Cecil shook his head. ‘Not biologically,’ he replied, trying to state the facts without letting the tearing of his heart interfere with the delivery. Grace’s eyes shone and she visibly shrunk back.
‘Then who is?’ she asked.
Cecil looked at Audrey. She lifted her head and cast it on one side, apologetically.
‘Louis,’ she replied in a small voice. ‘Your uncle Louis.’
Grace climbed slowly off the bed and walked over to the window in silence. She thought of her uncle and now understood his sadness. He had never loved Isla. He had loved her mother all along. She appreciated the tragedy of their affair immediately. Suddenly her mother’s dance of tears made sense. She understood her father’s drinking as a result of his unhappiness. Their frostiness as they had struggled to come to terms with their situation. Their mutual understanding as they had buried the past and resolved to move to England and make a new start. It was all suddenly very clear.
No wonder Louis and she were so alike. He’s my father, she thought in disbelief. He’s my father and he knows it. He’s known it all along. She sighed heavily and leant against the window pane. Audrey stood up and walked over to her husband. She took his outstretched hand and smiled at him through her tears. But neither spoke. They knew what the other was thinking. Cecil felt as if he had just given his daughter away and Audrey squeezed his hand, knowing how much that had cost him. They watched to see what Grace would do next. But she just stood by the window looking out. Thinking it over. Coming to terms with such a shocking revelation. But to her surprise, as much as she tried to feel something, she felt very little but surprise. It didn’t change anything. She was still standing in her parents’ bedroom where her father lay in bed dying.
She turned around and looked at her parents who hung suspended in a limbo, waiting with trepidation to see what would happen now they had let the demon out. Grace shook her head. Cecil caught his breath.
‘Louis isn’t my father,’ she said nonchalantly. ‘You’ll always be my Daddy. The fact that Louis is my biological father makes no difference to the last eighteen years. You raised me as your own daughter and loved me. I love you as my father. You’re all I’ve ever known. I don’t want another one. You’re the only father I’ll ever have.’
Audrey’s shoulders began to shake like they had done that day on the hill and Cecil smiled at his daughter in a way he had never smiled before. His face flushed with pride and gratitude and he held out his hand to her. With glistening eyes she took it and pressed her lips against it. ‘I love you, Daddy. I love you so much it fills me up inside like warm honey,’ she said and her voice croaked so that she couldn’t go on. They stared at each other with total understanding, for love is a bridge that can join even the two most dissimilar human beings. Then his eyes wandered past her and he smiled with recognition. Grace followed the line of his gaze and saw at once the watery forms of a woman and man who had come to take her father across to the other side. ‘Not yet, Daddy. There’s so much more I want to tell you,’ she sniffed. ‘Why is it that now I’m losing you I realize how much you mean to me?’ Audrey frowned at her, then looked down at the contented countenance of her dying husband. Grace watched in fascination and sorrow as her father’s spirit sat up in bed and moved into the outstretched arms of his mother and favourite Uncle Errol. He turned and grinned at her, understanding now as she did that the world of spirit awaited everyone. She wiped her face with her hand. ‘Bye, Daddy. We’ll meet again one day,’ she said softly and watched him fade into sunlight that now beamed in through the frosted window.
Grace’s legs were trembling so much she had to sit down. She saw the empty shell of her father lying on the bed and was almost surprised to see it there. Audrey sat stroking his hand, shaking her head in disbelief. ‘It was so fast. He was quite well this morning,’ she said, a frown now etched in deep lines on her troubled forehead.
‘He’s gone, Mummy.’ Grace sniffed and smiled at her mother. ‘Look at his face. Doesn’t he look happy?’
Audrey caressed his features with loving eyes. ‘I’ve never seen him look that happy, ever.’ She fixed her daughter with solicitous eyes. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry. As I said, my life hasn’t changed. You can’t alter the past, even with a revelation like that. So you loved Louis. That’s got nothing to do with me.’ She smiled again. ‘Let’s not tell the twins. No one needs to know but you, me and Louis.’