The Choices We Made Read online

  Setting her shoulders straight she reconsidered that thought. Maybe he behaved like that with all women guests, yet there had been honesty in his eyes and she hoped fervently that the warmth she had glimpsed there was for her alone. She stopped her wandering mind and spoke to herself sternly; that is not what I am here for, I am a professional; I need to start behaving like one.

  Instead she focussed on wondering if all the staff would be as friendly. It was a refreshing approach, very welcoming, very different from the attitude adopted by all of the staff at Christos’s hotels who always worked so hard to blend into the background. In retrospect she wondered if that didn’t make them rather boring almost like a grey day whilst here there was definitely sunshine, colour and a bubbly effervescence.

  She walked over to the window lost in her thoughts and opened it wide. As she leant out for a better look at the gardens the heady smell of roses wafted up to her on the gentle breeze and assailed her senses. The more she thought of how roses were pruned with love the more she decided to follow her nose and see just exactly what love was able to create.

  It didn’t take her long to find the rose garden for the heavenly scents hung strongly on the air beckoning her on to find them. She wandered down quaint cobbled pathways finding that both the fragrances and the sight instantly transported her back to her childhood and her own mother’s garden of roses. As she rounded a bend in the path she found herself nearly tripping over a girl on her hands and knees snipping dead heads of the roses and tidying up the borders.

  “I’m so sorry.” Adrienne apologised as she helped pick up the basket that she had inadvertently kicked over. “I was so lost in the memories that the smell of the roses invoked in my heart that I didn’t see you there.”

  She stopped talking as she felt a tightness in her throat and had to blink back unbidden tears.

  “It’s okay, no harm done. This garden catches a lot of people that way, the fragrances, the colours, this is my mother’s lifework and I try to keep it as perfect as I can.” The girl indicated a seat for Adrienne to sit on. They sat side by side companionably and looked together across the sea of colours.

  “Your mother created all this? It’s truly wonderful; you must be so proud of her achievement. Doesn’t she garden anymore?” Adrienne whispered, for it seemed almost irreverent to speak in a louder voice.

  The girl was silent and in that silence Adrienne heard her swallow deeply.

  “No, no, so I keep it perfect in her memory and somehow that keeps part of her alive for me. My father inherited this property before I was born and, while my father concentrated on restoring the house, my mother researched the history of the gardens and then recreated them, with some of her own little flourishes.”

  Adrienne sighed, “I’m so sorry. This reminds me so much of my own mother, she loved growing roses too and until this moment I’d quite forgotten that.”

  They both sat awhile longer in silence.

  “My name is Adrienne.” She turned to shake hands with the girl who had been gardening and was immediately knocked sideways as she found herself gazing into the self-same jade green eyes that she had seen not half an hour before. Like a thunderbolt she suddenly heard Christos’s broken voice as he described to her that Lindy had eyes the colour of jade, so clear and calm that he had wanted to dive into them.

  As this girl smiled sweetly at her she felt a sudden flurry of anticipation begin to swirl around her.

  The girl grinned. “I can see you must have met my Dad, I have his eyes don’t I? My name’s Emmelinda, I’m pleased to meet you.”

  She reached down to pick up the glove which meant she missed the startled look on Adrienne’s face as she casually framed the most important question she had ever asked.

  “Emmelinda? What an unusual name, are you always called that or do you find it gets shortened?”

  The girl straightened up with a remote look on her face. “My mother used to call me Lindy as a child but since she’s gone- well- my Father always preferred Emme and I suppose I do now, anyway that’s what everyone calls me now. Hearing myself called Lindy brings back to many sad memories.”

  She sat looking down at her hands in silent contemplation.

  Adrienne suddenly found it really hard to breathe as she finally began to feel her quest was over; she remembered what Christos had told her and the way he had described her - jade eyes - yes she had those - blond hair, she had that too, but her name had been Lindy Jagars and yet the man who was obviously her father was called Mackay; so nearly sure and yet not quite sure enough.

  She became aware of the aura of sadness surrounding the girl and was suddenly aware that it might have been her questions that were responsible.

  Gently she said. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you but I can see I’ve made you sad. I really don’t mean to pry and I know that I’m a stranger but would you like to talk to me? My children tell me I am quite a good listener as long, that is, as I remember not to offer advice that is neither needed nor wanted.”

  She smiled warmly, hoping against hope that the girl would confide in her.

  Emme looked up with a quick grin at her final comment, and then her face fell again. “It’s nothing that you’ve said, I suppose It’s just being here in her garden; it makes me feel as if I could almost reach out and touch her, and then I remember all over again that she’s gone and I miss her, every day I miss her and it never goes away.”

  Impulsively Emme turned to Adrienne, curling her legs under her as she did so.

  “She was wonderful my mum, she was this carefree spirit, she wouldn’t even marry my Dad until the cancer got her, then she insisted that he marry her and she insisted that I use his surname too, not hers anymore. She told us that she had lived all her life as a scandalous woman so she was determined to die a respectable one. My father did as he was told. He told me afterwards he’d been after trying to make her respectable since the day he’d first met her but she was so determined to live her life in her own way that she’d have none of it.”

