‘Mrs Fitzsimmons!’ he said heartily, holding out his hand to her without actually looking directly at her. ‘Do come in. You have some problem with your late father’s estate I believe?’
Rose had expected he would recognize her immediately. She had anticipated him staggering back in shocked surprise and gasping out her name. When he did neither of these things, proving he had no memory of the face of the young girl he’d claimed he loved, it made her even more determined to hurt him.
She shook his hand and smiled, then waited until the receptionist had gone, closing the door behind her. It was a warm and comfortable room, with a roaring fire with a club fender around it, leather buttoned-back armchairs and a mahogany desk, and the walls were lined with thick books. On the wall there was a large photograph of three children, obviously his, as the older boy looked very much like the young Myles she remembered. The younger boy in the front of the picture had to be Michael – he was around six, with very dark hair and an impish grin with missing front teeth.
Myles sat down when she did, and leaned back in his chair with a smile on his plump, overfed face, perhaps delighted that his new client was blonde and attractive. ‘Now, how can I help you?’ he asked in an oily tone.
‘You can try to remember me,’ Rose said.
‘We’ve met before?’ he asked with a frown.
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘Would the name Rose ring a bell? Or do I have to remind you of The George Hotel in Rye?’
His smile vanished, his eyes opened wide and he sat up straight.
‘Rose!’ he exclaimed, and coloured up still further. ‘My goodness me! What a surprise! How are you?’
‘Well enough,’ she said archly. ‘A great deal better now than I was twenty years ago when I waited in vain for you.’
‘I-I-I,’ he stammered. ‘It was the only thing I could do. Things were so difficult for me. And I left a letter.’
‘You were a deceitful coward,’ she snapped at him. ‘Didn’t I deserve better than just a letter? If you’d told me about your wife and children when we first met I’d never have got involved with you.’
‘You know why that was,’ he said, looking very flustered and not a little afraid.
‘I was little more than a child,’ she spat out.
‘Now look here,’ he said, rising from his chair. ‘You begged me to take you to London with me, if you remember I was completely against the idea. I only agreed because you said your father was violent towards you, and you were supposed to find a job which you never even attempted.’
‘I haven’t come here today to rake over all that,’ Rose said dismissively. ‘The hard facts are that you abandoned me when I was carrying your child.’
‘That was nigh on twenty years ago,’ he said incredulously. ‘In the light of all the other lies you told me at that time, there was no reason why I should have believed that either. So what has brought you here today, Rose? If not to rake over the past?’
‘Sometimes the past can jump up and slap you in the face,’ she said. ‘That’s what has prompted this visit. Our daughter, Adele, is planning to marry your son Michael, so I believe.’
If she had thrown a bucket of cold water over him she couldn’t have hoped to give him a bigger shock. His mouth fell open, he blanched, and his eyes grew wide as he clutched at his head.
‘Adele is your daughter?’ he said in a strangled voice.
‘
Our
daughter,’ Rose corrected him. ‘You know only too well that I was pregnant!’
‘I don’t believe this,’ he gasped. ‘It’s too extraordinary.’
‘Why is it? You don’t believe that a girl who has a grandmother living at Winchelsea Beach could meet up with your son who also had grandparents living in Winchelsea? It would’ve been extraordinary if they hadn’t met when there are probably less than two hundred people living in that whole area.’
Rose paused for a moment, guessing he was racking his brain for something to shoot her story down with.
‘Now, if you’d told me when we met that you were married and your in-laws were Mr and Mrs Whitehouse, I wouldn’t have even gone for a walk with you. After all, my mother, Honour Harris, was a friend of your mother-in-law.’
At that he put his elbows on his desk and cradled his head in his hands. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ he gasped out. ‘I never connected Adele with you. And she was living in my wife’s house as her maid!’
This much was news to Rose. Honour had said she’d been working as a housekeeper, but she hadn’t said who for. Clearly her daughter was a chip off the old block, grabbing a good opportunity when it came along. It was a shame though that she had unwittingly to grab her own brother.
‘Oh God! What am I going to do?’ Myles gasped.
Rose half smiled. She guessed that Myles Bailey QC didn’t often make such an admission. His court wig was sitting on a dummy head in the corner. His court gowns hung on the door. He was used to wringing the truth out of defendants and witnesses, but not to being held accountable for his own indiscretions.
