Secret Wedding. Emma Richmond

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      ‘I dislike being manipulated, and I don’t like what you are doing to my sister.’ With no hint of emotion, either in voice or stance, he continued, ‘Ever since she met you, it’s been Gillan this, Gillan that. You have a lifestyle she envies, wants to emulate. And, frankly, I think you’re too old for her.’

      ‘Too old?’ she exclaimed, scandalised. ‘I’m twentynine!’

      ‘Nearly thirty.’

      ‘All right, nearly thirty,’ she agreed miffily. Thirty was all right; she could cope with being thirty. ‘I’m not in my dotage!’

      He gave an odd smile. ‘I didn’t say you were, merely that you were too old for Nerina. She’s nineteen—a very impressionable nineteen. Because of her illness, she’s had very little childhood, very few teenage years to experiment, play games.’

      ‘Games?’ she asked in astonishment. ‘What sort of games?’

      ‘Games that the young play. Flirting, being silly, having fun. I love my sister and I want her to enjoy all the things she should have enjoyed if she hadn’t been so ill. And I want her to enjoy all those things with someone her own age, not someone who’s already played them. She thinks she wants to be like you—sophisticated—’

      ‘I’m not sophisticated,’ she protested. ‘I’m ordinary.’

      ‘But experienced,’ he said softly.

      ‘So?’ She glared defiantly.

      ‘So I don’t want Nerina to emulate you,’ he replied mildly.

      ‘Thanks very much.’

      ‘Look—’ he sighed ‘—I’m probably not explaining this very well—’

      ‘Oh, surely not!’ she derided sarcastically. ‘You appear to me to be a man who explains things right down to the last crossed T! No margin for error, no room for mistakes. . .cold, analytical—’

      ‘I want her to be young!’ he interrupted her.

      ‘I am young!’

      ‘But not silly, not giggly, not—learning. She needs to learn, needs not to have missed out on her youth. If she emulates you, she’ll have missed out.’

      ‘So you want me to tell her that I work best alone, that I don’t need her help.’

      ‘If you’re as fond of her as you say you are, then yes, you will.’

      ‘I am fond of her.’

      ‘Yet you have nothing in common. You’re ten years older than her.’

      ‘So? You make it sound unhealthy, and it isn’t! I befriended her, yes—’

      ‘And introduced her to just the sort of people I wish her to avoid.’

      ‘Rubbish!’

      ‘Not rubbish. You took her to a fashion shoot, without my knowledge or consent—’

      ‘Consent?’ she demanded in astonishment. ‘She’s not a baby!’

      ‘Yes, Miss Hart, she is! You encouraged her to disobey me, leave me in the hotel worried out of my mind, not knowing where she was—’

      ‘Now hang on a minute—’

      ‘No,’ he said coldly. ‘You hang on. You introduced her to a lot of unsavoury people—’

      ‘I introduced her,’ she interrupted furiously, ‘to two minor television stars, an agent and three top models. None of whom are unsavoury!’

      ‘Aren’t they?’ he asked with cold disbelief.

      ‘No! And surely Nerina didn’t tell you that they were? Because that I won’t believe.’

      ‘No, she didn’t. She told me nothing at all.’

      ‘And so you assumed it was a secret! That there was something to hide! No doubt made a great production out of it. Of all the clutch-headed—’

      ‘I beg your pardon?’ he asked icily.

      ‘Well, for goodness’ sake! You’ve just finished telling me you want her to play games—’

      ‘Not with people like that.’

      ‘They aren’t “people like that”!’

      ‘Aren’t they? Yet they, and you, encouraged her to stay out half the night—’

      ‘We stayed out until one! We drank soft drinks, talked. . . I don’t believe you! There was nothing terrible about it! She wanted to enjoy herself, and, the Lord knows, she’s had little enough of that over the last few years!’

      Pushing one hand through her short hair with an exasperated sigh, she continued, wearily, ‘And that’s why you dislike me, is it? Because I took your sister to a party? Because I took her without your knowledge and consent? Well, I didn’t know you had no knowledge of it. I didn’t know you were waiting in the hotel, tearing your hair out.’

      ‘Didn’t you?’

      ‘No!’

      ‘Then, for Nerina’s sake, I will accept your version of events, but it doesn’t alter the fact that I still think you too old for her.’

      ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake! We don’t live in each other’s pockets! We meet occasionally, write to each other. You want me to stop that now, do you?’

      ‘No, but I would certainly prefer it if you didn’t fill her head with details of your lifestyle.’

      ‘Lifestyle,’ she scoffed. ‘I go on photo shoots, and they aren’t in the least glamorous, let me tell you.’

      ‘They are to Nerina,’ he murmured drily. ‘Although, if I’m honest, I have to admit that my investigation didn’t actually turn up anything horrendous.’

      ‘Investigation?’ she demanded in horror. ‘What investigation?’ And, even more horrifying, what had he found out? Even Nerina didn’t know who she really was. Not the whole truth, anyway.

      ‘Something bothers you, Miss Hart?’

      ‘No. Yes. How dare you investigate me? Anyone would think I was a criminal! I admit it’s an unlikely friendship, but there’s nothing sinister in it.’

      Nothing sinister—just something she wasn’t prepared to tell. As far as either of them knew—as far as she hoped they knew—apart from being a photographer, she was a voluntary member of the trust that had set up Nerina’s bone-marrow transplant, her only chance of beating the myeloid leukaemia she’d been diagnosed with. It wasn’t an outright lie, but it was a sufficient bending of the truth to be called one. She had, in a way, been a voluntary member of the trust. But only in a way.

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