by Lynne Graham
“Me?” Kerry gaped.
Vickie sighed ruefully. “You were always the favourite at home. You worked hard at school, steered clear of too many different boyfriends…you never put a foot wrong. Of course I resented you. But after I’d been away for a few years I felt bad about it. That’s why I let you have my flat that summer. I was ready to play big sister.”
Kerry was completely motionless. She had often wistfully envied Vickie her glamour, her poise and her classic beauty. But Vickie wasn’t confessing to simple envy. Vickie, she sensed, was talking about sincere and bitter dislike.
“I can hardly believe you never guessed. The parents certainly did. You see, I wanted Alex for myself.” There was a crack in Vickie’s stark and shattering admission. “I cast out every lure there was for him. I invited him to my parties and he never came. Every time he saw me, he acted like he didn’t know me. And then you moved into my apartment, and in two months, my eighteen-year-old sister in her ragbag clothes had his ring on her finger, and my God, but I hated you for that!”
Chalk-white now, Kerry’s face was filled with dawning horror. “You were in love with Alex?”
“No, not in love. But he was the man I had set my sights on.” Vickie’s voice wobbled, at odds with her shuttered expression. “I never got close enough to get thinking about love, but believe me, I chased him. Do you know how I felt when he fell for you? Humiliated. He never did tell you, did he? That I fancied him and made a complete ass of myself…”
“Oh…Vickie.” On the brink of sympathetic tears, Kerry sprang up, ready to comfort her. “I had no idea, and I’m sure you didn’t make a fool of yourself.”
“Don’t be kind, Kerry. I couldn’t stomach that at this moment,” Vickie snapped, her composed face contorting with strong emotion as she turned her back. “I took that job in Venice because I wanted to cause trouble. I hated him because he didn’t want me. I wasn’t good enough. I’d been around. Hell, so had he been…but the old double-standard was made by men like Alex.” The words were pouring from her now in staccato bursts. “He wouldn’t have married you if he hadn’t been the first.”
Kerry sank down again, thunderstruck by what Vickie had hidden from her. She recalled Vickie’s pettish refusal to be her bridesmaid, Alex’s unrelenting coolness towards the sister she admired. The facts had been there before her, the suggestion of something that did not ring quite true, but she had been so full of loving Alex, she had been blind. She bled for the pain she had unwittingly caused Vickie. It was one thing not to attract a man, another for the same man to marry a kid sister. And Vickie had never had any trouble in getting the men she wanted. She was a very beautiful woman. Alex’s indifference must have hit her hard.
“I wish you’d told me about this a long time ago,” she said unhappily. “I used to talk all the time about Alex. It must have upset you.”
Vickie stubbed out her cigarette, and immediately lit another with an unsteady hand. “What upset me was the way he felt about you. He was besotted and it sickened me. But he had one Achilles heel. He was scared stiff your feelings were going to change and you were going to grow out of him,” she continued jerkily. “That’s why he was so jealous and possessive. He had worked out for himself that if you never got any rope without him or one of his sisters, you couldn’t get up to much. The night of my birthday when you phoned him, I was listening on the extension…and I heard every dirty label he attached to me. Of course, can you blame him? Even after the wedding, I made it clear that I was available!”
Twin spots of livid colour burnt over Vickie’s cheekbones. Kerry looked sickly away from her. Her sister spared herself no pride in the confession. She remembered Alex’s blazing anger that night on the phone. He had succinctly summed up his opinion of Vickie’s frequent and casual affairs. It must have been very painful for Vickie to listen to the character assassination.
“To give him his due, he had just cause. Alex is quick,” Vickie conceded. “He knew how I felt about him, and he despised me for it. I was furious that night and very bitter. I had had a lot to drink, although I’m not using that as an excuse…Jeff had stupidly put something in your drink to try and brighten you up a bit. When I found out I was angry with him, but by then you had already collapsed. I hauled you up to bed before twelve and you were out for the count…”
“But you said I was up to all hours drinking…” Kerry whispered.
