Page 2 of The Spanish Daughter (The Lost Daughters #5)

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LONDON, 2022

Rose pushed through the glass door and emerged onto the pavement, walking away from the lawyer’s office and wondering if she was dreaming. None of what she’d just heard seemed real and she could only imagine how confused she must have looked in the meeting. She slipped her hand into her pocket to feel for the little box she’d been given, her fingers moving back and forth against the smooth wood.

How is any of this real?

She stood and looked around, tilting her face up slightly to feel the sunshine on her skin—something she hadn’t enjoyed for days, or maybe even weeks. The past few months had merged into a blur for her, and she could scarcely remember what day of the week it was or when she’d last taken a moment to just breathe in the fresh air. Someone knocked into her then, making her stumble, and Rose blinked as she looked around, almost blinded by the sunlight as she remembered where she was. The city street was bustling with people going about their day, and she was nothing short of a hindrance just standing there.

Rose’s phone vibrated in her bag and she quickly reached for it, almost dropping it in her hurry to read the message when she saw it was from her mother’s carer.

All is well here. Your mother is sleeping. Take your time.

She was tempted to hurry home regardless, but she’d barely left the house of late and she still had another two hours before the carer was scheduled to leave. Rose decided to set off on foot and see if she couldn’t find a café, and she’d hardly been walking five minutes before she saw one. She headed straight in, smiling immediately at the inviting smell of coffee and happy to be away from the crowded street. It was heavenly and also exactly what she needed.

‘You look as if you’re in desperate need of caffeine.’

Rose glanced up and saw that the barista was watching her as he reached for a takeaway cup and placed it beneath the machine.

‘Is it that obvious?’ she asked.

‘Painfully so.’

Rose laughed. It hadn’t only been a long time since she’d had coffee, it had been a long time since she’d laughed, and it felt good.

‘Let’s just say I’ve been living on instant coffee these past few weeks,’ she said.

‘Let me guess,’ he said, making a face as if he was deep in concentration, before grinning. ‘Skinny flat white?’

She wasn’t sure if she was impressed or annoyed that she was so easy to read, but she decided to go with impressed. ‘You got me.’

Rose paid for the coffee and ordered an eggs Benedict to placate her growling stomach when the barista came back to the counter. And if she hadn’t been so curious to find out what was in the little box in her bag, she would have stood and flirted with the cute barista for longer. When she’d been working, she’d stopped every morning at the café closest to her office on the way in, enjoying the morning banter and always going to work with a smile on her face and a coffee in her hand. It wasn’t so much that she missed the routine of her old life, it was more that she craved the social interaction.

She eventually sat down at a little table in the corner and held the box she’d been given at the lawyer’s office, turning it left and then right in her hands as she studied the handwritten name tag attached to it. The string holding it together was old, with little fibres coming away and floating into the air as she worked on the knot with her fingernails. It didn’t take long until she was able to pull the string though, discarding it on the table and slowly opening the tiny box, the wood smooth against her skin. She paused, staring down at it for a moment before opening it, nervous about lifting the lid as a wave of sadness passed over her. I wish you were here to open it with me, Grandma .

It was only small, and she had no idea what to expect, but what she saw inside when she finally opened it took her by surprise. There was a piece of sky-blue silk, which appeared as if it had been cut or even gently torn from a larger piece of fabric, and as she lifted it out, she saw that a delicate figurine of a horse was nestled at the bottom of the box. She placed the silk down and carefully took out the horse, running her fingertips over the soft edges of the wood, admiring the intricate carving. It was so small and so carefully made, something she guessed a person would have to labour over for hours and hours to create by hand.

‘Flat white?’

Rose nodded at the server when she stopped at her table, not even looking up as she murmured thank you, unable to take her eyes from the figurine as she tried to understand what she was looking at—imagining who might have made it and how it might have come to be left for her grandma. The woman at the meeting, Mia, had claimed that the box had been left behind at a place called Hope’s House for Rose’s grandmother at her birth, before she’d been placed for adoption. Rose couldn’t fathom that this had been hidden for decades, just waiting to be discovered.

Eventually she put the horse down and looked in the box again, tipping it upside down, certain she’d missed something, wondering if there was supposed to be a letter or some explanation for what she’d found. But there was nothing. Just two tiny items that held the key to discovering her family’s true past.

Rose took the piece of silk in one hand and the horse in the other and stared between the two things, forgetting all about her coffee and closing her fingers over them as if perhaps just by feeling them she might have an answer.

But the truth was, she’d never been so puzzled in her life, and she also couldn’t help but wonder what it all meant for her, when she was on the cusp of losing the only family she’d ever known. A shiver ran through Rose as she stared down at the clues. Her grandmother had only recently passed away, barely six months before Rose’s mother had been diagnosed, which made finding this connection to the past bittersweet. She’d grown up an only child, living in her grandmother’s home after her father had left to work abroad. It had been a multigenerational house—with her, her mum and her grandmother all living together, and she’d grown up feeling as if she had two mothers who’d adored her instead of one.

Rose quickly blinked away tears, not wanting to become emotional in the middle of a café; yet she felt the most overwhelming sense of loneliness. She would have done anything to have her grandmother seated beside her, her soft, weathered hand in hers, glancing over and seeing her bright eyes looking back at her. Or the sense of her mother’s warm gaze settling on her as they exchanged a surprised glance at the discovery. It was almost impossible to believe that within the space of a year, she’d have lost both of them. And without them, did she even want to dig up the past? She sighed. Maybe some things are better left undiscovered .

But the discovery did bring a smile to her lips, remembering her grandmother’s favourite saying, which seemed most appropriate now.

‘Let sleeping dogs lie, my darling. Nothing ever came from poking one’s nose where it doesn’t belong.’

But would I be doing that if someone had intentionally left this behind for you, Grandma? Don’t I owe it to you, to find out about your past?

Rose brushed another tear from her cheek and repositioned the clues on the other side of the table before beginning her meal. She was curious, of course she was curious, but with everything she had going on right now, the timing couldn’t have been worse.