‘I’m grateful for your support, Mr Thorne, but that’s all I am. I won’t be seeing Michael Lindlay again.’
‘And Marie?’ he asked hardly.
She swallowed hard. ‘Marie is—well, that’s different. I—I said I would call her, and I will.’
‘Thank you,’ he said softly.
Her aunt was out when Sara let herself into the house, so she was able to collect her thoughts together in private. She hadn’t asked Dominic in, and he didn’t seem to mind her abrupt departure.
She wasn’t an orphan after all! She had a father and a sister, a sister she already loved. It would be impossible not to love someone who looked so much like her, and her affection seemed to be returned.
‘You’re looking pale, love,’ her aunt told her when she returned from the shops loaded down with groceries.
Sara helped her put the food away. She had thought long and hard about mentioning her meeting with her father and Marie to her aunt, and she still didn’t know what to do about it. Obviously her aunt and uncle must have known about Marie and herself, which also now explained away her aunt’s flustered behaviour when she had broken the cup. It hadn’t been the smashed cup that had upset her at all, it had been the mention of Marie’s name.
‘Sara?’ Her aunt was frowning at her now.
She blinked, biting her bottom lip. She hadn’t made her mind up what to do about her father, and to talk it over with her aunt was not something she felt like doing at the moment. No matter how kind her aunt and uncle had been to her during this visit, they had also helped to deceive her about the past.
‘I—er—I have a headache,’ she made up.
‘Now that’s a shame, I think Eddie wanted to take you out tonight.’ Her aunt seemed satisfied with her explanation. ‘He said he wanted to see you before you leave.’
‘But I’m not going for several more days.’
‘You know Eddie,’ her aunt teased. ‘He’s become very fond of you.’
And Sara was fond of him too, in a brotherly sort of way, which was why she accepted his invitation. He took her to the pub they had visited on their first evening together, cheering her up in a way that no one else could have done.
‘That’s better,’ he smiled as she laughed at one of his jokes. ‘I was beginning to wonder if I would ever get a smile out of you tonight!’
‘Sorry,’ she said ruefully, realising that this couldn’t be a very pleasant evening for him.
‘Aunt Susan said something about a headache when I rang. Do you still have it?’ he asked sympathetically.
They were sitting in one of the booths in the lounge bar, having decided not to join in the darts match this evening. Sara felt relaxed with Eddie, her discovery of earlier today not seeming quite so traumatic now she was with him. But the problem of it had only been pushed to the back of her mind. She knew that tomorrow, or even later today, she would have to think about it once again.
She shook her head in answer to his query. ‘No, it’s gone. And I’m sorry if I’ve been a dampener on the evening.’
‘Upset about leaving, are you?’
‘Oh yes,’ she didn’t hesitate with her answer. ‘England seems like—home.’ Even more so now! Her life in Florida seemed like a dream, and England now seemed like reality. Which was pretty stupid when she had lived in Florida virtually all her life.
‘Are you thinking of staying on?’ Eddie asked interestedly.
She shrugged. ‘I—I don’t think so. I have to go back for a while anyway. But I—I may come back. I’m not sure.’
He put his hand over hers. ‘I’d like you to.’
Alarm flared in her deep brown eyes. ‘Eddie—–’
‘In a purely sisterly sense,’ he grinned at her.
She smiled. ‘Do you always hold your sister’s hand in this way?’
‘I don’t know, I’ve never had a sister.’
She burst out laughing. Eddie always managed to reduce things to normality, making her panic this afternoon seem stupid. She wasn’t the first person to suddenly discover she had a family, after all, and at least she liked Marie. Her feelings towards her father were harder to define. Her mother had brought her up to love his memory, hence the photograph she always carried with her, and yet when presented with the flesh and blood man, a man still alive, she had recoiled from such a relationship.