Merde, thought Sebastian as he turned
and headed for the
car
park. I’m making the kind of excuses used by married men
and I don’t even have a wife . . .
Frozen by fear and uncertainty into briefly suspended
animation, Natalie waited too long at her table inside the café. By the
time she got outside her quarry had disappeared
from sight. Then she noticed a sign indicating an underground car-park
adjacent to the bank and realized that to have
vanished so
quickly, he must have gone to retrieve his car.
What goes in must come out; she thought, dragging her dark
glasses out of the pocket of her scarlet
denim jacket and
realizing as she ran towards the exit that her palms
were damp. This was it . . . any moment now she would be talking for the
first time to her father . . . that was, if he
didn’t run over her
first.
Sebastian swore again – in German this time – and had to
brake
sharply in order to avoid the young
girl who had stepped into
the path of
his Mercedes. Half these kids were on drugs
nowadays – what the hell was
the matter with her? Now she was standing right in front of him, staring
intently through the tinted windscreen as if it were all
his
fault she
had nearly been hit.
Irritably he lowered his window. ‘You’re asking for
trouble,
young lady, wearing those ridiculous
glasses in this weather.
Now move out of my way, I’m in a hurry.’
Since he had addressed her in German, Natalie didn’t under
stand a word, although his abrupt tone was less
than encour
aging. Feeling her heart thumping at a heavy, funereal pace,
she said in English, ‘Are you Sebastian Adams?’
‘Why?’ he demanded suspiciously, and she flinched,
shifting
from one foot to the other as she
struggled to remember what
she had planned to say next.
‘
I’m sorry I jumped in
front of your car, but I have to see
you, speak to you. It’s very
important.’
For a wild moment, Sebastian had
wondered if she were
some kind of terrorist. Now, somewhat reassured, he peered more closely
at this clearly apprehensive, olive-skinned girl
who spoke with a north-country English accent and who was
wearing a cheap jacket, torn jeans and a red and white baseball
cap. At the same time, however, he was pretty sure
that her
white silk shirt was from
Dior, and that her very dark glasses
were
also extremely expensive. She looked faintly familiar,
too. Maybe,
despite her scruffy teenage appearance, she was a client of the bank.
‘I can’t possibly see you now, and the bank is closed,’ he
explained with slightly less abruptness. ‘Why
don’t you phone
my secretary tomorrow morning and make an appointment.
If it really is urgent I could probably fit you in after lunch.’
He was very good looking in a
chiselled, elegant way. Natalie,
devouring
every detail, realized that he must be very fit; not an ounce of fat
contaminated his lean, muscular frame. The sports bag on the passenger seat
bore witness to that fact. But his grey
eyes
and forbidding expression still terrified her. She took a
deep breath
and tried again.
‘
It isn’t about
business. This is a very personal matter.
Please . . . it’s raining . .
. couldn’t I sit in your car?’
Now he looked frankly startled. Then, for the first time,
she saw a ghost of a smile hover around his mouth.
‘
Didn’t your mother
ever tell you,’ he said slowly, ‘not to sit
in cars with strange men?’
Emboldened by the oh-so-faint smile
and the unwitting
perfection
of his cue, Natalie took the plunge. Removing the
dark glasses which she had borrowed from Roz, she grinned
engagingly back at him.
‘My mother is Roz Vallender,’ she told Sebastian. And you
aren’t a strange man, you’re my father. So I think under the circumstances it
would be OK, don’t you?’
Chapter 51
’Just look at the two of you,’ cried Loulou, bursting into
the
sitting-room and finding Camilla and
Rocky sitting discon
solately at
opposite ends of the sofa. Rocky, his liquid brown
eyes piteously mournful, thumped his tail against
one of the
silk cushions. Camilla didn’t even turn round.
‘
Has Rocky done
something terrible?’ said Loulou, glaring
at him. Finally, Camilla shook her head. ‘I’m being depressed.
He’s
just keeping me company, that’s all.’
‘
Well, don’t expect
me
to,’ declared Loulou, then put her
arms around Camilla. ‘But you can
tell me what’s made you depressed, if it’ll help. It isn’t Roz, is it?’
‘
No.’ Camilla managed a
faint smile. She wasn’t going to
confess
her confused feelings for Nico to Loulou, whose ability
to keep secrets
was on a par with her recent choice in men. No, this particular secret was one
she had to keep entirely to herself, but Roz’s revelation earlier had hit her
hard. Everything that had passed between Nico and herself seemed cheapened now;
it was probably his standard patter for persuading women into bed. Her fragile
ego had been cruelly battered and with that had come a renewal of all her old
insecurities. This afternoon she had felt
lonely
and horribly alone. The coming-to-terms with that
sensation, which she
had hoped she was finally beginning to
master,
was clearly not yet complete. The situation wasn’t helped,
either, by the fact that she was no longer working.
When Matt
had died and she had retreated to Scotland in order to come to
terms with her grief, Zoë had taken over the day-to-day running of Sheridan’s
on a purely temporary basis. Upon returning to London, however, Camilla had
realized that she was no longer
needed. The
agency was continuing to flourish. And having
already decided that she
wanted to be able to spend more time with her children – and Marty – it had
been with some relief that she had passed her share of the business over to Zoë.
