saying how wonderful it is to be in love.”
John Plowman knew his life was about to change for the better, and that Ginny would be the love of his life. Admittedly she wouldn’t have the life she had had before, but this was the real Ginny; she would be happy in a small house, just as long as they could be together.
Kit came to stay in the house for two weeks one summer. John felt sorry for her, this pale little girl with the sad eyes, who barely spoke, and he took her under his wing, showing her the garden and getting her to help with small jobs, showing her how to deadhead, how to weed and prune.
He taught her with gentleness and sweetness, sorry only that Ginny seemed so uninterested in her daughter. She was her biological daughter, but couldn’t have been less like her confident, outgoing mother.
Perhaps he could change Ginny, he thought. Perhaps when they were married Kit could come and live with them and they could be a big happy family.
“Oh darling,” Ginny said sadly, when he revealed his plans to her. “I will always love you, but I’m not leaving my life.”
She didn’t tell John she was pregnant for a few weeks. Didn’t tell anyone. When he finally noticed her growing bump—she had taken to spending most nights during the week with John, in his small gardener’s cottage—she cried.
“I don’t know how to tell my husband,” she sobbed. Still, she refused to leave Jonathan and be with John.
There was no point telling Jonathan the baby was his—they hadn’t slept together in almost a year—and an abortion was out of the question. It just wasn’t something Ginny could do.
But neither did she want this child. There wasn’t an ounce of maternal instinct in Ginny. Never had been, never would be. Her first marriage, which resulted in Kit, had been a mistake. It was Ginny trying to be the dutiful daughter, trying to lead the life her parents expected of her, rather than following her dreams. Life with a husband and baby proved impossible, hence her taking flight shortly after Kit was born. She had never wanted any more children and she had nothing but negative feelings for this baby from the moment she discovered she had conceived.
The pregnancy was more than an inconvenience, it was a disaster. She didn’t delight in her changing body, she hated it; she wished she wasn’t such a good Catholic girl, wished she could just go to see a doctor and have it taken care of, but there weren’t enough Hail Marys in the world to take care of the guilt she knew she would have.
John was fired, and it was decided the baby would be put up for adoption. It was Ginny who contacted John, who asked him to find a family. Jonathan took the news of Ginny’s affair in his stride, but it was one thing to find out your wife was having an affair and quite another to raise someone else’s child as your own.
Ginny went to London to have the child. In the Lindo Wing of St. Mary’s Hospital, Paddington. No one knew her. No one thought to make a secret phone call to the gossip columnists on the papers in America.
While she was gone, her husband started thinking that it was time to replace Ginny with a younger, newer model. Not Clara—she wasn’t wife material in the slightest—but he had been somewhat taken with a young socialite he had met at the ballet a handful of times, and there was definite chemistry between them.
And Ginny had already cost him more than his first and second wife combined. It was definitely time for a change.
The divorce was quick, and relatively painless, made more so by yet another substantial financial settlement. She didn’t see Jonathan again. And she didn’t speak to John Plowman again for many, many years.
Ginny’s voice is tense on the phone. “How do you know about her? ”
“She’s here. In Highfield. She wants to meet me. She wrote me a letter and she’s staying in a hotel here.” Kit takes a deep breath. “It’s true, then.”
“What’s true? ”
“She is my sister.” The words feel alien even as they leave her lips.
“Technically, yes. But honestly, darling, I don’t know what she wants. She keeps trying to get hold of me too, and I just don’t want to have anything to do with her.”
“Mother! How can you say that about your own flesh and blood? And how