What You Made Me

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

WITH a thankful sigh Philippa sank back on her heels, surveying the stacked boxes and paper sacks, quickly stifling an unanticipated stab of pain as she looked at what was after all the accumulation of sixty odd years of living. How little she had really known about her aunt, and all that was left of her now was the faded photograph album Philippa had decided to keep. She hadn’t wanted to come back to Garston, but she had been Jane Cromwell’s only living relative.

Getting to her feet and dusting down her jeans she bent to pick up one of Simon’s motorbike magazines. Her ten-year-old son was motorbike mad at the moment. Even from being quite small he had shown a decidedly mechanical turn of mind. At the moment it was fixed with equal concentration on motorbikes and computers.

Thinking of Simon made her glance at her watch and frown. It was gone five and she had told him to be back at four. She planned for them to have an early meal and then leave to go back to London. Where on earth was he? They had only been in Garston for a week but it was long enough for Simon, with his outgoing extrovert nature, to make friends. Several of them had called for him this morning. Unlike herself Simon made friends easily. There must still be people living in the village who remembered her, but apart from the vicar no one had come to call.

Of course her aunt had always kept herself very much to herself. Living as she did in what was virtually a ‘grace and favour’ house on the Garston estate, her isolation from the rest of the village had tended to set her apart from the villagers, just as it had set Philippa apart during those years when she lived with her aunt. It couldn’t have been easy for her, Philippa now recognised, to accept the responsibility of a fourteen-year-old girl, still shocked by the sudden death of her parents, and inclined to be rebellious and withdrawn because of it. Her father, Jane Cromwell’s cousin, had been a diplomat, and he and her mother had been killed during a terrorist raid whilst Philippa was at school in England.

Their death had brought many changes to Philippa’s life, not the least of which was the discovery that there was no longer enough money for her to continue at the exclusive girls’ school her parents had sent her to. Her father’s salary had been generous but it had died with him, leaving only the proceeds of two small insurance policies. Her aunt had been a teacher and during the last ten years of her career had had only one pupil—Edward Garston, because of which she had been gifted a lifetime’s occupation of the small cottage which became home to Philippa, and which stood just within the boundary of the Garston family’s estate. Once they had owned vast acres of Yorkshire, including the village named after the family, but gradually over the years their land had been eroded away with their wealth until all that was left was the house itself, the parkland it stood in and the home farm. And then further tragedy had struck. Edward Garston had been killed in a car accident and his inheritance passed to a cousin, Scott.

Philippa could remember the day Scott and his mother arrived at Garston quite vividly. Scott’s father had been the second son, the black sheep of the family and there was gossip in the village that his grandfather had sworn he would rather see the house and the estate pass to a stranger than go to his son’s child. Scott had been twenty to her fourteen when he first came to live at Garston. Away at Oxford most of the time, Philippa could remember catching brief glimpses of him during the holidays, when invariably he arrived riding a large and noisy motorbike, his arrival always increasing his grandfather’s already irrascible temper. Jeffrey Garston was a proud, and Philippa had sometimes thought, very lonely old man, very bitter in his resentment of Edward’s death at eighteen and of the cousin who had taken his place. Edward had been reputed to be brilliant and it was no secret in the area that Jeffrey Gaston had looked to his grandson to somehow recoup the family losses and restore Garston Hall to what it had once been. The Garston family fortune had been founded on coal and railways during the Victorian era, but now they were reduced to living on a rapidly dwindling income.

After what she had heard about the family Philippa had been rather surprised that Jeffrey Garston allowed his daughter-in-law and grandson to come and live with him, but he had done so and moreover seemed to be training Scott to take over what was left of the estate, because Philippa often saw him in the holidays working at the farm, or supervising the shoots which still took place in the autumn, when large parties of businessmen would descend on the Hall, and the narrow road that led past the cottage to it would be busy with large, expensive cars.

