So, Sibyl did.
“Christ,” he said under his breath.
“What’s that?” Robert asked him.
A memory came to Colin and his tight chest seized.
“What was the date of the accident with the woman who broke her hip?” Robert looked at him curiously and told him the date, a date Colin remembered very well. He remembered Sibyl talking earnestly to her friend Kyle, her body stiff and jerky as she walked back to her house, her mind consumed with something unpleasant.
The date he’d made her his whore.
“Christ,” he clipped viciously, shook his head and found when he looked down at his hands on his desk they were shaking.
He clenched them into fists.
This woman, his woman, walked into his home innocently for a tour and he’d treated her like a common criminal.
Then she’d sold her body to him to make a group of old people safe.
And he’d made her feel like a whore so she could do it.
Money was scarce in the voluntary sector, he knew that, his company received dozens of requests a week for donations and he, personally, was asked to become a benefactor on a regular basis.
It would likely take a small community centre on a deprived council estate years to raise the funds to buy a bus.
Sibyl had seen her chance and grabbed it.
“You should know you have two tails.” Robert was continuing. “The woman out there…” He jerked his head to the door of Colin’s office. “And I think someone else, though can’t get a lock on them. Both have been watching you and Miss Godwin pretty closely. Do you want me to find out why?”
Colin was reeling with the information he’d learned, the fact that Beatrice Godwin, reincarnated had finally walked into his life and he could barely process any more.
“Look into the other one,” he ordered distractedly. “I’ll talk to Mrs. Byrne and I’ll phone you if I need anything further.”
Robert put the file on his desk and stood. “Can I say, Mr. Morgan…?”
Colin was staring at the file, knowing Sibyl’s remarkable life was inside.
He opened it randomly somewhere in the middle. He saw a copy of a newspaper clipping announcing, “Local Girl Wins Volunteer of the Year Award.” A younger Sibyl was shown in the photograph, holding up a plaque and smiling at the camera with her dazzling smile.
“Mr. Morgan?”
Colin’s head came up sharply. “What is it?”
His voice was impatient. He had things to do.
He calculated the time.
Colin’s mother and sister were at Lacybourne now, meddling and needling him about the American woman named Godwin. A woman he had not expected, three weeks ago, that they would ever meet.
Now, he knew, they most definitely would considering they’d be grandmother and aunt to that woman’s children.
Robert continued. “I know it isn’t my place to say but your Sibyl, she’s a bit… well, she’s got her heart in the right place but sometimes…” He stopped and then repeated himself, obviously uncomfortable. “It isn’t my place but you should keep an eye on her. She gets herself into trouble sometimes. Well… a good bit of the time.”
Colin nodded distractedly. That, as well as many other things about Sibyl, was now stunningly clear.
“Please send Mrs. Byrne in on your way out,” Colin ordered.
Dismissed, Robert left and Colin sifted through the file on his desk, watching Sibyl’s life pass by. On the last page there was a picture of her with four young girls aged around ten or eleven. They were staring at her with rapt attention as if she was the centre of the universe and she was smiling at them, her arms in full gesture, almost like she was dancing.