Betrayal

Betrayal
by Margaret Bingley
Copyright © Margaret Bingley, 2014

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Cover Artist: Hang Le
Interior Book Design: Shirley Quinones

Dedication

For Jay C. and Roo, Two very special people

Acknowledgements

No one can write a novel of this size without the co operation of many people but I would particularly like to thank The National Autistic Society; my agent, Maggie Noach, who answered my questions and lifted my spirits with unceasing patience; and Christopher MacLehose, who believed in the book a long time ago.

Prologue

Together they stood beside the five foot high cake, hands clasped on the ivory-handled knife, and Lisa looked out at the sea of faces. None of them were friends, many were enemies.

She saw Toby again; Bishop and the girls; and the Italian, now leaning against a wall in order to minimise his height. Glancing quickly away from him, she smiled up at her—husband as the flashbulbs exploded.

As most people suspected, it was a one-sided love match, yet she was determined to be a good wife. Aware of her own emotional short comings she believed that with her husband's understanding it would be a sound marriage. She was also certain that in Neal Gueras she had found the perfect solution to the problem of Jessica.

Her confidence on both counts was totally misplaced.

Chapter One

‘You mean you’re not really my mother?’ asked seven-year-old Lisa Greene, her dark eyes incredulous in her pale face.

Stephanie Greene tried to take the leggy, rigid body of her adopted daughter on to her lap, but it was impossible. She finally gave up and contented herself with putting a small, plump hand on the child’s dark hair. ‘No. That is, I didn’t actually give birth to you. I was - luckier than most women, I was able to choose my own beautiful baby girl. Most women aren’t that lucky, you know. Whatever they have, boy or girl, pretty or plain, they can’t change them for nicer babies, can they?’

‘You’ve always said I grew in your stomach,’ said Lisa, thoroughly confused. ‘Hasn’t any baby ever grown there?’

Stephanie winced. The lack of children of her own could still give her pain. ‘No, but we waited to tell you until you were old enough to understand everything. I expect you’d like to hear why your real mummy couldn’t keep you, wouldn’t you?’

‘I…No, thank you.’ Plainly shocked, the child’s voice sounded remote.

Stephanie hesitated, fleetingly wishing that Simon was here, but as usual he was abroad looking for antiques for his shop. ‘It doesn’t change anything,’ she continued. ‘We’re exactly the same people as we were before you know. And remember, I chose you.’

The stunned child thought she detected a note of regret. ‘But why don’t I remember choosing you?’ she asked in obvious puzzlement. ‘You were only three months old. Tiny babies can’t choose things like that for themselves!’

‘Then people shouldn’t be allowed to adopt them until they’re bigger.’

Nothing she’d read had prepared Stephanie for the awkwardness of the conversation. ‘Do you mean you’d rather have grown up in a children’s home, without any of your pretty clothes and lovely toys?’ she asked with a forced laugh.

‘I don’t know,’ said Lisa, her mind still in turmoil.

Her childish candour was unfortunate. Stephanie, never a very secure woman, had tried for years to feign affection for her adopted daughter, knowing all the time that in reality the child amused no vestige of maternal love in her. Now, seeing Lisa’s bewilderment, she chose to interpret it as a rejection of all her own efforts and thankfully abandoned the deceit forever. ‘You’d better go to your room,’ she said sharply.

‘What have I done?’ asked Lisa in hurt surprise.

‘You’re an ungrateful girl and if you don’t go I shall tell your father as much . He’ll probably stop your ballet lessons.’

‘But he likes me to go to ballet.’ She was puzzled by the threat and her failure to be cowed infuriated Stephanie, kindling a dislike that would in time border on hatred.

‘Get out, you little bastard!’ she shouted, smacking the child sharply round the face. ‘Go on, get out! You’re nothing but a disappointment to us both anyway.’

Terrified, Lisa stood stock-still, her right hand covering her mouth to choke back her sobs. A second blow nearly sent her tumbling to the immaculate, constantly raked, pale lilac shag-pile carpet.

‘Get out! Get out!’ screamed Stephanie, and at last Lisa managed to make herself run blindly from the room. Sobbing, she ran straight past the astonished housekeeper, along the wood-paneled hall and up the curved stairs. She stopped for a moment on the landing, nursing the pain in her cheek, but when she heard Stephanie’s shrill cries below she scampered to the safety of her bedroom.

