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But he might—just might—be loved into it…
CHAPTER TEN
EMILY was applying gold leaf to the gold-trimmed lattice work of a hand-painted dinner plate when the door to the studio rattled open and Mrs Cooper made an unprecedented entrance.
Alarmed by her huffing and puffing as she tried to speak, Emily pulled off her magnifying spectacles and eased back on her stool so as not to disturb the delicate sheets of gold leaf that she had laid out for matching to the two other plates that were next in line for re-gilding.
‘What’s the matter? Is it Peter?’ she asked worriedly and Mrs Cooper shook her head.
‘There’s a phone call for you,’ she panted. ‘Mr Nash s
aid to hurry. He said it was from Africa. He said it was your mother on the line.’
‘Oh!’ Abandoning her tools, Emily took to her heels, hoping that the connection wouldn’t be lost before she got there, leaving Mrs Cooper to close the door to the studio and follow at the more leisurely pace.
It had been over a week since she had spoken to her mother, and, given the nature of her parents’ posting, she had known it was futile to fret and fury at the lack of communication. Since Peter had been pressing her, and it made her uncomfortable that he was trying to act as if the fact she was his granddaughter was a foregone conclusion, she had told him that she had asked about the circumstances of her birth and now it was just a matter of patiently awaiting the reply. As she had pointed out, time had a different meaning in her parents’ world—urgency was based on physical need, with the simple need-to-know very far down on their list of priorities. She certainly wasn’t going to take a DNA test until it became the logical next step. Secretly, Emily hadn’t minded being suspended in the strange kind of identity-limbo, for it meant she could just push all her doubts away and devote her attention to the other, even more incredible development in her life.
For her burgeoning relationship with Ethan, the week had been one of guilty pleasure and unalloyed happiness. After their stay on Waiheke Island they had spent most of their evenings together, and, even though she felt a little uncomfortable about deceiving Peter, each night after he retired she would sneak along to make love in Ethan’s big bed, and sleep cuddled in his arms until dawn streaked the room with golden light. Once, they’d both overslept, and Mrs Cooper had caught her creeping out his door to the verandah in order to nip back along to her room without being seen, but since Ethan could do no wrong as far as the housekeeper was concerned she had primly turned a blind eye to what she termed their ‘shenanigans’.
Dylan, meanwhile, had returned to his apartment when his actor-tenant and family had flown back to Hollywood, leaving him much the richer for their visit. Without his boisterous and distracting presence, Emily and Ethan had been free to concentrate on each other…to tease and talk and engage in the age-old game of sensual love-play, while instinctively getting to know one another on a deeper level.
Ethan had even opened up about the traumatic set of circumstances that had led to his fear of flying, touching on the subject of his broken engagement with a hint of residual bitterness that told Emily that his youthful heart had been very much involved, and that he still bore the scars. It was evident that both experiences were strongly associated with each other in his mind, doubling their impact on his psyche. No wonder he had developed such an extreme emotional wariness. To Ethan, love, rejection, grief and loss were all inextricably mixed up together.
Now he had flown out to a new site for a few days, and Emily was coping with her own temporary sense of loss, and the troubling realisation that, in concealing her love as if it were an embarrassment rather than openly celebrating it with him, she might be actively supporting him in his emotional hibernation. He had conquered his fear of flying, but no one had yet given him sufficient incentive to conquer his fear of love.
‘In here!’ Peter called from his office, and limped around the desk, eagerly holding up the cordless receiver for her as she hurried into the room.
‘It’s my mother? Are you sure? The static made it hard to tell last time I spoke to her,’ she said as she grabbed it and held it to her chest, knowing she was only putting off the moment of truth.
‘It’s as clear as a bell,’ he said. He hesitated, his face both excited and strained. ‘I should go and let you talk to her,’ he said, his bony hands clenching at his sides.
