He saw incomprehension and then shock on Emily’s face. ‘She guessed?’
He nodded.
‘What did you say?’ she breathed.
‘I asked her what she meant.’
You know what I mean, son. Her failing voice had come out as a reedy rasp. I’ve seen the empty expression in your eyes whenever you look at me that was never there before. Did you find out that I worked the streets when you were a little boy?
‘And?’
He’d almost forgotten Emily was there. Alej’s vision cleared as he met her sapphire gaze. ‘What could I say? What could I tell her, other than the truth, when the truth was the only thing I could hold onto? And then she told me everything.’ His lips hardened as he spoke and suddenly he got an acrid taste in his mouth. He walked from the bedroom into the dining room, aware of Emily following him, before going over to the antique cabinet which would shortly be sold at auction and pouring two fingers of whisky into a crystal tumbler. He swallowed a fiery mouthful before holding his glass aloft. ‘Want one?’
She shook her head. ‘No, thanks. I want you to carry on with your story.’
He gave a bitter smile as he put the glass down on the gleaming wood. ‘Hers was a not unusual tale and in many ways, I wasn’t making a moral judgement. You don’t have to stand on a street corner to sell sex for money—I know women who would promise pretty much anything if they thought they were going to get a diamond necklace out of it. But this was a very different version of reality from the one I’d been given when I was growing up.’
Her voice was tentative. ‘Surely you wouldn’t have expected her to tell you the truth when you were a little boy?’
‘Of course not. I could understand why she would keep her prostitution a secret. She wasn’t the first young woman who would use her body to pay the bills and she certainly won’t be the last,’ he bit out. ‘But not why she felt the need to lie about the circumstances of my conception and about my father. When we moved from the favela and she found a job as housekeeper to your stepfather, she told me we wouldn’t be there long. She explained that my father was a rich and powerful man and one day he would return and rescue us and take us away from a life of servitude and we would live together happily on the acres of the pampas he called home.’
‘And you believed her?’
‘Of course I did! Children tend to believe what their mothers tell them. And we both know what good liars women can be, don’t we, Emily?’ There was a pause as he flicked her a cynical look. ‘But she saved the best for last. The dramatic deathbed declaration which can never be challenged once the final breath has been taken. There was no rich and powerful papa. No father at all, as it happened—just a former client of hers, an itinerant rogue who used to beat her up.’ He swallowed. ‘But still she let him keep coming back for more. He was nothing but a thief and a con man who spent most of his time in prison and was killed by wrapping his motorbike round a tree—but not before making her pregnant with another child.’
‘Oh, Alej. That’s terrible,’ said Emily dazedly, blinking her eyelids rapidly as if she was trying to hold back tears. ‘I’m so sorry.’
He gave another bitter smile. ‘Funny, isn’t it? I always regretted being an only child, except then I discovered I wasn’t. That I have a younger brother. A child she had no hope of supporting, so she did what any self-respecting mother would do and sold him.’
‘What was that you said?’ Her voice sounded as if it were coming from a long way away as she stared at him in disbelief. ‘Are you telling me your mother had another baby and she sold it?’
His jaw firmed. ‘That’s exactly what I’m telling you.’
‘Oh, Alej—’
‘No,’ he said bitterly. ‘Please spare me the kindness and compassion—the trembling lips and big, wet eyes. That’s not why I told you. And that’s it. That’s the story. There is no more.’
‘There must be.’ She walked over to the drinks cabinet and stood next to him, the delicate silk of her black dress making a soft, whispering sound and the faint scent of summer flowers drifting in the air as she reached him. ‘You have a brother, Alej. It may not be the ideal scenario—but that’s a wonderful thing, surely? You’ve got a sibling—which is more than I do. Someone whose gene pool you share. Someone you can have a unique relationship with. Have you managed to find him?’
‘No.’ Even Alej could hear how cold his voice sounded as he answered her question, but it wasn’t nearly as cold as his heart. ‘I haven’t found him because I haven’t bothered looking for him. He was sold to a woman in America and that’s all I know.’
‘But surely you—’
‘There is no “surely” about it,’ he ground out. ‘I’m too old to believe in fairy stories, Emily. Do you really think I would track him down, so that we could have some great big family reunion? Do you honestly think he knows the background of the woman who gave birth to him? Even if he does, do you imagine that’s something he’s ever going to want to celebrate?’
Emily didn’t answer. Not straight away. Her head was too busy buzzing with the emotional repercussions of his shocking revelation. But one thing quickly became apparent—like the agitated and muddy water of a pond which finally grew still, so you were able to see the stones on the bottom. No wonder Alej was so cold and mistrusting. No wonder he thought all women lied. Because in his experience, they did. She’d told him lies herself, hadn’t she? Big, powerful lies. She’d told him she didn’t want him. That she’d wanted other men. She’d said that because she was scared—scared of her own feelings and her mother’s unpredictable behaviour. Scared of being hurt and scared of the future.
Even now, she’d only given him half the truth, hadn’t she? She had been too much of a coward to take that final step and to tell him what was deep in her heart. And didn’t he need to hear that, now, when he was at his most vulnerable? When he must be aching and hurting deep inside, despite the proud expression on his face.
‘I also need to tell you something, Alej.’
He withered her with a sardonic look. ‘Don’t tell me your mother was a hooker, too?’
She didn’t respond to the jibe. ‘When I told you on our wedding day there had been no other man—’
‘It had conveniently slipped your mind that you might have forgotten to mention one or two?’ he suggested.
She blanked his harsh sarcasm, because of course he would lash out at her—wouldn’t anyone have lashed out in the circumstances? But he hadn’t yet made sense of his past, she realised—and maybe in a way, she had been guilty of the same. ‘No. There has been no other man because...’ she swallowed ‘...because nobody ever came close to you. And what I felt for you, I’ve...I’ve never felt for anyone else.’
She didn’t know what kind of reaction she had been expecting from this tentative revelation but it certainly wasn’t the one she got. All his icy composure had vanished and his face now blazed with sudden fury. ‘Is this pity you dole out to me now, Emily?’ he demanded savagely, angry green fire spitting from the depths of his eyes. ‘You think that because I have revealed my shameful parentage to you, I will grab at any crumb of affection which comes my way? That the illegitimate son of a hooker and a thief will be grateful for anything he can get?’
She saw his pain and his anger and thanked whichever self-protective instinct had stopped her from coming right out and telling him she loved him. And wouldn’t logic rather than emotion serve her better than anything else right now? ‘I don’t care about your past!’ she said quietly. ‘I don’t care who your father was or what your mother did.’
His face was a mask. ‘I didn’t tell you because I wanted your affirmation,’