Page 3 of The Spanish Daughter (The Lost Daughters #5)
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TWO MONTHS LATER
Rose sat in a heap of her mother’s belongings, a glass of half-drunk prosecco in one hand, watching her best friend move with an energy that exhausted her. If she’d been alone, she’d have been holding a tissue rather than a glass, but Jessica had blown into Rose’s flat like a storm, sweeping her into her arms and refusing to let her wallow. They’d cried together for the first hour, and then Jessica had taken over, immediately ordering groceries and tidying the place as if she were a professional housekeeper rather than a diplomat who’d just flown in from New York.
And now, six hours later, they were sitting in her mother’s room and Jessica still hadn’t slowed down.
‘Would you like my opinion?’ Jessica asked.
Rose watched as her friend scooped her long hair up and tied it on top of her head. ‘When have you ever not shared your opinion with me?’
Jessica’s smile was warm, her eyes soft as she looked back at her. ‘You’ve just lost your mum, Rose. I’m not going to do anything without asking first.’
Rose sipped her prosecco. At first it had seemed almost rude to drink a celebratory beverage within forty-eight hours of her mother’s passing, but Jessica had reminded her of all the times they’d sat and shared a bottle of wine with her mother when she’d visited from New York. It was as good as a tradition. The two of them had been best friends since their first day of high school, and Jessica had dropped everything and caught a red-eye flight from New York as soon as she’d heard the news.
‘I think you shouldn’t be in a hurry to deal with all her things,’ Jessica said. ‘There’s no reason I can see to rush this part of the grieving process.’
Rose nodded, blinking away tears as she looked around the room. Jessica was right. She didn’t want to erase her mother’s memory; she was only doing all this because she’d thought it was what was expected of her.
‘I think, in a few months from now when it’s not all so fresh, you’ll be more comfortable coming in here and going through all her things.’ Jessica paused. ‘ When you’re ready .’
‘So, what do we do now?’ Rose asked, looking around the room and knowing how lucky she was to have a friend like Jessica. ‘I hate the thought of being idle.’
‘We cook!’ Jessica announced, as if it were the most straightforward decision in the world.
Rose laughed, despite it all, following her friend to the kitchen where she unpacked the groceries Jessica had ordered earlier, pouring them another glass each as she sat at the kitchen bench to watch her friend cook, listening to her talk about her four-year-old twin daughters, to whom Rose was godmother.
‘It looks like you have a stack of unopened mail there,’ Jessica said, gesturing towards the large pile at the end of the bench. ‘Would you like me to go through it in the morning, so you don’t have to? I’m here to do whatever you need me to do.’
Rose sighed and stood to retrieve it. ‘No, I’ll do it now. Between the letters from the lawyers, the hospital and the insurance company, it was all starting to get a bit much, but I can’t ignore it forever.’
‘I know this is a touchy subject,’ Jessica said as Rose began to flick through the envelopes, ‘but have you heard from Luke?’
Rose glanced up. ‘I think I made it pretty clear to him that I didn’t want to hear from him ever again, so I shouldn’t be surprised, but no. He hasn’t even sent me a text since I moved out.’ Not even to see if I’d lost Mum yet .
Jessica grimaced. ‘He seemed so nice in the beginning,’ she said. ‘Clearly I’m a terrible judge of character though, because he turned out to be an absolute arsehole.’
‘I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think he was the one, so I guess we’re both terrible judges of character.’ Luke had been perfect on paper, in fact he’d been rather perfect in general, until he’d criticised her for taking a sabbatical from her job and then given her an ultimatum when she’d told him she’d be moving in with her mother to nurse her until she passed away. It had become immediately clear that he was seriously lacking in compassion, and she wouldn’t have swapped the last few months she’d spent with her mum for anything—and certainly not for him.
‘And what about work?’ Jessica asked. ‘How long do you have to decide whether you’re going back or not?’
As they talked, Rose sorted the envelopes into piles.
‘I have two weeks from now to give them my answer,’ she replied. ‘They’ve been incredibly understanding, but they can only let me stay on leave for so long.’
‘And the hesitation in your voice is because…’
‘Because I don’t know if I even want to be a lawyer anymore,’ she said, surprised at how easily her thoughts had rolled off her tongue. ‘I keep imagining going back to work, practising again, being part of that world, and there’s not even a glimmer of excitement inside me at the thought of it. I just don’t know if it’s for me.’