‘No—yes. No!’ she caught his arm, and sank into the leather chair in front of the desk on weak knees, her heart beating like a drum. It wasn’t fair to draw out his agonised wait, and she suddenly didn’t want to be alone. She wished Ethan were here, with his rock-solid presence and cool detachment.
‘Please. You may as well stay and listen.’ She took a deep breath and raised the receiver. ‘Hello, Mum?’
Peter leant on the edge of his desk as he listened to the frustratingly one-sided conversation and when she finally handed him the disconnected receiver, her other hand spread over her face, there were weak tears in his eyes and a tight dread in his chest.
‘So you were adopted,’ he acknowledged heavily, letting the receiver clatter to the desk.
She nodded behind her hands, tears leaking out through her splayed fingers as she leaned her elbows on her knees.
‘But you’re not my granddaughter after all, are you, Emily?’ he continued wretchedly, looking down at her brown curls.
She shook her head, sucking in a shuddering breath as she dropped her hands and looked up, hurting for him as much as for herself. ‘They’d never heard of anyone of your daughter’s description, not in their particular group, anyway,’ she recounted raggedly. ‘But it was a hugely chaotic time and lots of comings and goings were never recorded, and the usual corruption and bribery was always available to get things done.’
She straightened her spine. ‘My real mother was one of my parents’ best friends—another aid worker. She was—she’d been brutally raped and hadn’t told anyone, then was horrified to find she was pregnant.’ She choked to a halt and forced herself to go on: ‘She couldn’t have an abortion because of her faith, but she couldn’t bear to keep the baby—to keep me—and nor could she just abandon me in a foreign orphanage, so Mum and Dad did their good deed. They simply claimed me as their own, and then bribed some people to forge papers so they could get me onto their own passports.’
She smiled crookedly, wiping her drenched eyes. ‘So that’s why they never told me—they were afraid if anyone found out it could jeopardise their work, they could even go to prison for immigration offences, and my right to citizenship might be revoked. They thought it was safer if everyone believed I was their biological daughter—even their own parents. They were travelling around so much the lies were all very plausible. And they didn’t see the point in telling me that my real mother never wanted to meet me, and my father was just some anonymous rapist.’
Her voice broke up as she stood and looked into his drawn face. His skin was grey and he looked to have aged ten years. ‘I’m sorry, Peter. I know how very much you wanted this—but I’m definitely not Carol’s daughter. I’m not the person you’ve been looking for…’
‘But you’re the one that I found,’ he said remorsefully, suddenly pulling her into a fierce bear-hug. ‘Our friendship’s still real, even if the other’s not. I’m the one who’s sorry, Emily. Sorry for being such a wrong-headed, stubborn old fool and refusing to listen to reason. I can see now how I let my hopes grow into obsession that warped my views. Everything I was told I just twisted to fit my preconceptions. If I hadn’t seized the wrong end of the stick years ago you wouldn’t be going through all this mental anguish now. You would still have been in blissful ignorance about your parentage. I had no right to try and play God with your life.’
It was her turn to pat his back and try to find words that might console him. ‘You know what they say about the truth setting you free,’ she said lamely, although she thought it might take a while for her to believe it.
They shed a few more tears together and then, sensing he needed time alone to grieve for the death of his hopes, Emily insisted on going back to work, but once in the studio she tidied everything away and sat staring into space. Everything was the same, yet everything had changed. Peter was adamant that this wouldn’t affect their friendship, but inevitably it must. He would never give up. He had had a shock and a setback, but eventually he would want to start searching for his lost granddaughter again. And next time he might well be successful. Stranger things had happened. Like Emily Quest turning out to be Emily No-name!
For Peter’s sake she pretended to eat her dinner with her normal enthusiasm, but she noticed that both of them were merely shifting the food around their plates to disguise their lack of appetite, and the conversation faltered awkwardly as they tried to avoid the more painful aspects of the topic that was so much on their minds. She knew he was unhappy with the decision that she had just announced, but equally she knew that it was the right thing for her to do.
