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Chapter 9
‘Will you slow down?’
Lili was striding back to the car in double-quick time, leaving Nate behind. He caught up as she got to the car. Bella was sitting in the front seat, barking, excited to see them.
Nate made a grab for her arm. ‘Lili?’
She whirled around. ‘Why did my social worker lie to me?’
Nate shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’
‘All those years I was at this school, how could she not tell me it wasn’t a government scholarship paying my fees, but an anonymous benefactor?’
‘I’m sorry.’ Nate shrugged. ‘Perhaps she was trying to spare you from, er …’ Nate trailed off when he realised that his train of thought would not help matters.
Lili frowned. She knew what he was about to say. ‘She was trying to spare me from the possibility that there is someone out there, a relative, a parent perhaps, who paid for my expensive schooling, but didn’t want to know me.’
‘They must have cared about you to pay for all this.’ Nate flung his arm around, looking at the expensive school set in acres of grounds.
Or cared about people not finding out about me, thought Lili. After Laurie had told her what she would have preferred not to hear, they had all sat there, a heavy silence permeating the room. She’d stared at the paperwork that Laurie had found and had said, ‘There must be records of who paid the fees.’
All Laurie had known was what was in front of her. ‘BACS transfers, I’m afraid. The money with your name as a reference appeared regular as clockwork.’
Lili realised that all this visit had done was to raise more questions than it answered.
Lili opened the car door and was greeted by an excited dog. She couldn’t help but smile as Bella nuzzled her hand, angling for a fuss. ‘Good girl.’
‘She wasn’t good,’ Nate grumbled as he walked round the vehicle and sat in the driver’s seat. ‘I suggest that if you want to find answers, you’ll need to return to where it all began.’ He started the engine.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Lili.
‘Where they found you in Corfu.’
Lili sighed. ‘Now isn’t a good time.’ She couldn’t just jet off abroad – there was Maisie to consider. And there was the fact that Lili’s life had fallen to pieces; she needed to put it back together somehow and work out how to start over.
‘If you’re thinking about who would look after the antique shop, I’m sure we can figure something out.’
Lili sighed. That was the least of her concerns. ‘I told you, Nate, I won’t be here for much longer.’
‘Why not? Your boyfriend has dumped you. There’s a local non-feeing paying school here for Maisie. I send William there. Why return to London?’
Because all this is built on a lie. Lili couldn’t look him in the eye. She should have come clean from the outset. This was just a holiday. She didn’t expect to make friends, get a job, find somewhere to live, or find someone else with whom she felt such a strong connection even though she barely knew him. Lili cut that thought short. She was on the rebound from Alex – that was what all this was. Besides, she wasn’t ready for a relationship. The problem was that she wasn’t ready to leave either.
Although Hannah was flying home that day, Lili didn’t think she’d mind if they stayed on in Aldeburgh just for the weekend. She hadn’t told her they were on holiday in Suffolk. Lili was sure Hannah wouldn’t object to having an extra couple of days before they returned. It would be time enough for her to see Joseph, and to explain to Nate, his parents, and the other shop owners in the yard that she didn’t really know Joseph, and that contrary to assumptions, Maisie wasn’t her daughter.
She knew she couldn’t leave without them hearing it from her first, but not on the day she’d discovered everything she’d thought about her life, her past, was a lie.
Lili sat there as they made their way down the drive. She fingered the ring on the chain round her neck and thought again about Joseph’s identical ring. Was he her secret benefactor? Or was it just a coincidence?
Nate pulled the car to a stop at the end of the drive, waiting for a gap between passing cars so that he could join the main road back into Aldeburgh. He turned to Lili. ‘There is someone who could straighten all this out.’
Lili knew. A single phone might be all it would take. But right now, Lili wasn’t ready to talk to the one person she had trusted all her life – Connie.
Nate stared at her. He understood. There was nothing worse than discovering the people closest to you had lied to you, let you down. ‘Look, my father, he runs a business as an heir-hunter.’
Lili knew that already. She turned to Nate. ‘I’m not looking for an inheritance.’
‘He finds people.’
