Her colour was high and her eyes were blazing and the need that suddenly streaked through him nearly knocked him off his feet. ‘Look, Finn, I get that you feel let down and betrayed. And, believe me, I know what it’s like to have your whole world turned upside down and your identity stripped away. But Jim and Alice were, to all intents and purposes, your parents.’
He ruthlessly quashed the desire and frowned at her, denial reeling through him. ‘I fail to see how.’
‘Biology doesn’t automatically grant parental rights,’ she said bluntly. ‘Nor does it guarantee the ability to parent successfully. Look at mine. They’re hardly an advert for parents of the year. They never gave a toss about me, not properly, and they still don’t. Carla’s looked out for me far more than they ever did. She’s the reason I was able to find you all those weeks ago. If she hadn’t made me send her a photo of you along with your name the night we met, things could have turned out very differently. You had two people who loved and cared for you. And, yes, then, tragically, only one, but nevertheless you had someone on your side for years, someone who by your own admission never failed to support and champion you when it mattered most. You honestly don’t know how lucky you were.’
‘What if my mother’s death wasn’t an accident?’ The question shot out of his mouth before he could stop it and he froze, every muscle in his body as taut as a bow string.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked carefully and he suddenly found himself on a knife edge.
He could easily deflect the question, he knew, but what would be the point of that? He needed her perspective and her insight into things he couldn’t make head or tail of, and that meant unlocking the doors on his greatest concerns and flinging them open, so he took a deep breath and said, ‘What if she killed herself deliberately because of me, because of what I was or wasn’t?’
He hated the catch he could hear in his voice, but he didn’t regret the question because her face softened and, ah, there was the sympathy he’d been in need of. ‘Do you really believe that?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What do you remember of her?’
He scrolled back twenty years, searching for memories that were faded and hazy but nevertheless still there. ‘She smelled of roses,’ he said eventually. ‘She taught me poker and played football with me. Every Saturday she’d bake brownies.’
‘She sounds lovely,’ Georgie said, a trace of wistfulness flitting across her face.
‘She was.’
‘Did she make you eat your vegetables?’
‘Yes.’
‘Make you do your homework and go to bed on time?’
‘Yes.’
‘Were you ever sent to your room or grounded?’
‘Frequently.’
‘Then she loved you,’ she said with quiet conviction. ‘Very much. Take it from someone who knows what it feels like not to matter. They must have wanted you very much too, to go all the way to Argentina to fetch you. And they must have had their reasons for keeping it from you.’
‘I guess I’ll never know,’ he said, his throat oddly tight.
‘Unless your investigation agency digs something up.’
‘Maybe not even then.’
‘So much in life we just have to accept.’
‘As I’m discovering.’
‘Me too.’
With a strangely sad sort of smile she pushed herself off the bed and returned her attention to the suitcase, and as he watched her pull the top down and zip it up it hit him like a blow to the chest that, despite everything he’d just revealed, nothing had changed.
‘You’re still planning to leave?’ he asked, the blade of rejection slicing through him like a knife.
‘I have to get back to Josh.’ She shot him a quick glance, full of something he was too stung, too busy reeling, to identify. ‘Unless there’s any other reason for me to stay?’
‘No, nothing,’ he said, coolly, calling himself a fool for wanting her to stay, for thinking that he was good enough for her, for believing that they were in this together. ‘Go. Please. Don’t let me stop you.’
* * *