The Spanish Promise Read online

  ‘I don’t want it.’

  Charlotte stalled. ‘But I haven’t told you what it is yet.’

  ‘You don’t need to. I don’t want it.’

  ‘Señora, I don’t think you understand—’

  ‘I understand perfectly. I don’t want it.’ The old woman stared back at her with eyes as cold as a December dawn.

  ‘Abuela,’ Marina said, leaning in to her grandmother. ‘Let her finish, please. You must hear what she has to say.’

  ‘I do not need to, child. I already know what this is and I want nothing to do with it.’

  ‘But you don’t even know who it’s from.’

  ‘Yes I do.’ Señora Quincy closed her eyes. ‘I do.’

  Marina and Charlotte looked at each other. Charlotte bit her lip. She hadn’t expected this. It was one thing to refuse the offer, it was quite another to refuse to even hear it.

  ‘Perhaps I should give you and your grandmother some time alone?’ Charlotte suggested quietly.

  ‘My looks may have left me, but not my senses,’ the old woman said sharply, opening her eyes again. ‘I assure you, I can think for myself perfectly well.’

  Charlotte looked back at her, the slightly patronizing view she had taken of her upon entering now becoming clearer-eyed, more equal. ‘In which case, you will appreciate I am beholden to supply you with the full facts before I can accept your answer. You know the terms but not the offer, nor the identity of my client. Rest assured this is not a whimsical gesture; he has invested significant resources into tracking you down in order to make his proposal, and I must be satisfied you understand what is on the table before it is taken away.’

  ‘Grandmother, please,’ Marina implored her. ‘Just listen to what she has to say.’

  ‘No good will come of it, Marina.’

  ‘You’re wrong!’ Marina said forcefully, standing up now. ‘It could change everything for us! Look at how we struggle. I had to give up my car because the insurance went up. I can’t afford a new washing machine. I work two jobs. I’m exhausted all the time. I can’t remember the last time I put on a dress and went out. I’m forty-five but I feel eighty.’

  ‘I wish I did.’ It was a quip, a joke, but her granddaughter was near tears, her body tense with panic and resentment.

  ‘You owe it to me to hear her out,’ Marina said bitterly. ‘I could have signed it, you know. She came to me first; she didn’t know about you. I could have just taken all the money for myself and no one would ever have been able to take it away from me. I could have changed my life, like that.’ She clicked her fingers. ‘But I didn’t, because I love you. Because I had never met the man doing this so I knew it had to be you they were looking for.’ She crouched down by her grandmother’s knees, looking up at her through teary eyes, and the old woman instinctively reached out to cup her cheek, caressing her beautiful face. ‘I knew the money wouldn’t interest you. It never has. You’re happy here, you have your friends, all you need. But I thought there must be a reason why he is doing this. No one gives away ten million euros for no reason. I thought it must be important.’

  Charlotte saw how the old woman’s eyes narrowed at the figure. She looked . . . angry. ‘He thinks I can be bought.’

  ‘Señora Quincy, please listen to your granddaughter. I am not privy to the client’s reasons for doing this but you should perhaps know one pertinent detail: my client is dying,’ Charlotte said in a low voice. ‘Pancreatic cancer. He’s been given only a few weeks left to live.’

  Her words settled in the room like snow on the ground. Señora Quincy was quiet then for a long time, her crooked fingers absently stroking her granddaughter’s curved cheek as her eyes lifted off and stared into the distance, seeing into a forgotten past that had seemingly come roaring back into her life and now pulsed here in this very room. She rolled her lips into a thin line, her clear eyes watering slightly, the free hand in her lap pulling and releasing slowly in small fists.

  Finally though, she drew herself back to the present, looking first at Marina, then Charlotte. ‘Tell him I don’t want the money.’ Her granddaughter gasped but she held a hand up to silence her. ‘But if Arlo wishes to see me one last time, then I will see him.’ Her gaze was level and cool.