“It still hasn’t sunk in yet, has it? I lied! I told you a pack of lies!” she extended rawly. “I never went to bed. I stayed up all night with the last of my guests. When I saw Alex’s car drawing up down below, I decided to get my own back. I wasn’t thinking of you or the future or anything. It was an impulse. It was Alex I wanted to hurt. Jeff was still drunk. I told him it was a practical joke. He tore into your room, threw off his clothes and got into that bed beside you. He was there all of two minutes before Alex arrived.”
“No…it couldn’t have been like that…” Kerry’s tongue seemed too large for her mouth, the syllables of her dazed interruption dragging.
Vickie drew deep on her cigarette and stared at her. “It was. Jeff never laid a finger on you, not a single finger. I ran to the front door, threw it wide, looked suitably shocked and Alex leapt at the bait. I got the biggest thrill of my life watching Alex’s face when he saw you and Jeff in that bed. It was pure farce, but it knocked Alex flat.” She relived it without pleasure. Indeed, her voice was wooden. “I didn’t know he was going to go right off his head like he did. I thought he’d put it together for himself. He was always so damned clever about everything else. He should have smelt a rat the minute he got over the shock. But he didn’t.”
In the grip of astonishment, Kerry was speechless. The sordid episode which had wrecked her marriage and nearly destroyed her had been a cruel, spur-of-the-moment practical joke! Nothing had happened. All these years she had carried round this soiled feeling of shame. And nothing had happened!
“How could I have known that he would walk out on you and wall himself up?” Vickie demanded stridently. “I didn’t know what to do. I was scared. I would have ended up the family outcast. He would have ruined my career, too. All over his over-reaction to a crazy, childish joke! As if I’d have let him in if you’d really been in bed with somebody!”
“So you kept quiet.” Kerry could not conceal her revulsion. “You let me go through hell. In fact, you watched me go through it. I hated myself and I didn’t even do anything!” Her voice rose steeply.
Vickie collapsed down opposite, her eyes anguished. “It all just mushroomed, it got too big for me to handle. But I had to tell you now, I had to get it off my chest. I couldn’t see you going back to him because you thought you owed him the sacrifice…”
“Or did you tell me because you couldn’t stand the idea of me being Kerry Veranchetti again?” she countered in helpless suspicion.
Vickie flinched visibly. “OK, I deserve that and more, but I got over my jealousy and my infatuation a very long time ago. Don’t you understand what I went through, too? I was terrified of telling anybody.” Tears streaked her sister’s face. “Once it was done I didn’t know how to stop the shockwaves spreading.”
But she had still protected herself. Kerry lifted her head proudly. “You have to go to Alex and tell him the truth. Do you hear me? And while we’re on the subject, what about the mysterious Jeff, who so conveniently disappeared?” she stabbed grimly.
“Jeff?” Vickie’s eyes slewed back to her in shock. “What’s he got to do with it?”
Either her sister was very na;auive, or this was sarcasm. Now she had the whole story, Kerry found Vickie’s insistence that Jeff had been a stranger somewhat harder to swallow. “Did you really ask a complete stranger to take part in your joke?” she demanded uncertainly. “When I think about it, I find it hard to credit that you’ve neither heard of him nor seen him since. You know hundreds of people in the fashion industry, you’re both in the same trade. Are you telling me that you couldn’t track him dow
n if you tried?”
“Track him down?” Vickie ejaculated. “What for?”
“Obviously in the hope that I could persuade him to back up your story for Alex. Jeff hasn’t got any reason to lie, has he? Have you really never seen him since?” Kerry pressed less hopefully.
“Never…my God, it’s a big world out there! He mightn’t even be a photographer now, and even if I could…help, why should he risk life and limb to help you? Can you imagine the kind of revenge Alex would take?”
