‘Daddy said my hair means I’m a handful,’ announced Macy proudly, showing off a strand of her deep red locks.
Nina gave her husband a stern look. ‘Did he now?’
‘Might have done,’ Eddie replied with a grin. ‘Come on, young ’un. It’s way past your bedtime.’
‘But I want to stay up with you!’ Macy objected.
‘And I want a Ferrari, but we can’t always have what we want.’ He kissed her. ‘Mummy needs—’
‘Mommy,’ Nina said over him.
‘—to talk to her friend.’
‘What about?’ asked the little girl.
‘Grown-up stuff, you wouldn’t be interested. Now, how about me and Holly put you back to bed? We can tell you a story.’
Macy squeaked with excitement. ‘The one about the eggs with legs!’
‘I told you to send it to my publisher,’ said Nina.
‘I’ll type it up tomorrow,’ he replied. ‘Say night-night to Mummy, Macy.’
‘Night-night, Mommy!’
Nina smirked as Eddie groaned. ‘Fighting a losing battle, aren’t I?’ he said as he and Holly headed for Macy’s bedroom.
Nina waved to her daughter, then turned back to Olivia. ‘So. I think we have some stuff to talk about.’
‘We do,’ the elderly woman replied. She was carrying a bulging leather satchel. ‘As much as I dislike playing the little-old-lady card, may we sit down? This is quite heavy.’
‘Sure. This way.’
Nina led her guest into the lounge, gesturing to an armchair. After peering at the numerous framed photographs decorating one wall, Olivia sat and placed the satchel on a coffee table, Nina sitting opposite. ‘I wouldn’t expect you simply to take my claim at face value,’ she began as she opened it, ‘so I brought proof.’ She carefully drew out a plastic sleeve containing several photographs. ‘I see you have a picture of your parents there.’
Nina glanced towards the wall. The image was of her teenage self with Henry and Laura Wilde, taken at an archaeological site in Turkey. ‘Yeah.’
‘I have some family photos of my own. Please, take a look.’ She slid the sleeve across the table.
Nina took it. The first photograph was visible through the protective cover — and it gave her a momentary shock.
She recognised the smiling figure at the centre. It was her mother, a few years younger than Nina in the photo on the wall. With her were two people she knew only from pictures: her grandparents, Thomas and Olivia Pearce.
She looked up sharply at the old lady. Even though several decades had passed, there was still a definite resemblance between the woman in the still and the one sitting before her.
‘Yes, that’s me,’ said Olivia. She tapped the red-haired woman in the picture with a well-manicured nail. ‘That was taken in, let me think… 1966. We were living near New Haven at the time. Tom, your grandfather, was an executive for General Electric in Fairfield.’
‘And what were you doing?’
‘Whatever I wanted. My family, the Gardes, were wealthy and influential. I went back to my maiden name after Tom died — not immediately, I hasten to add. That would have been very disrespectful. But there were… social advantages, one could say. More so for your mother than myself. I wanted the absolute best for her, to open the right doors, which is why she adopted it too.’
Nina nodded, keeping her face neutral. Again the story matched what she knew of her mother’s background, but there was nothing so far that couldn’t have been unearthed with diligent genealogical research.
She carefully slid the clutch of photos from the sleeve. More images of her mother and grandparents, the giant tail fins of a car in the background of one dating it to the late 1950s or early ’60s. Time advanced jumpily as she flicked through them, her mother growing from a little girl into a young woman—
The last photo — and again she felt an emotional jolt. This featured only her mother and grandmother against a backdrop of trees and flowers. Laura had recently turned eighteen.
There was a reason Nina could date it so precisely. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, going into the main bedroom. She opened the wardrobe and took a cardboard box from the top shelf. Lifting the lid, she quickly found what she was looking for and returned to the living room with her prize.
It was another photograph, which she put down on the table next to the final one from Olivia’s collection: its twin. ‘Mom told me that was the last photo she had of her mother before she died,’ she said, a tremor in her voice. ‘Spring 1972. The Shakespeare Garden in Central Park. Now you’d better have a damn good explanation for why you have that photo, and how, if you really are my grandmother, you’re alive and well despite what my mom told me. Because if you don’t…’ the tremor became barely contained anger, ‘then age be damned, I’m going to kick your ass out on to the street.’
Olivia did not speak for several seconds, then the corners of her mouth slowly creased upwards. ‘It’s been a long time since I heard that tone of voice,’ she said. ‘You really are your mother’s daughter.’
Nina was unmoved. ‘I’m still waiting for an explanation.’
‘And you certainly deserve one. I assume you think I’m pretending to be your grandmother to bilk you out of the money your fame has brought you — something like that?’
‘The thought had occurred.’
‘I don’t blame you for being sceptical. But I assure you, I am your grandmother — and Laura’s mother. The reason she told you I was dead was that we had… a falling-out. A very serious falling-out.’
‘About what?’
‘About your father.’
‘What? Why?’
Olivia gave her a sorrowful look. ‘Everyone makes mistakes in their life — mistakes where they are one hundred per cent convinced they are in the right until the sky falls on them. The greatest mistake I ever made was thinking I knew what was right for Laura better than she did. When she met your father, and fell in love with him practically overnight, and wanted to marry him and search for Atlantis with him… I thought she was throwing everything away, that she was turning her back on her family’s legacy for a penniless archaeology student with a crackpot theory.’ A deep breath. ‘I was wrong. I’ve never been more wrong, and the greatest regret of my life is that I never got the chance to ask her forgiveness.’
It took Nina a moment to process what she had just heard. ‘So you’re telling me that Mom told me you were dead — that she lied to me — because you had an argument?’
‘It was quite a serious argument,’ the elderly woman clarified. ‘I forbade her to marry him — in fact, I told her she couldn’t keep seeing him. Now, knowing your mother, how do you think she took that?’
‘Probably the same way I would have.’
‘Exactly. And I’m sure you also remember what she was like once she had decided to do something. She was—’
‘Stubborn.’
Another tiny smile. ‘Determined was the word I was going to use, but yes. It all happened very quickly; I don’t think she had even talked about me with your father before they decided to get engaged. When she told me, the discussion became very heated, to say the least, and she…’ Any trace of humour vanished, replaced by regret. ‘She turned her back on me. She told your father that both her parents had died in the car crash, not just Tom, and once it had been said, she stuck with it.’
‘So you are saying she lied to me my whole life.’
‘I was dead — to her, at least,’ said Olivia. ‘The last time I spoke to her was shortly after she graduated, before her wedding. Our positions hadn’t changed, I was still trying to talk her out of it, so… that was it. She wanted nothing more to do with me. She could have contacted me at any time, but chose not to. And I’m ashamed to say that I made no further effort to reach out to her either, even after you were born. Determinedness — stubbornness — is very much a family trait, especially in the women. Your husband may be right about it coming with the hair.’