Devil and the Deep (The Ceruleans: Book 4) (11 page)

An impression of tiny baby footprints in yellow paint.

A candid shot of a picnic on the beach with my grandfather
and my grandmother and my mother and my father and my sister.

I got it. This blue room was my mother’s haven, and this was
her memory wall. For all those years with Hugo, she’d been wife and mother. But
now she’d taken back her life – all of it. Now she was the little girl who’d
grown up in the cove with her parents. Now she was the young woman who’d fallen
in love and carried babies in her belly.

These were the years that had been locked away. The
childhood ones, because they didn’t belong in Hollythwaite, with stuck-up Hugo
and his shame of the simple Jones family. And the coming-of-age ones, the young
woman ones? Because they didn’t belong anywhere near Hugo. Because they were
nothing to do with that man.

I fought to breathe steadily as I leaned forward and studied
the most interesting of all the pictures.

My mother sat cross-legged on a picnic rug. Her long red
hair was flying in the breeze and her loose sundress was clinging to the swell
of her stomach and her mouth was open in a wide smile. She looked so young and
so at ease in her skin. She looked, I realised, not like the mother I’d grown
up with, but like the woman I’d seen outside earlier today.

Beside Mum, my grandmother was rummaging through a wicker
picnic hamper, and behind, my grandfather was piling rocks around the pole of a
beach umbrella to anchor it down.

And at the foreground of the picture, back to the camera,
was my father, his arms flung high as he lifted his baby daughter into the air.
Sienna’s fists were waving and her face was lit up with a gummy grin and I
could almost hear her delighted shriek.

I looked at my father.

Despite the evident heat of the day, he was dressed in black
trousers and a black t-shirt. Tight, clinging to a well-built frame. His hair
was close-cropped and of an indeterminate dark colour. His hands, around my
sister’s torso, were large and square.

Hugo, though, was not well built.

Hugo, though, had hair that was wispy and blond.

Hugo, though, had delicate hands – hands for piano-playing
and canapé nibbling and patting children absently on the head, not throwing
them joyously into the air.

And I was quite certain that Hugo – the man I had always
called Father – did not, as did the man in this photograph, have the word
Serviam
tattooed onto his inner arm.

‘So your dad’s not your dad.’

‘Yes.’

‘But your mum is your mum.’

‘Yes.’

‘And your mum’s human.’

‘Yes.’

‘But your dad – your real dad – is a Cerulean.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you’re the daughter of a human and a Cerulean.’

‘Yes.’

‘Which means you were half-Cerulean.’

‘Yes.’

‘Until you died.’

‘Yes.’

‘Of being half-Cerulean.’

‘Yes.’

‘But your mum’s the daughter of a human and a Cerulean, and
she
didn’t
die. She’s just a plain old human.’

‘Yes.’

‘And your mum knew you weren’t Hugo’s and she lied to you
all your life.’

‘Yes.’

‘And your not-dad – that Hugo chap – knew you weren’t his
and he lied to you all your life.’

‘Yes.’

‘And somewhere out there is some Cerulean bloke you don’t
even know called Rafe who’s your real dad.’

‘Yes.’

‘But you don’t know who he is?’

‘No.’

‘Or where he is?’

‘No.’

‘Or why he left?’

‘No.’

‘Or why everyone’s been lying?’

‘No.’

Cara leaned back on the sofa and let out a long, loud ‘Hmmmmmm’,
followed quickly by, ‘D’you know, I feel like I’ve been sucked into a soap
opera.’

Beside her, Si said, ‘One of those soaps you need to take
notes to follow.’

Luke said nothing. He just stared at me from across the
room. He’d been doing that since I’d sat them all down in his living room after
dinner and dropped the bombshell, and it was freaking me out a bit. But then I
suppose I’d done my fair share of staring into space when I’d got back from
Hollythwaite yesterday afternoon. And in the evening. And in the night. And
this morning. And this afternoon.

‘Are you
sure
about this?’ said Cara. ‘I mean, no one
told you this – not that Evangeline, not Jude, not your mum. You just worked it
all out from a photo in your mum’s bedroom?’

I shook my head. ‘It’s not just a hunch based on a photo.
It’s much more than that. It’s that Mum has always been so haunted, like she’s
carrying some inner pain. It’s that she never seemed to like Hugo, much less
love him. It’s that she never called him my father, always his name. It’s that
Hugo always seemed awkward around Sienna and me, and distant. It’s that Sienna
and I have bits of Mum – Grandad, even – in the way we look, but nothing of
Hugo. It’s that Mum hid those photos for all these years, like they weren’t
appropriate for her home with Hugo.’

I looked around. Everyone was watching me intently, but I
couldn’t read their expressions.

