“It was very wise of you to leave when you did,” Natalie had written. “You saved Slater the necessity of telling you he didn’t want you any more.”
Chris hadn’t bothered replying and she had never heard from either of them since. Now Natalie was dead.
It took her a long time to get to sleep, images from the past haunting her, and then when, at last she did, the impatient jangling of the telephone roused her.
Her room was in darkness, and for a few seconds she was too disorientated to do anything but simply listen to the shrill summons of the ’phone.
At last she made a move to answer it. The crisply precise English accent on the other end of the line surprised her by sounding almost unfamiliar, making her remember how long it was since she had visited her own country. “I have Mr Smith for you,” the crisp voice announced, the line going dead, before Chris heard the ponderous tones of her aunt’s solicitor.
“Chris my dear how are you?”
“Half asleep,” she told him drily. “Do you realise what time it is here?”
“And do you realise we’ve been trying to get in touch with you for the last six weeks,” he retaliated. “I’ve practically had to subpoena your agent to get this address out of her. Chris, it isn’t like you to be so dilatory…I’d expected to hear from you before now.”
He must mean about Natalie’s death, Chris realised, suddenly coming awake.
“I only got your letter today,” she told him. “It must have been following me round. What happened? How did Natalie…?”
“The coroner’s verdict was suicide while the balance of her mind was disturbed,” she heard Tom Smith saying, the words reaching her stupefied brain only very slowly. “I did tell you that in my letter, my dear. Your cousin always was a mite unbalanced, I’m afraid. Your aunt recognised that fact and it used to cause her considerable concern. Roger’s mother had a similar temperament.”
Since Tom Smith had known the family for many years Chris did not dispute his comments. Suicide! The word seemed to reverberate painfully inside her skull, resurrecting all her childhood protective instincts towards her cousin. “Why? Natalie had had everything to live for, a husband, a child…”
“It seems that your cousin had been suffering from depression for a long time.” Tom Smith further shocked her by saying. Remorse, hot and sharp, seared through her. Had Natalie needed her, wanted her? Could she have helped her cousin. Pain mingled with guilt; her animosity towards Natalie forgotten, all her bitterness directed towards Slater. Perhaps he had been as unfaithful to Nat as he had her? She should never have blamed her cousin for what had happened; Nat had been an impressionable seventeen, Slater a mature twenty-five. Hatred burned white hot inside her, he had robbed her of everything she thought childishly, all her illusions; her unborn children, and now her only relative. No, not quite her only relative, she realised frowning. There was Nat’s little girl…Sophie.
“How is Sophie taking it?” she asked Tom Smith automatically, voicing the words almost before she realised she was going to. She had deliberately held herself aloof from all knowledge of Sophie, unable to contemplate the pain of knowing she was Slater’s child—the child she had wanted to give him.
“That’s why I’m ringing you,” Tom Smith told her, further stunning her. “She’s always been a very withdrawn, introverted child, but now I’m afraid there’s cause for serious concern. Sophie hasn’t spoken a single word since her mother died.”
Pity for her unknown niece flooded Chris, tears stinging her eyes as she thought of the child’s anguish.
“Natalie wouldn’t have named you as Sophie’s guardian if she hadn’t wanted to do so. I know it’s asking a lot of you, Chris, but I really think you should come home and see the child.”
Guardian! She was Sophie’s guardian? Chris couldn’t take it in. Her hand was slippery where it gripped the receiver, all her old doubts and pain coming back, only to be submerged by a wave of pity for Natalie’s child.
“But surely Slater…” she began huskily, knowing that Slater could never willingly have agreed to Natalie’s decision to appoint her as his child’s guardian.
“Slater is willing to try anything that might help Sophie,” Tom Smith astounded her by saying. “He’s desperate, Chris.”
There was a hint of reproach in his voice, and guiltily Chris remembered the unread pages of his letter, which she had discarded. “Did you write to me about this?” she asked.
“I set everything out in my letter,” he agreed patiently. “I was surprised when Natalie came to see me nine months ago and said that she wanted to appoint you as Sophie’s guardian, but she was so insistent that I agreed. If only I’d looked more deeply into her reasoning I might have realised how ill she was, but she seemed so calm and reasonable. Her own experience of losing her father had made her aware of how insecure a child could feel with only one parent; if anything should happen to her she wanted to be sure that Sophie would always have someone she could turn to.
“I had no idea then of course, that she hadn’t discussed her intentions with Slater, or indeed that you weren’t aware of them. There’s nothing legally binding on you, of course, and naturally Slater will continue to bring up his daughter, but at the moment he seems unable to reach her. She needs help, Chris, and you might be the only person who can help her.”
“But I’m a stranger to her,” Chris protested, realising fully what Tom was asking of her. How could she return to Little Martin? How could she endure the sight of Slater’s child; of Slater himself…but no, she was over that youthful infatuation. She knew him now for what he was, a weak man too vain to resist the opportunity to seduce a trusting seventeen-year-old.
Had he really loved Natalie or had he simply married her because he had had to? She had had a lucky escape Chris told herself. She could have been Natalie, crushed by marriage to a husband who didn’t love her, trapped…She was letting her imagination run away with her, Chris told herself. She had no reason to suppose that Slater did not love Natalie, perhaps it was even wishful thinking! No! Never!
“Well, Chris?”
“I’m coming home.” It wasn’t what she had intended to say at all, but now the words were out they could not be retracted.
“Good girl.” Tom Smith’s voice approved, and Chris shivered wondering what train of events she had set in motion. She didn’t want to go back to Little Martin; she didn’t want to see Slater or his child. The past was another country; and one she had sworn she would never re-visit, but it was too late now, she was already committed; committed to a child she had never seen, and remembering instances of Natalie’s vindictiveness, she wondered momentarily just why her cousin had named her as her child’s guardian. This thought was brushed aside almost instantly by a flood of guilt. If Natalie had been jealous of her, hadn’t she been jealous too in turn? Hadn’t she felt almost ready to kill her cousin when she saw her in Slater’s arms. She sighed. All that was over now, Natalie was dead, and in the end, for whatever reason, her cousin had entrusted to her care her child, and she could not in all honour ignore that charge, if only for her aunt’s sake.
CHAPTER TWO
LESS than thirty-six hours later when she stepped off a ’plane at Heathrow, Chris still wasn’t sure quite how she had got there. A brief call to her agent explaining the situation had resulted in cancellation of several of her assignments and the postponement of others. It was a testimony to her success that this was allowed to happen, her agent told her drily when she rang from London to tell Chris what she had done.
London was much cooler than New York. To save herself the hassle of a complicated train journey Chris had elected to travel to Little Martin by taxi. The cabbie raised his eyebrows a little when she explained where she wanted to go. The fare, would she knew, be astronomical, but that was the least of her worries right