Where was Scott now? Philippa had only had one letter from her aunt after she left and that had simply told her that Jeffrey Garston had died and that Scott had shut up the house and left the area. That alone had surprised her. Scott had been almost obsessed by his plans to make the estate a viable commercial enterprise once more, and to restore his home to what it had once been. She had replied to her aunt’s letter, telling her about Simon’s birth, but there had been no further correspondence between them. A niece who bore an illegitimate child had been so far outside Jane Cromwell’s own rigid moral code that there was no question that there would ever be forgiveness or acceptance, and certainly never a welcome in her home for either Philippa or Simon. How dramatic and terrifying it had all seemed eleven years ago!

Philippa suppressed a faint sigh. Who would have dreamed then that now women would choose to bear their children alone without the support of the child’s father? Simon’s lack of a father didn’t even cause so much as a faintly raised eyebrow these days. Her own single-parent status was so commonplace that more than half of Simon’s friends at his London school also lived with only one of their parents. Eleven years ago when she discovered she was pregnant she had been terror-struck.

She grimaced as she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror hanging on the wall. How very young and naive she had been. Seventeen and as green as grass. Well, she had learned, and now at twenty-eight, she knew without false modesty that she was an intelligent and even shrewd woman, who had learned about life the hard way.

What she failed to recognise in her own reflection was the vulnerability of her softly curved mouth; the shadows that darkened her grey eyes, the hint of pain that still lingered beneath the cool outer shell of reserve in which she cloaked her true feelings.

Her hair had been short when she left Garston. Her aunt had insisted that it was tidier that way. Now she wore it up in a nest chignon in keeping with her image as the efficient secretary to Sir Nigel Barnes, the Chairman of Merrit Plastics, but once released from its imprisonment it curled halfway down her back in honey-gold waves, silky soft and so directly in contrast to Simon’s straight coal-black hair that people often did a double take when they were introduced as mother and son. Like his hair, Simon had inherited his height and breadth of shoulder from his father. At ten he looked closer to thirteen and was maturing quickly, too quickly, Philippa acknowledged, subduing the faint feeling of dismay she always felt when she contrasted Simon’s upbringing with her own. Children were not allowed to remain naive for very long at the large London school Simon attended; sometimes she felt he was growing up too fast.

She sighed, and returned her attention to her appearance, pulling a wry face. Dressed in a pair of shabby jeans which had shrunk and were now barely decent, an old t-shirt which showed only too clearly that she had kept the slender figure she had had before Simon’s birth, her hair tied back in a ponytail, wisps escaping to frame her face, she looked more like Simon’s sister than his mother. Add to that, the fact that he was already two inches above her small five foot four, and their true relationship seemed even more ridiculous.

Thinking of her son, where was he? She glanced at her watch again. If he had one fault it was that when it came to time Simon was something of a dreamer. Once involved in some task time no longer seemed to matter to him. That he was extremely clever had been emphasised to her the last time she had visited his school. His headmaster considered him very gifted, and he had also pointed out rather wryly that it was unfortunate that in the modern secondary school of the type he would probably attend in London, he might not receive the individual tuition needed to make the most of his special gifts. The fact was that Simon, although brilliantly clever with his hands, with anything mechanical or mathematical, had, when it came to English and related subjects, something of a mental block, and as his headmaster had pointed out to Philippa, if Simon was to realise his full potential he would need to work hard to bring his English up to standard.

‘Without at least an “O” level in it, he will never make it to university,’ he had told Philippa frankly, adding ‘Private tuition would be the thing, but it would be very expensive. Another alternative would be a smaller, country school where they have more time to concentrate on individual subjects.’

Both were out of the question. Her salary was a good one, but living in London was expensive, too expensive for her to be able to afford private tuition, unless of course she could get an evening job, but that meant leaving Simon on his own. As it was she felt bitterly conscious of the fact that she was at best a ‘part-time mother’ but what alternative did she have? She was both mother and father to Simon. She had to go out to work.

