She was on her way to the front door when he asked her quietly, 'Olivia, why didn't you return my phone call?'
Olivia tensed. She had her back to him and she refused to turn round as she responded sharply, 'Why should I? After all, what could you possibly have to say to me that I would want to hear— Father?'
David winced as he heard the bitterness in her voice. She already knew what he had to tell her; he could see, not just from her challenging response to his question, but from the angry rejection of her body language as well.
'Maybe you didn't want to hear what I had to say Olivia but I wanted...' He stopped.
'Look, I know that I wasn't the best of fathers to either you or Jack and I can understand how you must feel....'
Olivia swung round, her face pale with angry disbelief.
'No you can't,' she denied. 'How could you. Your father loved you.... He practically worshipped you and he still does. At best you treated me as though I were... an... an inconvenience... at worst...'
'Olivia.' David couldn't help himself, instinctively he went towards her but immediately she retreated.
Olivia couldn't believe what was happening—that he had actually dared to come here to her home.
'Livvy,' David groaned. 'You have no idea how guilty I feel...how much I wish—'
'Guilty! Why, because you're afraid that I might tell Honor what an uncaring father you are? Yes, I know about the baby.' She practically spat the words at him.
'Honor already knows about all the sins and failings of my past,' David interrupted her quietly, but with such gentle strength that Olivia felt the tide of anger sweeping over her momentarily still. As a child she had known and seen her father in every kind of mood, euphoric when things were going well for him, sulky and uncommunicative when they weren't, demanding, insensitive, callous almost when dealing with anyone's emotions other than his own, a man who, as an adult, she had judged as vain, selfish and weak. But the man facing her now was none of those things. She could feel the quiet resolution of his own inner strength reaching out to hold her. She took a deep confused breath whilst David held his.
He wanted so desperately to reach out to her, to begin to build a bridge between them which eventually would give them both an easy passage over the chasm of the pain of her childhood.
'Honor and I are expecting a baby,' he continued,
'Your half-brother or -sister, Olivia.'
The unexpectedness of the pain his words brought her cut through and broke the spell she had been under.
'I don't want to know,' she began furiously, 'and if you only came to tell me something I already knew anyway...'
'Telling you about the baby wasn't the sole purpose of my visit,' David denied.
He took a deep breath.
'When I mentioned to Jenny that Honor and I were disappointed that you couldn't make it at the weekend, Jenny told me about the problems you've been having finding someone to help out with the girls. Honor and I could help, Olivia. I could pick the girls up for you from school. I thought...'
Olivia clung to the worktop as shock and fury poured through her.
'You thought what? Do you really believe I would ever, ever allow my daughters anywhere near you?'
Olivia realised that she was practically screaming the words at him, her self-control slipping away so fast that she felt sick, but somehow she couldn't stop herself.
'You need help Olivia,' David pressed on as calmly as he could.
'Yes, but not from you, never from you. What is it you really want? To practise your parenting skills on my children so that you can perfect them in time for the birth of your new child?'
She gave a bitter laugh.
'My God. How dare you, of all men, bring another life into the world? Haven't you done enough damage to Jack and me?'
'Livvy.' There was pain and guilt as well as protest in David's voice as he listened to her. He had known...expected...that she would object to his suggestion, but the raw agonising hostility and anger she was expressing made his throat ache with pain for her.
He had done this to her...caused her to feel like this.
'Livvy, I know how you must feel.'
'What?' Olivia stared at him. 'No, you don't....
How could you? How could you know what it feels like to be rejected by your parents...to be unwanted by your father, to be despised and disparaged because of your sex? The unwanted female child. Grandfather always used to say that Max should have been your child and I could see in your eyes that you thought so, too.'
'No, Livvy, that isn't true,' David denied. 'I...I was weak and...and immature enough to agree with my father when he said that Max should have been my son—yes—he always did seem closer in nature to me than to his real father, Jon. I'm not using that as an excuse but as an explanation. But I certainly never hated you. Never!'