For hours she lay there, nails digging into the palms of her hands, sobbing wildly until, finally exhausted, she slept.

Simon Greene returned unexpectedly a little before midnight. As usual he-looked in on his sleeping daughter first, placed a beautifully wrapped present beside her pillow and then went—somewhat less enthusiastically —to his wife’s room.

Stephanie was propped up against a mass of lacy pillows reading a new Catherine Cookson novel. Her only original claim to good looks had been her youth, but now—at forty-two—she had something better, money. With this she’d created a slightly corpulent but undeniably ultra-feminine image.

‘I wasn’t expecting you tonight, Simon.’

Her husband, equally corpulent but not in the least handsome and not particularly masculine in appearance, smiled ruefully. ‘I was worried about Lisa.’

‘Why?’

‘I knew you were going to tell her today and I was afraid she might take it badly.’

Stephanie laughed gently. ‘Why on earth should she do that? No, it went very well. She was surprised, of course, but she’s an intelligent little thing and fully realised how lucky she’d been.’

‘We’ve all been lucky.’ ‘Of course.’

‘Did she ask about her real parents?’

‘No,’ said Stephanie, on safer ground at last. ‘She wasn’t in the least interested in them.’

Simon sat on the edge of his wife’s bed until her frown drove him to the rocking chair in the corner of the room. ‘Well, that’s everything straight at last. Should I mention it too?’

‘I think perhaps…’

‘Better not make too much of it? No, quite right. I won’t say anything. After all, she knows exactly how much we think of her, doesn’t she? There can’t be any doubt about that?’

‘None at all.’

And indeed there wasn’t.

‘What would you like for your birthday, Lisa?’ asked Simon. ‘Choose something special. You’ll be a teenager at last!’

‘I don’t really need anything.’ Lisa’s voice was placating. He could always pinpoint the moment when she’d changed from an outgoing, humorous and totally honest little girl into an over-anxious, withdrawn and secretive child. It was the day after she’d learnt that she was adopted.

In his ignorance he’d thought that the more things he and Stephanie bought her, the more lavish their displays of affection, the quicker she would recover. But Lisa would never recover. She’d learnt that being beautiful misled people, that being rich meant you could buy anything, even another human being, and that overt displays of love were not to be trusted.

‘Isn’t there anything you’d like?’ he persisted.

How could she tell him that what she craved was a sense of belonging? That she no longer knew how to fit in and make Stephanie pleased with her again. Dumbly she shook her head.

‘Well, your mother thought…‘ ‘She isn’t my mother.’

It was the first time she’d spoken of her knowledge to Simon and he was caught unawares. He loved Lisa too deeply, and fearing to lose her through discipline and arguments he lost her anyway because she assumed his forever smiling expression to be as insincere as his wife’s.

‘That’s biologically true of course but…’

‘She doesn’t really love me!’ cried Lisa suddenly, tears filling her eyes. ‘I try and try but she’s always cross.’

Simon shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. ‘You’re at a difficult age,’ he said at last. ‘Most young girls quarrel with their mothers.’

‘It isn’t just my age. She’s always finding fault with me. Why Daddy?’

He wished that he could give her a satisfactory answer. As the years passed Stephanie became more and more difficult to live with and although he suspected it was his work that worried her, he knew that it was Lisa who suffered the most.

‘You’re two very different people,’ he said slowly. ‘I think it’s an unfortunate clash of personalities, that’s all. Deep down she loves you very much.’

They both knew it was a lie, and to Lisa, Simon’s lie—was yet another betrayal. ‘I would rather like a puppy,’ she confessed nervously. ‘I’d take care of it myself and…

‘Sweetheart, Stephanie doesn’t like animals,’ Simon apologised gently. Lisa swallowed hard as he squeezed her hand in apology. There was nothing else to be said and in the event she was very pleased with the new ski suit they chose for her. After all, she’d known that a puppy was out of the question.

‘Now that you’re sixteen I suppose you ought to go on the pill,’ said Stephanie to the quiet but beautiful girl opposite her at dinner. Light from the leaded windows shone on the polished table. Intently, Lisa studied the flecks of dust caught in the beam. ‘I’m speaking to you, Lisa!’

