Their coal-house was already stacked with fuel, the logs her father had cut only two weekends ago drying out; gas had been bought in ready for their annual power-cuts. She remembered how astonished Kyle had been by the depth of their snowfalls. He had come from London, where snow never lay for very long on the busy streets. Just momentarily she had felt superior to him but, as always, he had quickly turned the tables on her. She shivered and called to Meg.
She knew why Kyle Bennett was in her thoughts so much, of course; she had known from the first moment the specialist had told them that her father was going to need surgery and she had seen the fear and exhaustion on her mother’s face.
Things had not been going well for them businesswise recently. Too many shops were closing; too many small businesses going to the wall. It hadn’t helped, seeing all those huge signs plastered all over Bristol for Bennett Enterprises. Who would ever have thought that the scruffy-at-heel boy her parents had taken in would turn out to be such a successful businessman?
He was a millionaire several times over now, and with a life-style to match his wealth, if the popular Press was to be believed. And, knowing him as she did, Heather did believe it.
He had always liked the very best life had to offer, she remembered sourly. She only had to think of the succession of pouting would-be model girls he had brought home to show off to her parents. Glossy, expensive creatures who had made her feel clumsy and ugly, and she had seen in his eyes that he had known and enjoyed her discomfort.
It had always been like that between them. From the very first moment, they had recognised in each other a mortal enemy. She had never imagined then that she would be the one to vanquish him. She shivered, and not from the cold, remembering the price that had had to be paid for her victory. And she had not been the one to pay it. She swallowed hard against the lump of pain buried deep in her throat. Her parents never mentioned him, never referred to the events of that dreadful night, the night of her seventeenth birthday. They had never reproached or condemned, but she knew how they must feel. In demonstrating the strength of their love for her, they had also shown her a mirror-image of her own selfishness, an image reinforced by the counselling she had received while in hospital. She shuddered again, not wanting to recall those dark days and that stupid emotional teenage threat made out of jealousy and anger, without thought for its consequences.
Even now, the memory of how easily it could all have gone dreadfully wrong haunted her. She had been criminally stupid, selfishly determined to vanquish Kyle once and for all, to ruin his triumphant homecoming from Oxford, and to make her parents choose between them.
And she had succeeded, but at what price?
Never would she forget the reproach and fear in her father’s eyes when she’d woken up in her hospital room.
The indignity of having her stomach pumped out by the hospital staff had left her sore and exhausted, her brain not mentally capable of reasoning properly.
Her first croaked words had been, “Where’s Kyle?”
And they had had the compassion and the love not to tell her then that he had gone.
It had all been so silly, her resentment of the fact that he’d chosen to return home on the very day of her birthday, and thus, in her eyes, taken the limelight from her. She had refused to get changed for the special birthday dinner her parents had organised at a local hotel, and instead had stayed upstairs in her room sulking, sure that her father at least would come up and coax her to go down.
But it had been Kyle who had come up to see her. A Kyle older and far more mature than she’d remembered from his last visit, almost twelve months ago. During his last year at Oxford he had worked during his holidays and so they had not seen him, and she had managed to persuade herself that he was gone from their lives for ever, even though he wrote and telephoned regularly every week.
He had been curt and derisive with her, sparing her nothing, making her see herself as a spoiled, petulant child, determined to make everyone dance to her bidding. She had hated him even more for that, because she had seen in his coolly deliberate criticism the seeds of the truth, and that had hurt.
She had reacted wildly, close to the point of tears at what she considered her parents’ betrayal of her in choosing to let him come up and torment her, when they should have sent him packing and spent the evening coaxing her out of her black mood.
‘If you have the slightest bit of feeling for your parents, you’ll get dressed and come downstairs right now,’ Kyle had told her, getting off her bed. ‘It’s time you grew up, Heather, and stopped trying to use emotional blackmail to get what you want. OK, so you and I are always going to be poles apart, but for your parents’ sake we should at least try to appear to get on.’
She had hated him for his calm, reasoned argument, for the realisation that he was showing more concern for her parents than she was herself; and all the nebulous and real fears she had experienced in the years since he had become an adopted member of her family had exploded inside her.
She’d refused to get dressed, and in the end her parents and Kyle had gone out without her.
Nearly demented with rage and jealousy that this should happen on her birthday, she had flown to the medicine cabinet and extracted a full bottle of aspirin.
She hadn’t really wanted to die, just to punish those who should have loved her more than they did Kyle … much more.
If it hadn’t been for the fact that Kyle had persuaded her parents to return home half-way through the meal, she would not be here today.
She’d been unconscious when they’d found her hysterical note. She had been rushed to hospital, and brought round by the unsympathetic and very angry hospital staff, who quite rightly felt that their time was far too valuable to be spent on one silly, jealous teenager, when there were so many other people in greater need of it.
She had said many bitter and angry things in her letter: accusing her parents of wishing she had been a boy, accusing Kyle of trying to steal their love away from her, and finally saying that, since she wasn’t wanted or loved, she might as well end her life.
During the counselling she had received after her release from hospital, she had come to understand that it had not been Kyle she had hated so much as the threat she’d thought he represented; and that it was her own nature that was responsible for her feelings, rather than anything he had done.
She had been angry and resentful at these assertions, and then later, when she had come to understand the reality of them, very penitent. But by then it was too late. Kyle had disappeared, leaving only a note saying that in the circumstances, although he would always love and be grateful to them, he felt it would be as well if he didn’t see her parents again.
His absence was never mentioned, but Heather knew how much her parents missed him. Her mother could have leaned on Kyle’s strength, while her father could have turned to him for financial advice. If only …
But life wasn’t a fairy story. It wasn’t possible to simply close one’s eyes and wish.
There was another way, though. Her mouth went dry at the very thought of it. It had been in her mind since her father had first been taken ill. She kept trying to dismiss it, to find another way out of her dilemma, but deep down inside she knew there was no other way.
Call it reparation for an old wrong, call it a test she had to face before being able to call herself fully adult, call it what you liked, it all boiled down to the same thing.
She had to go and see Kyle; she had to ask for his help on her parents’ behalf. She had to humble and abase herself before him; she had to have