Eternal Hearts (Incurable Hearts 2) (3 page)

“And you were married to Jasmine Collins?”

Who the hell is this girl? I could only nod my head again.

“Then yes,
I’m in the right place so if you could help me with him,” she said, pointing to the impatiently waiting taxi driver and also reminding me of how Jasmine would sometimes talk to people when she wanted something done, “I’ll explain everything” she said more softly.

I didn’t have any cash on me
, I told her to wait and walked back to the kitchen.

“No booty call then?” Jase joked
, until he saw my face.

“What is going on Chris?” my mum asked looking at me.

“Who has any cash on them?” I asked looking at everybody.

“How much do you need?” Henry asked.

Shit, I should have asked her how much she needed. 

“Erm, sort us out a score, if you have it on you” I said looking back to the door, the girl was still standing there looking up at the house.

I closed my eyes and tried to clear my head, tonight had turned into one of my nightmares.

“Chris, what do you need money for?” my mum asked
, wanting to know what is going on, my silence probably made it worse but I didn’t know what to say.

“To pay the taxi fare”

“Who for?”

“Me”

We all turned at the same time to see the girl standing in the kitchen doorway, clutching her small bag.

I slowly looked around my family and I was glad to see I wasn’t the only one reacting like they had seen a ghost of my dead wife. I also clocked Henry and Rose share a secret were-not-so-shocked look before looking back at the girl standing before us.

“I was just seeing what was taking so long as he is getting really impatient out there,” she spoke looking straight at me then at everyone else. She definitely isn’t shy.

“I forgot to ask how much you needed,” I said.

“Seventeen pounds, don’t worry I’ll pay you back, apparently I’m a millionaire now, I can afford it” she said, dripping with sarcasm and so much like Jas.

It wasn’t just me, my family were
quietly trying to figure out who she is and why we all feel like we know her?

Henry passed me and walked out to pay the taxi driver himself leaving us standing in the kitchen awkwardly all looking at one another.

“Hi, I’m Fiona Robinson, what is your name?” my mum asked, stepping closer to the girl. The girl pulled out a piece of paper from her bag before answering.

“But, your name was Fiona Jenson?” she asked
, confused.

We all looked at one another, how did she know this information when we didn’t know her?

“Yes, I got married eleven months ago” my mum answered, carefully.

“Robinson? You got married to Henry then?” she said.

Okay, this is freaking me out and I wasn’t the only one.

“What is your name?” my mum asked
, again.

“Ava, Ava Collins-Reed”

Did she say Collins? As in Jasmine Collins, my wife? She looks like Jas and she has her surname, although it is hyphenated with Reed.
I’m hoping for a massive coincidence here but the feeling I have as to why she was here, wasn’t letting me believe in coincidences tonight.

“Why are you here?” I asked a bit too sharply.

My mum shot me a look telling me to shut up. All the alcohol I had consumed tonight had worn off, I felt sober as a nun.

“Why don’t we go and sit in the living room?” she said to us all.

She led this Ava Collins-Reed with her and I followed with Henry, Rose and Alex. Nat said she would stay with the kids and Jase made no effort to move. He looked at me sympathetically as if he knew something I didn’t. I shrugged it off and left the kitchen.

Mum sat on the sofa with Ava, Henry and Rose took a chair each and Alex and I stood. What she had to say I already knew I wasn’t going to like, I couldn’t look at her with how much she looked like my Jas.

“I’m sorry I have crashed your party” Ava said, talking to my mum.

“Don’t worry about that. You know about us and we know nothing about you. You say your name is Collins and I don’t want to freak you out but you look very much like someone we used to know” mum told her.

“I know, I can explain everything. I don’t want you to think I am lying because I am only going by everything I have learnt over the last couple of months,” she said.

“Why would we think you are a liar?” Rose asked her.

“Everyone always does” she said quietly, “Like I told you my name is Ava Collins-Reed. My biological mother was called Jasmine Collins, she gave me up for adoption when I was born”

I stood up straighter and really started to listen to the girl, Jasmine did not have a baby! She would have told me! I moved and leant on the back of the sofa, I was about to say something, probabl
y not very nice when Henry spoke up.

“How did you find this out?” He asked her
, leaning forward in his chair.

He knew something, I was sure of it.

“When I turned sixteen this lawyer made contact with me, he travelled to London and gave me a letter she had wrote to me, some other bits of hers and told me I have inherited a large amount of money” she told him.

“What was his name?” he carried on with his questions.

“Mr Jones, his office is here in Cambridge”

She couldn’t be lying, she knew too much. I caught something glittering on her wrist as she was nervously fidgeting with her sleeve. It was the bracelet I got for Jas for Christmas. I would ask her at some point if that was one of the bits she got from Mr Jones but for now I let Henry carry on.

“So he told you Jasmine died in 2010?”

“Yes, she tells me her
self in her letter about her illness and how she knew she was going to die”

So I wasn’t the only one who got a letter from the grave then. All of the conversations Jas and I had, she never once mentioned or even hinted at having a child, her body definitely showed no signs of having been through a pregnancy. And then, like the easiest math problem running through my head, I worked
it out, she would have been nearly thirty-three years old now so she had Ava just after leaving the estate, she left the estate because of what Leigh tried to do to her. Jas had lied to me again, he didn’t try, and now I had the product of rape sitting in living room. Why didn’t she tell me? I looked at Alex and saw he was already looking at me. I felt sick.

