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  “But with respect Mr Heyworth,” Tish interrupted, angry that this buffoon of a man seemed to know far more about her father’s life than they did. “Surely, my father would have told us if he’d had another family and was planning on leaving them money. My father was not a coward, and neither was he cruel. He must have had a sense of what this news would do to us. I mean just hearing all about this out of the blue from you today is not the way he would have wanted us to find out about it.”

  “I am sure your father didn‘t find the situation easy himself. In fact I know he didn‘t,” Heyworth said, without summoning the courage to look either of his clients in the eye. “But it is almost always the case that people who lead double lives do so because they can’t face up to telling the truth to those closest to them, so they just continue knowing that it is wrong, but not really knowing how to stop and deal with things.”

  “What exactly are you trying to say Mr Heyworth, that my husband was a liar?” Pamela asked angrily.

  “There are many complex reasons for this type of behaviour Mrs Thorpe, and I’m no psychologist,” the solicitor opined. “I’m not qualified to comment further on why he felt unable to tell you he had another life in New York. However, there is no escaping the words in front of us in black and white. I cannot pretend they are different words and neither am I able to change what your husband wanted to do with part of his estate.”

  “We are not necessarily disputing what’s in the document, Mr Heyworth, in terms of the money,” Pamela said. “But, as Tish has just said, it seems almost impossible to believe. You’ll have to give us some time to digest what you’ve just said. It’s one thing to find out that my husband had a mistress but to have had a child… and not to tell us…”

  “I have a lot of sympathy for you Mrs Thorpe,” interrupted Peter Heyworth. “And I am so very sorry that you’ve had to find out about things in this way. I feared you might be unaware of these arrangements, and when I heard about Richard…”

  “To be clear Mr Heyworth, I was most certainly unaware of all of it,” Pamela snapped.

  “It may not help you to know this, but Richard told me how much he regretted the way he had gone about things,” continued Heyworth. “He knew full well that when the time came it would all be extremely awkward and difficult. But, aside from that, he did write a will and testament and I am legally required to execute it according to his, and only his, wishes.”

  Tish looked at her mother aghast. This revelation was in many ways much more difficult than trying to understand her father’s end. In death, they could find medical answers to what had happened. For this, the only person who could make any true sense of it and tell them the truth was dead.

  “Mum, I think we need some time to take all of this in,” Tish bristled, unable to stand the conversation any longer. “I mean there is no real response at the moment, other than total shock and disbelief that Dad had this stuff going on and decided it would be best if we found it all out from someone else.”

  Pamela looked across at her daughter and shook her head in disbelief. “Tish I am so very sorry to have brought you here today. I would never have suggested it if I’d had even had a slight inkling of what was going to be said. We really need to get home and return here once we’ve had time to chat about all this privately.”

  “I think that’s eminently sensible Mrs Thorpe. There is no rush from my perspective,” Peter Heyworth said, as he stood up from his large leather chair and walked them over to the door. “In these types of circumstances, you need to be able to absorb and reflect on what has just been said. When you are ready we can talk again.”

  “Yes, that’s by far the best thing to do,” Pamela replied, her voice softening slightly as he helped her put her coat on.

  “As the other joint executor, I feel it would be appropriate if I was the one to contact the child’s mother” added Heyworth. “She has to know about the will, along with the other beneficiaries, and I suspect she’ll have no idea that Richard has passed away.”

  On hearing the solicitor talk about her father’s mistress, Tish squirmed. She looked at Peter Heyworth and wondered how anyone could get paid for dishing out so much misery. Her father had given him far too much information and control, she thought as she watched him smile.

  “That would seem to make sense,” Pamela said after considerable hesitation. “But could I ask that she and the other beneficiaries are not contacted until a couple of days after the funeral as I couldn’t cope with this hugely personal matter becoming public until all the formalities are out of the way.”

  “You have my word on that,” Peter Heyworth said. “I don’t underestimate how difficult this must be for you both.”

  Chapter 8 - Digesting The Truth

  “At some point in this nightmare,” Tish muttered to her mother as soon as they’d got into Richard’s dark blue Range Rover, “I’m hoping we will wake up.”

  Pamela looked over at her daughter before she started the engine, her face crumpled as she held onto the steering wheel tightly. “I can’t fall apart in public Tish, but I’m not sure I can go home yet either in case someone pops around unexpectedly. I need some time to think about what Peter Heyworth has just told us before I start talking about it to anyone else.”

  “I agree. Mum I’m so sorry,” Tish said reaching over to hug her mother. “Simon is the only other person who can be in the loop until after the funeral. “

  “Agreed,” said Pamela, nodding with approval.

  “You out of all people don’t deserve this, especially after what we’ve been through over the last two weeks,” continued Tish. “I mean this has just hit us like a bolt of lightning. I’m not sure you’re going to be alright to drive after what we’ve just had to listen to. Shouldn’t we have a coffee before going anywhere?”