She heard a sound outside, a car coming towards the cottage, and frowned. The lane the cottage was on was the back road leading to the Hall but was, according to the Vicar, not in use any more, the company which had made Garston Hall its headquarters using the main entrance. The discovery that Garston Hall had been taken over by Computex, a highly successful computer company, had rather surprised her. For one thing Garston was so remote, fifty miles from York, right in the middle of the Yorkshire Dales. That meant that Scott must have sold it, but then she had known he would have to when he refused to marry Mary Tatlow. His grandfather had been desperately keen for him to marry her. Her father was a millionaire and once married to her Scott could have looked to his new father-in-law to provide the money to restore Garston. But Scott had apparently refused to comply with his grandfather’s wishes. That had been something else her aunt had written in her last letter.

The sound of the car engine was getting louder. Philippa leaned out of the small casement window, frowning as she saw the enormous gleaming Rolls pushing its way down the overgrown lane, her frown deepening when she saw the huge dent and scraped paint on the front wing. The damage had obviously been caused recently and, to judge from the extent of it, would be horrendously expensive to repair. But then perhaps to a man who could afford to buy such a car the cost of a repair which she judged would probably buy her a very nice small car, meant nothing. The car stopped outside the cottage. The rear door opened and Philippa saw Simon getting out.

She hurried downstairs, wondering how on earth her son had managed to cadge a ride in the car, torn between amusement at his enterprise and maternal anger that he should have ignored all her warnings to him on the subject of strange cars and potentially even stranger men.

The first thing that struck her as she opened the door was that Simon looked extremely pale; the second was that her normally voluble son was suspiciously quiet. A car door slammed and her eyes tracked automatically to the man walking down the narrow weed-infested path, her heart doing a double somersault before lurching to a spectacular standstill. ‘Scott!’

‘So he is your son.’ He had ignored her whispered acknowledgement of him and stood behind Simon, dwarfing her tall, gangly son. As Philippa knew from experience Scott would have to duck his head a good six inches to pass under the low lintel to the cottage. Ten years had effected various changes in him but the one she registered first was the total lack of pleasure or warmth in his eyes as they rested on her, their deep blue depths which she remembered as warm and sunny, freezing her with the dislike he made no effort to conceal.

Eleven years since she had last seen him. He had been twenty-three, almost twenty-four, now he would be thirty-five. He was wearing an expensively tailored suit very much in keeping with the Rolls parked outside the cottage, but totally out of keeping with the Scott she remembered who had worn faded, ancient jeans, whose hair had brushed his shirt collars untidily, whose face had been open, always brimming with humour, his eyes always darkening with teasing laughter.

She shivered suddenly despite the warmth of the May sun. It was like standing in the path of a blast of arctic weather looking into his eyes. His face hadn’t changed though really, merely settled. He had always been very physically attractive, although time had added a certain degree of muscled hardness to the body she remembered as thinner, more boyish, and his face, the face that betrayed the hint of Spanish blood on his mother’s side of the family, was more arrogant, the grooves running from nose to mouth more defined. As a young man growing to maturity he had been devastatingly attractive and yet in many ways unaware of his appeal for her sex.

He was still every bit as physically compelling, perhaps even more so, but now there was a look in his eyes that told her he knew exactly what effect he had on her sex, and Philippa withdrew from the sexual explicitness it with a distasteful grimace she only realised he had witnessed when she saw the anger flare in his eyes.

So that at least had not changed. He still possessed a temper… the temper which had perhaps led him to defy his grandfather and refuse the marriage the old man had planned for him?

