Bella Rosa Marriages: The Bridesmaid's Secret. Fiona Harper

it?’ she asked, and her voice wobbled in unison with her stomach.

      Scarlett didn’t say anything but her gaze shot guiltily towards the stream innocently bubbling over the stones, and lingered there.

      ‘No!’ It was barely a whisper, barely even a sound. Suddenly Jackie needed to hold something, to cling onto something, but nothing solid was within easy reach. Everything was moving in the breeze, shifting under her feet.

      Tears started to flow down Scarlett’s cheeks again. ‘I’m so sorry, Jackie. I’m so sorry…’

      Jackie tried to breathe properly. Her letter to Romano had ended up in the stream? Thinking became an effort, her brain cells as slow and thick as wallpaper paste. She knew it was awful, her worst nightmare, but she couldn’t for the life of her seem to connect all the dots and work out why.

      ‘I didn’t realise at the time what I’d done,’ Scarlett said, dragging the tears off her cheeks with the heels of her hands. ‘I didn’t realise what it meant, that Romano was even the father…It was only later, when you and Mamma were shouting all the time.’ She hiccupped. ‘And then she sent you away. I knew I’d done something bad, but it wasn’t until I was older, that I put all the pieces together, and understood what it all meant for you and Romano.’

      Romano.

      The letter had been for Romano.

      Work, brain. Work!

      She looked at the stream.

      And then the forest upended itself. She didn’t faint or throw up, although she felt it likely she might do either or both, but the strength of the revelation actually knocked her off her feet and she found herself sitting on the hard compacted earth, her bottom cooling as its dampness seeped into the seat of her trousers.

      She closed her eyes and fought the feeling she was toppling into a black hole.

      Oh, no…Oh, no…Oh, no.

      The truth was an icy blade, slicing into her. Adrenaline surged through her system, making clarity impossible. She had to do something. She had to go somewhere.

      Jackie staggered to her feet and started to run.

      Romano didn’t know.

      Romano had never known.

      There was a knock at the bedroom door. Jackie hadn’t been moving, just lying spreadeagled on the bed staring at the ceiling, but she held her breath and waited. When she heard footsteps getting quieter on the landing she let the air out again slowly, in one long sigh.

      From her position flat on the bed she could hear voices murmuring, the occasional distant chink of an ice cube. Mamma must have opened the drawing-room doors that led onto the terrace. She glanced at the clock. Ah, cocktail hour. Vesuvius could erupt again and Mamma would still have cocktails at seven.

      But there were no Manhattans or Cosmopolitans for Jackie this evening, just an uneasy mix of truth, regret and nausea, with an added slice of bitterness stuck gaily on the edge of the glass.

      A migraine had been the best excuse she’d been able to come up when she’d arrived back at the house, uncharacteristically pink, sweaty and breathless. And to be honest, it wasn’t far from the truth. Her head did hurt.

      Mamma had moaned in her sideways way about self-indulgence, but she hadn’t pushed the issue, thank goodness. She was far too busy to deal with her middle daughter. Nothing new there, then.

      No way was Jackie going downstairs tonight. Mamma and Scarlett would be more than she could handle in her present state of mind. No, she wouldn’t leave this room until she had pulled herself together and done the laces up tight.

      Now the threat of interruption had diminished she hauled herself off the bed and looked around her old bedroom. If she squinted hard she could imagine the posters that had once lined the walls, the piles of books on the floor, the certificates in frames.

      Of course, none of it remained. Mamma wasn’t the kind to keep shrines to her darling daughters once they’d flown the nest. She’d redecorated this room the spring after Jackie had moved to London for good. In its present incarnation, it was an elegant guest room in shades of dusky lavender and dove grey.

      Jackie caught herself and gave a wry smile.

      Here she was, undergoing the most traumatic event since giving birth, and all she could think about was the decor. What was wrong with her?

      Nothing. Nothing was wrong with her.

      It was just easier to notice the wallpaper than it was to delve into this afternoon’s revelations.

      Uh-oh. Here came the stomach lurching again. And the feeling she was stuck inside her own skin, desperate to claw her way out. She steadied herself on the dressing table as her forehead throbbed, avoiding her own gaze in the mirror.

      Everything she’d believed to be true for the last seventeen years, the foundation on which she’d forged a life, had been a lie.

      She stood up and walked across the room just because she needed to move. She couldn’t get her head round this. Who was she if she wasn’t Jacqueline Patterson, a woman fuelled by past betrayal and life’s hard knocks? Possibly not the sort of woman who could have climbed over a mountain of others, stilettos used as weapons, to become Editor-in-chief of Gloss! And if she weren’t that woman, then she had nothing left, because work was all she had.

      Romano didn’t know.

      He’d never known.

      She closed her eyes and heard a gentle roaring in her ears.

      Would that have changed things? Would he have stood by her after all, despite the fact they’d been so young, despite the argument that had sent them spinning in different directions? A picture filled her mind and she didn’t have the strength to push it away: a young couple, awake long after midnight, looking drained but happy. He kissed her on the forehead and told her to climb back into the bed they shared, to get some sleep. He’d try and rock the baby to sleep.

      No.

      It wouldn’t have been like that, couldn’t have been. They couldn’t have lost their chance because of a few sheets of soggy paper.

      She had to be real. Statistics were on her side. She was more likely to have been a harried single mother, burned out and bored out of her mind, while her friends dated and went to parties and were young and frivolous.

      Yes. That picture was better. That would have been her reality. She had to hang onto that. But the tenderness in the young man’s eyes as he looked over the downy top of the baby’s head at its mother wouldn’t leave her alone.

      She walked towards the window but kept back a little, just in case any of the family were milling on the terrace with their cocktails. She stared off into the sunset, which glowed as bright as embers in a fire, framing the undulating hills to the west. Tonight the sun looked so huge she could almost imagine it was setting into the crystal-clear lake that lay behind those hills. Where Romano probably was right now.

      All these years she’d hated him. For nothing. What a waste of energy, of a life. Surely she must have had something better to do with her time than that? Maybe so, but nothing came to mind.

      Slowly, quietly, she began to feel the right way up again. Get a grip, Jacqueline. You’re not a terrified fifteen-year-old now; you’re a powerful and successful woman. You can handle this.

      Romano wasn’t the monster she’d needed to make him in her imagination. And he probably wasn’t the boy-father of her fantasies either. The truth probably lay somewhere in between.

      She had to give him a chance to prove her wrong, to find out what the reality would be. He had a daughter on this planet, one who was hungry to know who she was and where she came from.

      Jackie walked away from the window and sat back down on the edge of the bed. This changed all her plans. She couldn’t tell her family about her daughter’s existence yet. She had to tell Romano