My Lies, Your Lies - Susan Lewis Page 0,118
looked up as Joely and Callum came in and Joely saw straight away how drained, even shattered, both women looked.
‘Did you have a good sleep?’ Marianne asked.
Joely nodded. ‘Callum’s going to order in some food. I thought Jak’s?’
Marianne nodded. ‘There’s a menu in the kitchen.’
Callum fetched it and after everyone, including Freda, had made a selection, he went off to place the call while Joely, seeing that David’s letters were still on the table, began to fold them carefully back into a bundle and retie the lace.
Freda’s eyes were following her every move. ‘You say your son has seen them?’ she said to Marianne, sounding baffled and tired and so different to the way she had before.
Marianne nodded. ‘After his first child was born he wanted to know about his father so my husband and I invited him to come here for a weekend. We thought it was better to do it with no one else around and I think Jamie was grateful for that.’
Freda audibly swallowed. ‘Did he … What did …?’ She seemed unsure of what to ask next, but then the words came. ‘Did you tell him good things about his father?’
Marianne smiled. ‘There are only good things to say about David.’
Freda’s gaze remained fixed on the letters. ‘But not about his father’s family?’ she said.
Marianne’s eyes flicked to Joely as she said, ‘I won’t deny that he was angry about the way things had gone when he was born –’
‘– and that none of us have ever tried to contact him since? Yes, I can understand that. We should have, of course. I wanted to, many times, but I was afraid to. I thought … I couldn’t imagine that you’d welcome my interest after we’d neglected you, and him, for so long.’ Her head went down and her voice was barely more than a thread as she said, ‘Then, when I realized my husband had found you …’
‘I swear I didn’t know it was him,’ Marianne said gently.
Freda’s mouth flattened into a painful line. ‘I told Joely that he was like David in his ways, but all they really shared was a love of music and a name. David would never have behaved the way Doddoe did, but I kept hoping and praying that one day he would be like my brother, full of kindness and loyalty, humour and romance, but that day didn’t come.’ She took a breath and continued to look at David’s letters as she said, ‘Spurning Doddoe would have been what inflamed his passion to its height and turned it into an obsession. He was like that, anyone or anything he couldn’t have he saw as a challenge. He had to win, and he usually did. But you say you got your husband to send him away …’ Her eyes closed. ‘Of course it made him want you all the more, so much that he told me I needed to prepare myself because it would soon be over between us. He’d never said that before so I took him at his word. I needed to find out who it was …’ Her voice trailed away and as she looked down at their joined hands it was as though she had no idea how hers had got there.
Joely wondered what she was thinking now, if she was really as rational in her mind as she was sounding. It was hard to believe that one single explosion of emotion had been enough to settle the chaos and confusion inside her, but she really did seem calmer and strangely comforted by the contact with Marianne.
‘I’ve spent the past hour on the phone to Jamie,’ Marianne told her, ‘and he’s coming to meet you. He should be here sometime tomorrow.’
Freda looked fleetingly scared, as though she might back away from this, but her voice was steady as she said, ‘Can I ask what you’ve told him about me?’
With another glance at Joely, Marianne said, ‘Nothing you wouldn’t want me to tell him.’
Realizing her mother was hoping she’d do the same, keeping to herself the way Freda had used and tricked her and come close to causing her death, Joely gave a small nod and slipped the letters into the box. There was nothing to be gained from telling Jamie any of that right now, but she knew she would one day, when the time was right.
There were only Marianne’s typed pages on the table now, and as Joely picked them up Freda said,
‘Did I get it