Moving quietly, she went downstairs to the kitchen and made herself a pot of coffee which she carried to the study.
She’d brought in the computer and set it up the night before, and if she couldn’t sleep then she might as well start work. Begin to probe the real extent of the financial disaster facing her father.
Because it could be faced. She was convinced of that. James Fielding was a survivor. He would get over this heart attack, and the ensuing operation, and take up his life again. And somehow she had to salvage something from the wreckage—make sure there was something to give him hope.
She’d done some preliminary calculations of her own on the plane, partly to prevent herself thinking of other things, she realised, her mouth twisting, and had worked out how much she could afford to contribute. But the outlook was bleak. Even if she sold her London flat, and worked from this house, she’d struggle to pay the new mortgage.
Besides, she wasn’t sure whether she could endure to live under this roof again for any length of time. There were too many bad memories.
Cressida had been a teenager, still mourning her mother, when she had learned of her father’s decision to remarry. And her sense of shock, almost betrayal, had doubled when she’d discovered his choice of wife.
Looking back, she could see that she’d responded intolerantly to the newcomer, staring at her with resentful eyes.
Eloise had been a bit-part actress, her chief claim to fame as hostess on a second-rate TV quiz show. She was tall and full-breasted, her lips permanently set in a beguiling pout, her violet eyes wide, almost childlike.
Until she was crossed, Cressida thought wryly. And then they would narrow like a rattlesnake’s.
As they’d done when she first met her new stepdaughter. The hostility had not been one-sided by any means. Eloise had made it plain that she had little time for other women, and especially for a young girl just beginning to blossom out of gawkiness, although there was no way Cressy could ever have rivalled her voluptuous charms.
Chalk and cheese, Cressy thought with sadness. And I was just a nuisance, someone to be sidelined, if not totally ignored.
And even when, urged by her father, she’d tried a few awkward overtures, she’d found herself completely rebuffed. Eventually she had acquired a reputation for being ‘tricky’, if not downright difficult. And James Fielding, unable to see he was being manipulated, had made his displeasure known to his daughter, creating a rift that had widened slowly but surely over the years.
Cressida had soon realised she was no longer welcome in her own home. Even at Christmas Eloise had usually organised a ski-ing holiday for her husband and herself.
‘Darling,’ she’d said coaxingly when the first one was mooted. ‘Cressida doesn’t want to spend her vacations with a couple of old fogies. She has her own friends. Her own life.’ Her steely gaze had fixed her stepdaughter. ‘Isn’t that right?’
It had been easier to swallow her hurt and bewilderment and agree. She had had friends she could go to, and Uncle Robert and Aunt Barbara had always been there for her, their comfortable, untidy house a second home.
For a long time Cressida had convinced herself that the scales would eventually fall from her father’s eyes and that he’d see Eloise’s greed and self-absorption. But it had never happened. He’d been carried away by his passion for her—a passion that she had been careful to feed.
As for Eloise herself, Cressida was sure she’d looked at James Fielding and seen only a successful businessman, with a settled background and an attractive Georgian house not too far from London.
What she hadn’t understood was that James’s company had struggled to recover from the big recession of the eighties, or that James himself had faltered more than once as chairman, and was being encouraged to take early retirement.
Eloise had been too busy entertaining, enjoying weekend parties with amusing people, and being seen in all the right places.
Even after James’s actual retirement she’d seen no need to scale down their style of living or their expenditure.
Alec Caravas had been a younger man with a foolproof scheme for making them both instantly wealthy. Cressida could see how easily Eloise would have been seduced.
After all, she thought, I was planning to give up my job, my lifestyle, my independence. I shouldn’t judge anyone else.
Her own meetings with her father over the past two years had been mainly confined to lunches in London, with the conversation constrained.
Perhaps I should have made more of an effort, Cressida thought as she drank her coffee. Perhaps I should have played the hypocrite and pretended to like her. Even looked for her good points. Told myself that, whatever my personal feelings, she loved Dad and was making him happy.
Only, I never believed that. I just didn’t want to be proved right quite so comprehensively.
She sighed, and turned resolutely to the computer screen. It was little use rehashing the past, she told herself forcibly. She had to try and salvage something from the present to ensure her father had a future.
She worked steadily for a couple of hours, but found little to comfort her.
Her father’s company pension was indeed all that was left. All his other assets had been liquidised to make him a major shareholder in Paradise Grove. And he’d borrowed heavily too.
If he recovered from his heart attack, it would be to find himself insolvent, she realised unhappily.
His whole way of life would have to be downsized. She’d have to rent a larger flat, she thought, or even a house. Make a home for him—and Berry, who’d be needed more than ever. But how could she afford it?
I won’t worry about that now, she told herself, glancing at her watch.
It was time she took a shower and dressed, and got over to the hospital again.
As she pushed back her chair, she noticed for the first time the small icon at the bottom of the screen indicating there was an e-mail message for her.
Someone else believes in an early start, Cressida thought wryly, as she clicked on to the little envelope and watched the message scroll down.
I am waiting for you.
The words were brief, almost laconic, but they had the power to make her stiffen in shock and disbelief.
She twisted suddenly in her chair, staring over her shoulder with frightened eyes.
The room was empty. And yet she felt Draco’s presence as surely as if he was standing behind her, his hand touching her shoulder.
She said, ‘No,’ and again, more fiercely, ‘No. It’s not true. It can’t be…’
And heard the raw panic that shook her voice.
THERE was a rational explanation. There had to be.
Someone, somewhere, must be playing a trick on her, and had accidentally scored a bullseye.
All the way to the hospital Cressy kept telling herself feverishly that this was the way it had to be. That it must be one of her colleagues…
Except that they were all under the impression that she was still sunning herself on an island in the Aegean. She hadn’t told anyone from work that she was back.
And, anyway, the message was too pointed—too personal to have come from anyone else but Draco. Wasn’t it?
But