Until this moment, she had kept an open mind about Jack’s family, but if Arthur’s rudeness was anything to go by, she had an uphill struggle ahead of her. Having had a close relationship with her own mother and father, it was difficult for her to comprehend how anybody else’s family could drift apart. Jack had explained to her that he knew he was mostly to blame for pushing his children away. ‘I should never have abandoned them into the care of nannies to the extent I did,’ he had said when she first asked him why they never visited him, ‘but I thought I was doing the right thing. I was alone, and with my business interests taking up so much of my time, I thought a professional nanny would make a far better job of looking after the children than I could. But I fear now that I got it wrong.’
Romily could understand the dilemma in which Jack had found himself; it couldn’t have been easy. Of course the simplest thing, and what a lot of men in his position did, would have been to marry again, if merely for the sake of the children. But as Jack had said, until Romily came into his life, marriage could not have been further from his mind.
‘I fell in love with you that second evening we spent together,’ he told her, ‘and I knew then that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you.’
‘Only the second evening?’ she’d replied. ‘I’m disappointed.’
‘Go on then,’ he’d said. ‘When did you think you loved me?’
‘It was when you took me home after our first dinner,’ she’d confessed. ‘I couldn’t stop thinking about you all night. I wanted to telephone you and just listen to your voice. You could have recited pages and pages of the dullest balance sheets and I’d have been utterly entranced.’
He’d laughed and admitted he’d felt exactly the same way.
Romily steeled herself once more not to cry at the painfully poignant memory, and in the continuing silence, she slowed her speed and swung the car sharply through the brick posts that marked the entrance to Island House.
It was Kit who spoke first. ‘I’ve just realised who you are,’ he said. ‘You’re Romily Temple the crime author, aren’t you? I knew I recognised the name.’
‘Guilty as charged,’ said Romily, glancing at her stepson in the rear-view mirror once more.
‘When did the two of you marry?’
‘A few weeks ago. In secret. We didn’t want to make a big splash of it.’
‘Well, well, well,’ drawled Arthur, ‘how very convenient for you that our father should fall ill so soon afterwards.’
Resisting the urge to respond to his vile remark, Romily brought the car to a halt alongside Dr Garland’s Austin Seven. Even before she’d switched off the engine, Arthur was pushing open the passenger door to get out. His loathing for her could not have been more palpable.
‘I know this must be awkward for you,’ she said, out of the car and opening the boot so they could help themselves to their luggage, ‘but I do hope you can put aside your surprise, and any animosity you might feel towards me, and remember why you’re here.’
‘That’s what I’m beginning to wonder about,’ sneered Arthur. ‘Just why are we here? Other than to give our father one last opportunity to rub our noses in his contempt for us before he does us all a favour and dies.’
It was all Romily could do not to raise her hand and slap his arrogant face. How could the Jack she knew and loved have possibly produced such an odious son?
‘That’s a low shot, even by your standards,’ muttered Kit.
At the sound of the front door opening, the group turned as one towards the house.
‘Ah, the faithful lapdog is in residence, I see.’ Arthur’s voice took on a mocking superiority at the sight of Roddy standing on the doorstep. ‘On hand, no doubt, to inform us that we’re to be disinherited in favour of our new stepmother.’
‘Oh do shut up, Arthur,’ said Kit. ‘You’re not making this any easier for us.’
‘I’m merely saying what we’re both thinking. And if you wanted things to be easier, you should have stayed away. Take it from me, it can only get a lot worse from here on.’
Chapter Nine
Jack could hear distant voices. Men’s voices. Was that Arthur he could hear talking to Roddy? And Kit? Were they here at last? What about the girls? Or was he dreaming?
Distinguishing between what was real and what his subconscious conjured while he slept was becoming more and more difficult. He felt trapped between continuously sliding parallel worlds, perpetually disorientated, with no idea what day or time it was. Right now, though, he knew it was daytime; the sun was streaming in through the window, causing motes of dust to dance in the shafts of light. As a child, he’d been fascinated by the sight. His mother had spun him a yarn when he’d been very young that it was magic dust sprinkled by the fairies. He’d told his own children the same story, but perhaps he hadn’t been very convincing, for only Hope had believed him. Or maybe she was the only one who had felt inclined to humour him.
He wished Hope were here now. He so badly wanted to beg her forgiveness. He’d been wrong to want to deny her happiness with the man she loved. Romily had made him see that; had made him understand that there was nothing more important or powerful than love and forgiveness.
‘We don’t plan with whom we fall in love,’ she’d said. ‘Look at us; it just happens when it happens. I call it a happy collision.’
How right she was. Falling in love again at his age had seemed about as likely as him dancing on the moon, but that day at Brooklands, when he’d first approached Romily having frequently seen her about the club, he had felt something astonishing happen to him. Something he hadn’t believed he was still capable of feeling. After taking her for dinner, he’d promised to go straight out and buy one of her novels. To his shame, he’d never found time to read much before; work had always consumed him.
In the days that followed, when she had been too busy to see him again, he had found it difficult to concentrate on anything; all he could think of was being with this extraordinary woman. Yet at the same time he had wanted to deny what he felt, telling himself he was too old to succumb to such absurd behaviour. But after seeing her again, he’d known that he’d been given a special gift, a second chance to love once more. And to use Romily’s analogy of a collision, she had hit him absolutely with all the force of a fast-moving train.
Experiencing such a profound sense of contentment and love with Romily had made him face a harsh truth: that since Maud’s death, he’d stopped himself from feeling any real depth of emotion. Everything he’d done had been through a sense of duty, never through genuine love. Regret and bitterness had played their part too – why should others be happy when he could not find the key to it himself?
