It hadn’t occurred to her to suspect Noelle of being interested in her father—after all, he was a good twenty years older! No, she had simply sensed that, for some reason, Noelle did not like her, and when her father admitted to her that he was dating his secretary Luisa had been taken aback and shocked, and unable to hide it.
She should have done, of course. She wished now that she had. She bitterly wished she could like Noelle, that they could be friends, for her father’s sake. She had tried hard to make friends, once she had to face the fact that the relationship was serious and was going to end in Noelle’s becoming her stepmother, but it had been useless. Noelle hated her and was not prepared to come to terms.
Look at the way she was staring now, her eyes as sharp and acid as little green apples. ‘As it happens, he isn’t alone! Mrs North is at the house, cleaning, and I asked her to keep an eye on him. He didn’t go to bed; he’s lying on a couch watching television. There’s nothing much wrong with him that I can see, and if he’s upset he deserves it, driving like a maniac! He could have killed that man!’
Luisa paled, knowing that was true. ‘But he didn’t, thank God!’
‘If he had it would have been your fault!’ her stepmother spat, and Luisa flinched, unable to deny it. Watching her with triumph, Noelle rubbed it in, malice in every spiked syllable. ‘If you hadn’t rung Harry and made all that fuss he wouldn’t have left the party and driven like a bat out of hell to get back home.’
Luisa’s face was drawn. It was true, however much she wished it wasn’t, and regrets were useless now. If she could, she would go back and change events, but you could never do that. They were strung together like beads on a string, one event leading to another inevitably. She had rung her father in a mood of wounded disappointment, and he had rushed home to placate her. If he hadn’t, the accident would never have happened, and Zachary West would not be lying in a hospital bed close to death, her father would not be facing prosecution for dangerous driving...or even worse, if Zachary West did not pull through. Ice trickled down her spine. What if he didn’t...? No, she couldn’t bear to think about that.
‘But then you’ve always been spoilt and selfish!’ Noelle said, and Luisa stared dumbly at her.
Had she? It was true that she ought to have known better than to lose her temper just because Dad had forgotten it was her birthday and had gone out with his wife, instead, but she had been so hurt, at the time. Dad had always been absent-minded; she usually had to remind him about her birthday. She saw so little of him, though, these days, that that was not so easy. She had rung a week ago to jog his memory and ask if they could have lunch, but he was out and she had had to leave a message with Noelle, which had never reached him. Instead, Noelle had lured him out to one of those long business lunches she seemed to enjoy so much. She was grimly determined to push Luisa out of her father’s life, and Dad seemed blind to the battle going on over him.
Oddly enough, Luisa could see it from Noelle’s point of view. It must be embarrassing to have a stepdaughter who was almost the same age as yourself; it must underline the difference in ages between man and wife, and Noelle was probably jealous, too, of the old affection Harry Gilbey had for his daughter, an affection which reminded his new wife of his dead one.
Luisa was very like her mother, as all the photographs which filled the house when she first entered it must have told Noelle. Anna Gilbey had been a graciously lovely woman of forty when she died of a heart attack, leaving her only child as a living reminder to Harry of the woman he had married when he was only twenty years old. The years since then had been lonely ones for her father. Luisa could understand why he wanted to marry again, even if his choice had astonished and disturbed her, just as she understood some of Noelle’s feelings, but to understand did not make it any easier, she was to find. Luisa had always been very close to her father, especially since the death of her much-loved mother. Suddenly being cut off from him was hard to take.
Nevertheless, she had tried to accept the new situation, for Dad’s sake, as much as anything. It must be difficult for him, too, to be a buffer between two warring women, and she wanted to see him happy again, uneasily though she viewed his marriage to a girl of her own age.
If only she hadn’t got so upset when she realised that her father had forgotten her birthday and was not going to be back in time to see her! But her birthdays had always been special days: Dad had always made them magical in the past. They had gone out to lunch somewhere special, spent the afternoons together, made each birthday memorable. This was the first one since his marriage, and realising that her birthday treats too were over had hurt more than anything else so far. She had reacted childishly when she realised where he had gone and had rung him at the party, overwhelming him with guilt.
No, she should never have done that—but how could she have imagined that such disastrous consequences would flow from her outburst?
‘He’ll lose his licence, you know,’ Noelle vindictively said. ‘For at least two years, the lawyer says. And that’s not the worst thing that could happen to him. Well, I won’t be able to drive him around all the time; he’ll have to get a chauffeur. He can afford it, although he keeps saying money is tight. He wasn’t so mean when I married him. If he’d had a chauffeur, that accident would never have happened. At his age his judgement isn’t too good any more.’
Luisa stiffened. ‘What do you mean, “at his age”? Dad’s barely fifty, for heaven’s sake!’
Noelle had not apparently thought him very old when she married him! She had always been saying how young he was, how full of energy and life—and Harry Gilbey had lived up to that description over the past year, working and playing hard to keep up with his young wife. When he wasn’t at cocktail parties, dinner parties, business lunches, he was out on the golf course playing with clients or people Noelle wanted him to impress.
‘His reflexes aren’t what they were,’ shrugged Noelle.
‘Maybe he goes out to parties too often! It must use up a lot of energy!’ Luisa accused, and her stepmother’s green eyes blazed back at her.
‘That’s right, shift the blame on to me! You’d love to say it was all my fault! Well, it isn’t—Harry enjoys a busy social life; he always did, before he ever met me!’
Luisa couldn’t deny that, either. Her father had always been a social animal; he was gregarious, lively and loved company, especially that of young people, which was no doubt why he had fallen for the ravishing blonde who had become his secretary. Noelle had encouraged him and Harry Gilbey hadn’t been able to resist her and the chance to be young again.
Luisa sighed. ‘Yes, I know he does.’ Poor Dad. She bit her lip and looked at her stepmother with appeal in her dark blue eyes. ‘Noelle, why do we always have to quarrel like this? Especially now, when Dad is in trouble...he’ll need both of us over the next few months. Can’t we be friends?’
Noelle’s beautiful mask didn’t soften. Her green eyes flashed. ‘You’ve done enough harm, just leave us alone. Harry is my business now, not yours.’ She turned to walk away, stopped, and pulled a crumpled newspaper out of the black leather briefcase she was carrying. ‘Have you seen this?’
She didn’t wait for an answer; she was gone a second later, leaving Luisa staring blankly at the paper, folded back to show a grey photograph of Zachary West above half a column of print headlined ‘Crash Wrecks West Exhibition’.
Even more worried and depressed now, Luisa looked around for somewhere to sit down. There was a café across the square; she made for it shakily and fell into a seat near the door.
‘What can I get you?’ asked a waitress, coming over
