Her Sweet Revenge by Sarah Bonner

Author:Sarah Bonner [BONNER, SARAH]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-09-05T00:00:00+00:00

There is even more evidence in the envelope from Ella.

“Apparently Edward agreed to pay this man after the event. There was a life insurance policy,” Jen says. “The documents are in that pile.”

I look at them, signed by Helena, her scrawled signature so familiar, she didn’t change it after they were married.

“Ella managed to get copies of Edward’s bank statements too,” she says.

I shuffle a few papers until I find it. Details of multiple transfers from Edward Taylor to a series of numbered accounts.

“Seems like quite a lot of money.” Her tone is dry.

“One million pounds.” I look up from the papers. “It’s a huge amount of money.”

“Ella thought this guy had caught wind of the size of the life insurance policy and decided to increase his asking price.”

I stare at the number for a few moments, trying to process just how cold-blooded it all was. How meticulous the planning must have been.

“Fucking bastard,” Jen says, the disgust clear in her voice. The look on her face sends a shiver up my spine. It’s the same look I remember from my own younger days, before I was taught to keep my anger under control, to channel it back inside myself so it didn’t erupt. I’m thrown back in time to when I was ten years old, sitting on the whitewashed wooden steps of the folly on the edge of Uncle Jed’s estate.

I call him Uncle Jed and describe him as my godfather, but the reality is totally Dickensian—at least that’s what the girls at Ferndown said when they found out, describing it as the kind of thing you’d only hear in a Victorian novel. I was abandoned as a toddler with no idea who my birth parents were, and ended up in foster care. My foster mother, Pauline, did her best, but she didn’t really know what to do with a girl like me. She’d drag me to work with her sometimes, cleaning the houses of wealthy families in our village. That was when I met Uncle Jed, and in me I think he found a kindred spirit. He basically paid for my entire education at Ferndown, allowing the other girls to think he was my rich uncle.

I had been suspended from the local primary school for punching a boy in the face after he told me I was so ugly even my mum had abandoned me. Uncle Jed had laughed when he heard the story, this huge deep laugh that I’ve learnt only stupidly posh men can pull off. Not wanting me to be alone, Pauline had taken me to work with her, and I was on the folly steps, eavesdropping. My foster mother and Uncle Jed were inside, thinking themselves alone and out of earshot.

“That school could be a godsend,” Uncle Jed had said. “They’ll make a lady rather than an outlaw of her.”

“Do you think they can tame her?” Pauline replied.

“I hope so.”

The next sentence from Pauline had been little more than a whisper, one I always wondered if I’d really heard correctly.

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