Deceit. [COMPLETED.]

Chapter 42

"The Admission."
[JANE STAMFORD.]

Jane Stamford had not stopped staring at the piece of paper for nearly an hour.

A very attractive woman, her delicate amethyst eyes were blood shot from non stop crying as her lovely smooth skin was racked with anguish.

The neatly typed note was like a knife stabbing deep into her heart and for the first time in her life, she felt afraid.

A noise outside caused the hairs across the back of her head to tingle as a car moved up the gravel drive. She went to the bar at the side of what was a large living room to grab some much-needed courage and downed another glass of brandy before her daughter walked in.

They had failed her, Jane knew that now. A happy family crushed.  Decades of supposed love discarded as if it was a mere leaf blowing in the wind leaving only hatred in its wake.

Jennifer Stamford stopped a few feet from the door at the sight of her mother's dishevelled face.

'You have a glass in your hand mother,' she said irritably, 'and you only do that when you are upset.'

Jane's pulse quickened. Already on the back foot, she downed another glass before asking politely whether her daughter had seen her brother of late.

'No. Why should I have?'

The acidity in her daughter's voice only helped to reinforce what the message had said; that there could never be a way back now, no magical repairs to heal the wounds and that their lives were about to change forever.

'You were so keen to make amends after you came back,' said Jane clinging desperately onto every syllable in order to make sure she had pronounced them correctly and not portrayed her fear, 'only now you seem to have hardly spoken to him in months.'

'That's not surprising considering what's just happened. I am not that heartless mother. He needs his space remember or have you forgotten. That nice new project of his has just failed spectacularly so forgive me for staying away only I am trying to do the sisterly thing and give him time to lick his wounds. Why?'

Jane Stamford squared her shoulder trying to draw on all her strength but the sudden silence was beginning to annoy her daughter who wrinkled her brow as she spat out the next few words with venom.

'Is there a point mother?'

Jane Stamford put the note into her daughter's hand who scanned the words without flinching. 

'He deserved it,' she said lifting her head back up. 'So what if you found out. You can't prove a thing. Who are you going to tell, Daddy? The police?' Jenny scowled and shook her head. 'No. I don't think so,' she cried. 'Not if you know what's good for you.'

Jennifer scoffed at the confused look on her mother's face and went on to explain, 'It would look bad in the papers mother and you know it. It would be bad for business. Poor little rich girl sinks daddy's ship. What would the investors say?'

It was as if the flood gates to all her pent up emotions had now been set free flowing towards the one person she held responsible for all the pain she had endured and who had always seemed powerless in doing anything about it.

And maybe that was why Jenny hated her mother so. Because she of all people should have understood the pains of living with an overbearing father. She of all people should have known what it was like to give birth to a child and understood what it must have felt like to have lost the one precious gift God could have ever bestowed on a woman.

Her voice grew louder.

'What would people think eh mother? What would they say? They would want to know why. Why you left me alone to carry my baby. Why you left me alone on the operating table. Why you sent me away to the other side of the world.'