‘I don’t need the pill, Stephanie.’ She had stopped calling her mother two years earlier, at Stephanie’s request.

‘So you did know I was talking to you?’

‘Yes.’ Sometimes she wondered how much longer she could cope with Stephanie’s unpleasantness.

‘And you don’t need the pill?’ ‘No, thank you, Stephanie.’

‘Well, don’t come whining to me when you find yourself pregnant.’ Lisa kept her head lowered. ‘Of course, you wouldn’t,’ she muttered to herself. ‘You’d go to Simon, as usual.’

‘Simon says I can go to finishing school in Switzerland after my “A” levels.’’

‘Let’s hope the Swiss are ready for you.’

‘At least I might get some pleasant conversation at meal times,’ Lisa muttered defensively.

Stephanie leant forward. ‘If you’re not very careful your sharp tongue is going to impede any chance of a good marriage.’

‘I’m not going to get married.’

Just then the door opened and Simon hurried in. ‘I’ve brought a visitor home. If you’ve both finished perhaps…?’ He glanced enquiringly at his wife.

‘We’ll join you in the library,’ she responded, rising a trifle heavily to her feet, having in the last couple of years put on rather too much weight.

‘Who is it?’ asked Lisa, relaxing slightly now that she and Stephanie were no longer alone.

‘Neal Gueras, a business acquaintance. A very important business acquaintance.’

‘How old is he?’

‘Mid-forties, I’d say.’

She gave a sigh of relief. Not an eligible business acquaintance, for once.

Her adoptive father and the tall, heavily built man with thick brown hair swept back off a high forehead were suddenly silent as she entered the library. The visitor’s unusually dark eyes looked steadily into hers. ‘Mr Gueras, my daughter, Lisa,’ said Simon quickly. ‘Lisa…‘

‘I’m Neal Gueras,’ he said in a deep voice, ‘I’m delighted to meet you at last. Your father is always talking about you. Now I can appreciate why.’

‘Which won’t make it any the less boring in the future!’ she responded with a laugh. The dark eyes narrowed slightly, his expression changing from politely benign to surprised alertness. ‘Possibly not!’ he conceded.

‘Mr Gueras became a father for the third time today,’ gushed Simon, trying to stop the conversation.

‘How exciting!’ enthused Stephanie.

‘Not really; a third daughter, and positively no chance of a son in the future. Not, in my opinion, in the least exciting.’

Until then, Lisa had rather liked him. He was so different from most of Simon’s business acquaintances. His clothes, his manner of speaking, even his aftershave, all spoke of a different world from the one she was used to. However, his chauvinistic dismissal of a baby girl disappointed her so acutely that she turned sharply away from him.

‘You disapprove?’ He sounded amused.

‘Of course she doesn’t!’ responded Stephanie. ‘She…‘

‘Let her speak for herself.’

Never in her life had Lisa heard anyone speak that way to Stephanie.

‘Yes, I do,’ she said with total honesty. ‘Children should be loved for themselves. Not because of sex, appearance or temperament. They’re human beings. I hate the way adults talk about children,’ she added in a low voice.

‘I apologise,’ put in Simon quickly.

‘It’s quite all right,’ said Neal quietly. ‘Why do you feel so strongly about this, my dear?’

‘Because I…‘ At the last moment she stopped. She couldn’t tell him. She knew that she could never tell anyone how much she hated knowing that she’d been a disappointment. She’d only been adopted because she looked beautiful and misleadingly docile, and she spent hours thinking about the babies who stayed in institutions until they grew up. It made her feel both guilty and a fraud, because inside she wasn’t docile, and neither to her eyes was she beautiful.

‘Go on,’ he prompted.

Her eyes lost their frankness, she bit on her bottom lip and shrugged casually. ‘I don’t.’ She saw the disbelief in his eyes. ‘I was just being controversial!’ she added with a quick laugh, but it wasn’t the laugh he would have expected from a carefree teenager.

When Neal was leaving, Simon attempted to apologise again. Neal started to brush the apology aside, it was of no importance. ‘She’s adopted you see,’ explained Simon. ‘It’s as though…‘