They were almost alone in the arrivals hall now and, to Ella’s relief, Olivia was fiddling with her transistor radio, which Ella had once bought her in London and which the little girl had brought with her, no doubt trying to tune it in to a pop music station, and hadn’t, Ella hoped, been able to hear Oliver’s fiercely angry speech.
His words had rained down on Ella like a fire storm, shocking her into immobility.
In fact, she was so taken aback, so stunned by what Oliver had said, that the only response she could manage was a shaken, ‘I have never been ashamed of you.’
‘Then why have you always refused to have your family over or let me meet them properly?’
Ella badly wanted to sit down but there was nowhere to sit apart from the bench where Olivia already was.
‘That was for your sake,’ she told Oliver truthfully. ‘Because you are always so busy and because I didn’t want you to feel that I expected you to behave like a proper husband just because you’d married me. It was for your sake, Oliver,’ she repeated when she saw that he was simply looking at her, ‘because I wanted you to have your freedom. And don’t tell me that you didn’t want it. That model you rang on Christmas Day…’
‘Because she’d rung me earlier, out of her head on acid–she didn’t know what century she was in, never mind what day. She thought we’d got a shoot.’
Ella could see that he was telling her the truth. ‘You mean you aren’t in love with her?’
‘What? Are you crazy?’ Oliver made a sweepingly dismissive and frustrated gesture with his hand. ‘There was never anyone else after you–there couldn’t be.’
Her legs were threatening to stop supporting her. She felt shaky and filled with a mixture of disbelief and–ridiculously–hope.
‘You married me because of Olivia.’
‘Yes,’ Oliver agreed. ‘And, like the working-class lad I’d grown up as, once married my loyalty was to you–my loyalty and then my love. That’s how it is with us working-class boys. Our wives and the children they give us come first in our hearts and our lives, or at least that’s how it was with this working-class boy.’
‘You never said.’
‘How could I when you were mooning around over your lost American hero?’
‘I was doing no such thing.’
‘You were mooning around over something or someone.’
‘Didn’t it ever strike you that you might not be the only person to discover that the creation of a child can lead to you finding that you love the person you created that child with? Especially when you’re a woman who knows all she does know about good sex because of the man who created that child with her.’
‘Are you saying that you loved me?’ Oliver’s voice was both hoarse and uncharacteristically lacking in its normal self-assurance.
‘No,’ Ella told him crisply, suddenly finding her courage. She could see pain in his gaze before he hid it from her. ‘I’m not saying that I loved you, Oliver, because my love for you isn’t in the past, it’s here now in the present, and it will be there in the future.’
It really was ridiculous for two people of their age, who were married to one another, and whose daughter was sitting within watching distance, to be kissing so passionately in public, and all the more so given the circumstances, but somehow the sweetness of the moment meant too much to be denied, and it was several long minutes before Ella could bring herself to let Oliver end the kiss.
Still held tight in his arms she reminded him, ‘We need to get to the hospital. My father…’
‘Is holding his own and doing very well,’ Oliver assured her. ‘I spoke to the Hospital when Olivia and I got through Customs. Emerald had left a message for you to say we’re to go straight to Denham, because that’s where the rest of the family are.’
; The family. How easily and comfortably Oliver said those words, and how right they sounded coming from him. The family, her family, their family. She loved them, of course, but the reality was that the true family of her heart was this family: Oliver and Olivia and her.
Sister had come in to insist that since Jay was now out of danger, Amber was to go and eat the meal she’d ordered to be taken to the waiting room for her.
‘There’s no sense in you making yourself ill,’ she had pointed out, ‘especially not now that Mr Fulshawe is over the worst.’
Amber was still smiling over those words: ‘Mr Fulshawe is over the worst’ when she pushed open the door to the waiting room, her contented smile turning to one of disbelief and joy at what, or rather who, she saw waiting for her.
‘Rose. Oh, Rose. My dearest dear girl.’
Overwhelmed by her emotions, Amber held nothing back, hugging Rose to her as tightly as she could, her tears spilling onto Rose’s face.
The familiarity of her aunt’s rose and almond scent, her warmth and, above all, the emotion she exuded instantly transported Rose back to a time when her world had held no greater joy than to be held in her aunt’s arms. How naïve she had been then.