Eternal Hearts (Incurable Hearts 2)

  “Yeah, we would have saved you if you embarrassed yourself” Alex joined in.

  They were acting like I was about to marry this woman and that most definitely wasn’t going to happen. So far, I liked her company but this was for the last two hours, who the hell knew what would happen after tonight? I stood and took their jokes for what felt like an eternity when I heard the doorbell. I wasn’t expecting anyone else and it was getting late.

  “Don’t tell me you have called in for a booty call hoping we would have left by now” Jase called after me.

  I was nearly to the door when the doorbell rang again, I quickened my step and opened the door.

  What the fuck? I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

  Standing on my porch was a girl of sixteen, maybe seventeen years of age and she looked the spitting image of my Jas. A thousand images of Jasmine and a thousand explanations of who the hell this girl could be ran through my mind in under ten seconds. Surely I looked like I was going to be sick because I sure felt like I was. It would be a start to ask her name but I couldn’t speak, I could only see Jasmine’s face but this girls eyes were blue. I could see Jasmine’s long, dark hair falling around Jasmine’s bone structure. She is waiting for me to say something, looking at me from head to toe, as much as I was scrutinising her, she was doing the same to me.

  Why isn’t she saying anything, she must know why she turned up here? I wanted to ask her so much, why is she here at this time of night and why does she look so much like Jasmine?

  The taxi man honking his horn and yelling for this girl to hurry up out of his window snapped us both back to reality. She turned around and told him to wait, when she looked back at me she found her voice.

  “Do you have any cash as I’m short paying him?” she asked.

  That definitely woke me out of silence.

  “I’m sorry but we are in the middle of nowhere, are you sure you’re in the right place?”

  She still hadn’t introduced herself, I had no clue who she is and here she is acting like I’m going to invite her in and pay her taxi fare.

  “Are you Christopher Jenson?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “And you were married to Jasmine Collins?”

  Who the hell is this girl? I could only nod my head again.

  “Then yes, I’m in the right place so if you could help me with him,” she said, pointing to the impatiently waiting taxi driver and also reminding me of how Jasmine would sometimes talk to people when she wanted something done, “I’ll explain everything” she said more softly.

  I didn’t have any cash on me, I told her to wait and walked back to the kitchen.

  “No booty call then?” Jase joked, until he saw my face.

  “What is going on Chris?” my mum asked looking at me.

  “Who has any cash on them?” I asked looking at everybody.

  “How much do you need?” Henry asked.

  Shit, I should have asked her how much she needed.

  “Erm, sort us out a score, if you have it on you” I said looking back to the door, the girl was still standing there looking up at the house.

  I closed my eyes and tried to clear my head, tonight had turned into one of my nightmares.

  “Chris, what do you need money for?” my mum asked, wanting to know what is going on, my silence probably made it worse but I didn’t know what to say.

  “To pay the taxi fare”

  “Who for?”

  “Me”

  We all turned at the same time to see the girl standing in the kitchen doorway, clutching her small bag.

  I slowly looked around my family and I was glad to see I wasn’t the only one reacting like they had seen a ghost of my dead wife. I also clocked Henry and Rose share a secret were-not-so-shocked look before looking back at the girl standing before us.

  “I was just seeing what was taking so long as he is getting really impatient out there,” she spoke looking straight at me then at everyone else. She definitely isn’t shy.

  “I forgot to ask how much you needed,” I said.

  “Seventeen pounds, don’t worry I’ll pay you back, apparently I’m a millionaire now, I can afford it” she said, dripping with sarcasm and so much like Jas.

  It wasn’t just me, my family were quietly trying to figure out who she is and why we all feel like we know her?

  Henry passed me and walked out to pay the taxi driver himself leaving us standing in the kitchen awkwardly all looking at one another.

  “Hi, I’m Fiona Robinson, what is your name?” my mum asked, stepping closer to the girl. The girl pulled out a piece of paper from her bag before answering.

  “But, your name was Fiona Jenson?” she asked, confused.

  We all looked at one another, how did she know this information when we didn’t know her?

  “Yes, I got married eleven months ago” my mum answered, carefully.

  “Robinson? You got married to Henry then?” she said.

  Okay, this is freaking me out and I wasn’t the only one.

  “What is your name?” my mum asked, again.

  “Ava, Ava Collins-Reed”

  Did she say Collins? As in Jasmine Collins, my wife? She looks like Jas and she has her surname, although it is hyphenated with Reed. I’m hoping for a massive coincidence here but the feeling I have as to why she was here, wasn’t letting me believe in coincidences tonight.

  “Why are you here?” I asked a bit too sharply.

  My mum shot me a look telling me to shut up. All the alcohol I had consumed tonight had worn off, I felt sober as a nun.

  “Why don’t we go and sit in the living room?” she said to us all.

  She led this Ava Collins-Reed with her and I followed with Henry, Rose and Alex. Nat said she would stay with the kids and Jase made no effort to move. He looked at me sympathetically as if he knew something I didn’t. I shrugged it off and left the kitchen.

