you’re telling to fob me off, is it? You’ve not made it up to put me off the scent when really you are planning . . .’
Glen interjected, ‘Oh, Cait, I’d have to be a very cruel man indeed to tell you such elaborate lies just to provide myself with a cover story. No, every word I have told you is the truth.’
Deep down Cait had known it, but it was all too shocking for her to take in immediately. She silently resumed her seat and stared sorrowfully at him. ‘I can’t believe that my own mother could be so selfish and cruel as to live happily on what she stole from you, knowing you were rotting away in prison for something you hadn’t done. Or that she was in fact responsible for a poor man being half killed when he tried to stop his van being hijacked.
‘I asked my mother when I was younger how we lived as neither she nor my father worked, and she told me . . . she actually told me that it was none of my business, but that the money came from a sizeable inheritance she’d had left her.
‘I feel so guilty now I know the truth about where that money really came from! I’ve been living on your money too, Glen. It paid for the house I lived in, the food I ate, the clothes I wore . . . everything, in fact, until I started to contribute just a little towards my keep once I was working. She’s my mother and I feel in some way responsible for what she did to you. I feel I should try and make it up to you somehow, but I don’t even know how to start.’
Jan reassured her, ‘Whatever your mother did, there’s no need for you to feel either responsible or guilty.’
‘Jan’s right,’ Glen confirmed.
‘But it’s not fair that you’ve been forced to live so harshly while my mother and father want for nothing. There must be a way you can get her to restore what’s rightly yours?’
‘It isn’t rightly mine any more, Cait. I signed it all over to your mother, without being compelled to. I’ve already come to terms with that. I’m just grateful that I finally have a roof over my head, Jan’s good food in my stomach, and a job so I can pay my way. All I want back from Nerys is my daughter.’
Jan was looking at Cait closely. By now she would have expected the girl to be sobbing her heart out on finding out that her beloved mother wasn’t at all the woman she had believed her to be. Instead, any emotions she was feeling were being kept to herself. That didn’t seem right to Jan.
Cait was silent for a moment, deep in thought, before she fixed grief-stricken eyes on Glen and Jan. The emotional pain she was feeling was etched on her face as she told them, ‘The woman you described . . . the warm, caring, vivacious, funny woman . . . I’ve never seen her at all. Well, yes, I have – but only when she’s with my father. She dotes on him, fusses over him like he’s a little boy she has to protect, will drop anything she is doing if he needs her for the slightest thing. She’s never been like that with me. She won’t allow me to get close to her . . . never allows anyone else but him to get close to her. Should anyone even try to be friendly with her, she puts them firmly in their place and lets them know they are wasting their time. I know she doesn’t love me. My father doesn’t either. I’ve tried to rack my brains and understand why, but all I can come up with is the belief that they love only each other and don’t have any left over for me. Like you have, Glen, I’ve come to terms with the fact that she doesn’t have any feelings for me.’
Now Jan understood. Cait had never been shown any love by her parents, wasn’t used to receiving it so didn’t expect it automatically to be given her by others. It was Jan’s guess that if she’d ever had a boyfriend and he’d shown her affection, then she would have wanted it to be shown constantly in an attempt to make up for what she didn’t receive elsewhere. There were not many men who could stand to be with