Suddenly he realised she was weeping.
‘Kerry?’ He spoke her name quietly, but she spun round at once, her face an open book of remorse.
‘I’m sorry,’ she sobbed. ‘Oh, Theo—I’m so sorry for what I did that night.’
The pure emotion in her voice cut into him disconcertingly—but he told himself it didn’t matter what she said, how she tried to defend her actions. He knew he would never forgive her for what she’d done. She’d deliberately betrayed his plans—putting both his sister-in-law and his nephew in danger.
‘I did something inexcusable—something terrible.’ Her voice rose urgently. ‘But I never meant harm to come to anyone. You have to know that wasn’t my intention.’
‘I have no idea what you intended,’ Theo said honestly. He’d racked his brain repeatedly—wondering what had possessed her to go running to Hallie. Surely she’d known him well enough to realise that he only ever wanted what was best for his family. ‘What in God’s name were you thinking?’
He stared at her, feeling all the anger he’d tried to put aside for Lucas’s sake rising up within him once more.
‘I was thinking about my mother,’ Kerry suddenly blurted. ‘I was thinking about how it killed her!’ She dragged in a tortured breath and turned away from him, covering her face with her hands.
Theo stared at her in shock. What was she talking about? What did the death of Kerry’s mother have to do with what had happened the night Hallie crashed the car?
‘They took my mother’s baby away.’ Kerry’s words were muffled, but Theo could just about hear what she was saying. ‘They took me away from my mother—and it destroyed her.’
She scrubbed her palms over her face, then turned round to look at him again. He could see just how badly talking about—even thinking about—her mother was affecting Kerry. Her face was pale and her eyes wide, and her whole body was shaking violently.
‘Come inside and sit down,’ he said, reaching out towards her.
She curled in on herself and shrank away from him—as if at that moment she couldn’t bear to be touched. But then she edged past him and walked unevenly to the sofa.
For a moment Theo hesitated, then he poured her a glass of cold water and sat down next to her.
Kerry picked up the water automatically with a trembling hand and took a sip. It was the first time she had ever spoken about her mother to anyone. Her heart was thumping and her palms felt damp and clammy.
She didn’t want to say anything else—what would Theo think when he knew the truth about her?—but now she had started she knew she had to finish.
‘My mother was very young when she had me,’ Kerry said. ‘Only sixteen.’
She paused, glancing at him to see if he seemed shocked—but his expression was unreadable.
‘My grandmother was horrified. She forced my mother to hand me over to her, so she could bring me up alongside Bridget, her other, much younger daughter,’ Kerry said. ‘But it was a disaster for everyone. She never really wanted me, and always resented having an extra child to take care of. But even worse, her decision to take me destroyed my mother’s life. It made her feel like a failure and she never managed to get her life on track.’
She paused again, and took another sip of water to steady her nerves. Now she was telling Theo she felt really strange—almost as if she was watching someone else telling their life story.
‘So Bridget is really your aunt,’ Theo said. ‘But you were brought up together, by the same person.’
‘I think of her as my sister,’ she replied. ‘We grew up with each other and there’s not much age difference between us.’ She rubbed her hands over her face and took a few steadying breaths. Now she had started, she had to tell t
he final, most awful piece of the story.
‘Maybe if my mother had had her child to look after, she would’ve had a purpose in life—a reason to sort herself out,’ Kerry continued. ‘As it was, she turned to drink and then started taking drugs. She died of an overdose in the end.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Theo said. ‘That must have been very hard for you.’
‘At the time I thought she was my much older sister,’ Kerry said. ‘I didn’t even know her because Mum—I mean my grandmother—threw her out after I was born and wouldn’t let her back in the house. I met her once or twice when I was little, but I barely remember it.’
For the first time Kerry detected a response in Theo—and she lifted her eyes to see a look of shock on his face.
‘She didn’t tell you who your mother was? She lied to you?’ he asked incredulously.
‘My grandmother said it was in everyone’s best interests,’ Kerry said bitterly. ‘Really she was covering up the shame she felt because her teenage daughter had had a baby. I only found out when I was eighteen years old. I needed my birth certificate to apply for a passport when I got a job in the travel agency.’
She shuddered, hugging herself as she remembered the utter shock she’d felt as she’d looked at the birth certificate, staring in disbelief and confusion at her older sister’s name, written clearly in the section for her mother’s name.