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Suddenly the pain of Raffaele’s rejection was eclipsed by the knowledge that the shadowy man—the parent with no name, the father she’d never had—was Giancarlo Di Visconti.
‘I need to lie down. I feel sick.’
She stumbled back to the bed she had just vacated. She sank down into the soft, still warm embrace of cotton and down. She laid her head on the pillow and clenched her eyes closed.
She could hear her mother in the kitchen, the sound of the kettle being turned on. As if tea would fix this. She almost screamed it at her.
Why had she never told her? Why had Lynda buried his identity so deeply, made her feel ashamed even to ask about him? Why had she shut her down at every opportunity, getting so upset that Coral had given up asking.
Lynda came in with two mugs of tea, the steam rising like genies from unstoppered bottles.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Coral sobbed at her through foggy streams of tears.
‘Coral, you must believe that I only wanted to do the right thing.’
Lynda put the tea down and sat on the edge of the bed.
‘He was married when we met. I worked as cabin crew on his private jet. I had just arrived in London. I fell for him. Everything about him. He was handsome and clever and urbane. He was ambitious and charming. Everybody loved him. I wasn’t any different from anybody else. I knew he had a wife and a young child, but he was always travelling on business, always alone. For some reason he started to chase me. I couldn’t resist. Who could?’
‘You could! Anyone could! You allowed yourself to be seduced by a married man, for God’s sake!’
‘Don’t you think I know that? Don’t you think I feel ashamed?’
‘I don’t want to know. You didn’t want to tell me when I asked you, over and over again. It was the one subject you glossed over. Have you any idea how it felt for me to have no idea who he was? You wouldn’t give me so much as a name or a hair colour. I wondered if I had his eyes or his nose, but you wouldn’t even let me ask the question. And he’s dead now. It’s too late. Oh, my God. I can’t take this all in.’
It couldn’t be any worse. All those years pretending her father was some handsome prince who was going to gallop back into their lives…all those years burning a candle for him. The truth was he was no more than someone else’s philandering husband and she was the unwanted love-child. Except there had been no love. It had just been a dirty affair.
‘I didn’t want to tell you because I was ashamed. I was ashamed of what I’d done and even more ashamed that he didn’t want me. He chose his family over us. He said he didn’t believe me. Have you any idea how that felt? To have my love trampled into the ground? To be denied like that? Not only me, but you too. He denied you. And then he offered me money to disappear.’
‘Why didn’t you take it? Then at least we wouldn’t have been so poor!’
It was all she could say. She wanted to lash out and hurt. She wanted to scream and shout and stop feeling the pain that was eating her up inside. It was too much, too awful, to feel the hurt of being hated.
‘I was proud! Don’t you understand? It was all I had. I had nothing else. A tiny baby. No career. Nothing. He was everything I wanted. And I was sure he would come back for me.’
All those years of poverty. She hadn’t even had her own bedroom until she was twelve. No friends round. Her mother always in tears, unable to hold down an ordinary job. Paintings that didn’t sell. In and out of hospital.
‘But when you wanted to go to college I knew I had to find him. And I did. At least I tried. But I couldn’t get past Salvatore. Giancarlo was ill and they wouldn’t let me meet him. I didn’t have the strength to fight, Coral.’
Coral looked at her. Her poor mother. Pregnant by a man who didn’t want to know. Bringing up a child all alone with no one to turn to. And with the might and the wealth of the Di Viscontis so public, yet so inaccessible.
‘I’m sorry. I need to get my head around this.’
She reached out and squeezed her mum in a quick hug. It was as much as she could do.
‘I love you, Coral. Please never doubt that I did what I thought was best for you.’
‘I know.’
She sighed, comforting her sobbing mother. Soothing her and staring blankly at her tote bag on the rug, sunken and dead as her dreams.
She thought of that horrible man, her half-brother, remembering his rudeness both times she’d met him. How he’d seemed so brutal. She thought of the home he had—the yacht, the island, the jet, the wealth.
She thought of Raffaele.
Raffaele who had rejected her just like the Di Viscontis. What cruel twist of fate had allowed this to happen? He had been welcomed into the family that had gone to such lengths to keep her out.
