I STILL LOVE YOU, BUT...

CHAPTER 31

AMANDA

"Stella is fourteen years older than me. Our mum died when I was six, and she basically became my mum, big sister, everything. Dad was a wreck after Mum died in a car accident. A drunk driver ploughed into her," Cora says quietly. "Dad started to drink heavily, and Stella --- she had to grow up overnight, shoulder everything. She was only twenty-one, she dropped out of uni, came back home, because of me. To take care of me. Dad was a mess, but Stella --- she was always there, she never complained, she just took over. She got a job working at some office, and she spoke to Dad, basically told him to clean up his act, he owed it to me to Mum. You have a little girl, she's seven years old, she's lost Mum, she's hurting and she's lost. She can't lose you, too, Dad, I heard her say to Dad, and he started to cry. I miss her so much. I miss your mum so much, he sobbed. And Stella said, I miss her, too, Dad. But I can't break apart. I have to stay strong for Cora. Please, Dad. Please. For Mum's sake. She would have wanted you to go on, be strong. Be here for us. For Cora. She needs us, Dad. There were tears in her eyes, I could see them, but her voice was so strong, so steady."

She pauses.

Then, softly:

"Dad changed after that. He stopped drinking. He started to work again. And slowly, he became Dad again."

Cora looks at me.

"Stella is everything to me. She is the most selfless, unselfish, strongest person I know. She put her life on hold for me. I wouldn't be what I am now if it weren't for her. She worked, and put me through business school. She was smart, she could have become anything she wanted to be, but she gave up all her dreams, her plans, for me."

"Then she met Harold Robbins, she was working for him as an assistant, and they fell in love. She was so happy, and Dad and I were so happy for her. Harold seemed like a good man. They had two children together, two boys, two years apart, and everything was fine."

She falls silent, then looks at me.

"Until Iris Chambers started working at his company."

Her mouth thins.

"Iris set out to seduce him. It was a game with her, playing with men who were married, or taken...engaged men, men with girlfriends. She had a brief affair with her own brother-in-law, James Cartwright."

"How do you know all this?"

"My dad knows a lot of people. He was a member of the Underworld --- is that what you call them? --- in his younger days. He maintains contact with them, and they have this bond...anyway, Stella suspected that Harold was cheating, she confided in me, and I told Dad about it. She was hurting, Harold was distant, coming home late, distracted, disappearing for days for business, that was what he told Stella, but my sister isn't a fool. She watched him, she observed him, and she felt something was very wrong. She confided in me, and I told Dad. Nobody hurts my sister. And Dad listened, and he got his friends to investigate...and they came back to him with photos. Harold was cheating and the woman he was cheating with was Iris Cartwright, who was herself married to Edward Cartwright, a nice man, a good man, my dad said."

"Dad sat Stella down, showed her the photos, asked her what she wanted to do. Stella broke down. I love him, she said. I love him. How could he do this to me? This was six months into Harold's affair. We have two boys, they need their dad. Why, Dad, why? Why aren't I enough for him? What does she have that I don't?

"Just divorce him," I told her.

"I can't." She was crying. "You don't understand, Cora. I love him."

"He's cheating on you. He's lying to you. He's sleeping with another woman. How could you love him?" I cried.

"It isn't as easy as that," she said, her voice breaking. "I love him. I have children with him. He's betrayed me. He's broken me. But I can't stop loving him. If only it were that simple. But it isn't. You can't just turn love on and off."