‘I want to do something for you.’
‘You’ve done enough.’
‘I know! Do you think I don’t realize what I’ve done? I wish to God I could undo it.’
If she had the chance to live this last week over again, she would do everything very differently. She wouldn’t come looking for Anya. Or would she?
She just didn’t know.
Cathy’s crying had stopped. She was listening, silent, unmoving, but listening.
‘I’m so sorry, I feel terrible . . . I should never have come,’ Sophie said, tears trickling down her face, the saltiness of them in her mouth, sounding in her voice.
‘Yes,’ Cathy said in that muffled voice, still face down on the bed. ‘Yes, you had to . . .’
She turned over and sat up, her beautiful face pale and ravaged, her skin blotchy, her hair dishevelled, her eyes drowned in tears, but looking at Sophie directly, wide and blazingly honest.
‘You had no choice. I don’t really blame you, I’m just angry. I’ve been hurt, and I want to hurt someone back.’ She laughed raggedly. ‘Not a very nice motive. I’ll get over it. I shall have to learn to live with what I’ve found out about myself. It’s like being born all over again, I suppose.’ She put her hands over her face. ‘Oh . . . I wish to God I could believe you were lying, but wishing never changes anything, does it?’
Sophie put both arms around her, rocked her gently as if she were a child. ‘Wishes do come true sometimes.’
‘Not this time. I’ve been living a lie all my life without knowing it. Well, now I know the truth, I have to come to terms with it.’ She pulled away from Sophie. ‘I don’t think I’ll have any choice, anyway – I think Paul . . . my husband . . .’ Her voice shook and a tear spilled from her eyes, ran down her cheek. ‘He doesn’t want me now.’
‘Of course he does!’ Sophie was appalled. ‘He loves you, I could see that the minute I saw him with you, and he’s a nice man – I liked him a lot, he was kind to me when I had a bad dream last night. You don’t need to be afraid he’ll stop loving you just because you aren’t Gowrie’s daughter.’
Cathy quivered, listening to that reassurance, wanting to believe it but deep inside herself aware of a chilling change in Paul’s response to her. Until last night they had been so intensely aware of each other every minute of the day and night. Even across a room full of other people they had always been in silent, sensual contact, their eyes meeting, their bodies aching to touch, their hearts beating in unison, their blood pulsing at the same fevered pace.
Or that was what she had thought. She had felt that way, at least. She had believed he did.
Now she no longer knew. Had he ever really loved her? You couldn’t switch off that sort of feeling in a flash, could you?
‘I think he’s in some sort of money trouble,’ she whispered. ‘He needs the Ramsey money. And now he knows I’m not a Ramsey, won’t be able to help him out, I’m no use to him any more.’
All her perceptions of herself were undergoing radical surgery. Once she had believed her father loved her – now she had been forced to recognize how he had used her, right from her earliest years. She had been a pawn in his power game, of no more importance to him than that.
She had thought Paul loved her, too. Now it seemed that he had married her for her family money, and he didn’t want her if she was likely to lose it.
‘Your father is busy persuading everyone not to tell,’ Sophie wryly said. ‘And I won’t, so don’t worry – I think you’ll still get that money, and I don’t believe for an instant that your husband will leave you, or doesn’t love you. I’ll go back to the States with Steve in a few days, and you’ll go on with your life here. Everything will be back to normal.’
Cathy gave a long, slow, agonized sigh. She turned her head and stared at the dressing-table, her own reflection. How could everything go back to normal? She no longer knew who she was – and even if nobody ever told the world the truth, how could she go on living a lie? And how could she ever be happy with Paul again?
She ran her hands over her wet eyes, pushed back her hair. ‘I look a mess. I must wash my face, put on make-up, do my hair. I might feel better then,’ she said brightly.
She got off the bed and went into her bathroom and Sophie wandered around the room, picking up silver-framed photographs, staring at them, recognizing Gowrie in some, with Cathy, Paul with Cathy in others. Like the photographs downstairs, these showed Cathy at all ages: a little girl in jeans, carrying a fishing-net or riding a pony, a teenager in tennis gear, holding a silver cup, on a platform with her father, and in frothy, foaming white, a bride on her wedding-day, standing between Paul and Gowrie, her face alight with happiness.
All those memories had just been blasted to kingdom come.
Mea culpa, my fault. All I thought about was my mother, dying, so thin and pale and weak . . . so little time left for her, I would have done an
ything to make her better. I just wanted to find Anya and bring her home, I never really thought of what I would do to Anya. Obsessed, stupid, thoughtless, selfish – I hate myself for what I’ve done to Anya.
The bathroom door opened again and Cathy came out, face enamelled, doll-like in its perfection, hair brushed until it shone, her mouth bright and smiling, wearing the armour of outward appearances.
Sophie looked at her uncertainly, guiltily. This Cathy was harder to talk to, to approach. The walls were up; you couldn’t get near her.
Falsely cheerful, she said, ‘Let’s go down and have some coffee, I’m dying for a cup of good strong coffee, I don’t know about you.’
‘I’d love some.’