‘You’ll have to tell your son that Adele is his sister,’ Rose said. ‘That is, if you don’t want him to make an incestuous marriage.’
‘What proof do you have that Adele is my child?’ he asked suddenly, and she saw his eyes narrow with guile. ‘Adele’s name is Talbot. Where did that name come from if you are Rose Fitzsimmons now?’
‘That name was just a smokescreen,’ Rose said airily. ‘My married name is Talbot. I married Jim Talbot just before Adele was born, purely so she could have his name. But should you think he is her real father, add up the dates. You took me away with you from Rye in March of 1918 when I was seventeen. I was with you right up till the day you dumped me in King’s Cross in January the following year. I was already three months pregnant then. I married Talbot in May and Adele was born in July.’
‘That isn’t proof I am her father,’ he retorted.
‘Anyone who met me during those ten months we were together would vouch that I spent my days waiting for you to come home from your “business matters”. I even told the doctor I saw in King’s Cross your name. Then of course there are such things as blood tests.’
Myles was silent for quite some time, and Adele could see a vein throbbing on the side of his head. He was sweating, pulling at the collar of his shirt as if it was strangling him.
‘What do you want, Rose?’ he asked eventually. ‘Somehow I don’t believe it’s just the desire to make sure Adele and Michael finish their relationship.’
Rose decided to ignore the question about what she wanted for the time being. ‘I was rather hoping you were going to tell me how you think we should go about ending the relationship,’ she said with a defiant toss of her head. ‘Obviously it has to be done, but one way might be less destructive than another.’
‘I am not speaking to Michael at the moment,’ he said. ‘If I was to go to him and tell him this he wouldn’t believe me.’
Rose gave a little chuckle as she guessed why this was. ‘So you didn’t like the idea of your son marrying my Adele? Not good enough for your golden boy, eh? A girl from the marshes marrying the KC’s son?’
He had the grace to look a little ashamed.
‘Your wife will divorce you if this gets out,’ she said. ‘It could get out too, very easily. What will your other children have to say about it? What will it do to your standing here?’ She thumbed towards the door. ‘Incest is a very nasty word. For all we know it might have already happened. And Michael an officer in the RAF too.’
It was very satisfying to see him seriously frightened. He reached for a cigar from a box on his desk and lit it with shaking hands.
‘There is another way,’ Rose said as she watched him sucking on the cigar as if it were a teat. ‘You could go to Adele and tell her the truth. Ask her to break it off with Michael and beg her not tell him why. That way there will only be the three of us who know about it.’
‘Why can’t you tell her?’ he asked.
‘Because it would mean going back into her life,’ she said. ‘She went to live with my mother when I was ill many years ago. To go back for something like this would only cause her more pain.’
Myles looked at her sharply. ‘Somehow I don’t think you are suggesting any of this to prevent anyone’s pain,’ he said. ‘What do you really want?’
Rose riled up. ‘None of this would have come about if you’d been honest in the first place,’ she hissed at him. ‘You left me destitute in London with a baby in my belly. To avoid giving birth in the workhouse I had to marry a man I didn’t even like. You ruined my life, and it’s time you paid for that.’
‘Aha,’ he exclaimed, his eyes narrowing. ‘Now we’re getting to the real issue. It’s money you want, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Rose said with a shrug. ‘I do. I want a thousand pounds.’
‘A thousand!’ he exclaimed.
‘You can afford it.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s only fifty pounds for every year of Adele’s life, I’m sure you’ve spent a great deal more than that on each of your other children.’
‘And if I refuse?’
‘Then I go to the papers with the whole sordid story. It’s up to you.’
She fished in her handbag and pulled out a card from the restaurant she worked in. She put it on his desk with complete confidence. ‘You bring the cash to me there next Monday evening,’ she said. ‘I have already written down everything about you and me, and Adele’s birth, and given it to a friend to hold just in case anything happens to me, or Adele.’
‘What if she won’t keep quiet about it?’ he asked.
Rose shrugged. ‘You’ll have to make it worth her while, won’t you?’
‘If I agree to this, what assurance do I get that you won’t ask for more later?’
