Greece? Was it possible that she was leaving him and taking their daughter with her? But why would she do that? He had checked with the staff on Palos. Merry had had only one visitor and that was Roula, and when he had phoned Roula she had insisted that Merry had been perfectly friendly and relaxed with her. His lean brown hands knotting into fists, his tension pronounced, Angel resolved to be waiting at Foxcote when Merry got back.
* * *
Merry emerged from the rambling country house that she had not until that day known that Angel owned and climbed into the waiting limousine. She had left Elyssa with Sally, deeming it unlikely that her mother was likely to be champing at the bit to meet her first grandchild because Natalie had never had much time for babies. Furthermore, if Natalie was likely to be chastising her daughter and creating one of her emotionally exhausting scenes it was better to keep Elyssa well away from the display because Merry always lost patience with the older woman. What did it matter after all these years anyway? Natalie hadn’t even made the effort to attend her daughter’s wedding. But then she hadn’t made the effort to attend Merry’s graduation or, indeed, any of the significant events that had marked her daughter’s life.
Obsessed with the recollection of Roula’s sleazy allegations, Merry was simply not in the mood to deal with her mother. Landing in London to discover that Angel had arranged to meet her for lunch had been unsettling. Merry was determined to confront him but only in her own time and only when she had decided exactly what she intended to say to him. Not yet at that point, she had ducked lunch and ignored his calls and texts. Let him fester for a while as she had had to fester while she’d run over Roula’s claims until her head had ached and her stomach had been queasy and she had wept herself empty of tears.
Angel hadn’t asked her to love him, she reminded herself as the limo drew up outside Sybil’s house. But he had asked her to trust him and she had. Now that trust was broken and she was so wounded she felt as though she had been torn apart. She had trailed all her belongings and her daughter’s back from Greece but she still didn’t know what she would be doing next or even where she would be living. While she had been getting married, life had moved on. The cottage now had another tenant and she didn’t want to move in with her aunt again. Nor did she want to feel like a sad, silly failure with Angel again.
‘So glad you made the time to come,’ Sybil gabbled almost nervously as Merry walked through the front door into the open-plan lounge where her mother rose stiffly upright to face her. Natalie bore little resemblance to her daughter, being small, blonde and rather plump, but she looked remarkably young for her forty odd years.
‘Natalie,’ Merry acknowledged, forcing herself forward to press an awkward kiss to her mother’s cheek. ‘How are you?’
‘Oh, don’t be all polite and nice as if we’re strangers. That just makes me feel worse,’ her mother immediately complained. ‘Sybil has something to tell you. You had better sit down. It’s going to come as a shock.’
Her brow furrowing in receipt of that warning, Merry sank down into an armchair and focused on her aunt. Sybil remained standing and she was very pale.
‘We have a big secret in this family, which we have always covered up,’ Sybil stated agitatedly. ‘I didn’t see much point in telling you about it so long after the event.’
‘No, you never did like to tell anything that could make you look bad,’ Natalie sniped. ‘But you promised me that you would tell her.’
Sybil compressed her lips. ‘When I was fifteen I got pregnant by a boy I was at school with. My parents were horrified. They sent me to live with a cousin up north and then they adopted my baby. It was all hushed up. I had to promise my mother that I would never tell my daughter the truth.’
Merry was bemused. ‘I—’
‘I was that adopted baby,’ Natalie interposed thinly. ‘I’m not Sybil’s younger sister, I’m her daughter but I didn’t find that out until I was eighteen.’
Losing colour, Merry flinched and focused on Sybil in disbelief. ‘Your daughter?’
‘Yes. Then my mother died and I felt that Natalie had the right to know who I really was. She was already talking about trying to trace her birth mother, so it seemed sensible to speak up before she tried doing that,’ Sybil explained hesitantly.
‘And overnight, when that truth came out, Sybil went from being my very exciting famous big sister, who gave me wonderful gifts, to being a liar, who had deceived me all my life,’ Merry’s mother condemned with a bitterness that shook Merry.
‘So, you’re actually my grandmother, not my aunt,’ Merry registered shakily as she studied Sybil and struggled to disentangle the family relationships she had innocently taken for granted.
‘It wasn’t my secret to share after the adoption. I gave up my rights but when I came clean about who I really was, it sent your mother off the rails.’
‘Lies...the gift that keeps on giving,’ Natalie breathed tersely. ‘That’s part of the reason I fell pregnant with you, Merry. When I had that stupid affair with your father, I was all over the place emotionally. I had lost my adoptive mother and then discovered that the sister I loved and admired was in fact my mother...and I didn’t like her very much.’
‘Natalie couldn’t forgive me for putting my career first but it enabled me to give my parents enough money to live a very comfortable life while they raised my daughter,’ Sybil argued in her own defence. ‘I was grateful for their care of her. I wasn’t ready to be a mother.’
‘At least, not until you were born, Merry,’ Natalie slotted in with perceptible scorn. ‘Then Sybil interfered and stole you away from me.’
‘It wasn’t like that!’ Sybil protested. ‘You needed help.’
Merry’s mother settled strained eyes on Merry’s troubled face and said starkly, ‘What do you think it was like for me to see my birth mother lavishing all the love and care she had denied me on my daughter instead?’
Merry breathed in deep and slow, struggling to put her thoughts in order. In reality she was still too upset about Roula’s allegations to fully concentrate her brain on what the two women were telling her. Sybil was her grandmother, not her aunt and Merry had never been told that Natalie was an adopted child. She abhorred the fact that she had not been given the full truth about her background sooner.
‘The way Sybil treated you, the fuss she made of you, made me resent you,’ Merry’s mother confessed guiltily. ‘It wrecked our relationship. She came between us.’
‘That was never my intention,’ Sybil declared loftily.
‘But that’s how it was...’ Natalie complained stonily.
Merry lowered her head, recognising that she saw points on both sides of the argument. Sybil had only been fifteen when she gave Natalie up to her parents for adoption and she had been barred from admitting that she was Natalie’s birth mum. Merry refused to condemn Sybil for that choice but she also saw how devastating that pretence and the lies must’ve been for her own mother and how finding out that truth years afterwards had distressed her.
‘You say you want a closer relationship with me and yet you still had no interest in coming to my wedding or in meeting my daughter,’ Merry heard herself fire back at her mother.
‘I couldn’t afford the plane fare!’ Natalie snapped defensively. ‘Who do you think paid for this visit?’
‘How do you feel about this?’ Sybil pressed anxiously.
‘Confused,’ Merry admitted tightly. ‘Hurt that the two of you didn’t tell me the truth years ago. And I hate lies, Sybil, and now I discover that you’ve pretty much been lying to me my whole life.’
In actuality, Merry felt as if the solid floor under her feet had fallen away, leaving her to stage a difficult balancing act. Her grandmother and her mother were both regarding her expectantly and she didn’t know what she was supposed to say to satisfy either of them. The sad reality