Who's Lying Now? by Susan Lewis

Author:Susan Lewis [Lewis, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2022-02-02T17:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

ESTELLE

December 2020

Three weeks before Jeannie’s disappearance

Estelle was staring out at the marina, where only a few Christmas lights burned in the evening gloom and empty masts were rocking back and forth in the wind. She only had to think of her mother – the woman who’d given birth to her; that softly spoken, beautiful, ugly hypocrite – to feel disgust at herself and a fury that was almost impossible to control.

Why had Estie allowed her to walk away, as if all that mattered was how she felt and what she wanted? Why hadn’t she shouted after her, knocked her to the floor, told her exactly what she thought of her and her self-preservation?

She had more information now about Serena’s children, Aubyn and Talia, and her husband, Sir Jerome Fellowes. How were they going to feel when they found out there was another member of their family, someone who’d been so cruelly rejected by their mother and wife? Surely they’d only be able to see her as a monster after that.

‘It doesn’t end here,’ she said silently, as if Serena could hear. ‘I hope you know that. I will not let you get away with the way you treated me.’

The same words, the same raging sense of injustice, over and over and over. It was all she felt, all she could think about. There would never be anything between her and her mother – no love, no pride, no laughter, no relationship at all. Serena’s only concern was to shield her legitimate family from the living, breathing shame that was Estelle Fields.

Carrying two glasses of wine from the apartment kitchen, Guy said gently, ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been able to see you sooner. It’s been hectic at the hospital. I didn’t even get back last weekend.’

‘I know, you told me,’ she said, still staring out at the night.

‘But I rang,’ he reminded her, ‘and I worried about you.’

That comforted her and, as she turned around she said, ‘You still haven’t told me who this flat belongs to.’

Passing her a glass of wine, he said, ‘A friend of Jeannie’s, Val Clayburne. We’ve been keeping an eye on it until she can get here herself.’

‘It’s a nice place. Do you bring all your girlfriends here?’

A flash of disapproval passed across his eyes.

‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. Apart from anything else, I’m not a girlfriend.’

‘No, you’re someone who’s not in a good place right now, which is perfectly understandable considering what you’ve been through, but I don’t think you need to see it quite as bleakly as you do. It was just a first meeting.’

‘But she said—’

‘I know what she said, and maybe she meant it at the time, but going by the other things you’ve told me about her, she doesn’t sound as though she can just cut you off as if you’d never met at all. I’m sure she’ll be in touch again. Maybe not right away, but sometime in the New Year.’

Sinking into one of the sofas, Estelle took a sip of her wine and watched him sit into an armchair.

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