She Devil. Christy McKellen

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       CHAPTER TWO

      Jamie

      I’VE FELT SO much anger towards April Darlington-Hume over the years, it’s impossible to quantify it.

      At least, I think it’s anger.

      It certainly feels like it most of the time.

      Except for the times it doesn’t.

      I’ve never known what to do with those feelings, though, so mostly I’ve tried to ignore them.

      Which hasn’t been easy.

      I fucking adored her ten years ago, imagining that we’d stay together after we graduated from university and make a real go of it. It would have been challenging, sure, with me travelling the world one way to take part in tennis championships and she the other to build her career in the business world, but we could have done it. If she’d been brave enough.

      It was her father that got in the middle of us. I’m pretty bloody sure of it. He never thought I was good enough for her and in the end she clearly gave in and decided he must be right—even after I tried so hard to be there for her after her mother died. I knew exactly how much pain she was in because I’d been through the same thing in my teens when I’d lost my own mother—who had chosen her love of alcohol over her desire to stay alive and in my life and had succumbed to liver disease. I did nothing but send April letters, gifts and offer support and generally put my life on hold for her in case she needed me.

      But she didn’t.

      Instead she dumped me, without even giving me a decent reason, then proceeded to act as if I didn’t exist any more. She wouldn’t take my calls or come down and meet me at the door when I turned up at her house. And, when I finally managed to confront her when she left the house one day on her own, rather than hiding away in her chauffeur-driven car, she refused to talk to me, telling me to leave her alone and that it was over between us.

      That she didn’t love me and she was moving on. That I would be a hindrance to her family responsibilities and her career.

      That was all the explanation I got. After a year and a half of growing so close to her I seriously thought we’d get married one day.

      Because she’d been my best friend as well as my lover. My other half.

      But it turned out I’d meant nothing to her. Less than nothing.

      It’s no wonder I lost the plot for a while after being treated like that. I’m not especially proud of my actions at that time but I was hurting and so fucking angry with her, I could barely think straight.

      And now we’ve gone and raked it all up again.

      I’ve not been able to stop thinking about her since that night at the fundraiser. Her words have turned over and over in my mind, especially the part about her faking her orgasms with me. I don’t believe that’s true. It can’t be. I would have known. I’m sure of it.

      Wouldn’t I?

      I’ve never had any complaints from women before.

      But, despite being ninety-nine per cent certain I’m not misremembering our time together, that one per cent has planted a seed of doubt in my mind. Which has been fucking with my head ever since—so much so I’ve had trouble thinking about anything else.

      That is until the letter from my father was handed to me by the executor of his will.

      I’d been summoned to the solicitor’s office in Kensington a few weeks after I’d buried my father in the De Montfort family plot on a clifftop graveyard just outside St Ives—where we’d laid my mother to rest fifteen years before. The solicitor, Phil Clary, was one of my father’s oldest school friends and it was he who handed me a thick cream envelope with a sad, supportive smile.

      ‘Your father wrote this after his first heart attack a year ago and wanted you to have it a little while after he’d been laid to rest.’ He nodded towards the envelope. ‘I think he wanted to give you a bit of time to grieve first.’

      I have to admit, I was intrigued. He’d already willed everything he owned to me, including the entirety of his prosperous software business, so I was at a loss to think what could be in this letter. It had to be something seriously important for him to have had it delivered to me in this way.

      After ripping it open and sliding out a single sheet of paper, I took a breath before starting to read my fathers achingly familiar handwriting, my heart in my mouth.

       Son,

       If you’re reading this it means my damaged heart has finally given up on me and I’m in the ground. In a lot of ways this will be a relief. There have been many times in my life when I’ve prayed for an easy way out of the despair I’ve often found myself sucked into, particularly since losing the woman I loved more than life itself.

       Please don’t think for a second that this means I ever wanted to leave you, though. You are the one and only thing I did absolutely right in my life and I’m so proud to call you my son. You turned out to be a better man than I could ever have hoped for.

       I’m sending you this letter now because I need you to do something—something I was never able to ask of you while I was alive. Go and ask April Darlington-Hume to tell you what really happened to her mother.

       What they reported in the papers wasn’t the whole story. Not even half of it. I’ve wanted to tell you about it so many times, but it’s proved impossible for me.

       You’ll understand what I mean by that when you finally hear the long-buried truth. Even though it may be distressing to hear, I’ve come to realise that you knowing everything is the most important thing in the world.

       It will finally give me peace and hopefully you too, eventually.

       Take care of yourself, Jamie.

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