It Happened In Paradise: Wedded in a Whirlwind / Deserted Island, Dreamy Ex! / His Bride in Paradise

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘WHO said I was running away?’ she demanded.

‘“Time out”?’ Jago offered, quoting her own words back at her. ‘That’s a euphemism if ever I heard one. Not checking your messages? Not sending postcards home?’

She drew in a long slow breath and for a moment he thought she was going to tell him to get lost. That it was none of his business. But she didn’t. She didn’t say anything at all for a long time and when, finally, she did break the silence, it was with just one word.

‘Myself.’

‘What?’

He’d been imagining a job fiasco, a family row, a messy love affair. Maybe all three.

‘All my life I’ve been running away from this horrible creature that no one could love.’

It was, Jago thought, one of those ‘sod it’ moments.

Like that time when he was a kid and had poked a stick into a hollow tree and disturbed a wasps’ nest. It was something you really, really wished you hadn’t done, but there was no escaping the consequences.

‘No one?’ he asked.

Her shoulders shifted imperceptibly. Except that everything was magnified by the darkness.

‘Ivo, my brother, did his best to take care of me. In return I came close to dragging him to the brink with me. Something I seem to be making a habit of.’ There was a pause, this time no more than a heartbeat. ‘Although on that occasion I was in mental, rather than physical, freefall.’

‘You had a breakdown?’

‘That’s what they called it. The doctors persuaded him to section me. Confine me under the Mental Health Act for my own safety.’

And suddenly he wasn’t thinking sod it. He was only thinking how hard it must be for her to say that to a stranger. Actually, how hard it would be to say that to someone she knew well.

Mental illness was the last taboo.

‘You both survived,’ he said, mentally freewheeling while he tried to come up with something appropriate. ‘At least I assume your brother did, since you’ve just been godmother to his sprog. And, for that matter, so did you.’

‘Yes, he survived—he’s incredibly strong—but it hurt him, having to do that.’

And then, as if suddenly aware of what she was doing, how she was exposing herself, she tried to break free, stand up, distance herself from him.

‘Don’t!’ he warned, sitting up too quickly in his attempt to stop her. His head swam. His shoulder protested. ‘Don’t move! The last thing I need is for you to fall back down into that damn hole.’ Then, because he knew it would get her when kindness wouldn’t, ‘I’d only have to climb all the way back down and pick up the pieces.’

‘I told you—’

‘I know. You fall, I’m to leave you to rot. Sorry, I couldn’t do that any more than your brother could.’

For a moment she remained where she was, halfway between sitting and standing, but they both knew it was just pride keeping her on her feet and, after a moment, she sank back down beside him.

‘You remembered,’ she said.

‘You make one hell of an impression.’

‘Do I?’ She managed a single snort of amusement. ‘Well, I’ve had years of practice. I started young, honing my skills on nannies. I caused riots at kindergarten—’

‘Riots? Dare I ask?’

‘I don’t know. How do you feel about toads? Spiders? Ants?’

‘I can take them or leave them,’ he said. ‘Ants?’

‘Those great big wood ants.’

‘What a monster you were.’

‘I did my best,’ she assured him. ‘I actually managed to get expelled from three prep schools before I discovered that was a waste of time since, if your family has enough money, the right contacts, there is always another school. That there’s always some secretary to lumber with the task…’

‘You didn’t like school?’

‘I loved it,’ she said. ‘Getting thrown out is what’s known as cutting off your nose to spite your face.’

In other words, he thought, crying out for attention from the people who should have been there for her. And, making the point that whatever happened he would be there for her, he put his arm around her, wincing under cover of darkness as he eased himself back against the wall, pulling her up against his shoulder.

‘Are you okay, Jago?’

She might not be able to see him wince, but she must have heard the catch in his breath.

‘Fine,’ he lied. Then, because he needed a distraction, ‘Ivo?’ It wasn’t exactly a common name. ‘Your brother’s name is Ivo Grenville?’