‘Simon, where have you been?’ Philippa asked her son, turning her attention to him and hoping that Scott wouldn’t notice the hot colour painting her skin. ‘You know I wanted to leave early.’ If his hair and his bone structure were his father’s it was from her that Simon had inherited his grey eyes and the shape of his face. His mannerisms were hers as well, and she watched him scuffing his toes, his expression woebegone and guilty. Her mind too bemused with Scott’s wholly unexpected arrival to pay more than fleeting attention to Simon, she was startled when Scott said grimly, ‘I’ll tell you where he’s been. Trespassing on Computex land; riding a motorcycle for which I imagine I am correct in saying he has no licence. A motorbike which, moreover,’ he continued inexorably, ‘he crashed into my car.’

In a daze Philippa looked out of the window at the huge dent in the gleaming car, her glance going from that to her son’s milk-white face. Her appalled ‘Oh, Simon, how could you…’ drawing a gruff, ‘It was an accident honest, Mum.… It was broken and I’d been helping to mend it and then Tommy Hargreaves said I could have a go on it for helping them… I didn’t know it was private land.’

He shot a scared glance at Scott and Philippa’s heart went out to him. Poor Simon, what on earth had Scott been saying to him to make him look so terrified? And that dent in the car? Surely that hadn’t been caused simply by Simon? ‘Tommy told me they always used it for racing on… I told him I didn’t have a licence but he said it wouldn’t matter. And then.…

‘… and then I was on my way to the home farm to check on something with my Manager when this young fool came riding out of the trees and nearly ran straight into me. If I hadn’t swerved to avoid him, I doubt he’d be here in one piece now,’ Scott concluded grimly, whilst several facts hit Philippa at the same time. ‘On my way to the home farm,’ Scott had said, which must mean he was back living at Garston… And ‘swerved to avoid Simon’, which meant that Simon hadn’t run into him after all!

She went up to her son, hugging him tightly and for once Simon didn’t squirm away. For all his size he was very much her little boy, his eyes dark and afraid. ‘It was an accident, Mum,’ he said desperately. ‘I tried to explain, but Mr… Mr.…’

‘Garston,’ Scott supplied sardonically, glancing coldly at Philippa. ‘I see you haven’t told him much about that part of your life which preceded his birth, Philippa… I wonder why?’

‘You said you swerved to avoid Simon, which means he didn’t do the damage to your car,’ Philippa interrupted, without answering.

‘Not physically perhaps,’ Scott agreed, ‘but I don’t doubt that any court would lay the blame at his feet, as well as taking a pretty dim view of the fact that he was riding the machine without the benefit of a licence and trespassing on private land. It’s going to cost several thousand pounds to put the damage right.’

Philippa’s mouth went dry. Several thousand pounds, and how Scott would delight in making her pay, in extracting every last penny. He had sworn vengeance on her, eleven years ago, and she had laughed it aside, never dreaming that the future might hold this. Was he remembering that hot summer afternoon, when she told him she was leaving?

She looked at him and knew that he was. Once she had thought she loved him and once too he had thought he loved her, but it had all been a long time ago, an adolescent romance for her, a summer affair for him, both of them poised on the brink of other things with a summer to spare, but she had hurt his pride when she threw his love back in his face, and it showed in his eyes that he had not forgiven her.

‘Scott.…’ She took a step towards him and saw his instant recoil and knew that the plea which had been on her lips to let the past lie could not be uttered. He wanted it to remain alive; he wanted to punish her, and could she really blame him? She had told him she loved him and then she had gone to tell him that she had made a mistake and that she loved someone else. He had every right to resent, perhaps even hate her, whilst she.…

‘Mum.…’ She came out of her thoughts to find Simon watching her. Sometimes he saw too much and worried her with his maturity.

‘Go upstairs, Simon,’ she told him. ‘You still haven’t packed, and I want to leave as soon as possible.’

When he had gone she faced Scott, neither asking him to come in or preventing him from doing so. This house which had been her aunt’s belonged to the estate and would revert to it with her death, and Scott had every right to walk into it with or without her permission.

‘I’m sorry about your car.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Simon doesn’t tell lies, and we haven’t been here long enough for him to know that the estate is private.…’

‘What are you trying to say? That he was misled? He’s how old? Twelve? Thirteen?’

