‘Do you mean you never saw her again after your parents separated?’
Jane looked down at the glass she was slowly turning around in her clumsy grip, missing the warning glance that the hazel eyes directed over her head.
‘No...she was just there one day and gone the next. It wasn’t until a week later that my father told me she’d run off to Canada with her lover. He said she’d told him she didn’t want to be saddled with the responsibility of a whining little brat like me.’
Peggy almost dropped her knife, clearly appalled. ‘He said that to a six-year-old child!’
Jane had never found it easy to confide in people, instilled with her father’s belief that if you were strong you didn’t bother other people with your problems, especially if they were emotional ones. But Peggy’s empathy made it seem natural to open up.
‘He used to say that the reason she never bothered to send me birthday cards was because she obviously preferred to forget I’d ever been born. He always managed to make me feel a failure for not being able to make her love me enough to stay...’
‘That was very, very wrong of him,’ Peggy said fiercely. ‘It’s never a child’s fault when a marriage fails.’
‘He wasn’t just wrong—he was lying,’ Jane blurted out. ‘He lied about their being divorced and he lied about her not caring what happened to me. You see, after my father died I was going through his safety deposit box and I found some old letters and documents about their separation agreement and a wrangle over child access.
‘My mother had gone to Canada with another man but she’d been killed in a car accident in Montreal a couple of months after she got there. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to take me away with her, but it wasn’t true that she wanted to pretend I never existed. There was correspondence from her lawyer, demanding assurances that I would be given any letters that she sent, and she’d asked my father to get me a passport so I could visit her. But then she was killed.
‘She died—and for years, until I stopped letting him know how much I cared, my father told me she was having too much fun with her new life to send me a birthday card!’
There was a faint sound behind her and Jane jerked around, almost spilling the rest of her tea. Ryan was standing in the doorway, and from the grim look on his face he had been there for quite some time.
‘No wonder you believed me so easily when I told you about what your father had done to mine,’ he rasped, entering the sunlit room, his white trousers and yellow shirt adding an extra dimension to its brightness. ‘You knew it was just the kind of callous, conscienceless thing a bastard like him would do!’
‘Ryan!’ Peggy Mason’s hazel eyes were full of reproach.
‘Sorry, but it’s the truth and we all know it.’ Ryan sighed as he went over and kissed the finely lined cheek. ‘Hello, Mum, what are you doing here...besides the obvious?’ he said, looking wryly at Jane.
‘You’re Ryan’s mother?’ Jane experienced a sinking feeling in her stomach as she looked from the tiny woman with whom she had felt such an instant kinship to the giant towering beside her, searching in vain for a resemblance. Now she knew why the housekeeper had seemed so well informed!
‘I thought you realised who I was when I introduced myself,’ said Peggy in surprise. ‘I’m sorry—I just assumed you’d know my second husband’s surname. Who did you think I was?’
‘Probably another of my girlfriends,’ said Ryan cruelly. ‘When Melissa turned up Jane thought she was some infatuated nymphet I was keeping on a string.’
‘No, I didn’t!’ she snapped. She smiled apologetically at his mother, deciding that in the long run her ignorance had probably done her a favour, easing what could otherwise have been a hideously awkward meeting. ‘I’m afraid I just assumed you were the housekeeper...’
Peggy’s surprise turned to amused understanding. ‘I see. And now you’re embarrassed by your frankness. Don’t be—I appreciated the insight and I’m sure you feel better for talking about it.’
‘You still haven’t told me why you’re here, Mum,’ interrupted Ryan. ‘I thought you said Steve had some wedding parties booked for this week and would be too busy for you to come down. And why are you cooking instead of Teresa?’
‘The school called for her to pick up her son—he apparently has chicken pox—so I told her that of course we could manage without a housekeeper for the next few days. And it’s because Steve is going to be so busy that I thought I might as well come down and enjoy some of this wonderful beach weather.’
Ryan picked up a piece of celery and crunched it between strong white teeth as he studied her innocent expression. ‘So you’re saying that Melissa didn’t phone you to tell you what we were doing? This surprise visit has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that Jane and I are here—’
‘Well, that is a bit of a bonus, darling.’ His mother patted his hard cheek fondly. ‘Since it’s too rare these days that I get to enjoy the company of both my children on holiday at the same time. Ryan hardly ever spends time at Piha any more,’ she said to Jane, who was beginning to realise that his mother was more than a match for Ryan’s shrewdness. ‘The last time I tried to get him to stay more than a weekend he was chafing at the bit by the second day.’
‘I know what you mean,’ Jane murmured wryly.
‘Do you?’ She tilted her head in bird-like enquiry. ‘Has he been an awful nuisance?’
‘No, I haven’t! I’ve been trying to get Jane to rest. How long are you going to stay?’ he asked bluntly.
‘Well, I don’t know...a few days at least—it depends on how I’m feeling. You know I don’t usually have a timetable about these things.’ The hazel eyes smiled at her son’s open frustration.
‘Steve’ll miss you—’
‘We don’t live totally in each other’s pockets, Ryan. It’s not as if he’s very far away.’
He muttered something under his breath.