‘And a family line of Ceruleans makes sense,’ I went on, ‘where
this Potential business doesn’t. And the
Serviam
tattoo on the man’s arm
in the photo – he’s a Cerulean, he must be. And in the hospital last year,
after I collapsed at the zoo, when Mum met Jude she got really weird about his
tattoo – it was like she’d seen a ghost.’

Si was nodding soberly now, and Cara threw up her hands and
said, ‘Well, I don’t know what else it can all mean then!’

But still Luke was frozen.

‘It’s the truth,’ I said, eyes locked on his. ‘My family
makes sense now.
I
make sense.’

‘You
want
to believe this,’ he said, and it sounded
like an accusation.

‘No, Luke, I don’t want to believe that my mum has been
lying all my life and my real father abandoned us.’

‘Maybe he died,’ Cara pointed out.

‘I thought of that,’ I told her. ‘But then why would Mum
have lied at all?’

‘Well, maybe he didn’t abandon you all – maybe
she
left him?’

‘Even so, eighteen years and not a squeak from him?
Constitutes abandonment in my book, Cara.’

‘You sure no one turned up at some point and said, “Luke, I
am
your father”?’

I stared at Cara, mystified.

‘Star Wars,’
explained Si. ‘But more importantly:
Scarlett, if your mum was with a Cerulean, do you think she knows about them?’

‘I don’t see how. If she knew about Ceruleans, she’d know
about her father, and about Sienna and me.’

I wanted to spell out,
‘She’d have known the children of
a human parent and a Cerulean parent are half-Cerulean,’
but I couldn’t say
it. Not to Luke. I wasn’t ready for that conversation.

‘All Mum’s grief over Sienna – that’s real,’ I went on. ‘She
can’t have known that at eighteen we’d both either die or be Claimed. She’d
never have played dumb if she knew.’

Cara and Si were nodding.

‘But this is all just guesswork!’ protested Luke suddenly.

I turned away, to the bag I’d left by the door, and withdrew
from it some folded computer printouts. Mutely, I crossed the room and handed
them to Luke. He gave me a long, worried look before unfolding the papers. Cara
clambered over and Si leaned in so they could read together. I sank down onto
the nearby coffee table to watch their reactions.

The first sheet contained only a few lines and was dated
last summer, the day Hugo had left my mother.

~

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Re: ‘Family’

Dear Scarlett,

No doubt your mother’s been in touch and explained the
situation.

I’m sure you’ll agree that, in the circumstances, there’s
nothing to be gained by our continuing with some semblance of a father–daughter
relationship.
Your mother detests me and says she wants me nowhere near
you, and you understand that I must respect that.

I wish you well.

~

‘Ouch,’ said Cara. ‘Nice Dear John.’

‘My thought exactly at the time. Now, though, it’s clear he
thought Mum had told me I wasn’t his daughter.’

‘But after this letter he transferred a load of money into
your account,’ said Luke. ‘Which would imply he cared. Like a father.’

‘He did care, in his own way. And money was his way of
showing it.’

Luke opened his mouth to argue, but I gestured to the next
printout. It was of an email exchange from yesterday, the first sent in the
mid-afternoon, the reply sent near midnight.

~

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Re: Paternity…

Dear Hugo,

There’s no easy way to ask this, so I’ll get straight to
the point. Are you my biological father?

Scarlett

~

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

[Re:] Re: Paternity…

Dear Scarlett,

Your email was a complete shock to me. I thought your
mother had dealt with this! She threatened to tell you often enough. I believed
her in our final row, the day I left.

I can only imagine how impossible you will find it to get
the truth from that woman, so after careful thought this evening, I have
decided to tell you what I know.

No, I am not your father.

I met your mother when she was pregnant with you. She was
sitting on a bench by the Serpentine in Hyde Park, holding a howling Sienna and
was crying herself. I went over and asked whether I could help, and when she
looked up at me and I saw her eyes… I felt then I would do anything for her.

We sat together on that bench and we talked. She told me
that your father had hurt her terribly, and that she had come to London for a
new start. She wanted nothing more to do with her provincial life. She was
determined to make something of herself and create a secure, stable life for
her children.

I was young. I was enchanted. I had never met such a
beautiful, passionate woman. I always did have something of the poetic in me –
that William Blake connection, of course – and I saw myself as the knight in
shining armour rescuing the damsel in distress.

We were married two months later, just before your birth
– a quiet civil ceremony. My father threatened to disown me over it, but doing
so was pointless: already my trust fund had passed to me and I’d purchased
Hollythwaite.

The rest, as they say, is history.

I know nothing more of your biological father than what
Elizabeth told me that day, other than that she was adamant that the man was
gone from her life for good. I never asked her about your father. I did not
want to know, and she clearly did not want to share.

I solemnly promised your mother on our wedding day to
take you and Sienna as my daughters, and although you may doubt it, I did try
to be a father to you both. If I may just offer one final piece of advice in
that capacity now: don’t look for the man. It was always apparent to me by the
darkness in your mother that he had devastated her. She was William Blake’s sick
rose – you remember, of course, the poem? – and he was that invisible worm
whose ‘dark secret love/Does thy life destroy’.

