Free The Dark Shore by Susan Howatch Page A

explained that I couldn’t take you with me, as I would have no home and no one to help look after you, and you had to go to an English school? You remember how I promised to write, and how I made you promise you would answer my letters and tell me all you’d been doing?”
    The boy didn’t speak this time. He merely nodded.
    “Then why didn’t you write? You promised you would. I wrote you six letters including a birthday present, but I never had a word from you. Why was it, Justin? Was it because you resented me not taking you to Canada? I only did it for your own good. I would have come back to see you, but I got caught up in my business interests, so involved that it was hard even to get away for the odd weekend. But I wanted to see you and hear from you all the time, yet nothing ever came. In the end I stopped writing because I thought that in some strange way the letters must be hurting you, and at Christmas and on your birthday I merely sent over money to be paid into your trust fund at your grandmother’s bank ... What happened, Justin? Was it something to do with that last time at Clougy when—”
    “I have to go,” said the boy, and he was stammering, his composure shattered. “I—I’m sorry, but I must go. Please.” He was standing up, stumbling towards the swinging doors, not seeing nor caring where he went.
    The doors opened and swung in a flash of bright metal, and then Jon was alone once more in his hotel and the failure was a throbbing, aching pain across his heart.
    4
    It was eleven o’clock when Justin arrived back at Consett Mews. His grandmother, who was writing letters in the drawing room, looked up, startled by his abrupt entrance.
    “Justin—” He saw her expression change almost imperceptibly as she saw his face. “Darling, what’s happened? What did he say? Did he—” He stood still, looking at her. She stopped.
    “What happened,” he said, “to the letters my father sent me from Canada ten years ago?”
    He saw her blush, an ugly red stain beneath the careful make-up, and in a sudden sickening moment he thought, Its true. He did write. She lied to me all the time.
    “Letters?” she said. “From Canada?”
    “He wrote me six letters. And sent a birthday present.”
    “Is that what he said?” But it was only a halfhearted attempt at defense. She took a step towards him, making an impulsive gesture with her hands. “I only did it for your own good, darling. I thought it would only upset you to read letters from him when he had left you behind and gone to Canada without you.”
    “Did you read the letters?”
    “No,” she said at once. “No, I—”
    “You let six letters come to me from my father and you destroyed them to make me think he had forgotten me entirely?”
    “Justin, no, Justin, you don’t understand—”
    “You never had any letters from him so you didn’t want me to have letters from him either!”
    “No,” she said, “no, it wasn’t like that—”
    “You lied and deceived and cheated me year after year, day after day—”
    “It was for your own good, Justin, your own good ...”
    She sat down again as if he had exhausted all her strength, and suddenly she was old to him, a woman with a lined, tear-stained face and bent shoulders and trembling hands. “Your father cares nothing for anyone except himself,” he heard her whisper at last. “He takes people and uses them for his own ends, so that although you care for him your love is wasted because he never cares for you. I’ve been useful to him at various times, providing him with a home when he was young, looking after you when he was older—but he’s never cared. You’ll be useful to him now to help him with his business in Canada. Oh, don’t think I can’t guess why he wanted to see you! But he’ll never care for you yourself, only for your usefulness to him—”
    “You’re wrong,” said Justin. “He does care. You don’t understand.”
    “Understand! I understand all too