  “No, it’s better if we go somewhere else,” Pamela said. “If we stop here for a coffee we’ll meet people we know. I want to go to a place which is not home where we won’t be recognised. The coffee shop at Chartwell won’t be open yet, but I’d really like to go there for a walk in the grounds and then on out into the woods where the beautiful bluebells usually come out.”

  “Well if you want to, of course. I don’t mind where we go next.” Tish sighed shaking her head. “But only if you feel steady enough to drive?”

  “I’m fine. As soon as I pull out of Heyworth’s offices I’ll feel better,” Pamela said, edging the car backwards before driving it expertly out of the large iron gates of the solicitor’s office in the direction of Winston Churchill’s former country home.

  It was a crisp January morning. Early mists still hovered as a watery, winter sunshine peeped through the clouds, melting the hard frost covering skeletal hedgerows. Although the first flowers would soon come in the form of snowdrops and early lemon primroses, early signs of life had been stunted by the recent heavy snows.

  As they left the outskirts of the town and headed deep into the Kent countryside, Tish turned the radio down and was the first to speak, gently probing her mother on whether she’d had any idea her father had a child and a serious relationship with someone else in New York.

  Pamela kept her eyes firmly on the road ahead as Tish asked her the question and it was some moments before she answered. “Your father never told me about a mistress, and he certainly never told me he had fathered another child. If I’d known about either of those things I would have told you.”

  “But how on earth could he have kept such a huge secret from you and me?” Tish said burying her head in her hands. “The very idea that he expected us to find this out when he was dead just doesn’t add up. That is just not how the dad I knew operated. I mean he was a brave man. It’s incredible to think he did either of those things without saying a word.”

  Pamela’s face remained contorted in grief as she tried to find words to reply and make sense of what they’d just heard. “I don’t have the answers Tish, I just need to clear my head and think.”

  And so for the
next thirty minutes or more they drove in silence half listening to some forgettable chit-chat on Kent FM, periodically interrupted by unwanted traffic updates – mostly about congestion on the M25.

  When they finally arrived at Chartwell, Pamela drove the car slowly down an imposing icy driveway sandwiched between beautiful Kentish countryside despite being emaciated by the harsh winter.

  Breathing a huge sigh of relief as she switched off the engine, Pamela fell back against her seat. “I’m so relieved. It looks like we’re pretty much the only people here. Come on let’s get to the woods before anybody starts to arrive. I desperately need some country air and to be able to talk this through without other people listening.”

  “Ok,” Tish said. “Well I agree with that. We need to do something that involves exercise and exertion as I’m feeling angrier by the minute.”

  After putting on stylish waterproof hats, cashmere scarves and Hunter wellies, Tish and her mother walked quickly towards the wooden stile leading into ancient woodland which by May would be carpeted in a frenzy of bluebells. The frozen ground made it easier to walk underfoot.

  “So,” Tish said as they linked arms and picked up a decent pace. “What the hell has been going on? I mean is there anything that happened over the last few years that can help us unpick what’s we’ve just been told?”

  It was a simple question with a complex set of answers. What her mother told her certainly came as a surprise. And the gist of it was that Richard and Pamela Thorpe had never really been in love.

  When they’d first got married, Pamela told Tish, she hadn’t really known what she’d wanted. She had been a young and naive bride and had nothing to compare things with. Her only experience of marriage had been her parents, which had been traditional. Her strict disciplinarian father hadn’t helped. As a high-ranking officer in the army, he had disapproved of too much emotional analysis.

  Pamela had not wanted to share her initial disappointment in her marriage with her parents and had held onto the belief that things would change but, when they hadn’t, had decided it would be better to hang onto all the good things she enjoyed with Richard rather than to mess things up for Tish.

  “God, Mum,” Tish exclaimed utterly shocked by the fact it was most likely her fault that her parents had remained in a stale marriage. “I mean you hid all that very well. I can honestly say I didn’t have a clue that was how things were at home. It all seemed perfect, but you shouldn’t have sacrificed yourselves just for me."

  “Well the marriage may not have been perfect but it was by no means all bad,” Pamela replied slightly defensively, as they fought through thick undergrowth and stray brambles to get further into the woods. “And when you came along I didn’t want to break the family up. Your father never asked me for a divorce, and I never had a good enough reason to leave.”

  “But how could you have stayed?” Tish asked her mother, before frantically indicating they should take a sharp right turn to avoid an approaching passer-by with two fierce looking German Shepherd dogs.

  “Phew,” Pamela whispered as the dogs wandered off into the woods in a different direction. “I’m afraid I’ve totally lost the thread of what we were saying now.”

  “Well I haven’t,” Tish retorted defiantly. “I was asking why the hell you stuck with Dad if it wasn’t a real marriage. I get you partly did it out for me, but how could you put up with not being loved.”

  “Because,” Pamela said awkwardly. “I felt that if I left him no-one would want to take me on. It’s easier in some ways to tell you why I think your father clung onto the marriage. Looking back it was probably because he craved respectability and security. As he became more successful in his job, he travelled a lot. After you were born, I kind of finally accepted that this is how it was going to be.”

