Sealed With a Loving Kiss (33 page)

Peggy and Ron spoke to a very drowsy Cordelia and made sure she was comfortable in the hospital bed before they made a dash for the Anchor, leaving Daisy in Rita's capable hands. Ron had left Harvey at home, not wanting to bear the wrath of Matron, who hated dogs in her hospital, so they'd come through the side door of the Anchor quietly and listened at the bottom of the stairs to see how the land lay.

Peggy could barely breathe as she listened to the conversation going on upstairs, and she would have rushed up there and comforted both of them if Ron hadn't grabbed her arm and silently warned her to wait and not interfere.

They'd stood there and listened to the whole sorry tale, but as it slowly drew closer to its inevitable conclusion, they exchanged concerned looks and took a step nearer to the bottom stair.

When they heard the soft thud on the floor and Mary's cry of alarm, Ron bolted up the stairs calling for Rosie.

Peggy dithered, and then decided that Ron could deal with whatever was going on up there, for she had something far more urgent to do. She backed away and, with an anxious glance at her watch, headed once more for the side door.

MARY WAS STILL
trying to come to terms with the shock of seeing Rosie crumple to the floor in a dead faint. She was on her knees beside her, reaching for her hand and trying to push a whining, fretful Monty out of the way, when Ron burst into the room.

‘Get away,' he ordered the pup as he fell to his knees and gathered Rosie's limp body into his arms. ‘Rosie, acushla. It's all right, I've got you, you're safe. Wake up, my love.'

Mary was rather embarrassed by this outpouring of raw emotion, so she got to her feet and ran into the kitchen to dampen a tea towel and pour a glass of cold water. Returning to the sitting room, she placed the folded towel over Rosie's forehead, gave Ron the glass, and knelt beside them unsure of what to do next.

It was a long, tense few minutes before Rosie's eyelids fluttered and the colour began to return to her face. Ron held her close to his heart and tried to persuade her to drink some water. Her blue eyes slowly focused on Mary, and she reached out a trembling hand to touch her face. ‘Flora?' she whispered. ‘Flora, is it really you?'

Mary gasped, her gaze fixed on Rosie, her thoughts and emotions racing through her at such terrifying speed she couldn't voice any of it. She fought for calm as she reached for Rosie's hand and held it to her cheek. ‘Mother?' she breathed.

Rosie closed her eyes and a tear seeped through her lashes as Ron continued to hold her. ‘Oh, Flora,' she said tremulously. ‘My darling, sweet little girl.'

Mary glanced at Ron, who was looking quite grey with concern, and then returned her gaze to Rosie as she battled with her mixed emotions. There was joy at finding her, thankfulness that she was a lovely, caring woman who'd already become a friend – and a deep sense of shock and anger that Rosie had abandoned her. ‘Oh, Rosie,' she managed through her tears. ‘Is it true? Are you
really
my mother?'

‘This isn't all about you, Rosemary Braithwaite, so pull yourself together and stop behaving as if you're in some second-rate melodrama.'

They all turned sharply towards the neatly dressed, slender, dark-haired woman standing with a flustered Peggy in the doorway. Mary gaped at her in disbelief. ‘What on earth are
you
doing here?'

The woman made no reply, but her intense gaze was fixed so firmly on Mary that she began to feel very uneasy.

‘I know it must come as a bit of a shock, Mary,' said Peggy as she came into the room, ‘but it was necessary to bring her.'

‘But I don't understand.' Mary looked at Peggy in bewilderment. ‘What has all this got to do with her?'

Peggy glanced from Mary to Rosie and Ron, clearly unsure of how to reply.

But Rosie seemed to have recovered fully from her faint, and she struggled out of Ron's embrace to reach for Mary's hand. ‘It's all right, Mary. Really it is.' She then glared furiously at the other woman. ‘What the hell
are
you doing here?' she snapped.

‘I didn't want to come, believe you me,' replied Eileen Harris. ‘But Peggy insisted, and once she'd told me what all this is about, I knew I had no choice.'

‘I'm sorry, Rosie,' said a fretful Peggy as she and Ron helped her up from the floor so she could sit on the couch. ‘But this has got to be resolved once and for all – and that can only happen if everyone involved is present.'

