‘It’s true.’ Serena was inflexible. Resisting Cleo’s efforts to pull away, she continued flatly, ‘Believe me, Ms Novak, when my father—your grandfather—told me what had happened, I didn’t want to believe it either.’
‘Now, that I can believe,’ said Cleo a little grimly. ‘Well, don’t worry, Ms Montoya. Obviously your father is suffering from delusions. Unfortunately my real parents were killed in a rail accident six months ago or they would have told you that themselves.’
‘Yes, we know about the accident.’ Serena was full of surprises. ‘That’s when my father first learned where you were living.’ She paused. ‘And he is not delusional. Please, Cleo, come and have a drink with me and let me explain—’
Cleo fell back a step and this time the woman let her go. ‘How do you know my name?’
‘How do you think?’ Serena sounded as if she was getting bored now. ‘It’s Cleopatra, isn’t it?’ And, seeing the unwilling confirmation on Cleo’s face, she added, ‘It was your maternal grandmother’s name, too. She was called Cleopatra Dubois and her daughter, Celeste, was your mother. Celeste Dubois was one of the most beautiful women on the island.’ She gave Cleo a considering look. ‘I hesitate to say it, but you look a lot like her.’
Cleo’s lips tightened. ‘Was she black?’
Serena frowned. ‘Does that matter?’
Cleo shook her head. ‘Only a white person would ask such a question.’ Her lips curled. ‘Yes, it matters.’
‘OK.’ Serena considered. ‘Well, yes, I suppose she was—black. Her skin was—um—coffee coloured. Not black, exactly, but not white either.’
That was enough. Cleo refused to listen to any more. If the description of her so-called ‘mother’ had been meant to disarm her, it had failed abysmally. She was used to vapid flattery. Usually from men, it was true. But she’d had to deal with it all her life.
‘Look, I have to go,’ she said, assuring herself that if there had been any truth in what the woman was saying, she’d have heard about it by now. Her parents had not been liars, whatever Serena Montoya said. And Cleo had loved them far too much to even countenance such a suggestion.
Besides which, she’d been the sole executor of her parents’ estate. And she’d found nothing among their papers to arouse any kind of suspicion in her mind.
Except that photograph, she remembered now, half unwillingly. At the time, she’d thought little of it. It was a picture of her mother with another woman, a woman who she’d realised looked a lot like her. But there’d been nothing on the back of the picture, nothing to say who the woman might be. And Cleo had put it down to her own imagination. There were probably hundreds of people in the world that she bore a resemblance to.
Like Serena Montoya…
But no, she banished that thought, and to her surprise the other woman didn’t try to detain her any longer.
‘All right,’ she said evenly. ‘I realise this has been as much of a shock to you as it was to me.’
You got that right, thought Cleo savagely, but she didn’t voice the thought. Nor was she foolish enough to believe that this was the end of the matter.
‘You need time to assimilate what I’ve told you,’ Serena went on, almost conversationally, drawing velvet-soft leather gloves over her ringed fingers as she spoke. ‘But don’t take too long, will you, my dear? Your grandfather is dying. Are you going to deny him a last chance to meet his only granddaughter?’
Cleo arrived back at the apartment she shared with Norah Jacobs some thirty minutes later.
Actually, it was normally only a five-minute walk from the supermarket to Minster Court, where the apartment was situated. But Cleo had taken a detour through the park to give herself time to think.
At any other time, nothing would have persuaded her to enter the park alone and after dark, but right now she wasn’t thinking very coherently. She’d just been told that her mother and father—the two people in the world she’d always thought she could depend on—had lied about her identity. That far from being alone now, as she’d believed, she had an aunt and a grandfather—and who knew what else?—who were—well, white.
She didn’t want to believe it. She wanted things to go back to the way they were before she’d decided she couldn’t do without milk on her cornflakes in the morning.
If she hadn’t gone to the supermarket…
But that was silly. Sooner or later, the Montoya woman would have caught up with her. And things weren’t going to change any time soon. Not unless Serena Montoya was playing the biggest hoax Cleo had ever heard of.
And why would she do that? What did she have to gain by it? She hadn’t struck Cleo as being the kind of woman who’d put herself out for a complete stranger. Not unless her own father was dying, of course. And he had another agenda she had yet to reveal.
Norah was waiting for her in the rather cramped living room of the apartment. The whole place was pushed for space, but rents in this part of London were prohibitive, and Cleo had jumped at the chance to share expenses with the other girl.
Norah was blonde and pretty and inclined to plumpness. The exact opposite of Cleo in so many ways. But the two girls had been friends since their schooldays and, despite the limitations of their surroundings, they generally got along very well.
Now, however, Norah looked positively anxious. ‘Here you are!’ she exclaimed in relief, as soon as Cleo opened the door. ‘I’ve been worried sick. Where have you been?’ Then, her brows drawing together as Cleo moved into the light of the living room, ‘What’s wrong? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’
Cleo shook her head without saying anything. Walking past her friend, she rounded the breakfast bar that separated the tiny kitchen from the rest of the living space and stowed the milk in the fridge.
Then, straightening, she said, ‘Why on earth would you tell a complete stranger where I was?’
‘Oh…’ The colour in Norah’s cheeks deepened. ‘So she found you.’
‘If you mean Serena Montoya, then yes, she did.’
‘Serena Montoya? Is that her name?’ Norah tried to lighten the conversation, but she could tell Cleo wasn’t distracted by her efforts. ‘Well, she said she was your aunt,’ she offered lamely. ‘What was I supposed to say? She didn’t look like a con artist to me.’
‘Like you would know,’ said Cleo drily. Norah’s many unsuccessful attempts to find herself a decent man were legendary. Coming back into the living room, Cleo flung herself onto the sofa, regarding her friend moodily. ‘Honestly, Norah, I thought you had more sense.’
‘So she’s not your aunt?’
‘No, she’s not my aunt,’ stated Cleo with more force than conviction. ‘I mean, didn’t anything about her give you a clue? Be honest, Norah. Do I look like Serena Montoya’s niece?’
‘You could be.’ Norah wasn’t prepared to back down. ‘In fact, although you’re taller than she is, you do have similar features.’ She paused. ‘Montoya. That’s a Spanish name, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t know. I believe she lives in the Caribbean, so it could be.’ Cleo was impatient. ‘But my parents were black, Norah. Not Spanish. You know that.’
She hunched her shoulders, reluctant now to remember the rare occasions when she’d questioned her identity herself. She hadn’t looked a lot like her parents, and she had wondered if one or both of them might have Latin blood.
But those questions had aroused such animosity that she’d kept any further doubts to herself. And she refused to believe they’d been lying to her.