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She was about to close down the computer when a link to the Epping family crest caught her eye. She double-clicked and leaned in closer to the screen. The crest was an intricate mixture of green and blue curlicues, with golden lions on either side of a large shield. And at the centre of the shield, picked out in bright red and dominating the crest, was a flower – a rose.
What was it that Morag had told her?Rose was your mother’s choice of name. She was most insistent about it.
Rosie slammed the laptop lid shut and smiled shakily at the tourist couple who glanced up in alarm. It had to be a coincidence. Her mother had called her child Rose because she liked the name, that was all, not to drop another breadcrumb that would one day lead that child to her father.
‘Is everything all right over there, Rosie?’ called Pauline across the café. ‘You’ve gone awful pale under that tan of yours.’
‘Yes, thanks, Pauline. I’ve left money under the cup.’
Then, she stuffed her laptop into her bag and fled the café, leaving her half-eaten pastry on the table.
‘Pick up, pick up,’ Rosie pleaded, rushing along the High Street towards home with her mobile pressed to her ear.
Matt was never parted from his phone. It was virtually welded to his hand – he even took it into the toilet. But getting him to answer his phone these days was another matter. When she’d called him last night he hadn’t answered at all, though he’d texted later to say he was working late.
She rang off when her call again clicked through to Matt’s voicemail and hit the redial button for the third time because she really needed to speak to him right now.
Her breathing was too short, too shallow, and her fingers had started to prickle with pins and needles. Rosie deliberately slowed everything down but kept walking as Matt’s phone started ringing once more. Finally, he picked up.
‘Can’t speak. It’s ridiculously manic here for a Thursday. I’ll ring you back later, babe.’
‘No, please wait, Matt. I really need to speak to you.’
‘Can’t it wait?’ He lowered his voice. ‘A couple from Manchester are about to sign on the dotted line for that dodgy apartment near the car wash. The one with the broken air-conditioning system.’
She paused, confused. ‘I thought we’d agreed that one shouldn’t be on the market?’
‘What can I say?’ He raised his voice again. ‘Mr Jimson absolutely loves it, don’t you, sir?’
‘Can you spare me two minutes? I need to talk because I think’ – Rosie looked around to make sure Belinda wasn’t about to leap out from a side alley – ‘I think that Charles Epping might be my biological father.’
‘What, that bloke who owns your old house?’
‘The very same.’
‘And you think he’s your dad because…?’
‘I found out yesterday that people close to him call him Jay. Remember the love letter to Mum that I told you about?’
‘Of course I do. The letter and the house are all you talk about these days.’
‘Well, it was signed with a J so he might have written it.’ She stopped speaking but Matt said nothing. ‘Are you still there?’
‘Yeah, I’m thinking. Why didn’t you ring and tell me?’
‘I tried but you didn’t pick up and I didn’t want to explain it over text.’
‘You should have told me straight away.’
‘You should have answered my calls.’
‘I’m a busy man, Rosie.’
Urgh, this wasn’t the time to rehash old disagreements. Rosie ploughed on.
‘So his family call him Jay and he let my mum live at Driftwood House for years. He claims it was because she was friends with his sister but she died ages ago and he doesn’t seem the sort of man to honour an old agreement. Plus, my mum was insistent that I be called Rose and I’ve just found out that his family crest has a rose at its centre. He and Mum obviously had a falling out, and she never told me about him because everyone around here hates him. It all makes sense.’
Or it had until she’d said it out loud. Matt’s silence down the line spoke volumes. It was all circumstantial evidence that would never stand up in the police procedural documentaries that her mum loved to watch.
