Blood Sisters by Barbara Keating

Author:Barbara Keating [Barbara & Stephanie Keating]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2006-08-03T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

London, October 1965

Camilla was angry, unable to accept the lie in which she had been trapped, the bitter masquerade that was their futile marriage. They had been in a position to choose, while she had been given no options at all. It was impossible to fathom how or why they could have added a child to the torment of their existence together, and it crossed her mind that George might not be her father at all. She resented them for making her an unwitting victim of their unhappiness. It was plain that her father must have lived a secret life all through her childhood years, fearful of the possibility that his homosexuality would be discovered, that it would destroy his career, put him in prison even. Their shared secret had poisoned the home they inhabited, and allowed Marina’s isolation and unhappiness to grow like a cancer, and to distort all their lives.

Camilla had left the awful scene in the bedroom and rushed out of the house. Behind her she heard her father calling her name. As she slammed the front door, the desperate, rasping sounds of his pain and regret entered her brain like bullets, ripping apart all the trust she had invested in him since her earliest memories. She flagged down a taxi, but when she was safely inside she had no idea where she wanted to go. In the anonymity of the cab she began to weep uncontrollably.

‘Now don’t go breaking your ’eart, a pretty girl like you. I bet it’s over a man, eh? Well, he ain’t worth it. They never are, my love. That’s what I say, and you’ll soon see that I’m right.’ The cabbie regarded her with sympathy in his driving mirror. ‘Where shall we go then, miss? You want me to take you on a tour of the town, or ’ave you got somewhere special you’d like to wind up?’

Camilla searched for a handkerchief. Unable to make a decision, she gave the address of her flat. There was nowhere else she could go, no one she could lean on. She had never needed close friends in London, never sought out anyone in whom she might confide. In her mind she had always been apart, different from the people with whom she worked and dined and danced. She enjoyed being aloof, disconnected, unaffected by the realities of other lives. They had no power, no sway over her emotions or aspirations, no insight into her private thoughts.

‘I never have a bloody clue what you’re thinking,’ Tom had often complained to her. ‘You say things that sound reasonable and I listen, but I don’t know what’s really going on in that beautiful head. There’s no way to tell what you’re actually feeling, if you’re feeling anything at all. One of these days you’re going to find out that you’re human like the rest of us. That you have to connect, or you’ll start withering away like a plant without any water.’

‘Well, I certainly don’t need

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