Marilyn’s Child
The premise of Lynne Pemberton’s fifth novel is: Did Monroe and Kennedy have a child?Kate O’Sulliavan has only known the harsh regime of an Irish orphanage. Beautiful, wilful and uncowed by the cruelty of the nuns, she falls passionately in love with a handsome young priest. Father Declan Steele struggles to resist Kate’s overpowering sexuality and the tension between fairth and flesh reaches breaking point.She runs away to Dublin and comes under the protective wing of a cultured older man, Brenden Fitzgerald, who helps her build a dazzling international career as an artist. She trades her consuming passion for Declan for the security of marriage to fatherly Brneden but temptation is too much for the orphan and the priest.In the turmoil, tragedy and scandal that follow, Kate’s notoriety raises ghosts from her past. Suddenly she is swept along in a search for her true identity – a search that takes her back in time, to an illicit love ad the long-buried secret of a movie goddess and a White House legend.
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LYNNE PEMBERTON
MARILYN’S CHILD
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2000
Copyright © Lynne Pemberton 2000
Extract from ‘Usk’ from the Collected Poems 1909–62 by T. S. Eliot (published by Faber and Faber Ltd) reproduced by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.
Lynne Pemberton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780006513285
Ebook Edition © APRIL 2013 ISBN: 9780007483181 Version: 2017-02-09
Acclaim for Lynne Pemberton:
‘A rags-to-riches story with plenty of sun, sea, sand and sex thrown in … Escapist bliss’
Tatler
‘An ideal light, pacy summer read.’
Mail on Sunday
‘A tale of glamorous lives and ruthless ambition – impeccable.’
Manchester Evening News
Romantic suspense, mystery and intrigue in a tropical setting – a terrific read.’
Annabel
‘The material that great bestsellers are made of, a heady blend of success story, intrigue and a smattering of sex’
Sheffield Star
‘Perfect holiday reading’
Sunday Express
‘A bittersweet love story to keep you on tenterhooks’
Woman’s Realm
For Robin and Bobby I love you both, very much
Contents
When I was fifteen I knew how it felt to want someone. I mean really want them in every sense of the word. It happened very quickly, in a flash of absolute clarity, and it made the most perfect sense. There are moments, I’m sure, in everyone’s life, when absolute certainty stifles reasonable doubt. So it was with me. Of course he, the object of my adolescent longing, wasn’t of like mind – well, not then, not in the beginning. His moment of truth would come later, much later.
The past is a place I visit often – too often. It’s an unhealthy pastime, the retreat of the old and the dying who have nowhere else to go. I’m young, so why do I keep returning? Wallowing in it, embracing it? I even have to admit enjoying the pain. What use recrimination? What use regret? Had his thoughts been of me when he chose to leave? Had he wondered what would become of me without him? I’ve tried to patch it up, my broken heart that is, but I’m still searching for the right dressing, so I continue to bleed. In my head I can hear his voice, it never goes away; the deep resonant music of memory plays over and over again in the dark corners of my mind. ‘Our childhood baggage is merely pawned, to be retrieved or returned to us later in life, in one guise or another … There is no escape, Kate, nothing is ever what it seems.’
I close my eyes, my thoughts racing, my heart pumping hard. I’m travelling back, and the sensationis akin to a fast ride on an express train. The landscape of my life flashes past so quick I have no time to take any of it in. I can feel his presence, he’s close, very close, closer than he’s been for a long time. He looks exactly the way he’d looked the first time I set eyes on him, at precisely ten past four on a wet afternoon in March 1978.
In the quiet of St Winifred’s church I listen to his movements; from under half-closed lids I watch him mount the pulpit steps. He hasn’t seen me. I’m kneeling, hands folded in prayer, head bent, all manner of things going on in my head except worship. It’s dark in the church; he’s wearing a black soutane, his back towards me, clothed in shadow. Suddenly he lifts his head: a wedge of light from the window above the nave touches his crown, which is the colour of a roasted chestnut. Now he’s facing the empty church and, as if practising a sermon, he begins to mime. Desperate to stay hidden, I wriggle my body down into a crouching position and in the silence listen for his footsteps. When after a few moments I hear him descend from the pulpit, I raise my head a fraction to see him start down the aisle. As he gets closer I can see Father Declan Steele has full curling lips, darker in the centre, and heavy lids above navy blue eyes. Irish eyes, framed with spidery lashes, below ruler-straight eyebrows, thick and coal black. My best friend Bridget Costello had been right when she’d said he looked like Robert Redford in
