never seen directed at her before.
‘It’s not okay,’ he negated harshly. ‘It might have been if you’d told me all this right from the start.’
‘Really? And how would that have worked?’ She gave a bitter laugh. ‘Should I have thrown it into the conversation on our first date? Maybe confided it when I came to see you at your office, or murmured it as pillow talk a little further down the line? At what stage of our relationship should I have told you the truth, Leon?’
‘But surely that’s the whole damned point!’ he ground out. ‘That you didn’t tell me the truth. That you feigned ignorance and pretended. That in essence you lied to me, Marnie. And I can bear a lot of things, but not lies.’
Leon tugged off his tie and flung it to the ground as if it were choking him. And in a way, it was. Because her words had taken him hurtling right back to his own childhood. To the mother who had always appeared startled whenever he caught her taking tablets, explaining them away by saying she had a headache. A mother who told him she much preferred the shiny new wig to her own wispy hair—though he’d never really understood until afterwards why all those gloriously thick black locks had fallen out so suddenly. Not one honest answer had she given to any of his questions and he’d felt sidelined. As if he didn’t count enough to be told the truth. As if he didn’t matter. And that feeling had stayed with him, lying dormant inside him—always ready to rise to the surface if someone was deliberately dishonest.
‘You didn’t tell me the truth, Marnie,’ he repeated quietly. ‘And I’m afraid that’s a deal-breaker for me.’
He saw all the colour leach from her face and thought the clipped finality of his final statement would be enough to send her running from the room, saving them face and saving them both from any more soul-bearing or heartache. And didn’t he want that? Wouldn’t that have made it—not easy—but easier for them both? But she didn’t go. She just stood her ground like an immovable force. Dignified and proud, despite the sloppy clothes and her diminutive height, as she tilted a mulish face at him.
‘And being used is a deal-breaker for me!’ she hissed back.
Mutual mud-slinging was the last thing he wanted to engage in right now but he couldn’t let her furious accusation pass. ‘Being used?’ he verified icily. ‘And just how did I do that?’
‘You used me to upstage your father on his wedding day!’
‘You believe all that rubbish you read on the website?’
‘Yes! Because that’s what happened! I was there, remember? You must have realised that everyone was watching you, because they’d been watching you from the moment we arrived. What better way to pay your father back than by stealing all his thunder? By showcasing your own youth and vitality in contrast with a man in his declining years?’ She drew in a deep breath and he could see a tiny pulse hammering away at her temple, close to the moonlight sheen of her hair. ‘You told me you were angry with him. Angry that he’d duped you into attending a wedding you secretly disapproved of, but you did it because you were hoping for some kind of closure and reconciliation, which he failed to provide. You don’t want or need his fortune, but the fact that he’s doling it out to other people must have hurt you more than you care to admit, because that’s human nature.’
Her words faded away but Leon shook his head. ‘You can’t possibly stop now, Marnie,’ he said grimly. ‘Not when this is just starting to get interesting.’
She stared at him and he could see the hurt in her eyes, but was able to steel his heart against it because the slow pulse of anger in his blood was dominating everything.
‘You didn’t stop to think how all this might impact on me, did you, Leon?’ she questioned quietly. ‘I mean, you were never demonstrative with me before, were you? You never so much as held my hand or kissed me in public and I was okay with that because I sensed that was the sort of man you were. Yet suddenly, you’re all over me. I couldn’t believe the way you were acting on the dance floor.’
He gave a short laugh. ‘Neither could I.’
‘So why do it?’
It was a question he wished she hadn’t asked. A question he was under no obligation to answer. But he was aware that he couldn’t chastise her for refusing to tell the truth and then do the same thing himself. ‘Because I was going to suggest taking our relationship to the next level,’ he said, his words deliberately flat, as if that would take the emotional sting out of them. ‘I thought I was in love with you.’
Surely that was the key in getting her to leave. The deliberate use of the past tense, indicating he felt that way no longer. Surely she would be too proud to want him to witness the tears which were currently filling her beautiful grey eyes. But no. It seemed he had underestimated her tenacity, for she drew her shoulders back as if she were squaring up to him in a boxing ring.
‘Ah, so now I understand,’ she said. ‘You didn’t want to fall in love, did you? Not with me and not with anyone. You told me that right from the start. But emotions are messy things, aren’t they, Leon? Sometimes they creep up on you when you’re least expecting them. So I imagine finding out about my hidden past must have come as a huge relief to you. It gave you all the ammunition you needed to shoot our relationship down in flames. You could classify my behaviour as an abuse of trust when the reality is that it presented you with a handy get-out clause from having to commit.’