The arrangement had suited both of them and Camilla had
revelled in her newfound freedom, but on days like today she almost wished that
she still had something concrete upon which
to
concentrate. Anything would be better than this awful,
endless,
self-recrimination .. .
’I know,’ said Loulou
sympathetically, assuming that Camilla was upset about Matt, and waving at Lili
as she waddled into the room wearing nothing but a smile and one blue sock, ‘you
don’t have to tell me. But I can try
and cheer you up, can’t I? Christo and Laura are getting engaged tomorrow
night, and it’s Laura’s twenty-first birthday. Her family are holding a massive
party at their home in Bath. I’ve just
phoned Roz at the studios
and she
doesn’t want to go – she’s too wound up about Nat at
the moment – but
she suggested that we stay at her cottage that night. Good idea?’
She gazed
challengingly at Camilla, daring her to refuse. ‘Well .
‘
It’ll cheer you up,’ wheedled Loulou, lifting Lili onto her
lap and
kissing her bare shoulders.
Camilla thought about it. Refusing
Loulou was going to be
far more
difficult than giving in gracefully, she realized. And parties one didn’t want
to go to were almost always better than those to which one looked forward.
‘
OK,’ she agreed with
reluctance. ‘It’ll be a change of
scenery, anyway.’
‘
And lots of new,
uncharted men,’ said Loulou serenely.
‘What
more could two desperate single old women possibly
wish for . . .?’
Sebastian Adams had always led an
immaculately controlled
life. He was the most organized person he knew and he took
great pride in that fact. His body,
his career, his home and his
social life
were just as he liked them, just as he had
made
them,
and when a woman had once told him that he was
chasing
perfection he had taken it as a compliment. Imperfection, in
Sebastian’s logical eyes, was quite simply an unforgivable waste of time.
Which was why he was so totally thrown by the sudden
appearance in his ordered world of Natalie.
To say that this was a situation he wasn’t prepared for
had to be the understatement of the century. And simply as a defence mechanism
at first he had refused to even contemplate the idea
that what this young girl was telling him might be true. Fixing
her with his most imperious glare, then gunning
the engine of
his car with quite
uncharacteristic ferocity, his immediate
instinct had been to pretend
that she hadn’t even spoken, and to simply drive off and leave her.
As if guessing his intention, Natalie
had stepped calmly
once more in front of
the car. Unable to believe the incredible nerve of the girl, Sebastian had
jammed his foot down on the
accelerator,
revving wildly but moving forward only a couple
of inches. Despite his
panic – engendered by the fact that what was happening now was something over
which he did
not
have total control – he had been forced to register
admiration for her
steadfastness. She wasn’t
going to move, not even if he
did
run
her over. And there was no fear in her eyes at all. All he had
seen there was that astonishing, nerve-wracking
likeness to
Roz.
And now here she was, he thought, still wary but at the
same
time curious. She had appeared into his
life just a couple of
hours ago and he still didn’t have a clue why he
had allowed her to do so.
Although appeared wasn’t the right
word, he considered as
he sipped his iced Perrier and watched her gnawing the end of
a chicken bone. She had erupted
rather than appeared and even
in this
short space of time the evidence of that eruption was all around him; the gold
canvas bag spilling its contents on to the
dark
blue carpet, dark glasses rakishly adorning a prized Art
Deco figurine . . . yet strangely their presence
bothered him
less than he would have
imagined, just as Natalie’s own
incongruous appearance irritated him
marginally less now than
when he had first
seen her. That spiky, wet-gelled hair suited
her elfin looks and her jeans, although faded and torn, were actually
very clean. Really, he considered as if from a great
distance, she
looked perfectly OK. But then maybe, he amended with habitual care, he was
still in deep shock.
‘Look, this
has
to be some kind of mistake,’ he
said for the second time. Unperturbed, Natalie grinned.
‘
Of course it was a
mistake. Roz didn’t get pregnant on
purpose, did she? No fifteen year
old would.’
Irritated by the way she was deliberately twisting his
words, Sebastian glared at her. ‘You know precisely what I mean. It’s
obvious that you’re Roz’s daughter, but why should
I believe
you when you tell me that I’m the father?’
‘
My
father,’ corrected
Natalie, more seriously now. ‘I’ve
explained
all that as well. You really aren’t paying attention.
Roz didn’t tell
me;
she hedged and
prevaricated and kept
changing the subject. I only found out because I
overheard her talking to Camilla.’
Sebastian, though loathe to admit it even to himself, had
to concede that Natalie’s reasoning was entirely logical.
‘
But she could have
been lying even then,’ he persisted,
clinging
to the vestiges of his organized bachelor existence like
a convict on
death-row praying for a reprieve. In his heart he knew already that it was all
over. ‘She might have been lying to her friend.’
‘Now
you
listen,’ said Natalie firmly, and he
realized afresh that she wasn’t even afraid that he would refuse to acknowledge
her. ‘And I mean
really
listen to me. If you aren’t my father, can
you think of any reason on earth why she has never
ever
even
told you that she gave birth to me? She knew you didn’t want
children so she kept it a secret from you, but if I
had been
anyone else’s child it wouldn’t have made any difference to
you,
at all. So you’re my father; you know
it and I know it and it’s
about time you bloody well accepted the idea.’