‘Mrs Walden there is someone is here to see you.’ Celeste, the maid, informs Josephine who has been in her library avoiding the world outside of it and reminiscing on old times.
Emerson stands in the doorway and Josephine’s face dawns with knowing. ‘Aunty Josephine, we need to talk.’ Aunty Josephine not aunty Jojo like they called her growing up. He steps in and shuts the door behind him before the maid can do so. He takes the seat he is not invited to take, opposite the woman he’d known to be his mother best friend, and something of an aunt to him growing up. To him and his sister. His father did say to talk to her, well he is here to talk to her, and she is going to tell him everything. He knows half the story from Tristan now he wants the whole truth from her.
‘Emerson-’
‘My sister is all things good and kind, she would move heaven and earth for those she loves. She has never hurt anyone. She’s worked hard all her life; she’s done everything she was told to do. Her wild wings were curtailed by mum and you were always in the shadows. I see it now, but I don’t know everything so please tell me what you know. What happened to my sister?’
Josephine sighs heavily, the weight of the world in that sigh. She could stay silent, take it to the grave this secret of theirs or she could do what her friend would want her to. Tell the truth.
‘Would you like something to drink?’
‘I would, actually. Scotch if you have it.’
Josephine fixes herself and Emerson a drink, the boy she raised now a man avenging his sister. She denied him a true relationship with her and for what? To hide their secret; she and Evelyn’s and she will do so no more. She hands Emerson his glass and she resumes her position opposite him. A sip of the finest Scottish whiskey from St Margaret’s Hope because she will need all the hope she for this moment.
‘Your mother and I were lovers.’ She begins, and if Emerson is shocked to hear that, which she can tell he is, he appoints a measure of control so steely she is ashamed for underestimating him. ‘We loved each other fiercely and in secret until my husband caught us in the act one day. You see, the Waldens never really cared for me, I was a girl from a poor Caribbean Island who lost her family to tragedy and then got knocked up with their son’s child and so they branded me a gold-digger. I was not the one they wanted for Tristan, but I was the one they were saddled with. Mother of his child, his only child because Elspeth, rest her soul, could not give him one that would see me off and present them as the definitive Lord and Lady Walden. Elspeth was his betrothed until our unfortunate dalliance. Whilst they were busy plotting to get rid of me, my best friend and I grew closer and what we had, became more than just friendship.’ She takes another gulp of more liquid courage.
‘We loved each other but back then it was a taboo for us to even think about being together so when Tristan walked in on us, literally walked in on us in bed, we broke it off. It was hard, living in this house with a husband who held that one thing that could destroy my life, in his hands. He threatened to take away my son if I stood in his way with Elspeth, he’d been uncertain he was going to marry her, until that moment he walked in on Evelyn and me in bed together. It made it crystal clear to him; he was going to marry her, take my son away and destroy me in the press because he could. I stayed. Your mother begged me to come with her, she was willing to walk away from your father, but I stayed, for my son. We remained friends and found ways to be lovers. One day we were in bed together at a hotel because we’d been forbidden by my husband from seeing each other, so we found ways around it. We were in Paris at the time, and we came up with a plan to keep us together, we had an agreement between us that if we could not be together, then our children should live that love for us and that way we would be forever bonded. It was ridiculous now I think on it, but at the time, the love we had was simply too great a thing to lose. But it was more than that, she knew Tristan’s secret, knew what it would mean for me to have him marry your sister. She saw the way the Waldens treated me so the plan was a win, win. So, Ife was to marry Tristan and in that way we would be together, ever bonded as family but also his secret was safe. Tristan, my husband, carried on with Elspeth which was known in our circles, I lived in hope of this alliance with your mother because our love was so dear to me, it killed me to lose her and it was the only thing keeping me alive back then, knowing that my son was safe from the vitriol of his grandparents. I didn’t think Ife would mind, you all grew up together, so it was only a matter of the heart and you were all so fond of each other. We pushed them together. Your mother turned the screws by threatening her with everything including disinheritance. Back then parents held the strings and so she did what she was told; married a man she had no affection for other than friendship. She rebelled, went away when she was pregnant, denied us any relationship with the children other than was necessary, and I don’t blame her for any of it.’ She takes a large gulp of her drink, ‘the rest you know from Tristan.’
Silence. Deafening silence engulfs the pretty space between them. His sister was simply a pun in this game and if he wasn’t so busy with his head in the sand, he would have seen this, he would have done something to protect her. But what would he have done?
‘How could you do that to her?’ Emerson asks after a time. ‘How could you hurt her so. How could you deny her a life, love? How could you destroy the relationship she had with her father? You didn’t even give her a chance to have one with him. How could you do that to her? Ife is a good person. A better person than we deserve. How could you hurt her?’
‘I am so sorry. I know that means nothing, but Emerson I am so sorry for everything. We are so sorry.’ Evelyn would be too.
‘You’re right it doesn’t, but my mother isn’t here, like the coward she was, she left you to take the blame and died without ever coming clean and now you have to live with that, which I suppose is your punishment but that is not for me to determine. You better hope we find my sister safe and well.’
Josephine did not move from where she sat, the numbness had settled in to corrode the heartbreak, from so many things from the losses and the hurt.