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‘I’ve got something to tell you.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Look, I haven’t been completely honest about my reasons for coming here.’ Freya launched into her story, starting with her mum walking out, and then the conversation she’d overheard between her dad and a woman called Wendy, who had phoned from this hotel.
‘So, you’re here to find her?’
‘I am, yes.’
Tarek looked at her thoughtfully.
‘There’s something else.’ Freya told him about those days out with her dad, when she was a child, and the visits to the park where she’d played with a girl around her own age while her dad had sat and talked with a woman. Tarek listened intently. ‘Do you think this woman he used to meet may have been Wendy?’
‘I’m not sure. Jolene had a theory that my dad had had an affair years ago with this Wendy, and that the girl I used to play with was … is … my half-sister.’
‘I suppose that is one possibility. Perhaps you’ll find the answers you’re looking for here, at the guest house.’
‘I hope so.’
‘Then we must stay, at least for today.’
Freya put her tea down, got out of bed, sat on the edge of the folding bed and flung her arms around him to give him a hug. It wasn’t that she needed his permission to stay, or that they both had to return to Cambridge together. He could leave straight away in a taxi and she could make her own way home. But Freya wanted him there, as moral support, as someone she could talk to. She drew back, her nose almost touching his. She could tell that she’d caught him by surprise, this sudden display of affection. But what followed, their first kiss, was inevitable. She knew that now. And as she kissed him deeply, she realised why she was here with Tarek. For the first time in her life, she knew what it meant to be in love.
Freya’s heart sank. Very soon he would leave and return to Alexandria. She drew back before this went any further, her heart pounding in her chest at the awful thought of him leaving. How would she survive without him? She had never felt that way about being apart from Theo.
‘I, er, I’d better get ready. Breakfast is at eight.’
Tarek glanced at his watch. ‘But it’s only seven.’
Freya grabbed her clothes and her overnight bag and rushed into the bathroom. She stopped in front of the bathroom mirror and tried to put the thought of Tarek leaving out of her mind. She focused on her parents, the woman called Wendy, and the young girl she used to meet in the park.
‘I wonder what today will bring,’ she said to her reflection.
Chapter 45
The first thing Emily did after waking was to log on to the AncestryDNA website to check she hadn’t imagined things the previous night; to make sure there really was someone on there she was related to. Itwastrue. She hadn’t imagined it. She was so excited. She’d contact the person later that day.
Emily got out of bed and opened her curtains, smiling. The sun was shining, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The beautiful morning mirrored her mood. She glanced at the website on her phone and wondered what the day would bring.
She couldn’t wait to tell Clarissa.Was it too early to knock on her friend’s door and tell her the news? Emily knew she had to lay out the breakfast buffet in the conservatory. She decided to do it straight away so that by the time she finished, Clarissa might be up and about.
Emily could hear her parents moving about in the room next door. Her dad was due to go to work. Normally, he’d be gone well before now, but the other fishing trawler crew member had come down with the flu; her dad couldn’t go out on the trawler alone. As she got dressed she could hear their voices, indistinctly, although from the tone she got the impression they were having words. Emily stopped and frowned. She wondered what was going on.
She brightened when she realised what it might be. Her dad didn’t like missing work, and her mum wouldn’t like him moping around, under her feet all day. She smiled. Perhaps it was for the best that he was at home today. They were so booked up this morning. An extra pair of hands to help out with the breakfasts wouldn’t be a bad thing.
‘Why did you open her mail?’
Wendy pulled a face, admonishing herself for forgetting to bin the letter. Worse still, she’d left it in plain sight on the mantel shelf, intending to dispose of it, but it had completely slipped her mind. Gerald, who had been looking for things to do, and a reason to get out of the house, had spotted the letter and offered to post it. Before she’d reached it, he’d taken it down from the mantel shelf, realised it was not his wife’s handwriting, and discovered the envelope had been opened.
‘You read a guest’s private letter?’
‘Give it here.’ Wendy snatched it out of his hand.
‘I don’t understand …’
Wendy started to tear it up into tiny pieces.
He stared at her, wide-eyed.
‘It’s from Alice to her husband, Jeffrey. Sounds as though she’s discovered something..’
Gerald frowned. ‘Discovered something? Discovered what?’
