A Sister’s Gift (37 page)

‘Oh, no, Eve. Surely not?’ I demur.

‘Well, never mind, she’ll have to drop it in the end. I won’t deny it will help us having a little bit of leverage over the situation.’ Eve leans forward and pats my stomach encouragingly.

What’s the baby got to do with this?

‘I told her about your pregnancy, I hope that was OK?’

Since when has Eve been so deferential to me? I restrain a frown. ‘She’s had to back-pedal a little since she learned about that. She was all for getting rid of you, that’s the truth. Frankly I suspect she’s got a few of her own people lined up to take over the PlanetLove jobs. She told me I could keep only one of mine – she’s made me sack Emoto, the bitch.’

‘So you kept me on instead of Emoto?’ That’s what I wanted, wasn’t it? But I wanted to earn that place on merit, not because
I’m expecting this baby – is this something to do with equal opportunities or somesuch? Is that what all this is about? I liked Emoto. In all fairness, he should be the one up for the Klausmann Award, not me.

‘You shouldn’t be forced to let him go,’ I say softly.

‘You bet I shouldn’t,’ she comes back fiercely. ‘Gillian liked him, too. She tried to insist I choose him and not you but I wouldn’t be moved. Still, it’ll all be worth it in the long run. If we can get rid of Ms Defoe and her lot, get our operation back under our own jurisdiction, I’ll get Emoto back onboard once we’re running our own show again.’

‘So…how’re you planning on going about that?’ I give her a look of frank admiration. I’m feeling pretty gratified by her show of loyalty to me, too. I think if I were in her shoes I’d have kept on Emoto instead of me. And especially when you consider the fact she knows I’m pregnant! It’s pretty amazing, really. On the other hand, Eve’s always been one to back a winner and I did miraculously get on that short list when Emoto didn’t.

‘How indeed?’ Eve laughs. ‘Until you came out and announced you were expecting the other day I had absolutely no idea. Now, of course, we’ll have the Chiquitin-Almeira board eating out of our hand – well, your hand – but I like to think you’ll be guided somewhat by me…’

‘Why on earth would they give two hoots?’ I blurt out.

‘My dear.’ Eve gives me an astonished smile, ‘These South Americans are mad about family, don’t you know that? Now you’re
enceinte
, you’ll be – well, in the inner circle, so to speak. Guillermo will no doubt insist on you two getting hitched and – if it isn’t out of order for me to say so – I’d love to be matron of honour. Just imagine the power and influence that’s going to result from this! Here, let me get the door for you.’ She jumps out as the taxi slides to a halt and rushes round to my side to open the door. ‘We don’t want you straining yourself, risking any damage to your precious cargo…’

My precious…? I just look at her, open-mouthed.

‘Don’t look so astonished, my dear. You falling pregnant with Guillermo’s child is really the most extraordinary stroke of luck for us all. You’ll be able to work on him so eventually they take up our cause again, won’t you? We can give the Europeans the old heave-ho…’She pays the taxi driver and pushes me towards the doors of a plush and expensive-looking hotel where she’s going to stand me lunch. She probably imagines it’s going to be a worthwhile investment for her. She thinks I’m the cavalry, arrived with all the backup that’s going to save PlanetLove and our patch of forest because of course, if Guillermo were on board with it we wouldn’t have to worry about a paltry half a million quid to buy our patch of forest.

I see now why she’s been so excited and delighted about the pregnancy. Why I’m suddenly the golden girl; why the ‘allegations’ that someone’s cooked up against me aren’t troubling her over much. Could this even be – my heart sinks – why I’ve suddenly been shortlisted for the Klausmann Award, over other contenders like Emoto who I know deserved it more?

When she finds out this isn’t Guillermo’s baby she isn’t going to be so pleased though, is she?

‘Are you all right, my dear, is everything all right?’

‘No.’ I put my hand to my mouth as a rush of acid vomit rushes into my throat.

I am going to be sick.

Forgive her, Richard says. Again – I already forgave her once before. But what good does forgiveness ever do? ‘Are you OK, Scarlett?’ Eve’s eyes narrow and I can feel her impatience. The sick feeling has passed but I am far from being OK.

