‘And you didn’t.’
He dropped his shoulders and let out a sigh. ‘Come on, Romany,’ he said. ‘Cut me some slack here, would you? It wasn’t my finest hour, okay. I didn’t try hard enough, and I should have done better. All I’m saying is that I had no concerns about you. I could see how much you were loved and cared for. I didn’t just turn my back. You were safe. Angie didn’t want me, not really. And so I went back to Newbury and got on with my life.’
He was trying, Romany could see that. He knew that he had made some bad choices and he was trying to paint himself in the best light possible, but he wasn’t being defensive in any way.
‘So how come you ended up in York?’ she asked.
‘We lost touch, Ange and me. The phone number I had for her was disconnected and I think you moved house. But I thought about you both, wondered how you were getting on.’
He met her gaze, and she could see in his face that he needed her to believe this.
‘Then a job came up in York. I wasn’t long out of catering college and there was nothing keeping me in Newbury, so I applied and then I moved up here.’
‘But you didn’t look us up?’
He shook his head. ‘I didn’t want to get in the way or spoil anything that Angie had going on with anyone else. But I looked out for you both when I was out, just in case I saw her or someone that might be you. I think I spotted you both on Parliament Street once, and I was going to say hello, but you looked so happy together, like a little unit. I lost my nerve.’
‘And did you know about Hope and me?’
He nodded. ‘That wasn’t hard to work out. Angie and Romany is hardly a common combination of names. When Hope told me what Angie had asked her to do it was fairly obvious why.’
‘And Hope?’
‘She knows too. I told her. How could I not? We’ve just been waiting for the right moment to tell you.’
‘But how did Mum know that you were in York?’ Romany asked. She was trying to link all the pieces together, but this bit was missing.
‘We think she saw me at Hope’s thirtieth party, but we don’t know for sure. That was the only thing we could think of that would connect all the dots.’
Romany sat and thought for a while as the café hummed around her. Her head was spinning with it all, but she could see that it did fit together.
‘Tiger recognised you, at Christmas,’ she said.
‘Yeah, I thought he might have done. I’ve been waiting for it to come to a head since then. But I wanted you to be in charge, Romany. It had to come from you. It was only when it looked like Tiger wasn’t going to say anything that I gave you a little nudge.’
Romany thought back to the journey home from the fashion shoot. It had been so subtle, his hint. She might easily have missed it.
‘And there you have it,’ he said. ‘The whole sorry tale. I imagine you’ll need some time now, to think it through, decide what you want to do. There’s no pressure from me, Romany. I can be as involved in your life as you like. Or not at all, if that’s what you choose.’
Romany scraped at the remains of the froth in the bottom of her glass with her spoon. She had no idea what she wanted to do, what her future might look like, whether he would be a part of it or not. But she liked him. He had been straight with her, she thought. Told her the truth. And that must count for something.
‘Okay,’ she said.
56
Romany hadn’t told Tiger that she was going to meet Daniel. She hadn’t wanted him to worry and she wasn’t sure she needed the inevitable questioning that would follow. But as she let herself back into the flat, she wished that she had done. She needed someone to talk it all through with, but she couldn’t be bothered with going back to the start, with what she had thought up until today. She just wanted to dive straight in with what had just happened without any preamble or explanation. But Tiger wasn’t great with anything emotional. He would just crack some corny joke or other.
Maybe Maggie would be a better choice of listener. Romany had always found her easy to talk to in the past and she generally said something sensible, even if it wasn’t what Romany wanted to hear. But Maggie was too close to her mum. She would judge Daniel for leaving them at the start and then staying away for all that time. And her anger at him for that action would skew her view. No, Maggie wasn’t the right person. And anyway, she thought, her mum had left Maggie in charge of all things legal. This wasn’t in her brief.