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Thea slowly shook her head. This was the last thing she’d expected Beth and Mark to turn up and tell her. She didn’t bother asking who Callum’s real father was. She didn’t care. Callum’s past didn’t concern her.
What she was concerned about was her own father. Something didn’t make sense. ‘I still don’t understand why my dad just disappeared from our lives like that. We were a happy family. He loved us. Why would he do that to us?’
‘He didn’t,’ said Beth, turning in the front seat to look at her.
‘But that’s not true.’ Thea frowned. ‘You just said—’
‘It wasn’t intentional – is what I meant,’ said Beth. ‘It wasn’t a choice.’
‘How can you say that? He had another woman – a wife, I assume. Callum’s mum.’
Jack cut in. ‘Henry had an accident in his van years ago, up in Scotland, which explains—’
‘Why he disappeared one day,’ said Edward, listening from the back seat.
‘Are you saying that he had amnesia, he lost his memory?’ asked Thea.
‘That’s right.’
Beth took up the story. ‘Over some years, he’d been visiting Callum’s father to sell him rare books. Having young children of his own, he’d grown fond of Callum over the course of these visits. That’s what Callum’s mother said. When she left Callum’s father, Henry stayed in touch with her, and visited when he could, helping out the single parent and her young son.’
Edward interrupted, ‘That sounds just like something Henry would do.’
Thea glanced at Edward before returning her attention to Beth.
Beth had turned around in the front seat while she spoke to Thea.
Thea said, ‘Go on.’
Beth sighed. ‘I’m afraid that one day Henry had an accident in his van.’
‘While he was on the road, visiting them?’
‘That’s right.’
‘So, he ended up living with Callum and had no memory of us? Is that what you’re saying?’
‘Yes.’
‘But his memory came back.’ Thea was aware that she was stating the obvious.
She noticed Jack and Beth exchange a glance again before Beth replied, ‘Yeah, I suppose you could say that.’
Thea wanted to know why, if his memory had returned, he hadn’t got in touch. And there was something else bothering her. ‘If that was the case, and he knew Callum wasn’t his son, why would he give him the bookshop, and give just this old campervan to me and my sister?’
‘That’s the question Callum grappled with. He was in pieces over how to tell you all this. Had been the whole time, especially when he was falling in love with you, but mistakenly thought that you and he could never be together.’
‘But we can now.’
‘He thinks you’ll never forgive him.’
‘Well, he’s right,’ Thea said petulantly, not sure if she was more upset with him for not telling her the truth about her father, or for the fact that he’d got to spend time with Henry growing up that she and her sister had been robbed of.
Jack said, ‘I told him to tell you about Henry straight away, but he didn’t. I could understand. It meant telling you that your father had been alive this whole time and living with someone else; living with his mother. But now he’s paid the ultimate price – he’s lost you, the love of his life.’
Beth turned in her seat to look at Thea. ‘You can see that all this isn’t his fault, right? Do you think you can find it in your heart to forgive him?’
Thea glanced at Edward. Everyone deserved a second chance – didn’t they? Especially if their heart had been in the right place, even though they’d done the wrong thing.
