‘The truth. That you explained to me when I was old enough to understand what had happened…That you had fallen in love with someone who you thought was free to love you in return…and that you had then discovered that he was in fact already married with a child. That on the advice and counselling of Gran and Gramps you had decided not to get in touch with him and tell him about me because, as they had pointed out to you, he had already made it plain that he didn’t want anything to do with you, and that anyway, a man who had already betrayed his marriage vows and his child was only going to cause us both a great deal of unhappiness.
‘I’ve always agreed with what Gran and Gramps told you,’ she added calmly. ‘He couldn’t have been much of a man, to hurt you the way he did. You and Gran and Gramps have always given me so much love…been so honest and truthful with me.’ She looked steadily at her mother. ‘I admire you tremendously for not giving in to the temptation to confront him with your pregnancy, especially when you loved him so much. He has no place in my life or in my heart. How could he have? If I had one wish it would not be for my father, but that Gran and Gramps were still alive and that Gramps was here to walk down the aisle with me.’
They hugged one another silently for a moment, both of them acknowledging the huge emotional debt they owed to Kate’s parents, who had always been so wise and caring, never reproaching her for what she had done but instead gently helping her to understand that for her own sake and her child’s she must put the past behind her.
‘I think what you and I need right now is a bottle of champagne and a weepy movie,’ Sophy said shakily.
Kate laughed.
‘Maybe, but what we have is a potential strawberry mountain waiting to be hulled and washed.’ She saw Sophy’s grimace and reminded her, mock-severely, ‘You were the one who wanted the June wedding…the country setting…the fresh strawberries and cream…’
‘Don’t remind me,’ Sophy protested as they went together to the car to bring in the fruit.
CHAPTER TWO
‘THE MOST BEAUTIFUL girl…’
‘Such a lovely dress…’
‘What a fabulous day…’
The comments washed past Kate as she stood on the steps of the church with Sophy and John and John’s immediate family.
The June sunshine was dazzlingly bright and hot after the cool, cloistered peace of the church. The vicar had held a private memorial service for her parents in that same church after the plane crash…Her breath locked in her chest as she reminded herself that, today of all days, she must not allow anything to cloud Sophy’s happiness.
And Sophy was happy. It radiated out of her.
As she watched, the newly married pair touched hands, a small, private gesture of shared love and reassurance, and then Sophy commented curiously, ‘Heavens, John, who’s that gorgeous dark-haired man over there with the redhead?’
All of them turned to look in the direction Sophy was discreetly indicating.
A couple were standing apart from the rest of the guests, in the shadowy seclusion of the quiet graveyard.
Kate looked at them absently, and then focused abruptly on the man, her heart feeling as though it had suddenly been clamped in a giant vice. The whole world seemed to spin crazily around her as her throat went dry, and she fought off the panic engulfing her. It couldn’t be…Not here! Not now! Not today!
Somewhere in the distance John was pretending to be jealous, and his mother was saying in amusement, ‘That’s my cousin, Joss Bennett.’
‘Oh, is it? I’ve heard you mention him,’ Sophy was responding, enlightened. ‘Funny, I’d envisaged him being much older than that.’
‘You mean rather more around my age,’ John’s mother teased.
Kate heard their conversation. It lapped round her, a lulling, distant noise that couldn’t calm her jangled, discordant nerves. She was concentrating on the man standing within the shadows of the ancient yews, sunlight dappling his features, obscuring them slightly, but not so much that she had not recognised him immediately.
It had been almost twenty-two years…by rights her heart and mind should have forgotten everything about him…but they hadn’t.
She had a confused awareness of a desperate need to keep up appearances, to act as though nothing untoward had happened…as though she hadn’t looked across a sun-dappled churchyard and seen standing there the man who had deserted her all those years ago, leaving her to bear his child…this child who was now a young woman.
Somewhere in the distance, John’s mother was saying easily, ‘Well, of course, Joss is much younger than me, I suppose now he must be forty-two, going on fortythree.’
‘He doesn’t look it,’ Sophy was saying admiringly. ‘Heavens, I would have thought he was somewhere in his late thirties at the most.’
‘Hey,’ John cautioned her teasingly. ‘Watch it…I’m beginning to get worried. I shall definitely not introduce you to him.’
The sun’s heat, the laughter and warmth of the day…all of them might not have existed, Kate felt so cold and alone.
Was it mere coincidence that had brought him here today of all days, or…?
It was coincidence! It had to be. If by some remote chance he had discovered that Sophy was his child, surely he wouldn’t have waited until today, until she was getting married, to claim their relationship?
The vice loosened its grip a little. She drew a deep, shaky breath, trying to control the trembling she could feel threatening her composure. It was just a horrible coincidence. He was John’s mother’s cousin, a coincidence…
Someone touched her arm and she turned her head to look into Sophy’s concerned eyes.
‘Are you all right, Mum? You’ve gone quite pale, and you feel cold.’
Momentarily she was the focus of the small group’s attention. This was Sophy’s day, she reminded herself fiercely, and nothing was going to be allowed to spoil it. Nothing. She could see that John’s mother was already beginning to frown a little, as though picking up the vibrations of shock emanating from her…the kind of shock that had nothing to do with a beloved daughter getting married.
‘It was colder than I’d expected inside the church,’ she managed, forcing herself to smile.
The outfit she had chosen for the wedding consisted of a black and white silk spotted dress with short cap sleeves, in a vaguely twenties style, with a plain white silk jacket and a white silk hat trimmed in black, the colours being perfectly acceptable since Sophy had chosen to wear a dress of heavy cream silk rather than the traditional white she had claimed would look awful with her olive-tinted skin.
Skin she had inherited from her father, Kate acknowledged, unable to resist darting another tormented look at the couple in the churchyard.
They were standing facing one another, Joss bending towards the redhead while she removed something from the lapel of his jacket. She was tall, almost as tall as Sophy, and he didn’t have to angle his head far to look down at her. When he had been with her… Her heart jolted frantically in her chest as memories she didn’t want came surging past the barriers of her self-control. Memories of the first time they had met on the cliffs beyond the windy Cornish fishing village, devoid of tourists during that wet cold summer. She had run into him, having got caught out in the rain. She had been running back to her mother’s aunt’s cottage, her head down, not looking where she was going.
He had caught hold of her as she staggered, and she had lifted her head to