Linda stood, staring at the floor, before slowly lifting her head to turn twenty-five years of resentment on the man who was the father of her child. The man who had left her for another woman. It was a look filled with both hatred and self-pity. Still a young woman, she had sworn when he left that she would never be with another man. She said now, ‘You took the best years of my life.’
Enzo shook his head. ‘I gave you the best years of your life, Linda. You squandered the rest yourself.’
Something in her eyes told him she knew that she had sacrificed herself on the altar of her own martyrdom. A sacrifice made, not for love of Enzo, but as a means of punishing him by punishing herself. And he could feel nothing but pity for her. For now he had taken her daughter, too.
She held Kirsty in a long look of pained regret, before turning slowly away and walking out into the hall.
When the outside door closed behind her, Enzo and Kirsty stood listening to the silence. Even the pianist had given up.
Finally, she turned to look at him, eyes brimming, and in two short steps she had thrown her arms around him, burying her face in his chest, sobbing like a baby. He drew her to him and held her close and ran a hand through her soft, long, silky hair, just as he had done when she was a child.
When, eventually, she found her voice she said, ‘It never made any difference to me, Dad, thinking that Simon was my blood father. I always knew I was my daddy’s girl.’
‘And you always will be,’ he said, and wondered if he would ever have the strength to let her go.