  She paused, glancing around the garden, Adrienne glimpsed the tears she was holding back and saw how they saddened the cool jade of her eyes.

  Sighing deeply she continued. “Being here just brings back so many happy memories, it makes my insides ache. In her memory I wanted to do something for the hospice that helped us and my godfather suggested we open up the gardens. Some of the guests that had known her helped me and sold tea and cakes, then someone else came up with the idea of some stalls and its grown into a big yearly event now. We have always been rather more of a home to some of our guests and many of them come back, year after year to help with this event.”

  Adrienne smiled sympathetically though, in truth, she had been listening with only half an ear. She was concentrating wholeheartedly on how to wrangle out of Lindy the surname she had once used to use without making her suspicious. The more she looked at her, the more she was convinced that the girl in the photo that she had in her pocket was the same girl now sitting beside her on the bench.

  Just as she was working up to asking her what her surname had been and wondering if she could actually tell Lindy that she knew Christos, their peace was disturbed by the sound of children’s voices that could be heard, in the distance, quarrelling.

  The voices got louder the nearer they came; damn she thought, nearly at the answer and yet not quite.

  “Chrissie’s got a boyfriend! Mum, Chrissie’s got a boyfriend.”

  A tall gangly boy of about ten or eleven ambled into view followed immediately by a smaller girl who may or may not have been of the same age. Both curly haired, she was as fair as he was dark, however what struck Adrienne was that whereas their mother was fair skinned they had skin the colour of soft toffee.

  Obviously they spent all their time in the sun, unless.

  Adrienne’s heart missed a beat - unless their father had a different skin tone to their mother, and was in fact....no, surely it wasn’t possible to conceive from one night�
��s lovemaking. Oh don’t be so stupid she told herself crossly, you know very well it’s possible and what is more, it looks to me as if I am staring straight at the proof.

  “Mum, will you please tell Michael to shut up. I have not got a boyfriend, he is just a friend. Mum! Will you PLEASE tell him to shut up!” The girl indignantly demanded.

  Emme stood up, “Enough you two I have a guest here with me. Now behave yourselves.”

  Both children turned to Adrienne.

  “Sorree.” They apologised in unison. She saw their eyes sparkling with humour but whereas she had expected to see the jade green colour of both their mother and grandfather’s eyes, she found herself instead looking into eyes that were chocolate, amber and honey and sparkling with gold.

  She felt her heart do loop the loops because she recognised those eyes, in fact she looked into them most days. She was now almost ninety-eight percent certain that she was looking at Christos’s children. If only she could confirm categorically the name that she had used in college, then she would be absolutely, totally one hundred percent certain. The children were turning away from her to speak to their mother again.

  If what she thought was true it would mean that they must be the same age, twins, as each moment passed she became more confident that her long search was finally over and she had found Christos’s long lost love.

  But what she couldn’t understand was why Emme hadn’t approached Christos when she had found out she was pregnant. Had he really hurt her that much that she had decided to hide his children away from him as punishment? She looked curiously at Emme; she gave the impression of being a gentle soul, was it possible that she could really be that vindictive? She thought back to the tale Emme had just told her; maybe her mother’s illness had influenced her decision.

  Meanwhile Michael insisted on his grabbing his mother’s attention.

  “Mum! Granddad says you are to come back straight away because he can’t make any sense of what he’s meant to be doing and he needs you immediately so that you can explain it to him. You know, so he understands.” Michael grinned. “That means you have to explain it to him simply, as you would to a child!”

  “Michael!” Emme remonstrated, but with a tone in her voice that informed Adrienne she was resigned to being ignored.

  Adrienne tried to hide a smile as she recalled how her children had spoken to her in much the same tone, and with just as little respect, as soon as they had hit their teenage years.

  “Of course he could have rung you on your mobile but then I told him that obviously you wouldn’t have it switched on because you never do, so we had to come all the way out here to tell you ourselves.” Chrissie virtuously finished.

  Emme turned to Adrienne with a rueful grin, “I’m so sorry you must excuse me, I’m afraid it appears my presence is required up at the house.” She turned to walk away and Adrienne sprang up, afraid to let her and the children out of her sight.

  “I’ll walk with you if you don’t mind.” She replied, but then, as Chrissie held back, she slowed her walk to keep level with her, it was very obvious that she was still very annoyed with her brother.

  Adrienne glanced shrewdly at the girl, “My name is Adrienne, and I believe I heard your name was Chrissie.” The girls’ angry eyes rose to meet hers.

  “I suppose you heard that from Michael, him and his big mouth, you know sometimes I really hate him.” She replied glumly, scuffing her shoes on the grass.

  Adrienne grinned; she had heard similar comments from her own children when they had been bickering.

  “No you don’t; not really, you’re just super cross with him at the moment because he was embarrassing you. Why don’t you ask your dad to have a quiet word with him, man to man, about teasing? I remember my daughter doing that very thing when her brother’s teased her and whatever her father told her brothers, it stopped the teasing from the moment he spoke to them.”