  Arlo? Charlotte hesitated. Was it a shortening of Carlos? It was just about close enough, and the old woman had come to that name completely unprompted. ‘Okay, I will pass that message back to him. But you should know, he suffered a stroke last week,’ she said gently. ‘He’s currently in hospital. He was unconscious but is now recovering fairly well, I understand.’

  Señora Quincy flinched at her words, nodding in understanding.

  ‘May I ask what he is to you?’ Charlotte asked quietly. ‘What is your connection to him?’

  At that, Marina Quincy hooked an almost hairless brow. ‘You mean to say you don’t know?’

  Charlotte shrugged. ‘We’ve jumped to one wrong conclusion already.’ Her eyes briefly met Marina’s. ‘I hesitate to guess again: a former friend? Boyfriend?’

  ‘More than that.’

  ‘Husband?’ Charlotte asked.

  She shook her head.

  ‘. . . Brother?’

  ‘More than that,’ the old woman repeated, just as Marina said at the same time, ‘My grandmother was an only child. Orphaned in the war.’ Marina gasped as she heard her grandmother’s contradictory reply.

  Charlotte saw the intense look simmering in those grey eyes; something was waking from deep within her. ‘I don’t understand: how can he be more than a brother?’

  ‘Oh, quite easily,’ the old woman said, fire in her eyes and a secret on her lips.

  Mateo’s white sneakered foot was already twitching anxiously by the time she rushed up the steps. He was dressed in his tennis whites, his signature glass of chilli-infused water beaded with condensation.

  ‘Charlotte, our third meeting in almost as many days. You have good news for me, I hope?’

  She shook his hand and tipped her head in a half-shrug. ‘I definitely have news.’

  ‘Did you make the offer?’ he asked impatiently.

  The waiter came over and without pause or ceremony she ordered a Pellegrino. She sat down on the rush seat, the pale-blue cushions a gentle complement to her shell-pink dress.

  ‘A lot has happened in the past twenty-four hours, so I’ll get to the point,’ she said directly. ‘We discovered last night that the Marina Quincy identified in the report was the wrong Marina Quincy.’

  ‘What?’ Mateo looked aghast. ‘No, absolutely not,’ he rebutted sharply. ‘Those researchers were working with information directly supplied from my father’s lawyers. They haven’t got this wrong.’

  ‘To the letter, no. But Miss Quincy is in fact named after her grandmother who, although she’s living in a care home, remains the legal owner of the apartment – even though it is her granddaughter who lives there now.’

  She paused, seeing how the consternation in his expression changed into confoundment. Two women with the same name, two generations apart, living at the same address? It was an unfortunate coincidence.

  She continued. ‘I met the older Marina Quincy this morning but I’m afraid she has point-blank refused to accept the offer.’

  ‘So then we’re negotiating?’ He scowled, a look of disgust deepening across his features.

  ‘No, she says she’s not interested in money. The only thing she has said she will do is see your father.’

  ‘What?’ he thundered, his composure slipping completely and sending a sparrow pecking at his feet, flying back into the bushes. He looked apoplectic. ‘That is precisely what we said she could not do. My father is dying. I will not have her coming into the heart of our family and spreading her poison—’

  ‘That’s the thing,’ Charlotte said gently. ‘She is family.’

  Mateo looked at her as though she’d started talking in tongues. ‘. . . Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said quietly, but his face had paled.

  ‘She
is your father’s twin. Younger by six minutes.’

  He shook his head, his mouth hanging open but no words coming out. ‘No. This is . . . this is a lie. My father had two brothers, both older, who died in the war. He never had a sister, much less a twin. Don’t you think we would know if he had?’

  Charlotte chose her words carefully. ‘Well, Marina Quincy apparently concealed his presence from her family too. They believed her to be an only child, orphaned in the war.’

  ‘There you go then! She’s a fraudster, a chancer!’

  ‘I don’t think so. She knew exactly who the client was – who was offering her money – before I had a chance to say your father’s name. In fact, I never did name him. She said it to me, unprompted.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes, although she called him Arlo. I assume that’s a shortening for Carlos?’

  ‘Yes, but not one that I’ve ever heard used for my father. In fact he’s always been very particular about it.’