‘But we aren't all present, are we?' said a tight-lipped Eileen as she perched on the very edge of the other couch. ‘The cause of all this – as usual – is nowhere to be seen.'

Mary looked at them all in tearful frustration. She couldn't understand any of it. ‘You're all talking in riddles,' she said in utter confusion. ‘If, by that, you mean my father, then how could he possibly be here? No one's seen or heard from Cyril for years.'

Eileen tore her gaze from Mary and looked wide-eyed at Rosie. ‘She still doesn't know, does she?'

Rosie shook her head and reached an unsteady hand for her cigarettes. ‘I haven't had the chance to tell her anything,' she said, ‘and I think you should leave it to me to explain.' She blew smoke. ‘At least she'll get the truth from me – which is more than I can say for anything you might tell her,' she added bitterly.

‘You never listened to anything I had to say,' retorted Eileen, the colour rising in her perfectly made-up face. ‘And you clearly wouldn't admit the truth if it up and bit you.'

Rosie gave a grunt of disdain as she shrugged Ron's calming hand from her shoulder. ‘There speaks the pot calling the kettle black,' she snapped. ‘You're a liar, Eileen. Always were and always will be.'

Eileen got to her feet as the colour drained from her face. ‘If that's what you want to believe, then I can't do much about it. But if you gave me the chance to tell my side of things, you might actually, for once, admit that what happened was not my fault.'

‘You should try seeing things from my point of view,' Rosie snapped. ‘But then you've always been a selfish, self-seeking bitch and couldn't care less about the damage you cause others.'

‘Stop it,' begged Mary. ‘Stop it, both of you. Whatever the truth is – however you see things – this isn't helping,' she said brokenly. ‘If you don't call a truce and calm down, I'll leave and never come here again. It's hateful seeing you like this, Rosie.'

‘Oh, Mary, I'm so sorry,' said Rosie, clasping her hand. ‘I couldn't bear to lose you now I've finally found you after all these years.'

‘I'm sorry too,' said Eileen gruffly as she sat down again. ‘But what you have to understand, Mary, is that Rosie and I haven't seen eye to eye for years, and all this raking up of the past has opened old, very deep wounds.'

There was a long silence which Peggy eventually broke. ‘Then I think it's time you stopped fighting and just told her – calmly and sensibly – what happened, and with as much thought for Mary's feelings as possible,' she said. ‘From what I've heard, the actual truth is far from black and white, and you each have a very different story to tell.'

She went to squeeze in on the other side of Mary and put her arm about her shoulders. ‘Mary, love, I know you've already told Rosie your story, but I think Eileen should hear it too so that there are no further misunderstandings.'

Mary was comforted by Peggy's sheltering embrace, but there were too many unanswered questions clamouring in her head. ‘Before I do that, I would like some straight answers from both of you,' she said, looking from Rosie to Eileen. ‘Firstly, what is it I don't know about Cyril Fielding? Secondly, are you my mother, Rosie – and if so, what has
any
of this got to do with Eileen?'

She didn't miss the surreptitious glances that flew between the two women, and wondered if this was simply a tacit agreement to say as little as possible. ‘I'd appreciate the whole, unvarnished truth, no matter how awful it might be,' she said flatly.

There was a long, tense pause before Rosie spoke. ‘Cyril Fielding never existed,' she said in a low, unsteady voice. ‘It was just a name conjured up by … by …' Rosie took a deep breath and gripped Mary's hand. ‘By my brother Tommy,' she said in a rush.

Mary couldn't breathe – couldn't think – couldn't articulate the horror and shock that was surging through her. She was aware of Rosie's grip on her fingers, of Peggy's arm about her shoulders and of the very real anguish in Rosie's face. ‘Tommy?' she managed finally. ‘Tommy's my father?'

Rosie nodded as tears brimmed and threatened to fall.

Mary's thoughts were whirling and a worm of horrifying suspicion began to make itself impossible to ignore. ‘But … But he's your brother,' she gasped. ‘Surely you aren't trying to tell me that you and he …?'

Rosie went ashen. ‘No! Oh, God no, Mary, of course not.'

Mary experienced an overwhelming sense of relief that was laced with deep grief. ‘So you aren't my mother, after all,' she said through her tears.

Rosie shook her head, her lovely blue eyes awash with sadness.