With best wishes,

Hugo

~

‘Ohhhhhhhh,’ said Cara. ‘Well, that settles it then. Poor
old poetic Hugo. I know he was a cold fish all your life, but he’d had good
intentions once.’

I smiled at her but said nothing. It was good of Hugo to
have replied and been open with me at last, and I understood him a lot better
now, but I wasn’t about to go rushing off to ‘poor Hugo’ and attempt to
resurrect our faux father–daughter relationship. He’d done us both a big favour
in ending that charade.

‘What about your mum? Why did you go to Hugo, not her?’
asked Luke softly. He looked troubled, but I couldn’t tell why – for me, for my
situation? Or for us somehow?

‘Softly, softly, catchee monkey,’ Cara butted in. ‘Better to
confront her with proof – right, Scarlett? Then she can’t wriggle out of
telling all.’

I shifted uncomfortably on my table-top perch. ‘Actually, I’m
not sure I’m going to confront her.’

‘What!’ Cara looked appalled. ‘But she
lied
to you,
Scarlett! She has to tell you the truth now! You’re a grown woman, you can take
it.’

‘Cara,’ said Si, putting a restraining hand on her arm.

Ignoring him, she said, ‘You have to know where you come
from!’

I folded my arms over my chest defensively before replying: ‘I’ve
thought about this a lot. I’ve thought about why Mum lied. And I know that
above all else she loves me and would do anything,
anything
to spare me
from hurt. She’s protecting me. She always has. And who am I – without
understanding her reasons – to tell her she’s wrong to do that?’

Luke was nodding, I saw, and the hard knot in my stomach
unwound just a little. But Cara was red-faced and strangling the life out of a
cushion.

‘Lying is
always
wrong!’ she declared with passion. ‘Always.
You can’t just go no further. That’s not how life works! You have to root out
the truth.’

Suddenly, I was annoyed. And on my feet. ‘This isn’t one of
your movies, Cara,’ I said. ‘This is my life – and it’s my choice.’

‘And it’s the wrong choice!’ she yelled, launching herself
up to look me right in the eye. ‘You can’t just know you have a parent out
there and let it go!’

Si and Luke were up too now, Si muttering in Cara’s ear and
Luke moving to stand between us, as if preparing to break up a cat fight.

Whatever Si was saying it wasn’t working: Cara was in full
flow:

‘He’s your dad, Scarlett! Maybe he
loves
you – maybe
he
wants
you! You have to find him – you have to fight for him!’

She was crying now, and concern pierced the anger prickling
through me. She’d never shouted at me like this before.

‘Cara –?’ I began.

But she wasn’t even looking at me now; she was shaking off
Si’s hand and pointing at Luke and saying in a broken voice, ‘Tell her, Luke.
Tell her right now, because she hasn’t got a bloody clue.’

‘No, Cara,’ he said firmly. ‘This is different.’

‘It’s not!’ she shouted. ‘Life is that simple and you know
it. Perfect or not, parents are
precious
.’

And with that she ran, sobbing, from the room.

*

Luke and I took a walk down to the beach, ‘to cool off’ as
Luke put it, but he was intent on keeping me warm, keeping me pressed to his
side the whole way. On the beach we sat side by side on the dry sand just
beyond the tide mark and I leaned my head on Luke’s shoulder and he rested his
head on mine.

‘I’m sorry about Cara,’ he said. ‘She’ll calm down. She
just… she misses our parents so much. It makes her a little crazy sometimes,
the grief. She envies anyone who has a parent – parents.’

‘I understand,’ I said, though I didn’t – how could I? I
couldn’t even begin to imagine how being orphaned would rip you apart.

His arm tightened around me. ‘And I’m sorry about me,’ he
said. ‘For being so… useless in there. I didn’t know what to say. I still
don’t.’

‘It’s a shock, I know.’

‘But if you’re not going to go looking for your father then
nothing really changes, does it?’

I heard the hope in his voice, and I echoed, ‘No, nothing
really changes.’

‘And if Hugo’s right, he’s not someone you’d want in your
life anyway. I mean, there must be a good reason your mum made a new life and
never told you about him.’

‘That’s true.’

‘And to challenge your mum on it means risking hurting her,
and she’s so happy now, and you two are getting on so well.’

‘I know,’ I said. He was voicing my own thoughts.

‘Sometimes the right choice – the brave choice – is to do
nothing at all.’

I exhaled and relaxed. He was right, and I was so relieved
to hear him sounding like himself again.

We were quiet for a while, letting the rhythm of the ocean
and the freshness of the breeze soothe away the drama of the past couple of
hours. It was the calmest I’d felt in days, since before Hollythwaite, since
before Cerulea, since our date, when we’d kissed in the folly and then come
home and –