Rejection Runs Deep (The Canleigh Series, book 1: A chilling psychological family drama), Carole Williams [ebook reader 8 inch .TXT] 📗

in this information. It couldn’t be true.  It was impossible.  How could her mother have had another child and none of the family know anything about it?  It was a sick joke.  It had to be.

Curious of what else might be discovered Delia opened up the remaining sheet of paper.  It was a letter, dated a month after the child’s birth from Elizabeth, her mother’s cousin.  Delia had never met her mother’s family but was aware that they existed from photographs of her parents’ wedding.  Elizabeth wrote that she and George had arrived safely in America with the baby, who had suffered no ill effects from the journey, and from then on there would be no further contact between her and Margaret.

Delia sank down on the unmade bed with the papers in her hand, wondering if her father knew about this other child.  Would her mother have told him?  If she had, he probably wouldn’t have married her and if Granny had found out she would have had a fit, being such a stickler for correct behaviour at all times.  She would never have allowed her son to marry someone who had borne an illegitimate child.  It would have been unthinkable.  No, her mother had definitely kept this secret to herself for years.   Delia had no real desperate need for a child, although she had always expected to have one or two with Philip but there was no real longing to be a parent.  She tried to imagine having a baby and then giving it up.  Keeping its existence a secret.  It must have played on her mother’s mind.  But then, thinking about how her mother hadn’t exactly been the maternal type, perhaps not …  although she had kept these papers.  How often had she pulled them out and looked at them?  She had obviously screwed them up to throw away at some time.  Why hadn’t she?  Why had she kept them?  If she had thrown them away Delia wouldn’t be sitting here now, startled to find out she had a half-brother in America.

Delia tucked the papers into her bag, stood up and looked around the room.  There was nothing she wanted and her greatest desire was to get out of this grim place, take a long, cool shower and think about what she was going to do next.

She said a quick goodbye to the pathetic figure of Parfitt, who nodded his head in acknowledgement and raised the bottle to his lips once more.  It was obvious he was going to drink himself to death and for an instant Delia felt sorry for him.  He was a useless man who had caused tremendous sorrow and heartbreak to her family but to end up here in that state, all alone with no cash and no-one to turn to was a pretty awful situation to be in.  Delia had no reason to help him but inexplicably she set her bag down gingerly on the beer stained table, rummaged for her cheque book, scribbled quickly with her gold pen and handed him a cheque.

“Here.  It’s enough to cover a flight back to the U.K.  Take it as payment for what I did to your car all those years ago.  Not that I regret for one moment what I did,” she added quickly.

Not giving him a chance to react, she almost ran back down the overgrown drive to the roadside where her taxi was waiting.  The coolness of the air conditioning in the car was a great relief and by the time they reached her tiny hotel a few minutes later, she felt slightly better, although her head was now throbbing badly.

With the aid of a long, cooling shower, two painkillers, and the gentle humming of the air conditioning in the adequately furnished but hardly luxurious room, she managed a few hours sleep and woke early the next morning, relieved to find the headache had disappeared and she felt rested.  She lay on the bed and thought about her mother, remembering vivid scenes from her childhood; Margaret coming and going from Canleigh, bringing lavish presents but giving no real love and showing little interest in her children’s daily lives or wanting to join in their activities. Tears, or even a tinge of sadness, still eluded Delia.  It puzzled her.  Surely she should feel something?  This was her mother for goodness sake.  She should feel devastated, as if the world had ended, but she didn’t.  All she did have was a massive curiosity about her half-brother.  Did he know about his parentage and that his mother had married into the British aristocracy?  Was he aware he had half siblings?  What was he doing with his life?  Was he married?  Did he have children?  What did he do for a living?  Endless, endless questions.

Having had enough of her bedroom and needing to be active, Delia rose early, before the real heat of the day.  Wearing her new sparkly white swimsuit, matching beach wrap and flip-flops and popping a hotel towel into her canvas beach bag she ventured outside into the already warm air, pleased to see the sands on this side of the island were free of volcanic ash and far more like those in the advertisements for a vacation in the Caribbean.  Still thinking about her mother and the existence of her secret son, Delia enjoyed a long swim in the clear blue water and then lay for a while on her towel on the sand but once the temperature began to rise and there was no shade to protect her, she walked back to the hotel.  Showered and dressed, she picked up the two crumpled pieces of papers from the dressing table, where she had left them the night before, and took them out to the veranda outside her room, where there was a fabulous view of the beach.  She slowly ate a breakfast of cereals, toast, pineapple juice, and black coffee while staring thoughtfully at