‘I never really asked you this, Destiny, but what exactly happened out there in England?’ Her father wasn’t looking at her, and she felt a little jolt of shock at his question. He was a reticent man when it came to conversations about feelings and emotions, and for him to encourage one right now showed how much the question had been nagging away at the back of his mind.
‘Nothing happened out there.’
‘The last time we spoke when you were there, you seemed to have settled in and you were enjoying yourself.’
‘I never said that I was enjoying myself,’ she persisted stubbornly, staring out of the window as the rain lashed the rainforest around them, making every bending tree and swirling leaf look dangerous. Men thought that they were so big and strong. Well, it only took one show of nature like this to silence them.
‘Darling, you don’t actually need to spell everything out for me. I know I’m an old duffer—’
‘Dad! Don’t!’
‘—but I can occasionally read between the lines, and you were enjoying yourself. Nothing like that time when you were in Mexico and you were so desperate to come back home.’
They both paused as the car was manoeuvred very slowly through a minor flood, densely brown and littered with fallen leaves.
‘So why did you suddenly decide to leave?’
‘I didn’t suddenly decide,’ Destiny said awkwardly. ‘I just realised that I couldn’t accomplish any more over there, so I came back.’
‘Henri said something about a man.’
‘Henri? What did he say? It’s not true!’
‘He said something about this Callum character…’
‘Henri doesn’t know Callum from Adam!’ she burst out, cursing her friend for having dumped her in the mire. She hadn’t mentioned Callum Ross to her father because there had been no point. It would only have hurt and disappointed him to think that she’d got caught up in a temporary and seedy affair with someone so alien to the sort of man he would have expected for her. Not a doctor, not someone whose life-blood was rooted in environmental issues and helping other people. But a businessman. Someone whose interests were all wrapped up in making money, even when it involved marrying a woman to further his ends.
‘What was he like, then?’
‘What was who like?’
‘You’re dodging the question. And you’re going into a sulk.’
‘Dad, I’m a grown woman. Grown women don’t go into sulks. Have you ever known me to go into a sulk?’
‘No,’ he admitted, but before she could give a triumphant smile, he carried on remorselessly, ‘which is why your behaviour has been so odd ever since you returned. You say the right things, and never hesitate to pull your weight, but you’ve been wrapped up in yourself and I can’t help but wonder whether something happened to you over there that you’re not telling me about. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that you’re suffering all the symptoms of love sickness.’
‘Oh, Dad, please.’ Amazing how parents had a knack of making you feel like a child.
‘And the only name that’s been mentioned in connection with your stay in England, aside from the Wilson man, is this Callum character.’
‘Who is just the sort of man I would never fall in love with!’ She thought back to that hard, intelligent face, those skilful hands that had explored every inch of her body until she’d thought she would suffocate from desire—and then she thought of his proposal, which had been like a punch in her gut. Cold, logical, without feeling or emotion. Theoretically, the sort of man she really would never fall in love with, which just went to show how huge the gap was between theory and practice.
‘Why?’ her father was asking in a mildly curious voice. ‘Is he cruel? A bore? Stupid?’
‘No, none of those things.’
‘Ah. I see,’ her father murmured.
‘He just expects everything to go his way, even when his plans are…are…’ Her cheeks were bright red, and not from the sweltering heat in the car. She stopped abruptly, caught off guard in the middle of her sentence. ‘He thinks that because things make some kind of peculiar sense to him everyone will just fall into line and go along with what he has to offer.’
‘Are we talking about his purchase of the company? Because, from the sounds of it, it seemed very generous, and it’s a great relief to me that you now have more than sufficient funds to retire to England whenever you choose…’
Destiny looked at her father as though he had suddenly taken leave of his senses. What was he talking about? Ever since she had returned to Panama she’d felt as though, subtly but undeniably, things were changing around her. No comfortable Henri, no comfortable routines that she never questioned, and now her father was hinting that she might want to go back to England. Why?