Sabrina gave a nervous laugh. ‘I hardly know him, Garth.’
For a moment there was silence as Garth regarded her silently. ‘My stepson is a good man...a bit of a womaniser. He has a tendency to break hearts——’
‘Really, Garth, you don’t need to worry. I can take care of myself,’ she cut across him hastily, but he looked unconvinced.
‘Damn it all, Sabrina... I’ve made such a mess of everything, I should have told my wife about you years ago: I feel I’ve let her down, and you and Marc——’
‘Don’t say that, Garth,’ Sabrina interrupted him sadly. ‘You haven’t let anyone down. It wasn’t as if you had the affair with my mother while you were married to Nadine.’
‘No... but I was married when I met your mother.’ He saw the look of shock on her face. ‘You didn’t know?’
She shook her head. ‘There was nothing about that in my mother’s diary.’
For a moment Garth’s face was lit with a ghost of a smile. ‘Dear Lucy. She hated the deceit. She felt terribly guilty.’
Sabrina could hardly take in what he was saying. She couldn’t believe that her mother would have had an affair with a married man; it seemed so out of character.
The shrill ring of the phone interrupted the silence. Garth turned impatiently towards it and flicked on the answering machine. ‘Let’s walk out in the garden,’ he suggested gently. ‘At least out there we will have no interruptions.’
She nodded. She wanted to hear Garth’s story... she wanted to try and place the pieces together in her mind. Maybe then she could understand why her mother had kept so many secrets from her.
Despite the sunshine it was cold outside. Garth linked his arm through hers. ‘Are you warm enough, sweetheart?’
For a moment the concern in her father’s voice made Sabrina’s eyes mist with tears. She nodded, and he patted her hand. ‘Come on; I’ll give you a tour of my lovely gardens,’ he said gently.
The landscape was very beautiful, and for a little while they walked in silence, just drinking in the colourful spring flowers as they both collected their thoughts.
Then Garth began his story and Sabrina forgot her surroundings as her mind closely followed his every word.
‘You know, you are a lot like your mother,’ he said with a sad smile. ‘I thought the world of Lucy; her death was a terrible shock.’
‘Yes, I miss her terribly, Garth,’ she said huskily. ‘We were so close... at least I thought we were close.’ Her voice broke for a moment. ‘I just can’t understand why she didn’t tell me about you. I feel as if I’ve been living a lie all my life.’
‘Lucy did what she thought was best,’ Garth said gently. ‘I know she loved you very much; she never meant to hurt you.’
‘Then why didn’t she tell me?’ Sabrina demanded, a note of anger in her tone now. ‘She lied to me, Garth. She told me that my father was dead.’
‘You have every right to be angry. But you have to remember that your mother was only young when she was expecting you. Attitudes to unmarried mothers have changed radically since then. In your mother’s day it was very hard...’ He trailed off and for a moment he seemed lost in thought. ‘Lucy was such a beautiful woman... very spirited, very stubborn.’ He sighed. ‘She was about your age when I met her. She was an idealist—she had dreams of being a famous lawyer, a force to be reckoned with in the London courtrooms.’
‘She didn’t do so badly.’ Sabrina smiled. Despite everything she was proud of her mother. She had been a very strong woman, a successful lawyer who had been highly respected.
‘We had an affair.’ Garth ran a hand through his thick hair. ‘I was already married to a woman called Jessica when I met your mother.’
‘Your wife didn’t understand you.’ Sabrina’s voice for a moment was angry.
He sighed. ‘I know it sounds bad, but Jessica and I were not in love. We were more or less going our different ways when I met your mother. Jessica was seeing another man, a very wealthy man whom she had set her sights on once she had discovered that I was not as lucrative a proposition as she had thought.’
‘So if you loved my mother so much, why didn’t you divorce your wife and marry her?’ Sabrina’s voice was dry.
‘Oh, believe me, I would have.’ He shook his head emphatically. ‘But when I asked Jessica for a divorce she became hysterical. Suddenly I was the most important thing in the world. Obviously the man she had been seeing was not interested in making an honest woman of her.’ His mouth twisted bitterly. ‘So she figured that she would hang on to me.’
Sabrina could hear the pain in his voice and she reached out a hand to cover his. ‘You don’t have to tell me this,’ she said suddenly. ‘It doesn’t matter; it’s in the past now.’
‘Oh, it does matter. You see, the past has a way of shaping the future.’ For a moment he was silent. ‘Jessica and I had a dreadful row, and I said things I shouldn’t have...cruel things. She ran out of the apartment and straight in front of a car.’
‘Oh, Garth!’ Sabrina stopped and turned to look at him, shocked by what he had told her.
‘She recovered for a short while but she was in a wheelchair.’ Garth stared at her. ‘She needed me, Sabrina, and I felt so goddamned guilty.’
‘So you finished with my mother?’
He nodded. ‘It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.’ There was a far-away look in his eyes for a moment. ‘She must have known that she was pregnant when I finished with her, but she never told me.’
‘I suppose she didn’t want you to feel trapped.’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’ He smiled sadly. ‘The awful thing was that Jessica died six months later. But by that time your mother had moved and I had no idea where she was.’
Sabrina lowered her eyes from his and there was silence for a moment as both were lost in their own private worlds.
Then she looked up at him sadly. ‘I sometimes think that fate chooses the paths for our lives. Maybe you and my mother were just never meant to be.’
‘Maybe. About four years later I met Nadine. She was a widow with a young son and I was a widower.’ He smiled at Sabrina. ‘We comforted each other and I fell very much in love with her. I never did tell her about my affair with your mother. She was so sympathetic about my losing my wife—how could I tell her that I had been unfaithful to her?’ Garth shook his head. ‘Even now I feel guilty when I think about Jessica.’
Sabrina understood Garth’s reluctance to tell Nadine. Maybe if he had told her right at the beginning that his marriage to Jessica had been a mistake she would have understood. But to have to tell her now would be hard.
‘Anyway I thought that I would never see your mother again and then one day I bumped into her in the middle of Oxford Street. I could hardly believe my eyes. It was six years since I had last seen her. We went and had a drink together.’ Garth pushed a shaking hand through his hair. ‘I told her I was married with a baby daughter and a stepson. She told me about you. You can imagine my shock.’
Sabrina could indeed.
‘I don’t know, Sabrina, maybe I let you down and maybe I took the coward’s way out, but when she told me that things were better left as they were I agreed with her.’
Sabrina blinked back sudden tears.
‘She had already told you that your father was dead. And I had to consider Nadine. I do love her——’
‘It’s all right, Garth.