That small gesture shattered all hope, and brought such a deep, physical pain to Mary's heart that it took a long moment to recover from it. ‘Then I don't understand,' she murmured into the heavy silence. ‘Why keep Cyril's identity such a closely guarded secret? And as you aren't my mother, how did you know I'd once been called Flora?'

Rosie was clearly making a tremendous effort to control her own emotions as her grip tightened on Mary's hand. ‘I swear to you, Mary, I didn't know anything about Cyril until the other day; and I certainly didn't know you'd been asking after him.'

Mary listened as Rosie told her how Tommy had confessed to using that alias, and how worried he'd been about the possibility that Mary's family had been victims of his insurance scam and she was out to cause trouble with the police.

Mary's hurt was all-encompassing as she slowly withdrew her hand from Rosie's grip. It was hard enough to accept that this was not her mother, but to realise she'd betrayed their friendship by spying for Tommy was unbearable.

‘So that's what this tea party was all about?' she said brokenly. ‘You were just trying to find out why I was looking for Cyril.'

‘That was only a tiny part of it,' Rosie confessed as she mopped her tears and tried valiantly to keep calm. ‘I've come to be very fond of you, Mary, and wanted to get to know you better. I had no real intention of doing Tommy's dirty work, but your search for Cyril intrigued me – it didn't make sense. You were too young, and the sort of background you had didn't fit the picture that Tommy had painted of his victims – they were usually wealthy, you see, not country vicars.'

Mary battled with her disappointment and pain as she thought about this and then came to realise that she should actually be grateful for Rosie's meddling – for without it, the truth would have stayed buried. And she'd asked for the truth, no matter how unpleasant it turned out to be.

She looked across the abandoned tea things at Eileen, understanding now that, for some reason, she too had been following Tommy's orders. Then she felt a deeper sense of betrayal as she turned sadly to Peggy, for she'd come to love and trust her and hadn't for one minute suspected that she'd been lying to her for all this time. ‘You knew Cyril was Tommy all along, didn't you?'

‘Not until very recently,' said Peggy as she flicked a glance at the silent, solemn Ron. ‘It was only when I asked Ron about Cyril that I learned who he was – and once I knew, then it was vital to protect you from him. Ron didn't know about him being your father,' she added hastily. ‘Not until last night, anyway, when it became clear that all this was going to come out.'

‘But I'm not a child, Peggy. I trusted you to tell me the truth – so why didn't you?' Mary demanded.

‘How could I?' said Peggy softly. ‘He'd already frightened you by trying to pick you up that night, and you'd started playing the piano here, and were in and out visiting Rosie who'd become a friend.'

Peggy gave a deep sigh. ‘It was better you knew only that your father was a complete rotter and not worth the effort of trying to find him. You had to stop asking about Cyril, don't you see? Otherwise Tommy would have got to hear about it and …'

‘He would have pestered me until he knew the whys and wherefores – and then once he realised who I was … I dread to think what might have happened then,' Mary finished softly. Her head was throbbing, her heart was aching, and she was still finding it almost impossible to deal with what she'd learned, for within a few minutes she'd gone from joy to despair – from trust to doubt – and ultimately to a deep and painful sadness.

Yet, as the silence in the room continued, she realised Peggy was not to blame for any of this, and she loved and admired her too much to continue being cold with her. She took Peggy's hand. ‘I do understand why you kept quiet,' she said softly, ‘and I'm grateful you cared enough to protect me.' She held Peggy's gaze as she laced their fingers. ‘How long have you known that Tommy had fathered a child?'

‘Many years,' she replied as she dabbed away her tears. ‘It was a confidence Rosie shared with me that I've kept ever since. Neither Ron nor my Jim ever knew about it.'

Mary gave a deep, wavering sigh as she gathered her scattered thoughts. ‘My father, whatever he calls himself, is a crooked, womanising spiv, and that is something I've already managed to come to terms with. It's just the fact that he's Tommy Findlay that I'm finding hard to accept.' She shot Rosie an apologetic, uncertain smile.

‘I don't blame you,' said Rosie as she blew her nose on Ron's handkerchief. ‘He's not exactly the sort of relative anyone would wish for,' she said with some asperity, ‘and I'm just so sorry you ever had to find out about him.'