‘I straighten my back and lean the spade up against the trellis that supports Flo’s favourite old yellow dog-roses. There’s scarcely a bud on them this year and I have a sneaking suspicion I know the reason why. I pull off my gardening gloves and examine the fibrous stem that has patiently wound itself up the lattice work over the years, but the leaves seem somehow tired, sapped of energy. Then I look a little closer and I see that I’m right. The thin and persistent tendrils of bindweed are everywhere. The Choker, auntie Flo used to call it. The tubulous white bells it produces later in the years are pretty but deceptive. I spent ages last summer trying to get rid of this stuff.

I drag at the intricately-entwined bindweed and follow the tortuous path back to its roots. The damn thing is everywhere. It’s invidious. It’s…it’s deep in the system of this garden. Way past the yellow dog-roses it’s in amongst the peony bushes too. It’s snarled up amongst the sweetpeas and the lupins and the jasmine. It’s bedded down in the woody stems of the Forsythia and in and out amongst the azaleas and no matter how much I pull it out I can’t seem to get to the bottom of it.

The worst of it is, I have a growing sense that I may not
even need to. Will we even still be here, next year? If Rich has his way, we won’t. He has come back from Italy subdued, willing to forgive, but also with more of a sense of his own purpose. As if he’s fully realised the implications of following my dream so closely that he’s had no time to nurture his own. For the first time I’ve come to see that he really does want to move to Italy.

It’s as if…my dream of having a family has been the only thing that’s bound him to this place – maybe I’ve been The Choker for everything he wanted to establish for himself? That isn’t a pretty thought.

I wipe a trickle of sweat off my face. I’ve managed to pull out half the established garden along with the bindweed, I realise now. Still, no matter. The important shrubs and perennials will grow back. This thing needs to be dealt with.

I hurl a huge bundle of etiolated weed stems through the air and into the pile that’s destined for the compost. I haven’t got the time for this gardening lark. Scarlett could have done it when she was here seeing as she supposedly loves it so much but I scarcely saw her lift a finger…

I wish…I wish I could find some way to forgive her. Not for her sake, but for my own. To find some peace. If only there were some way, like the weeds – to dig out your bad feelings and put them into the bin for recycling…

God, there are nettles in here too. I put my gardening gloves back on to protect my fingers. Forgiveness. I frown. You put all your resentment and your bitterness, like choking weeds, to one side. No matter what was done to you. No matter how bad it hurt. Or still hurts. You let it all go.

But how? And how am I ever going to get to the end of this blasted bindweed? Shall I go to the end of my days dragging it out and untwisting it and fighting it just because I can’t figure where it all comes from? Damn it I’ll dig up the whole garden if I have to!

‘Is everything quite all right down there, m’dear?’ Beatrice’s face appears from her spare bedroom window next door. She’s opened it up wide and she can see clearly the trail of destruction I’ve just wreaked.

‘Quite all right,’ I tell her firmly.

‘We’re going to have quite a few bald patches around for the garden party,’ she presses hesitantly.

‘No worries. Um. The thing is – there isn’t going to be a garden party now.’ I look up at her impatiently. Damn it I never told her I. ‘We’re cancelling.’ ‘Just you hang on a second.’

When Beatrice reappears, this time through my side gate, she’s holding two large glasses of transparent liquid that I suspect holds something a little stronger than just water.

‘Just you sit yourself down and explain, young lady.’ My neighbour clears my gardening tools off the plastic ‘patio set’ chair and places it by me. She’s looking worried. But she needn’t be.

‘I was just trying to get rid of the Bindweed,’ I tell Beatrice calmly. ‘It looks pretty, but in the end it chokes up everything.’

‘What’s happened to Scarlett?’ Beatrice looks at me closely and I can see she isn’t fooled by my calm act for one minute.

‘She’s gone.’ I take a swig from the glass she’s just handed me and I was right. G and T. A stiff one. ‘I told her to go, mind,’ I add after a bit.’ And she’s…’I hiccup, ‘she’s taken my baby, Bea.’.’ I sit down on the chair at last and she takes a pew beside me.

‘She’s taken your baby’ she says gently. It is neither a question nor a statement, just an echo of my own words. ‘Do you know where she’s gone?’

I shake my head briefly.

‘To hell, I hope.’ I can’t forgive her. I can’t. ‘She wanted us to sell off this place,’ I gesture towards the cottage, ‘did you know? She was so desperate to get her hands on the money I believe she’d have done anything to get her hands on it. But in the end she wanted something else even more than she wanted that.’ I
smile at Beattrice wanly, aware that I’m probably not making any sense to her but Bea doesn’t smile back.

