Read One Night: Denied for Free Online Page B

couldn’t walk away from my girls and let them fall into the hands of some immoral bastard.’
    ‘So you walked away from my mum.’
    ‘And let her fall into the hands of an immoral bastard.’
    I gasp, my eyes darting around the dimly lit restaurant, trying to comprehend what I’m being told. ‘You knew. I was looking for answers and you knew all along?’
    His lips straighten and his nostrils flare. ‘You didn’t need to know the sordid details. You were a young girl.’
    ‘How could you let her go like that?’
    ‘I kept her close for years, Olivia. Letting her loose in my world was disastrous. I stood back and watched her drown men in her beauty and spirit, watched them fall for her. It tore my heart out every fucking day, and she knew it. I couldn’t take it any more.’
    ‘So you banished her.’
    ‘And I wish to every god that I hadn’t.’
    I gulp back the lump forming in my throat. Everything William has told me might fill a massive hole in my history, but it doesn’t fill the hole in my heart. Despite his tale of tortured love though, she still abandoned her daughter. There’s nothing he could tell me to make that right. I glimpse across the table at the mature, handsome man whom my mother was in love with and, crazily, I can appreciate it. And even crazier was that I went to find my mother, tried to fathom her mentality. I took her journal and tracked down those men she wrote about, desperate to figure out what she found so appealing. But instead I found comfort in her pimp. My short time with William when I was seventeen showed me a compassionate, caring man, a man who I fast became fond of, a man who cared for me. There was no desire, nor was there any physical attraction, despite his good looks, but I can’t deny that I felt a certain sense of love for him.
    ‘How did you not know who I was?’ I ask. I survived a whole week before William worked it out. I remember his face, the realisation . . . the anger. I know that I look scarily like my mother. How had he not seen it?
    He takes a deep, almost frustrated breath. ‘When you turned up, it had been fifteen years since I’d seen Gracie. The resemblance was uncanny, but I was so blindsided by that alone I didn’t stop to consider the possibility. Then I did, but the maths didn’t add up.’ His eyebrows jump up accusingly. ‘Wrong name, wrong age.’
    I look away, ashamed. I’m humiliated and shattered. Some things are best left dead, and my mother is one of those things. ‘Thank you,’ I whisper quietly as our risotto is placed before us.
    William lets the waiter fuss for a few moments before flicking his hand, silently ordering him to leave. ‘For what?’
    ‘For sending me back to Nan.’ I look up at him and he reaches over and takes my hand. ‘For helping me and not telling my grandmother.’ That was what did it. William’s threat to pay a visit to Nan terrified me more than anything else because it would have killed her. She was in a terribly dark place. As far as Nan is concerned, I ran away to escape the harsh reality that my mother’s journal represented. I couldn’t add to her grief. Not after everything she went through with her daughter and then Granddad. ‘But I read her journal.’ I let the words tumble from my lips in a moment of confusion. ‘That’s how I found you back then.’
    ‘A little black leather book?’ he asks with an edge of resentment to his tone.
    ‘Yes.’ I’m almost excited that he knows what I’m talking about. ‘You know of it?’
    ‘Of course I do.’ William’s jaw has noticeably tightened, making me sit further back in my chair. ‘She was kind enough to leave it on my desk for a bit of bedtime reading once.’
    ‘Oh . . .’ I pick up my fork and start poking at the rice dish that I’m not hungry for – anything to escape the potent bitterness pouring from William.
    ‘Your mother could be a cruel woman, Olivia.’
    I nod, the purpose of the little black book suddenly very