Free Brother and Sister by Joanna Trollope

yourself?"
    He stood up. He nodded.
    "David," Marnie said, "could you just look at the positive? Could you just consider your upbringing and your present life
     and family situation? Could you just reflect on the fact that whatever the circumstances and tragedies of your early life
     I chose to stay in England and marry you and have your children? I chose that."
    He looked down at her. There was a pause and then he bent towards her and said fiercely, "I was only chosen by you after I
     was rejected by her. "
    Marnie looked back.
    "Her?"
    "Yes," David said. " Her. "
    "Not—not Nathalie?"
    "No."
    Marnie swallowed. "You mean your birth mother."
    "Yes," David said with emphasis.
    Marnie turned her face away. She put up one hand and held the end of her plait.
    "We seem—to be in real deep here—"
    David said nothing.
    Marnie said, "Nathalie's—kind of ripped the wounds open, hasn't she, even if she didn't mean to—"
    "She asked me to go with her."
    "Go where?"
    "On this journey. To find—to find our mothers."
    Marnie let her plait go and sat bolt upright.
    "She asked you to find your mother too?"
    "Yes."
    "Anything else I should know?"
    "No!" David shouted. He closed his eyes and turned his face to the ceiling.
    "And will you?"
    "No!" David shouted again.
    Marnie waited a moment and then she said, "Why not?"
    "Because I don't want to! I don't need to! I don't want to have anything to do with her, ever. "
    "Look at me," Marnie said.
    Slowly David bent his head forward until his gaze rested on Marnie. She was sitting straight-backed with her hands flat on
     the table. Her hands were ringless. She had never worn rings, not even a wedding ring. "Why?" she'd said. "Why does a ring
     make us any more married?"
    "What," he said now.
    "Listen—"
    "Look," he said, interrupting, "I don't want any half-baked claptrap off the Internet—"
    She ignored him.
    "Nathalie decides, for reasons we don't know, or maybe understand, that she wants to find her mother. She tells you. She has
     never given you any reason previously for wishing to do this, so it's a shock for you. But it's more than that. It's unhinging
     something in you, it's digging up something from the past you thought you'd buried, maybe even buried with Nathalie's help.
     It seems to me there's only one solution." She stopped and brought her hands together, as if to prevent them from gesturing
     and thus making the whole situation more emotional than it already was.
    Then she said, "You have to agree."
    "I have agreed," David said. "I've told her I'll help with Mum."
    "No."
    She looked steadily at him, and he had a clutch of recollection, a memory of those children in the nursery school who were
     going to do what Marnie told them to do because, in the end, she knew what was best for them.
    "No," he said again. His voice sounded far away and thin.
    "Nathalie's right," Marnie said. "If she's going to look for her mother, you have to look for yours, too—"
    "Marnie—"
    "You do," she said. "Or you'll never be at peace again. Not now."

CHAPTER FIVE
    T he upstairs sitting room of the Royal Oak had been decorated by Evelyn Ross to provide a distinct contrast to the public
     rooms below. The Royal Oak—apart from the improbably green tree on its signboard—had apparently always been painted black
     and dark red, with gold lettering, and nothing would shift Ray Ross from the conviction that this was somehow a historic tradition
     that it was his duty to uphold. When he had first become the licensee, all those years ago, Evelyn had begged for at least
     cream instead of black, or even, inside, some color for the window frames and doors less profoundly redolent of beer than
     the chipped tan they had always been, and had been met with complete resistance. The pub would be repainted every ten years,
     Ray said, in the livery it had always worn, and if she wanted to display her artistic flair she could do it in the areas well
     away from the dignity of his business.
    "This isn't a