  Mum sat on the sofa with Ava, Henry and Rose took a chair each and Alex and I stood. What she had to say I already knew I wasn’t going to like, I couldn’t look at her with how much she looked like my Jas.

  “I’m sorry I have crashed your party” Ava said, talking to my mum.

  “Don’t worry about that. You know about us and we know nothing about you. You say your name is Collins and I don’t want to freak you out but you look very much like someone we used to know” mum told her.

  “I know, I can explain everything. I don’t want you to think I am lying because I am only going by everything I have learnt over the last couple of months,” she said.

  “Why would we think you are a liar?” Rose asked her.

  “Everyone always does” she said quietly, “Like I told you my name is Ava Collins-Reed. My biological mother was called Jasmine Collins, she gave me up for adoption when I was born”

  I stood up straighter and really started to listen to the girl, Jasmine did not have a baby! She would have told me! I moved and leant on the back of the sofa, I was about to say something, probably not very nice when Henry spoke up.

  “How did you find this out?” He asked her, leaning forward in his chair.

  He knew something, I was sure of it.

  “When I turned sixteen this lawyer made contact with me, he travelled to London and gave me a letter she had wrote to me, some other bits of hers and told me I have inherited a large amount of money” she told him.

  “What was his name?” he carried on with his questions.

  “Mr Jones, his office is here in Cambridge”

  She couldn’t be lying, she knew too much. I caught something glittering on her wrist as she was nervously fidgeting with her sleeve. It was the bracelet I got for Jas for Christmas. I would ask her at some point if that was one of the bits she got from Mr Jones but for now I let Henry carry on.

  “So he told you Jasmine died in 2010?”

  “Yes, she tells me herself in her letter about her illness and how she knew she was going to die”

  So I wasn’t
the only one who got a letter from the grave then. All of the conversations Jas and I had, she never once mentioned or even hinted at having a child, her body definitely showed no signs of having been through a pregnancy. And then, like the easiest math problem running through my head, I worked it out, she would have been nearly thirty-three years old now so she had Ava just after leaving the estate, she left the estate because of what Leigh tried to do to her. Jas had lied to me again, he didn’t try, and now I had the product of rape sitting in living room. Why didn’t she tell me? I looked at Alex and saw he was already looking at me. I felt sick.

  I needed to know if she had told her the father’s name, if Jas didn’t tell me about it then hopefully she wouldn’t have told this girl how her dad is a sick pervert?

  “Did Jasmine tell you in the letter your father’s name?” I asked, looking at her properly for the first time since opening the door. She looked me in the eye and I could see she was worried about telling me.

  “She tells me, you are,” she said, as confidently as she could.

  She took my breath away with her reply, those were not the words I thought I would hear.

  “That can’t be right, she is lying” Alex said, coming to stand beside me.

  “I told you, I don’t lie” Ava repeated sternly.

  “Not you, Jas is lying” he said to Ava, “You would know if you got her pregnant” he said to me.

  How would I have known? I didn’t talk to Jas after we slept together the once and she left the estate shortly after.

  “Sit down Alex” mum told him.

  I couldn’t find any words to say, trying to think back all those years ago to see if there was anything I saw but did not put together or even when we were together but there wasn’t. She didn’t let on about nothing. She was always good at that though, hiding things away she didn’t want you to know.

  “What does it say in your letter?” my mum asked, keeping the interrogation going.

  “Here, I can show you” she said pulling an envelope out of her bag, she handed it to my mum and then looked at me.

  I broke eye contact with her and watched my mum read this letter from Jas, as her face got whiter and whiter, I knew she was telling the truth.

  “According to Jasmine, she is your daughter” she said, passing the letter to me. I snatched it away and passed it to Alex for him to read. If my mum said Jas was telling the truth then I believed her too.

  “Read it,” I told him.

  I kept looking at my…daughter, looking at her sitting there looking back at me. A sixteen-year-old girl and she is my daughter. All these years I wasn’t interested in having children and then I meet Jas again and I started to dream of having a family with her, it turns out we could have had one for the past sixteen fucking years.

  Ava was waiting for me to say something, I was scared of saying the wrong thing, and this being the first time we meet I didn’t want to mess it up by being a dick.

  “Just because she writes you’re her dad doesn’t mean you are, you should get a test done to be sure,” Alex said, finishing reading the letter.

  “Jas had no reason to lie son, she wasn’t like that” mum said, defending her.

  “She lied to you about her illness” he said, still disbelieving.

  “She didn’t lie, she just didn’t tell me at first” I contradicted him.

  “It was the same thing and you know it,” he snapped back at me.

  “Why are you being like this? You knew her, you liked her!” I said, trying to figure out where this attitude towards her was coming from.

  “I did like her but I am only saying you can’t trust this girl is your daughter just because…” Alex began to get louder as he spoke, he stopped when I began to step towards him. Henry came and stood between us, Alex and I haven’t argued in a very long time but if he kept this up then I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from doing something I would later regret.

  “Stop this, Jasmine wouldn’t lie about this but it would be prudent to know for sure” he said.

  “That is what I was trying to say. No offence Ava but my brother needs to be sure you are his daughter” he said, more calmly.

