The leaves whispered above their heads, and when Isabella’s answer came it was only just audible. ‘About the baby.’
An invisible juggernaut hit Jackie in the chest.
‘You know I…? You know about…?’
Their faces confirmed it and she gave up trying to get a sentence out.
But exactly how much did they know? All of it? She stood up.
‘You know I was pregnant when I went away to live with my father?’
They both nodded, eyes wide.
‘You know I gave the baby up for adoption?’
Isabella nodded again. ‘No one told us, but it was kind of obvious when you came home the following summer without a baby.’
Oh, Lord. They knew everything. She sat down again, but she’d chosen the wrong crate and it tipped over, leaving her on her hands and knees in the dirt. Both Isabella and Scarlett rushed to help her up. She was shaking when she grabbed onto their arms for support.
They got her to her feet again and she met their eyes. There was no point in trying to hide anything now.
‘My daughter—Kate—contacted me a couple of months ago. We’ve met a few times—’
‘Kate?’ The strangled noise that left Scarlett’s mouth was hardly even a word. Jackie watched in astonishment as her normally feisty, bull-headed little sister broke down and sobbed. ‘You had a little girl, a little girl,’she whimpered, over and over.
Jackie was stunned. Not just by Scarlett’s reaction, but by the outpouring of emotion; it must mean that, on some level, Scarlett didn’t despise her as much as she’d thought. She’d always seemed so indifferent.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Scarlett finally mumbled through her tears. Jackie turned to Isabella, hoping for an explanation, but Isabella wasn’t in a much better state herself.
A thought struck her. ‘You can’t tell anyone about Kate!’ she said quickly. ‘Not yet.’
My goodness, if this was going to be the reaction to the news, she’d been right to decide to keep her mouth shut until after the wedding.
‘It’s okay,’she added, taking a deep breath. ‘Things are going to be okay. Kate and I are getting to know each other. Things are going to work out, you’ll see. So don’t be sad for me—be happy.’
She’d hoped she sounded convincing, but she’d obviously missed the mark, because Scarlett and Isabella, who had been in the process of mopping up a little with a few tissues that Isabella had pulled from her pocket, just started crying even harder. Jackie stood there, dumbfounded, as they sat down on the two tree stumps looking very sorry for themselves indeed.
And then another thought struck her. One that should have popped into her head at the beginning of this surreal ‘lunch’, but she’d been too shocked to even think about it.
‘How?’
Both the other women went suddenly very still.
‘How did you find out? Did Mamma tell you?’
They both shook their heads, perfectly in time with each other. If she weren’t in the middle of a crisis, Jackie would have found it funny.
‘Then how?’
Scarlett looked up at her, her eyes full of shame. She didn’t even manage to maintain eye contact for more than a few seconds and dropped her gaze to the floor before she spoke.
‘The letter.’
What letter? What was Scarlett talking about? Had Mamma written a—
White light exploded behind Jackie’s eyelids. She marched over to Scarlett’s tree stump and stood there, hands on hips, just as she would have done when she’d been a stroppy fifteen-year-old, and made her sister look at her.
‘You read the letter? My letter?’
Scarlett bit her lip and nodded.
‘How dare you! How dare you! How—’
She was so consumed with rage she couldn’t come up with any new words. Not even wanting to share a woodland clearing with the other two women, she strode over to the stream, as far away from them as she could possibly get without getting tangled up in trees, and stared into the cool green tranquillity of the woods.
Another thought bubbled its way to the surface. She turned round and found them twisting round on their tree stumps, watching her.
‘Then you know who…’
Isabella swallowed. ‘Romano.’
Jackie covered her mouth with her hand. This was worse than she’d imagined. Hen nights involving L-plates, obscene confectionery and tiaras would have been a walk in the park compared to this.
She exhaled. It all made sense now—why they’d freaked out when they’d seen her and Romano together back at the restaurant. But why had they dragged her away? Why tell her now?
‘We didn’t ever tell anyone else,’ Isabella added hastily.
Jackie breathed out and sat down on the crate—the good one—and looked at her sister and her cousin.
They knew. And that had been her secret mission this visit, hadn’t it? To tell everyone. Did it really matter if Scarlett and Isabella had known all along? Probably not. It would just be one difficult conversation she could cross off her list. They’d actually done her a favour.
Her anger had faded now, and she even managed a tiny smile. ‘I was planning on telling you all after the wedding, anyway. Kate would really like to meet her aunts and uncles and I think it’s time this secret came out into the open.’
Why weren’t Scarlett and Isabella looking more relieved? They were still folded into awkward positions on their tree stumps. She decided to lighten the atmosphere.
‘The least you two can do after all this is help me break the news to Mamma. I think you owe me!’ And to let them know she was rising above it, dealing with the past and moving on, she gave them a magnanimous smile.
‘You don’t understand,’Scarlett said, rising from her stump, her forehead furrowing into even deeper lines. ‘There’s more.’
More? How could there be more? She’d told them everything. There were no more secrets left to uncover.
CHAPTER FOUR
SCARLETT gulped and cleared her throat. ‘The letter…I brought it here to show Isabella.’
Jackie felt her core temperature rise a few notches.
‘You have to remember—’ Scarlett shot a glance at Isabella ‘—we were only eleven…’
Jackie’s voice was low and even when she spoke. This was the tone that made her staff run for cover. ‘What else, Scarlett? You did give my letter to Romano yourself, not pass it to someone else to give to him? If someone else knows—’
Isabella, who’d been unable to stand still for the last few moments, jumped in. ‘It was my fault. I wanted to tell Aunt Lisa at first…’ She trailed off at the look on Jackie’s face. ‘I didn’t!’ she added quickly.
‘We fought,’ Scarlett said, her voice gaining volume but at the same time becoming toneless, emotionless. ‘Isabella had hold of the letter and I tried to snatch it away from her. It just seemed to leap out of my hands…’
They ripped the letter a little? Got it dirty? What? Jackie willed Scarlett to say either of those things. Just a little smudge. No harm done. But she could tell from the look of pure desolation on Scarlett’s