Page 81 of The Wedding Proposal

‘I see.’ Fiona looked at Elle.

Elle gazed back.

‘Would you say that you are back together?’ Fiona prompted.

Again it was Lucas who answered, his voice calm and reasonable. His thigh was warm and firm against Elle’s. ‘I think we’re old enough to sort ourselves out, Mum. You don’t need to be concerned. When we’re ready to tell you something, we’ll tell you.’

Fiona nodded, sadly, as if she’d feared as much. She exchanged a look with her husband and took a surprisingly enthusiastic slug of gin and tonic. For the first time, it crossed Elle’s mind that Fiona wasn’t enjoying herself. Everything about her spoke of a woman gearing herself up for an unpleasant task.

Being viewed as an unpleasantness gave her a jagged pain in her chest, and being so obviously disliked made her feel physically sick.

She had to resist the urge to justify herself. Look I’m not such an awful person. I was young and stupid and I was manipulated. That’s not a crime! At least give me and Lucas a chance. We can mess things up without your help.

But begging for understanding wasn’t going to win her any respect — or, for that matter, any understanding. She pressed her lips together and left the floor to Fiona.

This time, when Fiona spoke, it was to her son. Her voice was gentle. ‘I would really have liked us to have this chat in private, Lucas. It would have been so much better.’ She paused.

They waited.

Fiona took another slug of her gin. ‘Something happened. We didn’t tell you at the time because we thought it would cause unnecessary pain. You’d already left to live in America with Simon.’ She licked her lips. ‘A man made an appointment to see me at the office. Richard Manion.’

Elle jumped. She felt the muscles in Lucas’s thigh twitch, as if some reaction was trying to burst out of him.

Geoffrey stirred, turning his gaze on Elle. ‘I think you call him Ricky,’ he clarified, as if she might not have noticed the name of her ex-husband on Fiona’s lips.

Fiona darted a glance at Elle, but then returned her gaze to Lucas. ‘I’m very sorry to tell you that Mr Manion tried to blackmail me. He also told me the truth about Elle. It seems as if the boat’s not the only “shady lady” around here.’

Chapter Twenty-Eight

It was as if the air around her had turned to ice. Elle couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. She felt, more than saw, Lucas turn his head to stare at her. Fiona and Geoffrey were staring at her, too. Everybody in the world was looking at her and waiting for her to speak. ‘B-blackmail?’ she managed, eventually. Her voice sounded distant in her ears. ‘What truth?’

Fiona turned back to Lucas. ‘You know that we wouldn’t do this if it weren’t absolutely necessary, don’t you?’

Elle felt a surge of rage at being ignored. ‘WHAT TRUTH?’ she yelled, not caring that everybody jumped.

Fiona visibly withdrew. ‘You really want me to go through—’

‘Every word.’

‘I think you’d better.’ Lucas’s voice was without expression.

With a shrug, Fiona complied. ‘This man, Richard Manion, said he was your husband.’

‘Ex-husband,’ Elle corrected her.

Fiona waved her hand, as if brushing the detail aside. ‘He said that if I didn’t give him money, he’d make sure everybody in town, including the newspapers, knew that our son’s girlfriend was a crook, that she’d been involved in handling stolen goods, receiving, deception, etc. And’ — she paused, impressively — ‘you’d let Ricky take the blame. He told me about forged cheques, the police looking for you in the past. The data you’d let him share—’

Elle gasped as if Fiona had leaned forward and driven her fist into Elle’s guts. ‘The shit.’

Slowly, she turned to Lucas. ‘He’s twisted everything,’ she said, helplessly. ‘I was never in on it.’ Her voice shook. ‘I was a victim.’

Lucas gave a single nod. ‘Can you tell me how it was from your side?’ Shock was in his frozen face, his expressionless eyes.

‘You know the first part.’ She sighed, slumping against the back of the sofa. ‘You know that it didn’t take me long to realise that I’d made a huge mistake but I didn’t really know how to get back from it.’

Her heart beat in huge heavy thumps as she began the story she could have insisted on telling before. ‘As soon as I had a decent salary, Ricky decided he was going to start his own business. He made over a spare bedroom into his office and boxes of things were always hanging around the garage. It had already become obvious that, financially, he was a nightmare. We began with a joint account but his view of that was that I put money in and he took money out.’

She swallowed. She was aware of Fiona and Geoffrey listening intently, but her focus was on Lucas. Sweat greased her palms. Her fear at finding herself cornered into regurgitating everything she’d held back for so long threatened to overwhelm logical thought. She took a deep breath, trying to steady herself, trying to order the facts.

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