‘Ivan George Grenville, to be precise.’ She sighed. ‘Financial genius. Philanthropist. Adviser to world statesmen. No doubt you’ve heard of him. Most people have.’

‘Actually I was thinking about a boy with the same name who was a year below me at school. Could he be your brother? His parents never came to take him out. Not even to prize-giving the year he won—’

‘Not even the year he won the Headmaster’s Prize,’ she said. ‘Yes. That would be Ivo.’

‘Clever bugger. My parents were taking me out somewhere for a decent feed and I felt so sorry for him I was going to ask him if he wanted to come along.’

‘But you didn’t.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I wasn’t criticising you, Jago. It’s just that I know my brother. He never let anyone get that close. Not even me. Not until he met Belle. He’s different now.’

‘Well, good. I’m sorry I let him put me off.’

He’d meant to keep an eye out for him, but there had been so many other things to fill the days and even a single year’s age gap seemed like a lifetime at that age.

‘Don’t blame yourself. Ivo’s way of dealing with our parents’ rejection was to put up a wall of glass. No interaction, no risk of getting hurt. Mine, on the other hand, was to create havoc in an attempt to force them to notice me.’

‘That I can believe. What did you do once you’d run out of the livestock option? Kick the headmistress?’

‘Are you ever going to let me forget that?’

‘Never,’ he said, and the idea of teasing her about that for the next fifty years gave him an oddly warm feeling. Stupid. In fifty hours from now they would have gone on their separate ways, never to see one another again. Instead, he concentrated on what really mattered. ‘Tell me about your parents. Why did they reject you both?’

‘Oh, that’s much too strong a word for it. Rejection would have involved serious effort and they saved all their energy for amusing themselves.’

‘So why bother—to have children?’

‘Producing offspring, an heir and a spare, even if the spare turned out to be annoyingly female, was expected of them. The Grenville name, the future of the estate had to be taken care of.’

‘Of course. Stupid of me,’ he said sarcastically.

‘It’s what they had been brought up to, Jago. Generations of them. On one side you have Russian royalty who never accepted that the world had changed. On the other, the kind of people who paid other people to run their houses, take care of their money and, duty done, rear their children. They had more interesting, more important things to do.’

What could ever be more important than kissing your kid better when she grazed a knee? Jago wondered. The memory of his own mother kissing his four-year-old elbow after he’d fallen from his bike sprang, unbidden, to his mind. How she’d smiled as she’d said, ‘All better.’ Told him how brave he was…

He shut it out.

‘Chillingly selfish,’ he said, ‘but at least it was an honest response. At least they didn’t pretend.’

‘Pretence would have required an effort.’ She lifted her head to look up at him. ‘Is that what your parents did, Jago? Pretend?’

Her question caught him on the raw. He didn’t talk about his family. He’d walled up that part of his life. Shut it away. Until the scent of rosemary had stirred a memory of a boy and his bicycle…

Lies, lies, lies…

‘Jago?’

She said his name so softly, but even that was a lie. Not his real name. They were alone together, locked in a dark and broken world, reliant upon one another for their very survival and she had a right to his name.

‘Nick,’ he said.

‘Nick…’

It was so long since anyone had called him that. The soft sound of her voice saying his name ripped at something inside him and he heard himself say, ‘I was in my final year at uni when I was door-stepped by a journalist.’

She took the hand that he’d hooked around her waist to keep her close and the words, coiled up inside him, began to unravel…

He could see the man now. The first to reach his door. He hadn’t introduced himself, not wanting to put him on his guard. He’d just said his name. ‘Nick?’ And when he’d said, ‘Yes…’ he’d just pitched in with, ‘What’s your reaction to the rumour…’

‘My father was a politician,’ he said. ‘A member of the Government. A journalist knocked on my door one day and asked me if I knew my father had been having a long-term affair with a woman in his London office. One of his researchers. That I had a fourteen-year-old half-sister…’

He caught himself. He didn’t talk about them, ever.