‘You’ve just lost your mum, so it’s probably completely normal to feel like this, but then again, maybe everything you’ve been through has made you see things more clearly. If you don’t love what you do…’
‘It’s like my heart isn’t in it anymore. I think maybe I need a change of scene, or perhaps I just need a proper break after everything that’s happened, to catch my breath.’ Rose had been going over and over in her mind whether she wanted to go back or not, whether she was brave enough to turn her back on the career she’d spent so long studying and working for.
‘Perhaps I could tempt you to come to New York then? The girls and I would love having you close, and it might be just the change you need.’
‘And I would love seeing them more, but…’ Rose murmured, holding up the last envelope from the pile and staring at the return address, which clearly stated that it was from Argentina. ‘What is this?’
Rose forgot entirely what they’d been talking about and slid her fingernail beneath the seal, surprised at the thick weight of the envelope and the matching cream paper inside. She’d managed her mum’s affairs for some time now, but she’d never had anything unusual like this arrive before. It was usually correspondence about her banking or insurance, but this…Rose unfolded it and skimmed over the words, one hand lifting to her mouth as she gasped, not believing the words that were printed on the page.
‘What is it?’ Jessica asked, coming to stand beside her. ‘You know my husband will fight the insurance company for you if they’re refusing to?—’
‘It’s not that,’ Rose murmured, as she read it again before passing it to Jessica. ‘It’s from a law firm, in Buenos Aires. It’s addressed to my mother.’
‘Buenos Aires? Are you sure?’
Rose nodded and reached for her drink, taking a large sip and then another, trying to stop the shake in her hand.
‘What business did your mother have in Argentina?’ Jessica asked, taking the letter from her. ‘Why would a law firm from another country be writing to her?’
Rose didn’t answer; she just sat there and tried to digest what she’d just read, waiting for her friend to catch up. Jessica had gone silent as she read.
‘Rose, this says that your mother is the sole beneficiary of a large estate in Argentina,’ Jessica said, her eyes wide as she stared back at her. ‘It says that the family matriarch has passed away, and that?—’
‘My mother has inherited her expansive polo property and the balance of her fortune, as heiress to the Santiago family estate,’ Rose finished for her, having already committed the words to heart. ‘That it was intended to be left to my grandmother from her biological mother, but that because she’s no longer alive, it goes to my mother.’
Jessica met her gaze. ‘Which means that now your mother isn’t here…’
Rose blinked, hardly able to comprehend the reality of what they were discussing.
‘Rose, it means that you will inherit this now. You’re the sole beneficiary of your mother’s estate, correct?’
Rose nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said, her voice so raspy it barely came out as a whisper. ‘I am.’
‘And you knew nothing about any of this?’ Jessica asked, her eyebrows arched in surprise. ‘About this family connection? Because it doesn’t sound like this is an old lady with a few euros to her name, it sounds much, much more substantial. It sounds like…’ She shook her head. ‘Rose, this sounds like something that could change a person’s life. Have you ever even heard of the Santiago family? Have you been to Buenos Aires before?’
‘I knew nothing of it, and I would bet that my mother knew nothing, either. This isn’t the sort of thing she’d have kept from me, especially when we had so long together before she passed away. We told each other everything these past few months.’ Rose closed her eyes, suddenly remembering the little box with the horse figurine inside; how confused she’d been about the clues. So much had happened since then that she hadn’t had time to think about them, but this brought it all back. She’d received unexpected correspondence from lawyers twice now in the space of a few months. ‘Actually…’ Rose leapt to her feet and ran to her bedroom, reaching around in her bedside drawer until her fingers connected with the wooden box. When she returned, Jessica had a knife in her hand again and was chopping up mushrooms for her famous carbonara, but she stopped and washed her hands when Rose returned.
‘I think it might have something to do with this,’ Rose said, breathless all of a sudden, the rush of what it had felt like discovering these clues for the first time coming back to her. ‘It has to be connected, otherwise it’s all just too much of a coincidence.’
Jessica took the box from her and opened it, taking out the figurine and the piece of silk and looking bewildered as she lifted her gaze.
‘What are these?’ Jessica asked. ‘Rose, where did you get them from, and why are they in this little box?’
‘I think,’ Rose said, looking up into Jessica’s wide eyes, ‘that these things are connected to my grandmother and her inheritance in Argentina. I found out just a couple of months ago that my grandmother was born at a place called Hope’s House, here in London, and until now, I had no way of knowing what they meant.’ She paused. ‘But this letter? It could explain everything.’