'Yes, you did,' Olivia contradicted him flatly. 'Not that I care. Who would want the love of a father who's a thief and a liar?' She gave a small dismissive shrug.
'No matter how much you might have wished Max was your son it can't have been as much as I wished that Jon and Jenny were my parents.'
If she had meant to hurt him then she had succeeded, David acknowledged. Not because of what she had said, but because of the mental picture she had unwittingly drawn for him of a defenceless hurting child who had given her love to her aunt and uncle because she felt her own parents had rejected it. What he was hurting for was her.
'Livvy, listen,' he begged her tenderly. 'We all know what a wonderful mother you are, but we know, too, that without Caspar... You have a full-time job.'
'You've been talking about me...behind my back.'
She gave David a bitter hostile look. 'Oh, yes, I can just imagine what must have been said. Poor Olivia...her parents didn't want her and now it looks like her husband doesn't, either. Well, for your information, I was the one who decided to end our marriage.'
She held her head up proudly. 'They say, don't they, that a child is programmed by the relationships it experiences as a child...driven to replicate them in adult-hood, no matter how damaging or destructive they may have been. If that's true, I suppose it's no wonder that my marriage didn't work out.'
'Livvy,' David protested in shocked concern.
'Don't call me Livvy,' Olivia told him sharply, her voice starting to rise with the tension and pain she was experiencing. 'You don't have the right.... You don't have any rights where I'm concerned. How dare you come here, patronising me, pretending to be concerned for me? Trying to whitewash over the past. Don't think I can't guess why. The new perfect David Crighton you've somehow managed to convince the rest of the world you've become—but can't possibly be—just has to do the right thing, doesn't he? The perfect son.
The perfect brother. The perfect husband and now, the perfect father. Well, maybe that's what you'll be to Honor's baby, but you certainly never were to me or Jack.'
Just the thought of her father being a parent again, starting a brand-new life...a brand-new family...
caused her such an intensity of savage, dark, self-destructive emotion that Olivia felt as though she were drowning in her own pain and grief.
Quietly David listened, wanting to give her time to express her anger and pain before he tried to comfort and reassure her, but before he could do so she took a deep breath and told him sharply and fiercely, 'I want you to leave. Now. This is my home. Just as the children are my children.'
'And
my grandchildren,' David reminded her quietly.
He could see from her expression that he had said the wrong thing.
'You need help, Livvy,' he insisted. 'Please let me do something.'
'The only thing I want you to do is to keep out of my life,' Olivia cried. 'I hate you...I hate you....'
WEARILY DAVID massaged his temple as he drove back to Honor. He had failed at many things in his life but no other failure had made him ache with guilt and remorse like this one did.
More than ever now he knew just how much Olivia was hurting, how alone she was, how abandoned she felt. And he had sensed, too, for all her pride and defiance, that she still had some very strong feelings for Caspar.
And it wasn't just Livvy's pain that was making him long to gather her up in his arms and comfort her with all the tender fatherly love he had never shown her as a child. There were her daughters, as well...his grandchildren, especially Amelia the elder one with her wary eyes and anxiety for her mother. He didn't blame Olivia for not being aware that her elder daughter was taking on the role she herself had found so onerous, the role of a child having to protect an adult. But he would certainly blame himself if he didn't protect Amelia...if he turned his back on her as he had done on Livvy.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
DESPAIRINGLY, Olivia watched as both her daughters played with their food. They had been subdued ever since David had left and she knew that they were as aware of the atmosphere of heavy tension filling the kitchen as she was herself.
'Will Daddy be home for Christmas?' Alex suddenly asked her in a loud voice, ignoring the look Amelia was giving her.
Olivia took a deep breath. She had by now carefully explained to both girls that she and Caspar were going to be living separately from now on and assured them that once Caspar had found somewhere permanent to live they would be going to see him. Whatever her private feelings, there was no way she was going to stop them from seeing their father.
'Darling, we've already discussed Daddy is going to be living separately from us.'