‘You assured me you loved me,’ she reminded him. ‘I was naive enough in those days to think that meant you would never desert me. I might be many things, but I am not a blackmailer. I’m just asking for what’s owed to me for a ruined life. Just be glad I’m not about to ruin yours.’
Chapter Eighteen
Adele, with a group of other nurses, walked up the steps of the nurses’ home just after six in the evening. It was 15 February and the other girls had been teasing her about the Valentine she’d received from Michael the day before.
He’d made it himself, a picture of a Spitfire with a tiny photograph of himself stuck in the cockpit. On a cloud in front of the plane was an equally tiny picture of Adele’s face, but he’d drawn her in an angel’s costume.
‘My head’s in the clouds since I first met you,’ the poem read.
The sun is out and the skies are blue,
You are my angel, the girl of my dreams,
I spend all day dreaming up schemes,
To carry you off to a wondrous place,
To see you dressed in wedding lace.
You are my Valentine for ever and a day.
When can you next come out to play?
Adele thought it was sweet and wonderful but the other nurses had been teasing her by saying that they hoped he flew planes better than he wrote poetry.
‘You’re all just jealous,’ Adele giggled, and when she saw Mr Doubleday the caretaker standing in the hallway looking stern, she playfully reached out and tweaked his cap down over his eyes.
‘Now then, Nurse Talbot,’ he said gruffly. ‘Enough of that horseplay. There’s a gentleman to see you. I’ve shown him into the sitting room.’
‘Is it Michael?’ she asked eagerly.
‘If Michael’s the fly-boy then it isn’t,’ Mr Doubleday said dryly. ‘And your cap’s on crooked.’
Mystified, Adele opened the door of the sitting room and there to her shock sat Myles Bailey. ‘Good evening,’ she said politely, but a cold shudder went down her spine because she knew he hadn’t come all this way for a social call.
‘I need to talk to you, Adele,’ he said. ‘Is this room fairly private or can we expect hordes of other nurses to come in any minute?’
‘It’s only ever used for visitors,’ she said. ‘I doubt anyone else will come in now, everyone’s gone off to get changed and eat their supper.’
‘You look very nice in your uniform,’ he said, looking her up and down in a way she found most disconcerting. ‘How are your studies coming along?’
Adele sat down opposite him. She was puzzled that he was being so nice, but she hoped it might be because he was coming round to her marrying Michael. ‘All right, I think, though it’s hard to swot up for the exams after a long day or night on the wards. It’s nearly two years now, only one more to go before I’m an SRN.’
He cleared his throat and looked awkward and nervous.
‘Nothing’s happened to Michael, has it?’ she asked in alarm.
‘No, he’s fine as far as I know,’ he replied. ‘But I did come here to talk about him, and you.’ He gave a big sigh, and Adele’s heart leaped, sure he was about to bumble out some kind of apology.
‘This is a very delicate matter, Adele,’ he said. ‘It’s not something I ever expected to crop up, and it’s going to be hard for me to tell you about it.’
Adele was confused now. He didn’t look as though he was struggling to word an apology, but his voice was too soft and hesitant for anger. Her heart sank again, for she sensed that whatever he had to say, it wasn’t going to please her.
‘You can’t marry Michael,’ he blurted out. ‘You are brother and sister.’
Adele giggled. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said.
‘I’m completely serious,’ he said reprovingly. ‘You see, it seems I am your father, Adele.’
She could only stare at him in astonishment. It seemed like a joke, yet common sense told her it couldn’t be. Myles Bailey was a very serious man.
‘I had an, er…’ He paused and coughed, looking as though he wished the floor would open up and swallow him. ‘I once had an affair with your mother.’
Adele could only stare at him in disbelief, thinking he’d gone mad. ‘No, Mr Bailey,’ she finally managed to get out. ‘My mother doesn’t live anywhere near here. You don’t know her.’
‘I do, Adele, or at least I did twenty years ago. I met Rose in Rye when she worked at The George. She came away with me to London.’
Adele was stunned. Her grandmother had once said she thought Rose had run off with a married man, but how could it be Mr Bailey? A travelling salesman, a soldier or sailor maybe, but not a pompous lawyer with thinning hair and a red face!