  Chrissie sighed and then in a small voice answered her. “That would be quite difficult to do because you see we don’t have a dad, only a mum and a Granddad who’s too busy at the moment, and well, you see he is a bit of a tease too, though not like Michael. Granddad’s teasing is quite sweet and it makes me want to laugh.”

  Adrienne spoke very carefully, trying to hide her mounting excitement as she realised she was incredibly close to the final answer she needed. “Oh my dear, I’m so sorry. Did your father die?”

  “Oh no, he didn’t die, in fact, we don’t even know what he looks like.” Chrissie explained with all the truthfulness of youth. “He was Mummy’s boyfriend before we were born but Granddad said he wasn’t good enough for her because he broke her heart, that’s why we’ve never seen him and that’s why I’m never going to have a boyfriend. I don’t want my heart to be broken and then be sad all the time like my Mum is.”

  Adrienne could have hugged herself with glee. I’m right, this is his Lindy and these are his children, even the two stories fit together. Trying to hide the elation bubbling through her, she schooled her voice to sound very gentle as she asked her.

  “Why are you so certain your mum is sad?”

  “I don’t know I suppose it’s the faraway look she gets in her eyes occasionally. Of course Michael never sees it ‘cause he’s only a boy and they are useless at seeing things, but I see it and I don’t like it.”

  Chrissie paused, her face a picture of concern for her mother’s unhappiness.

  Adrienne’s heart went out to the child as she recognised how worried she was. Putting her arm around her shoulder she gave her a quick hug.

  “Well now it could be something very simple. Maybe she feels sad that you’re growing up and are not her little children anymore. I know I used to feel like that as soon as my children grew taller than me.”

  Chrissie’s joyous eyes flew to her face, “Do you think so? I never thought of that. Wow - thanks a lot you’ve made me feel much better about it all.” And she began to race off to catch up with her mother and brother, before spinning around and adding, “But I still don’t think I’ll get a boyfriend just in case you’re wrong.”

  Adrienne knew she had found his Lindy, but the children? They were totally unexpected, and were an almost insurmountable complication. From Chrissie’s comments it appeared that her mother was still nursing a broken heart; she paused, obviously that was what she had wanted to find out, but could that really be enough reason for her not to have told Christos that he was a father?

  Adrienne knew that Christos needed to resolve his feelings once and for all and, in all probability, Lindy needed to resolves hers too. But the children, didn’t she realise she couldn’t keep them hidden away forever and at some stage in their lives they needed to know who their father was? Christos most definitely needed to know that he was a father but how the hell was he going to cope with the knowledge that the love of his life had concealed her pregnancy from him and raised her children in secret? And how would Lindy and the children cope with him entering their lives, especially when there appeared so much animosity towards him?

  However she looked at the situation she knew that as soon as she brought them together she would set of a rollercoaster of epic size and with it the potential for so many people to be hurt in the process.

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  Adrienne sighed deeply her thoughts returning to the present and she glanced around the room that Christos had so recently vacated hoping against hope that she would find the answers to make the situation easier for everyone to cope with.

  She considered phoning his mother and disclosing to her all that she had discovered about her son, his love and his children, after all she felt that Maria had a right to know and the more people there were present at their meeting might actually deflect Christos’s anger from her. She got as far as actually contemplating booking accommodation for her too before she came to her senses and shook her head at her own stupidity.

  When she thought sensibly of the emotional fallout that would be experienced by Christos, Lindy, t
heir children and their resident grandfather, bringing Maria, a volatile and emotional woman, into the mix would only make a difficult situation even more so.

  No, keeping Maria out of the equation, at this moment in time, was the only acceptable behaviour.

  What she was blissfully unaware of, however, was the conversation that was just about to take place between Maria, Christos’s mother, and Sophia, Christos’s godmother.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Maria Cervantes put the phone down stifling a sigh as she heard Christos slam the receiver down; she glanced in the mirror and corrected her facial expression. She had been about to cry and at her age it was most detrimental to her face. At fifty two years old she still looked stunning; her black hair stylishly and artfully touched by Lucia, her maid, so that no-one ever saw the grey hairs that were beginning to appear there with ever increasing urgency, as if they were trying to help her recognise, gently, that she was slowly aging.

  She didn’t need to see them; she knew she was getting old. And she was so lonely. She missed her husband, she craved grandchildren to look after and all the time she worried about her remaining son Christos. She knew that yet again she had made him angry, but she would keep on trying because she so wanted to see a real smile on his face again, one that came from his heart and gave a glimpse of the real man that had somehow become hidden under the mask he now wore.

  It felt to her as if she had lost two sons the day Mikolas had died, for the Christos she loved was buried somewhere deep inside the empty shell that he showed the world. She wandered aimlessly around the room picking up one picture after the next and nearly dropped one as the phone began to ring shrilly. Christos, her heart surged, he’s changed her mind, he’s going to say that he is sorry for upsetting her; he’s going to come and meet Katherine. Her hand shook as she picked up the phone.

  “Hello” she began tentatively but anything more she began to say was drowned out by the voice at the other end.