  I quickly looked at her, she didn’t look like she had took offence but she did look like she wished she had kept her mouth shut.

  I couldn’t think properly and Alex wasn’t making it any easier, he was the same when Jas told me she was dying but back then he made sure I knew what I was doing and then he left me be, even though he didn’t agree with my choice, but tonight he was different. He would talk to me for sure when we were alone. Right now, I couldn’t think straight and Alex being here wasn’t helping the situation, fuck, I didn’t even understand the situation myself. I kept hold of the letter Jas wrote her, I didn’t want to read it in front of everyone. It was still hard reading the letter she wrote to me and this was new material so to speak from her and it was about our supposed daughter together.

  “You should leave,” I told Alex, “Actually, everyone should” I finished looking at no one in particular. Nobody moved apart from Ava.

  “I am sorry, I shouldn’t have come,” she said, holding her hand out for the letter back. This is crazy, according to my dead wife’s letter to this girl I am her father. I always thought Jas never lied to me but if what she says is true then it means she did lie to me when she didn’t tell about our daughter.

  “Read it first son” my mum said as I went to pass it back to Ava.

  If what I was about to read is true, I couldn’t ask her to leave, she didn’t have enough money to pay her fare here let alone get herself back to wherever it is she is staying.

  “Okay” I breathed out slowly, “Can everyone apart from Ava and mum leave.” I asked, after all if she is my daughter then she is my mum’s granddaughter.

  “Don’t be taken in by anything bro, you don’t know anything about her,” he said eyeing on her up on his way out.

  Rose left quietly smiling at Ava and gently squeezing my shoulder as she passed. As Henry went to leave I realised I wanted him to stay, he knew more about Jas then anyone even me and plus I still needed to ask him about the look he shared with Rose when Ava first walked in.

  “You can stay Henry,” I said, finally sitting on the chair.

  Jas had been gone for three years and she could still shock me into losing the feeling in my legs. Everyone sat back down, I hated awkward conversations and looking back over my life, and all the conversations I didn’t want to participate in involved Jasmine.

  “I’m not saying I don’t believe you, but my brother is right, we will need to get a test done,” I told her.

  “I know, like I said, I only found this out a while ago and I’m only going by what she told me in her letter” she replied.

  “I can’t imagine how hard it was for you to come here” mum said looking at her with sadness in her eyes.

  “To be honest, I wasn’t worried about what would happen, I just had to know I tried” she said.

  I was beginning to feel guilty, now that I was looking at her, I noticed she had the same sad tint around her that Jas always had. I wanted to ask her loads of questions, even if turns out she is not my daughter, she is still Jas’s.

  “Where are you staying Ava?” mum asked her.

  “At a hotel in the city before I go back to London” she replied.

  Again, so much like Jas, she could also speak with my mum easily. I didn’t like the thought of her staying on her own, she was only sixteen.

  “Where in London do you live?” I asked her. She sounded like she lived there a while.

  “Greenwich”

  “Is that where your parents live?” my mother asked her.

  “No, they died when I was five, I live with my aunt and two cousins”

  “Oh, I am sorry to hear that”

  Before I heard any more about this girl’s life I had to read this letter, see what Jas had to say to her. I couldn’t read it here with an audience though.

  “I am goi
ng to read this letter, I’ll be back in a minute” I told them on my way out of the room. I made my way upstairs and locked myself in my bedroom. I sat on the edge of the bed and took a deep breath.

  Dearest Ava,

  Now you’re reading this, you’re old enough to hopefully understand. The day you were born was the hardest day of my life. My decision to give you up for adoption was the only option I had for you to have a normal, decent upbringing with everything I thought at the time I couldn’t give you.

  I was assured the family you were going to were a good, stable, hardworking family who would love and look after you like you deserved.

  I don’t want to flood you with lame excuses but I know with all my heart that if I were in a better place when you were born I would have kept you in my arms forever. From the moment the nurses took you away I prayed for the day when we would see each other again.

  Unfortunately that will never happen now, as I found out last year I have an incurable brain tumour. I am writing you this letter with not much of my life left because my hopes of seeing you again will never happen. I hoped I would be able to personally give you the answers to the questions I’m sure you have.

  My name is Jasmine Elizabeth Collins. Jasmine Enterprises is my creation and when you are old enough, you will have a ten per cent claim to it. After you were adopted I threw myself into work shying away from anything or anyone who could hurt me. Then Karma came and slapped me across the face and paid me back tenfold for all the wrong decisions I have made in my life.

  You probably want to know who your biological father is, his name is Christopher Jenson. The first thing you should know about him is he never knew about you, he didn’t know I was pregnant with you either. Your father and I never had the love at first sight type of relationship, we were both young. I left everything and everyone I knew when I found out I was having you, as I didn’t want you to be trapped in the same life as I was.

  However, in September 2010, we literally bumped into one another again for the first time in thirteen years, he was still as gorgeous as I remembered and this time around we did fall in love. I knew of the pain I would cause him, as I couldn’t give him myself completely or for very long and the weight on my conscious keeping you a secret from him weighed excruciatingly heavy, every day I looked at him and saw you. Even when we were married I couldn’t tell him.