  “But you must have felt so lonely Mum, if Dad wasn’t always there for you how on earth did you put up with it? I mean it must be difficult to stay with someone when you loved them but they didn’t necessarily love you back the way you wanted them to,” Tish sighed.

  “I just did,” Pamela shrugged. “I can remember feeling like an exotic bird in a cage sometimes, whose role in life was to be looked at but not to be touched. People on the outside must have thought I didn’t have a care in world. On the outside I had all the trappings of wealth and a successful handsome husband, but inside I yearned to feel real all-encompassing love. Once, before I got pregnant, I actually packed my bags, but your father took them straight back upstairs and pleaded with me to stay.”

  “God it’s so heart breaking to hear you talk like this,” Tish cried out turning towards her mother. “You’ve suffered in silence all these years and now you’ve been publicly humiliated. How did Dad ever think this was ever going to be ok?”

  “In many ways it wasn’t his fault either,” Pamela replied, her face softening. “Your father had a habit of burying his head in the sand, working non-stop and not really talking about his feelings or problems.”

  “Don’t make excuses for him anymore because you don’t have to,” Tish said angrily. “I mean he may as well just put a knife through my heart the way I am feeling right now. He clearly didn’t care as much as he liked us to think he did.”

  “That’s absolutely not true,” Pamela almost shouted back at her daughter. “You were a much longed-for child. The look on your father’s face when you were born was one of pure love and joy. As soon as he saw your tiny face he fell in love with you, and his feelings never changed towards you over the years.”

  “Don’t,” Tish whispered as she fought back tears. “I can’t bear hearing you talk like this. I know he loved me and I also think he loved you, which makes all this so much more difficult to comprehend.”

  “Well,” Pamela said. “I had to make a choice all those years ago and I chose your father and decided to make the best of it. I lowered my expectations and concentrated on you and our future. I can hardly complain about it now. When all has been said and done, it’s not been a bad life, just different from the one I imagined.”

  “I want to ask you one last question if I may?” Tish asked gingerly. “And I totally understand if you don’t want to answer it, but did you ever suspect Dad had someone else in his life?”

  “When your father was alive…” Pamela started to say before pausing. “I tried not to think about that kind of thing. But underneath I probably suspected he had someone, but not anyone serious and I certainly never imagined that he had fathered another child. I mean, that would have been a betrayal too far.”

  “I always wondered why I’d never had a sister or brother, I guess I now know why,” Tish said deep in thought as she caught hold of a large white feather as it floated eerily in front of her.

  “Well you almost did,” Pamela said quietly. “Soon after you were born, I got pregnant again but miscarried very early on. After that, things changed between us and I gave up on ever having a second child.”

  “Oh God Mum, how awful for you,” Tish said as a grey squirrel rushed past them and scurried up the bark of a nearby tree. Tired from talking and saddened by thoughts that had negative memories for both of them, mother and daughter walked on for a few minutes in silence, the only sound being the swish of their wellies as they kicked their way through a mouldy pile of leaves.

  “Yes, but it was awful for both of us, not just me,” Pamela eventually replied. “Your father would have loved a son to play golf with and to have been able to go sailing with. He was absolutely devastated when he found out about the miscarriage and that the child I had been carrying was a boy. Things were never the same after that.”

  “Christ, Mum! Why didn’t you tell me any of this? We’ve been living a huge lie,” Tish said, kicking mercilessly at a decomposing acorn.

  “Tish, that is not entirely true,” Pamela pleaded shaking her head. “It’s not all been horrendous. Your dad and I had a hugely important shared bond with you and in the end it was easier to paper over some of the cracks than change things. In
many ways our lives together had become too difficult to unpick and unravel, and underneath I’m still not convinced that he really wanted to leave us.”

  As they had been talking, the January mists had fully lifted and the ancient woods had become perfectly still and bathed in a glorious seasonal glow.

  The magnificent landscape of the Weald of Kent that had once belonged to England’s most famous war leader – who must have walked through the same woods in times of turmoil – gave Tish strength and resolve.

  She’d never really been touched by nature before but, as they walked together in the winter sunlight that now shone brightly through the boughs of the tall wide oak trees high up above, Tish turned her face up towards the lemon coloured sun ascendant in the sky and allowed it’s rays to caress her face and sooth her pain.

  As they made their way back to the car park, Tish resolved that the recent news would not break them and that somehow they would find the strength to soldier on and build another kind of life for themselves.

  As she made this commitment, Tish turned to her mother and smiled. “I know we will be ok Mum,” she said. “If dad gave me one gift in life, it is the ability to fight and win. This won’t buckle me, and I’ll be strong for you. We just have to figure out what to do next. The Thorpes aren’t losers and I intend to work this all out for both of us, you just need to give me some time now.”

  Chapter 9 - Funeral Arrangements

  Even though it was only New Year’s Eve, the world had largely already woken up from its festive stupor and started surging forwards again, this time without Richard Thorpe in it. Funeral arrangements and practical necessities involved in burying the dead suddenly consumed Pamela and Tish’s every waking moment.