‘Oh, Nick…’ She said his name again, softly, echoing his pain. He shouldn’t have told her. No one else had used it in fifteen years and to hear it spoken that way caught at feelings he’d buried so deep that he’d forgotten how much they hurt. How betrayed he’d felt. How lost.

‘That was when I discovered that all that “happy families” stuff was no more than window-dressing.’

She didn’t say she was sorry, just moved a little closer in the dark. It was enough.

‘It must have been a big story at the time,’ she said after a while, ‘but I don’t recall the name.’

‘It was fifteen years ago. No doubt you were still at school.’

‘I suppose, even so—’

‘A juicy political scandal is hard to miss.’

It hadn’t just been the papers. His father had been the poster boy for the perfect marriage, a solid family life. It had brought out the whole media wolf pack and the television satirists had had a field day.

‘You’re right, of course. The fact is that I don’t use his name any more. Neither of us do. My father was dignified, my mother stood by him and, in the fullness of time, he was rewarded for a lifetime of commitment to his country, his party, with a life peerage. Or maybe the title was my mother’s reward for all those years of keeping up appearances, playing the perfect constituency wife. Not making a fuss. But then why would she?’

It was obvious that she’d always known about the affair, the child, but she had enjoyed her life too much to give it up. Had chosen to look the other way and live with it.

‘She was the one who spent weekends at the Prime Minister’s home in the country,’ he said. ‘Went on the foreign tours. Enjoyed all the perks of his position. Got the title.’

‘What did they say to you?’

He shook his head. ‘I went home, expecting to find my mother in bits, my father ashamed, packing.’ It had taken the police presence to get him through the television crews and the press pack blocking the lane, but inside the house it was as if nothing had changed. ‘It was just another day in politics and they assumed I’d come down to put on a united family front. Go out with them for the photo call. My mother was furious with me for refusing to play the game. She said I owed my father total loyalty. That the country needed him.’

He could still see the two of them going out to face the cameras together, the smiling arm-in-arm pose by the garden gate with the dogs that had made the front page of all the newspapers the next day. Could still smell the rosemary as the photographers had jostled for close-ups, hoping to catch the pain and embarrassment behind the composed smiles. As if…

‘What I hated most, couldn’t forgive,’ he said, ‘was the way the other woman was treated like a pariah. Frozen out. She had to give up her job, go into hiding, take out an injunction against the press to protect her daughter. Start over somewhere new.’

‘You don’t blame her at all? She wasn’t exactly innocent, Nick, and someone must have leaked the information to the press. Maybe she hoped to force your father’s hand.’

‘If she did she was a fool,’ he said dismissively.

‘She didn’t go for the kiss-and-tell? Even then?’

‘No. Everyone behaved impeccably. Kept their mouths shut and my father was back in government before the year was over.’

‘She loved him, then.’

‘I imagine so. She was a fool twice over.’

‘I suppose.’ Miranda’s shivering little sigh betrayed her. Was that how she saw herself? A fool?

‘If it wasn’t for herself, maybe it was for her daughter.’

She swallowed nervously, as if aware of treading on dangerous ground.

‘Perhaps she wanted some of what you had,’ she said when he didn’t respond. ‘To be publicly acknowledged by her father. In her place…’

‘In her place, what?’ he demanded when she faltered.

‘It’s what I would have done,’ she admitted.

‘Poking a stick into a wasps’ nest,’ he said, realising that she was probably right. ‘Poor kid.’

‘She’s a woman, Jago. About my age. Your sister. And you’re wrong about your parents losing nothing,’ she said before he could tell her that he didn’t have a sister. That she was nothing to him. ‘They lost you.’

‘The people I thought were my parents didn’t exist. Their entire life was a charade.’

‘Truly? All of it? Even when they came to your school open day?’

‘They did what was expected of them, Miranda,’ he said, refusing to give them credit for anything. ‘It was just another photo op. Like going to church when they were in the constituency. Pure hypocrisy. It didn’t mean anything.’