Page 82 of Deep Blue Sea

‘That was never going to happen; Dad knew I wouldn’t allow it.’

‘So they went to Adam too?’

‘I’d say that was a good home, wouldn’t you?’

Their drinks arrived. Charlie swizzled his straw around his glass of cola.

‘So you’ve made up with Auntie Rachel? I thought she might be at the funeral. I was hoping she would be. You know, sometimes you don’t think you need certain people, but you do.’

He was wiser than his years. Diana knew that Julian had made a good choice gifting his shareholding to their son.

‘Charlie, I’m here to talk about something your dad wanted you to have.’

‘What?’ he asked doubtfully.

‘He’s given you all his shares in the company.’

There was a couple of seconds’ silence.

‘All of them?’ he said finally.

Diana nodded.

‘Voting shares?’

She looked at her son with surprise. She’d had no idea that he understood the corporate make-up of the business.

‘Everything that Dad owned. They are to be held in trust until you are twenty-one. He also attached a letter of intent. It’s not legally binding, but he expressed a wish that one day you become CEO of the company.’

Charlie had fallen silent.

‘The reason I wanted to talk to you about it now is that I need to know how you feel about it,’ continued Diana softly. ‘I spoke to Adam and he maintains that he never really wanted to join the family business, that he felt obliged to do so. And I would never want you to be in that position of feeling that it’s your duty.’

She thought of the Denvers – steely Ralph, frightening Elizabeth, snobby Barbara – and wondered if she always wanted to be so tightly aligned with them. But then this was Charlie’s choice. Not hers.

‘He really thought of me as his son, didn’t he?’

‘Of course you were his son,’ she said, her mouth opening in horror.

Charlie looked up at her, his mellow hazel eyes taking on an edge of defiance.

‘When he married you, he got me. I know he called me his son, but don’t you think I’ve often wondered how he could love another man’s child like his own?’

‘But he did,’ whispered Diana, wondering how much the thought of this had tortured Charlie.

‘I know that now,’ he said, his lips beginning to wobble with emotion.

‘You should read this,’ she said, pushing a sheet of paper across the table between them. It was Julian’s letter of intent that he had attached to his will. She had read it a dozen times over since she had left Stuart Wilson’s office and could memorise every word, even though it had felt as if she been intruding on a father’s parting words to his son.

‘I’ll read it later,’ said Charlie, putting it in his pocket. ‘I do want his shares,’ he added. ‘I want to make him proud of me. I want to be the man he thought I could be.’

Diana clenched her fists under the table. She was determined not to cry in front of her son, even though this time, they were tears of happiness.

28

Rachel was feeling terrible. She had a pounding headache and her skin had that crawling feeling you get just before the onset of a three-day cold. Glancing into the window of the taxi, she was pretty sure she looked as bad as she felt. Her flying visit to Washington had been one of those classic red-eye in-and-outs that was a positive magnet for jet lag. She had been living on coffee, junk food and nerves for three days, and the return trip had been disrupted by a baby in the row behind her. What she wanted right now was a long bath and three or four glasses of red wine, not to be zooming down the motorway to meet someone who had called her a bitch the last time they had spoken.

‘You have to go, Rach,’ Ross had said when Rachel had explained her plan on the way to the airport. ‘Adam Denver could be useful even if he doesn’t know it.’