I needed to know if she had told her the
father’s name, if Jas didn’t tell me about it then hopefully she wouldn’t have told this girl how her dad is a sick pervert?

“Did Jasmine tell you in the letter your
father’s name?” I asked, looking at her properly for the first time since opening the door. She looked me in the eye and I could see she was worried about telling me.

“She tells me, you are,” she said
, as confidently as she could.

She took my breath away with her reply, those were not the words I thought I would hear.

“That can’t be right, she is lying” Alex said, coming to stand beside me.

“I told you, I don’t lie” Ava repeated sternly.

“Not you, Jas is lying” he said to Ava, “You would know if you got her pregnant” he said to me.

How would I have known? I didn’t talk to Jas after we slept together the once and she left the estate shortly after.

“Sit down Alex” mum told him.

I couldn’t find any words to say, trying to think back all those years ago to see if the
re was anything I saw but did not put together or even when we were together but there wasn’t. She didn’t let on about nothing. She was always good at that though, hiding things away she didn’t want you to know.

“What does it say in your letter?” my mum asked
, keeping the interrogation going.

“Here, I can show you” she said pulling an envelope out of her bag, she handed it to my mum and then looked at me.

I broke eye contact with her and watched my mum read this letter from Jas, as her face got whiter and whiter, I knew she was telling the truth.

“According to Jasmine, she is your daughter” she said
, passing the letter to me. I snatched it away and passed it to Alex for him to read. If my mum said Jas was telling the truth then I believed her too.

“Read it,” I told him.

I kept looking at my…daughter, looking at her sitting there looking back at me. A sixteen-year-old girl and she is my daughter. All these years I wasn’t interested in having children and then I meet Jas again and I started to dream of having a family with her, it turns out we could have had one for the past sixteen fucking years.

Ava was wai
ting for me to say something, I was scared of saying the wrong thing, and this being the first time we meet I didn’t want to mess it up by being a dick.

“Just because she writes you’re her dad doesn’t mean you are, you should get a test done to be sure,” Alex said
, finishing reading the letter.

“Jas had no reason to lie son, she wasn’t like that” mum said
, defending her.

“She lied to you about her illness” he said
, still disbelieving.

“She didn’t lie, she just didn’t tell me at first” I contradicted him.

“It was the same thing and you know it,” he snapped back at me.

“Why are you being like this? You knew her, you liked her!” I said
, trying to figure out where this attitude towards her was coming from.

“I did like her but I am only saying you can’t trust this girl is your daughter just because…” Alex began to get louder as he spoke, he stopped when I began to step towards him. Henry came and stood between us, Alex and I haven’t argued in a very long time but if he kept this up then I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from doing something I would later regret.

“Stop this, Jasmine wouldn’t lie about this but it would be prudent to know for sure” he said.

“That is what I was trying to say. No offence Ava but my brother needs to be sure you are his daughter” he said
, more calmly.

I quickly looked at her, she didn’t look like she had took offence but she did look like she wished she had kept her mouth shut.

I couldn’t think properly and Alex wasn’t making it any easier, he was the same when Jas told me she was dying but back then he made sure I knew what I was doing and then he left me be, even though he didn’t agree with my choice, but tonight he was different. He would talk to me for sure when we were alone. Right now, I couldn’t think straight and Alex being here wasn’t helping the situation, fuck, I didn’t even understand the situation myself. I kept hold of the letter Jas wrote her, I didn’t want to read it in front of everyone. It was still hard reading the letter she wrote to me and this was new material so to speak from her and it was about our supposed daughter together.

“You should leave,” I told Alex, “Actually, everyone should” I finished looking at no one in particular. Nobody moved apart from Ava.

“I am sorry, I shouldn’t have come,” she said, holding her hand out for the letter back. This is crazy, according to my dead wife’s letter to this girl I am her father. I always thought Jas never lied to me but if what she says is true then it means she did lie to me when she didn’t tell about our daughter.

“Read it first son” my mum said as I went to pass it back to Ava.

If what I was about to read is true, I couldn’t ask her to leave, she didn’t have enough money to pay her fare here let alone get herself back to wherever it is she is staying.

“Okay” I breathed out slowly, “Can everyone apart from Ava and mum leave.” I asked, after all if she is my daughter then she is my mum
’s granddaughter.

“Don’t be taken in by anything bro, you don’t know anything about her,” he said eyeing on her up on his way out.

Rose left quietly smiling at Ava and gently squeezing my shoulder as she passed. As Henry went to leave I realised I wanted him to stay, he knew more about Jas then anyone even me and plus I still needed to ask him about the look he shared with Rose when Ava first walked in.

“You can stay Henry,” I said
, finally sitting on the chair.

Jas had been gone for three years and she could still shock me into losing the feeling in my legs. Everyone sat back down, I hated awkward conversations and looking back over my life, and all the conversations I didn’t want to participate in involved Jasmine.

“I’m not saying I don’t believe you, but my brother is right, we will need to get a test done,” I told her.

“I know, like I said, I only found this out a while ago and
I’m only going by what she told me in her letter” she replied.

“I can’t imagine how hard it was for you to come here” mum said looking at her with sadness in her eyes.

“To be honest, I wasn’t worried about what would happen, I just had to know I tried” she said.

I was beginning to feel guilty, now that I was looking at her, I noticed she had the same sad tint around her that Jas always had. I wanted to ask her loads of questions, even if turns out she is not my daughter, she is still Jas’s.