Obsession by Susan Lewis Page B

yourself for a bit of a – surprise.’
    Instantly the humour retreated. ‘What kind of surprise?’
    Ted opened a file on the desk in front of him and stared down at it.
    ‘Uncle Ted?’
    He looked up, smiled briefly, then bracing himself, he once again lowered his eyes as he said, ‘Well, my dear, apart from the shop and the cottage, your mother has left you something in the region of a quarter of a million pounds.’
    He looked up and found the very expression he had expected – stunned disbelief.
    For a moment or two Corrie simply blinked. Then she laughed. ‘But the dress shop could never have made that much money. It didn’t. I know it didn’t, I do the accounts myself.’
    ‘You’re right,’ Ted told her. ‘It didn’t. The money, with the exception of twenty thousand pounds, has come from your father.’
    ‘My father! You mean…. But Mum never said anything about this. Uncle Ted, are you sure you have it right? I mean if Dad had left all that money for Mum when he died she would have told me.’
    Ted shook his head. ‘No, she wouldn’t have told you. She didn’t tell you. I think she wanted to, many times, but … well … The truth is, Corrie, your father didn’t leave the money when he died. You see, he isn’t dead.’
    Again Corrie stared at him, her cruelly bitten lips trembling with shock. Then to Ted’s dismay she started to recoil , as though he was playing her a cruel and tasteless joke.
    ‘As I said,’ Ted began, ‘I think your mother wanted very much to tell you the truth, but …’
    ‘What are you talking about? The truth is that he died. He died when I …’ she stopped as again Ted shook his head.
    ‘Your father is very much alive, Corrie. You don’t know how sorry I am that you have to find out like this …’
    ‘No! Stop, stop!’ Corrie cried. ‘You’ve made a mistake. My mother would have told me if he was alive. I know she would. I mean why would she keep it from me?’
    ‘She had her reasons, Corrie. I don’t think she was proud of them, but it was a decision she took before you were born.’
    ‘No, I don’t believe it. She wouldn’t have kept … We told each other everything.’
    Ted merely looked at her, his round blue eyes imbued with sympathy. Corrie turned away, absently shaking her head. Then suddenly her head snapped up and the look of anger and betrayal in her eyes was unbearable. ‘So she lied! All those stories she told me about him, none of them were true?’
    Taking a deep breath Ted removed his spectacles and rubbed a hand over his jaw. He suddenly looked very old and very tired. ‘They were true,’ he said, ‘at least partly, but …’
    ‘Why would she tell you and not tell me?’ Corrie cried. ‘I just can’t believe …’
    ‘She didn’t tell me, my dear. At least not at first. It was your father who told me what happened.’
    ‘You mean you
know
him?’
    ‘Yes. I was his solicitor – more accurately his father’s solicitor. Only here, of course, in the country, they had someone else to take care of affairs in London, but the matter of Edwina came to me.’
    ‘The matter of Edwina! Oh God, I can’t believe this is happening? Are you trying to tell me he deserted her, that he paid her off? Are you saying she’s loved him all these years when all the time …’ Corrie couldn’t go on. Her eyes darted about the room, as though searching the shadows for the sense of all this. She felt suddenly weightless with the shock, lightheaded. It was as though she were drifting through the tangled, menacing branches of a dream – a nightmare.
    Ted waited for her to look at him again. She struggled to see him, to hear him, but her mother’s face, her mother’s words were besieging her. She stood up, circled the chair and went to press her head against the soothing coolness of the window. She looked out at the village she had known all her life but now looked so alien. ‘What, what did you say?’ she said, distantly aware that Ted was