‘I knew there was trouble brewing,’ she murmurs now. ‘And I knew I should have spoken up before this…’

Oh no. First Duncan. Now Bea. Don’t tell me Bea’s another person who knew what we were up to all along?

‘About what, Bea?’ I swirl the G and T around in my hand recklessly. If she does know, the realisation dawns on me – I’m past caring…

‘She told me about the promise that Flo extracted from you, never to sell up, my dear. Flo loved this old place. It’s been in the family for generations. She was named for it, you know. And I respect your reasons for honouring her wishes it’s just that…’

‘Just that Scarlett’s been round yours moaning that she was left out of the inheritance or some such? Oh, Bea, she’d have frittered it all away on…on a wing and a prayer. She never stops to think, that’s the trouble.’

‘Maybe so. But did you realise it was never really Flo’s to bequeath to anyone in the first place?’

‘Of course it was Flo’s. Don’t be absurd,’ I don’t care about any of that right now; the cottage, the inheritance, all those things…

‘It belonged to her brother and…my dear, this is the bit I’ve been meaning to tell you because I’m pretty certain Flo never did…’

‘What?’ I stare at her askance. If Flo had a brother she certainly never spoke of him to us. Bea just looks at me over the top of her spectacles and I can feel my own face reddening because it’s suddenly become obvious what she’s going to say next. No!

‘Flo’s brother – he…he wasn’t our dad was he?’

‘Eve, look, you’ve got to understand something.’ I leave my hand on her arm as she helps me out of the taxi. The cool interior of the Montana Hotel beckons enticingly and she turns her head, wondering why I’m not as keen as she is to go straight in. The midday sun is blazing down on our heads right now, I can feel the heat dancing on my scalp, but still I hold her back. After what I’m about to tell her she might not be so keen to buy me lunch.

‘I need to tell you something before this goes any further.’ I take in a deep breath and then I sock it to her all at once. ‘This isn’t Guillermo’s baby.’

The shocked look on her face says it all. ‘How could it not be?’ she gets out after a few moments. She sounds angry. Very angry. ‘You were going steady with him – that was my understanding? He’s as much as asked you to marry him. You told me that the day he brought you back on his boat…’

‘Yes. Yes, he did. Nonetheless, this isn’t his baby I’m carrying.’

‘You…you stupid,
stupid
girl!’ Her face seems to be getting redder by the minute.

‘Steady on, Eve! This isn’t what you think it is,’ I stammer.

She’s frowning and I can almost hear the cogs whirring round in her brain. ‘I can’t believe this is happening. No, I can’t believe it. You’re seriously telling me this is not Almeira’s child?
Are you sure?’
‘I’m…absolutely sure.’

‘Look.’ She pulls me in a little closer as our raised voices draw the attention of curious passersby. ‘Gillian Defoe backed down over my insistence that we keep you on instead of Emoto only because of the Almeira connection,’ my boss growls at me now.

‘I don’t understand.’ Maybe it’s the heat, stewing my brain, but I can’t fathom what she’s talking about.

‘Your connection,’ Eve spells out, ‘through pregnancy, to the Almeira family. In the long run, the European Alliance people are relying on Chiquitin-Almeira backing just as much as we are.’

‘What do we need them for then? If they have no money to run the outfit…’

‘Because they’re bringing in
some
money, obviously!’ she rants. ‘Enough to keep us afloat till some bigger fish come in. For God’s sake, Scarlett Hudson, I thought when I sent you off first at Christmas you understood I was hoping you’d be able to pull together the funds for us?’

I stare at her, stunned. ‘Well – that’s exactly what I was trying to do by having this baby, Eve! I’m acting as a surrogate for my sister, you see. I thought if I had her baby, then she’d be prepared to sell Florence Cottage for me and with the proceeds I’d be able to help save our patch of forest.’

Now it’s Eve’s turn to stare. ‘And what about Guillermo Almeira? Did you not once think about him?’ she says faintly.

‘About how he’d take it, you mean? I thought about it a lot. That’s why I didn’t tell him, in fact.’ I try to swallow but I’ve got a lump in my throat. Maybe I didn’t think this through enough? ‘I was hoping in the end he’d understand why I needed to do this. I wanted to help my sister and I wanted to help PlanetLove. I thought it was for the best.’

‘No, you didn’t, Scarlett, that’s the trouble. You didn’t
think
at all. You’re still not thinking. What I meant just now was -didn’t you ever consider just asking him for the money? Using
your influence with him to get Chiquitin-Almeira back on board?’