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She swallowed. ‘After Daddy died she got a job as a care worker, and the people she visited really loved her. They all said so. And Mrs Jessop told someone that if Mummy hadn’t been so involved with looking after everyone else she might have thought about herself more, and realised there was something wrong. Seen a doctor before it was—too late.’ Her voice wobbled. ‘So, you see, there must be some mistake. There has to be.’
Carrie gave her a comforting pat. ‘I’m sure,’ she said, but her anxious eyes said that even if her parents had been wrong, that still didn’t explain Kezia Trewint’s strange, unloving attitude to her only living relative.
Understanding that had still been a long way in the future, Rhianna thought wearily, leaning back in her seat and closing her eyes. In the meantime it had remained on the edge of her life, a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand, yet occasionally ominously hinting at the storm to come.
Like the day she’d encountered Diaz Penvarnon for the first time.
It had been, she remembered, one of those burning, windless days in August, when the sun seemed close enough to touch.
They’d been down at the beach all day, slipping in and out of the unruffled sea like seals, Rhianna by then as competent and confident a swimmer as the other two. It had been Simon who’d called a halt, explaining that he needed to get back as his parents had friends coming to dinner.
In spite of the heat, it had always been a matter of honour to see who could get to the top of the cliff path ahead of the others. The girls rarely won against Simon’s long legs, but this particular afternoon he had dropped one of his new trainers in the loose sand at the foot of the cliff and halted to retrieve it, so that Carrie and Rhianna had found themselves unexpectedly ahead, flying neck and neck up the stony track.
And when Carrie had stumbled Rhianna had got there first, laughing and breathless, head down as she launched herself towards some invisible finishing tape.
Only to cannon into something tall, solid and all too real, finding, as she had staggered back with a gasp of shock, strong hands grasping her shoulders to steady her, while a man’s cool voice had said, ‘So—what have we here? A fleeing trespasser? This is private land, you know.’
She looked up dazedly into the face above her, swarthy and lean, with high cheekbones only to see the faint amusement fade from the firm mouth and the grey eyes become as icy as snow clouds in January. He studied her in return, his glance shifting with a kind of incredulity from her unruly cloud of hair to her long-lashed eyes and her startled, parted lips.
She said, ‘I’m Rhianna Carlow. I—I live here.’
He drew a swift sharp breath, lifting his hands from her and stepping back in a repudiation that was as instant as it was unmistakable.
He said, half to himself, ‘Of course—the child. I’d almost forgotten.’
‘Diaz!’ Carrie was there, hurling herself at him. ‘How truly great! No one said you were coming.’
‘It was intended as a surprise,’ he said, returning her exuberant hug with more restraint before he looked back at Rhianna. He added unsmilingly, ‘It seems to be a day for them.’
And she thought with inexplicable desolation, Someone else who doesn’t want me to be here…
Simon’s panting arrival provided a momentary diversion, but the greetings were barely over before Moira Seymour came sauntering across the lawn towards them, cool in a blue cotton dress, and fanning herself languidly with a broad-brimmed straw hat.
She said, ‘Simon, my pet, your mother’s telephoned, asking where you are. Carrie, darling, get cleaned up for tea, please.’ Her glance flickered dismissively over Rhianna. ‘And I’m sure, young woman, that your aunt can find something for you to do.’
The first direct remark Mrs Seymour had ever made to her, Rhianna realised. And one that made her inferior position in the household quite explicit. Turning her back into the intruder. The trespasser that Diaz Penvarnon had just called her. A name that might have started as a joke, but was now, suddenly, something very different.
My first starring role, Rhianna thought bitterly, and one that will probably haunt me, for so many reasons, as long as I live, wherever I go, and whatever happens to me.
Diaz—Diaz Penvarnon…
He was a chain, she told herself, linking her with the past, which must be broken now that he was out of her life for ever.
I’ve got to start thinking of him as a stranger, she thought, almost feverishly. I must…
But from that first moment of meeting he’d imprinted himself indelibly on her consciousness, and Rhianna had found her life changing once more—and not for the better, either.