  ‘Well, perhaps only she called him by that name? It reminds him of her?’ She shrugged, watching as he struggled to make sense of the barrage of information. ‘Either way, if they’ve both lied about their families and kept their pasts hidden, there has to be a very good reason for it. And with your father gravely ill, this begins to make sense of what he’s doing: it is increasingly looking like he’s reaching out to her, like this is his way of trying to make amends for something.’

  Mateo looked furious again. ‘Why should we assume he is to blame? If even any of this is true.’

  The waiter set down her drink but neither one of them acknowledged him, too deep in the conversation to notice.

  ‘Mateo, I’m not pointing a finger at anyone,’ she said calmly. ‘These are the only facts I have to hand at the moment and it goes without saying that we will investigate thoroughly and corroborate Señora Quincy’s story that she is his twin sister; we can also insist on a DNA test for absolute, genetic proof.’

  ‘Yes. I insist upon it. She could be anyone,’ he blustered.

  ‘Possibly. But it is strange that both of them have concealed the other’s identities from their own families, don’t you think? Clearly, there’s something that links them. But your father is the one who has instigated contact, not her, and she appears to have gone to very great lengths to remain hidden from him: if Marina’s granddaughter has grown up believing her grandmother was an only child with no other family, then it follows that her father – Señora Quincy’s son – thinks the same too; this would suggest that whatever happened between her and your father at the very least occurred when her son was very young, or it even pre-dated his birth.’

  Mateo shook his head, denying her words and the implicit blame within them. ‘You’re telling me that this woman kept her past a secret from two generations of her family? As far as I’m concerned, that tells us all we need to know about her: she is a convincing liar.’ It was said as a statement of fact. An utter condemnation of her character.

  ‘With all due respect, your father lied in keeping her a secret from you all too. You had no idea he was a twin either.’

  Mateo Mendoza’s eyes flashed with anger at the assertion but he had no reply to it. He looked at her with hard eyes instead. ‘So then, what does she want exactly? Why does she want to see him? What does she expect to get out of it? More money?’

  ‘I doubt it; she seemed wholly uninterested in the financial offer. My guess is that she’s after closure of some sort. An apology?’

  ‘I’ve just said, my father—’

  ‘I know,’ she interrupted, not wanting to hear another defence of his father. ‘But clearly none of us possess the full facts at the moment. We don’t know what’s gone on between them, only that they’ve both hidden each other from their own families for a very long time.’

  He was quiet for a moment, his eyes on the horizon as he took a long sip of his drink. He was thinking, calculating, considering . . . ‘How did she strike you?’

  ‘Well, I spoke with her at length just now and she appears to be in fine health for a woman of her age, although clearly she tires easily and is physically frail.’

  ‘How about mentally?’

  ‘According to her granddaughter, she is not suffering from any mental deterioration, if that’s what you mean. She’s in the home for physical assistance, nothing more.’

  Mateo’s face crumpled into a frown, his head dropping forward as though his neck could no longer support the weight of it. ‘None of this makes any sense. For the past week I have been going over and over it: who is this woman? Why is he so fixated upon her, above and beyond us? And now we learn she’s his twin?’ He sighed, looking exhausted and embattled. ‘That makes no sense either; even less than before. If she is his blood, why gift her the estate? Legally, she’s already entitled to a fixed share when he dies. Technically, she should already have a share, after their parents, my grandparents, died.’ He looked at her, baffled.

  Charlotte shrugged. ‘From the financial profile the researchers worked up, the apartment is her only asset – but it’s very meagre. If she does already have a fixed share in the estate, it doesn’t look like she’s ever accessed it. Could there be a hidden fund or a trust? Another bank account perhaps that’s been dormant . . . ?’

  ‘There’s never been any mention of one, but then why would we look for someone we didn’t know existed?’ he muttered. ‘I’ll get Milton and the lawyers to look into it.’

  ‘Or perhaps your father has already done that and that’s why he’s giving her the gift? Perhaps he knows she won’t touch the family estate otherwise? For some reason, she didn’t want it then and she doesn’t want it now . . . Do you know if he was going to make the donation anonymously?’

