Emerald Mistress

‘Life was very different here then. No one would have dreamt of interfering between a father and his child.’

‘She must have felt so alone…’ Harriet thought that it was hardly surprising that when Eva had finally escaped her father’s threats and restrictions, partying had held rather more appeal for her than parenting.

‘Hasn’t Eva the life now, though?’ Joseph remarked in a determinedly cheerful change of subject that suggested he was more comfortable skimming the surface of her mother’s past. ‘I saw a picture of her in an old magazine last year. She looked like a queen in a ballgown at some charity do. She’s come a long way from the young woman who used to help out in the village shop.’

‘Could you give me the names of any of her schoolfriends?’ Harriet suspected that the key to discovering her father’s identity would most likely be found amongst her mother’s contemporaries.

‘I was acquainted with the family situation, but not with much else. We were of different generations.’ His eyes veiled, he served her with a mouthwatering wedge of chocolate cake, and for a few minutes there was silence as Harriet did justice to it.

‘I imagine that there was quite an uproar after my mother ran away.’ Harriet was thoroughly relaxed, and happy to match Tolly’s frankness with her own. ‘I’m very keen to find out who my father was.’

Clearly unprepared for that admission, Joseph looked startled. ‘But surely your mother—?’

‘No…she’s always refused to say,’ Harriet admitted ruefully.

‘But you can hardly go around asking awkward questions of people you don’t even know,’ the old man pointed out. ‘You could cause offence, and you might also cause trouble by casting suspicion on an innocent party. I would strongly advise you to speak to your mother again.’

Harriet suppressed a heavy sigh. She was not close to Eva, and worked hard at conserving the relationship she did have with her. The last time she had tackled the older woman on the score of her parentage Eva had taken strong umbrage.

Joseph gave his guest an anxious appraisal. ‘I think you also need to ask yourself what you’re hoping to get from the information you seek. Your father may be a man who let your mother down when she most needed his support. He might have no interest in knowing you.’

‘Yes, I accept that.’ Harriet was, however, studying her companion with increased interest. The very urgency with which he spoke made her wonder if he knew rather more about her background than he was willing to admit. ‘Were there rumours at the time?’ she pressed more boldly. ‘I mean, people must’ve talked.’

‘People always gossip, and rarely with kindness or commonsense,’ Tolly responded steadily. ‘It would be wrong of me to repeat idle chatter. If your mother was seeing anyone it was kept very much a secret.’

Harriet let the subject drop there, guiltily conscious that she had said rather too much for so short an acquaintance, and listened as her host talked gladly about less contentious issues. It had gone nine when she drove home in a deeply pensive mood. What did she hope to achieve from establishing the identity of her father? She knew that she had a deep need to know exactly where she had come from. But wasn’t it more than that?

Harriet had never really felt that she belonged anywhere. In the same way she had never known what it was to have a parent who was absolutely hers…at least not for long. As a child she had been hurt and confused, because she’d rarely seen the mother she adored. She had then had to adjust to the cruel reality that Eva could somehow manage to be a full time parent for her younger son and daughter. But perhaps it had hurt most of all when Harriet had finally discovered that the man she had grown up believing to be her father was not her biological father after all.

Eva had been six months pregnant when she’d married Will Carmichael, a research scientist a decade older. Seemingly she had snatched at the chance of a wedding ring and a name for her unborn child. A quiet, studious man, Will had been besotted with his youthful Irish bride, but the union had been a disastrous mismatch. Walking down a London street one day, Eva had been stopped by a talent scout and discovered as a fashion model. Hiring a nanny to take care of her baby, Eva had flung herself into the excitement of fame, fortune and foreign travel. The unequal marriage had disintegrated without fanfare.

Even after the divorce Will had been left to shoulder the burden of raising Harriet while Eva concentrated on her career. And when Harriet was five years old her mother had remarried and become a society wife. The wealthy English businessman with whom Eva had had her younger children, Alice and Boyce, had not encouraged Harriet’s visits to his country home in Surrey. He had disliked such an obvious reminder that his beautiful wife’s past had featured other men, and in the interests of marital harmony Harriet had been virtually airbrushed out of her mother’s life.

Harriet had been thirteen years old when she’d overheard a devastating exchange between Eva and Will on the phone.

‘I wanted to tell Harriet the truth years ago, but you wouldn’t agree,’ Will had been saying, with unusual curtness of tone for so mild-mannered a man. ‘She thinks of me as her father, and finding out that I’m no more her father than the Easter bunny will be a nasty shock! Teenagers are vulnerable, Eva. I don’t care if your therapist believes that coming clean on that score will benefit you; I’m more concerned about how it might affect Harriet.’

Harriet had been shattered by the revelation that the father who had brought her up with so much apparent love and sacrifice was not even a blood relation. Even though Will had repeatedly assured her that he loved her just as much as any biological parent, Harriet had still felt like a cuckoo abandoned in his nest. In her heart, where she had used the salve of her father’s love to compensate for her more distant bonds with her mother, she had felt utterly crushed. A kind and gentle man, Will Carmichael had taken on a responsibility that was not his and done his best by her principally because he had had no other choice. Her mother’s refusal to finish the story by telling Harriet exactly who her birth father was had not helped.

The following morning dawned bright and breezy, and Harriet scrambled out of bed with a little frisson of anticipation: it was an absolutely perfect day for the races. A veteran of such country pursuits in her early teen years, and well aware of how rough and ready such events could be, she dug out warm comfy clothes and thermal socks to go with her Wellington boots.

Samson trotted round her feet and fussed until she set out his breakfast.

‘You’re a real little tyrant,’ she told him fondly.

Out in the yard it was all go, and Harriet resolved to rise from her bed earlier. Fergal was cleaning up a dilapidated horse trailer and Una Donnelly was busy in Tailwind’s box, engaged in plaiting his mane into intricate knots. Harriet leant on the stall door to watch. ‘I was never very good at plaiting.’

The teenager looked across at her with a surprisingly ready smile, her liquid dark eyes full of pleasure, as if such compliments rarely came her way. ‘It takes a lot of practice,’ she confirmed. ‘But I could teach you if you like.’

‘OK…did Fergal bring you over?’

‘No, I’ve got a bike.’ She grimaced and lowered her voice to an exasperated whisper. ‘He passes our door but he won’t give me a lift because he’s scared of folk talking about us. He’s dead silly about stuff like that.’

Harriet gave her a non-committal smile.

‘You should let Fergal use the horsebox,’ Una added. ‘It’ll make the yard look better. You’ve got to think of your image in horsy circles.’

Harriet went pink and hurried over to Fergal to urge. ‘I never even thought to say…for goodness’ sake, use Kathleen’s horsebox!’