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Your loving grandfather,
James Heatherton-Smythe
I reread the letter. Twice. My grandfather’s affection for me, although we’d never met, is palpable. As is his love for Jago Moon, the son he never had. And Jago was Miranda’s man, technically entitled to all of her assets. And yet, he didn’t involve a lawyer to claim what was his. He’d left it to my discretion. And I hadn’t listened. He would have let me take what was rightfully his.
*
‘Jago called by for the umpteenth time today,’ Grandmother says when I invite her to sit down, her keen eyes trained on mine.
I pour her a cup of tea.
‘I swear, the more I send him away, the harder he bounces back. But I suppose he always did.’
I sit up as my heart begins to jump around in my ribcage.
‘Jago Moon? What f-for?’
‘He wanted to see you, of course,’ she says as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. ‘But I told him he could sling his hook.’
‘Grandmother!’
Her eyes twinkle with mischief.
‘But I must tell you, Emily – I am beginning to think he actually does care about you.’
‘Why would you say that?’
She puts her cup down and stares straight at me.
‘Because I have never seen him so miserable – not since… since Miranda died.’ She sighs, sitting back, her arms encircling a scatter cushion as her eyes dart back to the past. ‘We have made so many mistakes with him. Or rather, I have. And Maura.’
But then she looks at me again.
‘If he and Miranda were married, then that means that he doesn’t need your half of the inheritance. All that was hers, and I can assure you that her assets are immense, is now his. I genuinely think he has formed an attachment to you, for who you are and not what you own,’ she says.
‘What makes you think that he has actually formed an attachment to me?’
‘Well, first of all, he didn’t try to dispose of you.’
‘Am I supposed to feel flattered?’
She leans forwards. ‘All I know is that he saved your life, when instead he could have left you to drown so he could inherit it all. Which means that I was wrong about him.’
‘Grandmother?’
She shakes a finger at me. ‘You, my dear, did what Miranda couldn’t.’
Something that Miranda couldn’t do? I find this highly unlikely.
‘You make him happy, Emmie, and I was blind not to see it. And you, my granddaughter, are infinitely better than Miranda was, or could ever be. You are right for him. And he is right for you. It took me a long time to come to this conclusion, but now I finally see things as they truly are.’
She’s serious. I look for traces of jest, but there are none.
She sighs. ‘All these years, I could never understand what the two of them had in common. Miranda was so elegant and poised and dignified, while Jago Moon was never one to keep his opinions to himself, to use an understatement.’
That, I had to agree with.
‘But,’ she admits, ‘I now realise I was wrong about him all along, and Nano was right. Jago is a good man and he does have a heart. And I think it’s been broken again.’