‘Ten.’ Red flags of colour sprang into her cheeks. Scott knew exactly how old Simon was, damn him.

‘He looks much older. Our magistrates are rather old-fashioned around here. They take a dim view of damage to private property. As well as the damage to the car there’ll probably be a hefty fine to pay, always supposing of course that they accept this as a first offence.’

First offence! Philippa’s body went cold. ‘It was an accident,’ she said desperately. ‘You.…’

‘Can you prove that? I could claim that it was malicious damage. I thought you were never going to come back here, Philippa. I thought your lover was going to take you away… somewhere glamorous.… The south of France I believe you said.… How long did it take him to realise what a cheat you were? Not long, to judge from the speed with which he left you. He was back at Woolverton by Christmas and married the following spring to Mary Tatlow. Your aunt was very disappointed in you, Philippa. She did say that she never wanted to see you again if I remember correctly.’

‘I was her only relative, when she died I.…’

‘Came back out of a sense of loyalty to her, is that what you’re trying to say?’ he jeered, anger splintering through the cold façade he had adopted towards her. ‘Don’t try to make me believe that. I know exactly how much your loyalty is worth.…’

‘Scott, I.…’

‘You what? Made a mistake? When did you discover that? When Geoff refused to marry you despite the fact that you were carrying his bastard child? No wonder you left so quickly. It was quite a nine-day wonder, I can tell you, especially as he left at the same time. “There’s someone else,” you told me in that cool, butter wouldn’t melt voice. “I can’t marry you, Scott… I love someone else…” and then you left… cool as the proverbial cucumber… after you told me you were carrying his child. Have you any idea what you did to me? Have you?’ he demanded savagely… ‘I’d defied my grandfather for you. I was even prepared to leave Garston… to give up everything for you. But I wasn’t enough for you, was I? As soon as you found out that my grandfather would disinherit me if we married, you dropped me flat and took up with Geoff Rivers. Did you tell him that I was the one who had your virginity or didn’t he care? He ran out on you in the end though, didn’t he, Philippa? He left you, carrying his child … alone… and you’ll never know just how much pleasure knowing that gave me.…’

‘I think I can guess.’ She sounded calm but she had gone paper white. The force of his anger pounded against her in waves, battering against her defences, forcing her to remember things she would rather forget; that final scene with him; the pain that followed.…

‘Yes, you always were quite quick on the uptake.… So quick that I still find it hard to understand why you ever let me make love to you in the first place. If you’d still been a virgin you might have got more out of Geoff than a bastard child… as it was, you’d have been hard put to prove which of us was the father.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ She could feel hysteria building up inside her, an aching, panicky pain she remembered from long ago and which she had kept deliberately at bay in the years that followed.

‘Then what do you want to talk about? How you’re going to pay for the repairs to my car? My car, Philippa, not Computex’s.… Oh yes, Computex belongs to me. I made good after all you see.… You should have stuck with me; despite being disinherited I made it after all. My godfather helped me, and with that and a large slice of good luck I managed to hold on to Garston. Just think if you hadn’t run out on me you’d be mistress of us both now… Garston and me… I always did wonder which of us meant the most to you.…’

‘Neither.’

‘No, of course not. I was forgetting about Geoff. How easily you deceived me.… Did you enjoy it, you bitch, letting me think you loved me when all the time…?’

‘Scott… about your car.’ She wet her lips nerving herself for the admission she had to make. ‘I’m afraid that I… I just don’t have that sort of money.…’

‘How very unfortunate for you.… So… what do you suggest I do? Simply wipe it off—put it down to “experience”?’ He shook his head, baring his teeth slightly in a vulpine grimace. ‘You’ve already cost me far too much under that heading. ‘Oh, no,’ he said softly, ‘this time I’m going to do some recouping. You made a laughing stock out of me eleven years ago, Philippa, and now it’s my turn to turn the screw a little.’