Marian
I cannot express how fortunate I feel. Your heart, truly? I do not think you stupid in the slightest, although I fear I would be a hypocrite if I considered it for even a moment.
I am sorry, truly, that you had that experience. Of being doubted, but also for the loss of your child. I know how wild jealousy can make a person. I admit that I have fallen victim to it more than once, but I have always been just as easily brought out of it again with a reassurance or a kind word. Well, at least on occasions where it was just my own foolishness and had no real basis in reality.
I should mention a little about Adele's mother, for her sake much more than for my own. Adele believes her mother to be dead, and she will tell you as much, but I must tell you that it is not the truth. It simply seemed a kinder explanation. For the first six months or so of her existence, I believed wholeheartedly that she was my daughter. I was going back and forth between England and France, I returned unannounced to surprise them, and I discovered her with another man. In the aftermath, during the following arguments and upsets and conversations I discovered that he was but one of many such men. She admitted that she claimed Adele was mine because she thought I was the one most likely to support them and not disappear into the night, but apparently that just makes one a naive fool and does not buy any sort of loyalty. It later transpired that she was not simply in the habit of taking many lovers, but of charging money for the pleasure.
Adele tells me now, in such an innocent way that one must try not to have too strong a reaction, that there were many, many strange gentlemen who visited with her mother. She has learned all sorts of quirks and sayings and songs that no child should ever be repeating, but you will see she does it with such a naivety, she really does not understand what she is saying. It is just a mimic that I hope will fade more and more with time.
Ah, so although I could no longer say with any degree of certainty that Adele was any relation of mine, I also could not be certain that she was not. So I continued to visit when I was in the country, and the last time, when she was about nine years old, I found her destitute, living with a poor couple she did not even know. I make inquiries into her mother's whereabouts, and discovered that she had ran off to Italy with some lover and decided she did not want Adele anymore, she did not care what became of her, and she had no intention of returning to Paris for her again. So I asked Adele if she wanted to stay there in France, or if she wanted to return to England with me, and she wanted to go with me. The people she was with, they had told her that her mother was in heaven, and I just never corrected her. It seemed far too cruel. Perhaps one day, but I am not sure what good would come of a full disclosure. Please do just humour her on the subject.
As for me being something of a romantic, I must admit to it. Although I suspect you might simply laugh at me if I tried to deny it after all of this I have shared today. You are right - I should have told her. I knew at every step that I should tell her, and yet my own cowardice or selfishness got in the way, and I kept thinking 'tomorrow' until it was far, far too late. I consider now that I may have underestimated her, that she may have had sympathy and stayed as a friend, which would have been something at least, but you know how it is. Stupid heart.