Eliza put her cutlery down and gripped her hands together on her lap underneath the table. It had been brewing inside her for days, this pressing need to put things straight at last. She could no longer live with this terrible guilt. She wanted to move on with her life. She could no longer deny her love for Leo. Even if he didn’t love her, surely she owed him the truth of her feelings. ‘Samantha…there’s something you need to know about that night…I know it will be hard for you to hear and I don’t blame you for thinking I’m just making it up to get out of this situation, but it’s my fault Ewan had the accident that night.’
The silence was long and painful.
‘I broke off our engagement,’ Eliza continued. ‘Ewan left my place so upset he should never have got behind the wheel of that car. I should never have let him leave like that. I’d bottled up my feelings for so long and then that night I just couldn’t hold it in any longer. I told him I didn’t love him any more. He was devastated.’ She choked back a sob. ‘I know you can’t possibly forgive me. I will never forgive myself. But I want to have a life now. I want to be with Leo and his little girl. I love him. I’m sorry if that upsets you or you think it’s selfish but I can’t live this lie any more. I feel so wicked to have accepted the love you’ve given so freely and so generously when all this time I’ve been lying to you.’
Samantha let out a deep uneven sigh. She suddenly looked much older than her years. She seemed to sag in the chair as if her bones had got tired of staying neatly aligned. ‘I suppose it’s only right that you lied to me.’
‘What do you mean?’
Samantha gave her a pained look. ‘I’ve been lying to you too for the last few years.’
‘I don’t understand…’ Eliza frowned in puzzlement. ‘What do you mean? How have you lied to me? I’m the one who covered up what happened that night. I should have told you at the hospital. I should have told you well before this.’
Samantha took a deep breath and released it in a jagged stream. ‘He told me.’
Eliza was still frowning in confusion. ‘Who told you what?’
‘Ewan.’ Samantha met her gaze levelly. ‘He told me you’d broken up with him.’
Eliza felt her heart slam against her ribcage as if it had hit a brick wall at high speed. ‘When did he tell you?’
Samantha’s throat moved up and down like a mouse moving under a rug. ‘I called him just a minute or two after he’d left your place.’ Her face crumpled. ‘I’m so sorry. I should’ve told you before now. I’ve been feeling so wretchedly guilty. It was my fault. I was on the phone to him just moments before he crashed into that tree.’ She gave a ragged sob and dropped her head into her hands. ‘He told me you’d ended your engagement. He was upset. I told him to pull himself together. I was furious with him for being so surprised by your ending things. I’d seen it coming for months. He was livid. I’d never heard him so angry. He hung up on me. It was my fault. I caused his accident.’
‘No.’ Eliza rushed over to wrap her arms around Samantha. ‘No, please don’t blame yourself.’
‘I knew you were unhappy,’ Samantha sobbed into her shoulder. ‘I knew it but I didn’t say anything to him or to you. I wanted it to all work out. I wanted you to be the daughter I’d always longed for. I wanted us to be a family. That’s all I wanted.’
Eliza closed her eyes as she held Samantha tightly in her arms. ‘You’re not to blame. You’re not in any way to blame. I’m still that daughter. I’ll always be that daughter and part of your family.’
Samantha pulled back to look at her. ‘There’s something else I want to confess.’
‘What is it?’
‘I’ve met someone.’ She blushed like a teenager confessing to her first crush. ‘He’s a doctor at the clinic I take Ewan to. He’s been wonderfully supportive. We’ve been on a few dates. That’s where I’ve been going the last couple of nights. It’s happened very quickly but we have such a lot in common. He has a daughter with cerebral palsy. I think he’s going to ask me to marry him. If he does, I’ve decided I’ll say yes.’
Eliza smiled with genuine happiness. ‘But that’s wonderful! You deserve to be happy.’
Samantha gave her a tremulous smile. ‘I’ve been so worried about telling you, but when I saw all that fuss in the press about you and Leo Valente, I started to wonder if it might finally be time for both of us to move on with our lives.’