‘Does he know who I am?’ Keeley asked. ‘Does he know my name?’ He couldn’t know, could he? He couldn’t have, all this time, been playing some kind of game with her feelings?
‘I… do not know,’ Silvie said, looking confused. ‘When I first mentioned it, he shut me down so fast. I…’
Silvie pulled her chair a little closer, recapturing Keeley’s hand. ‘Have the two of you met already?’ she asked. ‘Ethan spends much of his time at our flagship hotel in the Opera District, but I know he has been determined to do something special this Christmas at all the hotels. We have had… certain difficulties of late, but we will… work through them… as a family.’
As a family. Keeley couldn’t stop her body reacting to that sentence. What did that mean? Tears were seeping from the corners of her eyes again.
‘Who is he?’ Keeley asked. ‘To you… and to Ferne?’
Silvie sighed, sitting back a little and raising her slipper-covered feet towards the fire. ‘That is a question the Durands have been asking themselves for around twenty years.’ She smiled. ‘Ethan, he is like an… adopted son you could say… just without the paperwork. Ferne, she started bringing Ethan to this house when he was perhaps eight or nine. And, when we found out where he was living, we arranged official visits and trips out, weekends here. Then, eventually, as the years went by, he was more here than anywhere else.’ She smiled again. ‘So you have met him. I am glad. He was a very big part of Ferne’s life. He knew her the best out of everybody.’
Keeley nodded, her body beginning to shake again. ‘They were in love, weren’t they?’
‘Oh! No!’ Silvie said immediately, her head shaking. ‘Goodness, no. Ferne, she was never interested in boys in that way.’ Silvie looked directly at Keeley then. ‘I never had any doubt about that.’ She patted Keeley’s hand. ‘Before Ferne left for London… before the accident… she told me that she had just started to date someone new.’ Silvie smiled. ‘She said that if it was still going well after Christmas then she very much wanted me to meet her.’ Silvie sighed. ‘Ferne had many dates, but she had never suggested I meet anyone before. I did not think that the place I would be first meeting Nicole would be Ferne’s funeral.’ She sighed again. ‘But… I was very glad to meet her. I could tell that she cared for Ferne very much and it was nice to know that my daughter was at her happiest romantically before she passed away.’
Despite Silvie’s sad story, a flicker of hope burned brightly in Keeley’s heart. Ferne and Ethan had never been together, never been in love. But he hadn’t wanted to meet her. Hadn’t wanted to share dinner with the person who had the kidney of someone he was close to. What did that mean for them now?
‘Keeley,’ Silvie said softly. ‘Ethan and Ferne, they were the very best of friends. At times, inseparable. And, at the beginning, I did have my concerns about the relationship. Ethan, he was always an unknown entity. I think he will forever be a little like that. But what I have discovered, from getting to know him, is that the core of a person does not come from the people that made them, it comes very much from the nurturing.’ She took a breath. ‘Has he told you the kind of life he was leading when he was young?’
Keeley nodded. ‘A little. But I… didn’t push.’
‘Well, you should know that someone who has had the kind of treatment I imagine Ethan has had goes one of two ways. There is the tragic way, where they can never find the exit from the vicious circle they have grown up with, or there is the way where they take everything that has been dealt to them and they turn it on its head and rise above it.’ Silvie adjusted herself in her seat. ‘It takes the strongest of characters to do that. Can you think how it might be? To not let the scars of your past taint your future? I am not saying that his upbringing has not affected who Ethan is today, only that he has somehow successfully used it as a weapon to drive him to better things. Yet still, all the time, Ethan believes he is not good enough, when the truth is, actually he is better than all of us.’
Keeley took in everything Silvie had said. It was a brief story of the man she already knew had a good heart. And she knew that because he had shown it to her. But that was before. How were things going to change if he found out who she was? How did she feel now she knew he had been like a brother to her donor?
‘Tell me,’ Silvie said gently. ‘What is it you really want to know about Ethan?’
What did she say now? The absolute truth? That he had captured her heart like no other, but now there was this undeniable bond between him and the woman who had saved her life it felt unsurmountable, almost incestuous.
She shook her head, tears escaping again. ‘I met Ethan… when I first arrived in Paris. He was carrying a penguin. And somehow, through every twist and turn of my visit here, he’s been there.’ She took a breath. ‘And, after the shortest time, I found myself wanting him to be there.’ She swallowed before starting again. ‘And then it was as if we were meant to find each other. And I don’t understand that at all but… somehow it happened.’
‘Oh, Keeley,’ Silvie gasped.
‘I had no idea who he was. I had no idea he knew Ferne. He told me about his hotels eventually, but still I never connected the two things until…’
‘Until?’ Silvie asked, still holding Keeley’s hand.
‘Until when I was here for dinner,’ she admitted. ‘And we were in Ferne’s room and a book fell on the floor.’ She closed her eyes, remembering. ‘A photo fell out and… I don’t know… I wish I hadn’t looked. I wished I’d left it on the floor.’ She sighed in frustration and gazed at the flames. ‘I told myself it wasn’t Ethan. As if anyone else could have those eyes?! And then… tonight… he took me to one of his hotels and… it was one of your hotels.’ She paused. ‘Perfect Paris Opera.’
‘Keeley, what has actually happened to make you so sad? Has Ethan done something? Said something?’
She shook her head, trying not to fall apart again. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, he hasn’t done anything. Except… get to know me like no one’s ever done before.’ She wiped tears from her face with the back of her hand. ‘And now… it’s ruined.’
‘What is ruined?’ Silvie asked gently.
‘Everything,’ Keeley sobbed. ‘Because I wasn’t being Kidney Girl. I promised Rach. And it was really refreshing to just be the person I was before I had the accident and before I lost Bea. I hadn’t been that person for so long I had forgotten who she was. And I was starting to get to know her properly again and I like her. And now…’
‘Now?’ Silvie asked.
‘Now, not only am I going to have to tell Ethan about my transplant, I’m also going to have to tell him that I have Ferne’s kidney.’
Silvie didn’t immediately reply and when Keeley looked up it was to see tears were in the woman’s eyes too. She suddenly felt very selfish for coming here at all.
‘I’m sorry,’ Keeley said, standing up. ‘I sound so ungrateful. I shouldn’t have come. I don’t know what I was thinking. I probably wasn’t thinking at all. I’ve insulted you and I’ve insulted Ferne’s memory and—’