  He shrugged disconsolately. ‘I know nothing about any of it. He never discussed it with me.’

  ‘Well, it would have been tokenism anyway,’ Charlotte mused. ‘Marina would surely have guessed where the money came from if several hundred million euros suddenly turned up in her account one day.’ She bit her lip. ‘Maybe he’s tried giving her her share before and she’s refused . . . ? Perhaps he thinks that by giving her the money on his deathbed, she won’t be able to return it?’

  ‘Why should he have to try so hard? It makes no sense,’ he cried, the exasperation bursting through again as they went round in circles, seemingly never getting closer to the point. ‘Are we really supposed to accept that this woman turned her back on her family and left them far behind – not just the estate and her share of it, but the people: her brothers, my father, her parents? What kind of woman could do such a thing? And then, not only did she hide herself from them, but she perpetuated the lie throughout her own family’s lifetimes?’

  ‘I agree it’s baffling. It suggests that whatever happened between them must have been devastating.’

  They were both quiet for a long time, the word sitting between them like a bomb. ‘Devastating’ covered a lot of ground.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked finally.

  He was quiet for a moment, trying to control himself, control the situation. ‘Well clearly the financial offer is now redundant. If she’s truly a Mendoza, then legally she is already a rich woman, whether she chooses to spend it or not. No, money has no weight here any more.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘What is vital now is that we discover what happened between her and my father to make her abandon her family. And why my father is so desperate to bring her back again.’

  Charlotte agreed. ‘He’s certainly gone to a lot of trouble trying to track her down. It strikes me that reconciliation, even forgiveness, is what he needs before he dies.’

  ‘Reconciliation? . . . Hmm.’ His eyes slid sidelong to her. ‘How is Professor Marling getting on?’

  In an instant, her world flipped, landing belly up. The very mention of him was enough to floor her. ‘Um . . .’

  ‘Because he had better be as good as his CV suggests. You might have brought him in initially for some background context,
but things have changed. Everything now hinges on knowing exactly what happened, when and why. He needs to be thorough and he needs to be fast.’

  ‘He won’t let you down. He’s meticulous.’

  ‘You said you two knew each other?’

  ‘That’s right. We were briefly at Cambridge together.’

  ‘Cambridge?’ he frowned. ‘I thought he said Oxford.’

  Charlotte was impressed he’d picked it up; he clearly had an eye for details. ‘Yes, he – uh, transferred, for his final year,’ she said stiffly.

  ‘Oh. Well he must have had his reasons. We’ll have to put ourselves in the hands of the professor and hope he can find an explanation for why my father’s doing what he’s doing. God knows, we all need resolution now before he passes.’

  ‘Well, I don’t doubt he’ll do an excellent job for you. And if I can do anything further down the line, either for you or the two Marinas, don’t hesitate to let me know.’

  Mateo frowned. ‘That sounds like you’re leaving.’

  She looked back at him in surprise. ‘What more is there for me to do? My role was to get close to Marina and find out what she knew and, if necessary, to manage her financial expectations.’ She shrugged. ‘That she’s family means that’s all a moot point now. She has certain legal rights; your lawyers will take over from here.’

  ‘On the contrary, you are still very much needed, Charlotte,’ Mateo said, shaking his head at her. ‘I’m sorry but if she and my father are to be reunited after almost a lifetime apart, then that will take a certain amount of managing and you alone are the bridge between the two sides. You are best placed, I feel, to help our newcomers adapt to the new life in which they are going to find themselves. I need you to be at La Ventilla for the reunion.’

  ‘La Ventilla? That’s your estate in Andalusia.’ She felt her stomach dip again. Telling Stephen and her mother she was coming out to Madrid had been tricky enough. Now the country pile?

  ‘Precisely. The doctor has said my father can be discharged in the next few days, and he is keen to go home. Clearly he is not well enough to travel any distance so we must bring my aunt to him. If you and she are correct and reunion was what he really wanted all along, then we must honour my father’s wishes.’