Kerry’s brows pleated. “You’re filled with amazing concern for somebody you don’t know, aren’t you? What is his name?” she prompted tautly.
“I don’t know! I don’t know a thing about him!” Vickie practically shouted at her, and it was obvious that for her this situation had got out of control. Kerry was talking about possibilities she had never foreseen, and suggesting taking the entire affair beyond these four walls, an affair moreover which showed Vickie to poor advantage.
“I don’t believe you,” Kerry admitted wearily.
“Alex wouldn’t even believe me. Why try to drag anybody else into it? Even if I could find him for you, what good would it do? I’m damned if I would face Alex. He didn’t trust you, that was his problem,” Vickie argued vehemently. “Not mine. And the way he treated you afterwards showed you what Alex was really like. He’s a bastard.”
“You won’t tell Alex, will you?” Kerry read the answer in her evasive gaze and experienced a spasm of sick disgust. “Well, may God forgive you, Vickie, because I never will. How could you have been such a cold, selfish schemer? What did I ever do to you?” she whispered.
Vickie just sat there, pale and trembling but silent.
Kerry got up, defeated but angry. “Let me tell you something else; you were in love with Alex. If you couldn’t have him, you didn’t want me to have him either. That’s what it all came down to four years ago.”
She walked out of the apartment, grimly and impotently convinced that Vickie was withholding information about Jeff. Four years ago, it had suited Vickie very nicely to have no Jeff available to refute her lies. Kerry’s head was reeling dizzily. Vickie. To even credit that Vickie had saved her own skin and pride at the expense of her marriage devastated her. It was as if her sister had suddenly become a stranger to her. Kerry could not forget, forgive or even begin to understand how her sister could have remained silent when she realised Alex intended to divorce her.
Her sister just hadn’t been able to hold on to the dark secret any longer. Her nerves had given way. Kerry remembered her nervous brittle manner at the hospital. Vickie had been scared that, if Alex and Kerry finally got together, her duplicity might somehow be revealed. How could it have been? Kerry had never understood why she should recall not a single thing between feeling drowsy and waking up. But she had never suspected that her drink had been doctored. Vickie had told her that she had over-indulged. Kerry had had no cause to disbelieve her, and Vickie had staged a very good act of sympathy that morning. Perhaps she had enjoyed seeing Kerry at the mercy of shock and horror. Kerry wondered painfully if she would ever be able to believe in anybody again.
* * *
WHEN SHE STEPPED OUT of the car at the vicarage, Nicky came running to her. “Can we go home now?” he demanded.
“Yes.” Again she manoeuvred out of any long chats with her parents. They accepted that she had a great deal to do, and Vickie’s revelations had made Kerry eager to be away from their unworldly contentment.
As Nicky chattered on the drive back to the cottage, a strange new lightness of heart began to lift her out of her introspection. The nightmare of her conscience had suddenly been banished. The shadows were gone. The guilt was gone. In a peculiar way, Vickie had set her free.
“Granny said that you and me and Daddy are all going to live together,” Nicky relayed excitedly.
She tautened, sucked back willy-nilly to the present. How could she turn in her tracks now? She had no proof. Would Alex even believe Vickie, or would he think that Kerry was rather pitifully trying to cover up too late? A surge of savage hostility encased her then. The tables had been turned. She could hate Alex now without feeling guilty about it. He had judged her without a hearing. Suddenly she was in so much conflict that she couldn’t think straight. She was sick and tired of being a victim. Vickie had made her one, Alex had followed suit with a cruelty foreign to Kerry’s softer nature.
If she married Alex she would still be paying for a crime she had not committed. She had already paid a hundred times over. Dammit, why should she be victimised again?
Her fingers hovered over the phone to contact the driver and tell him to return her to the vicarage. She saw herself walking in and laying the whole story before them. Simultaneously, she saw herself destroying her family. It would still come down to her word against Vickie’s. It would tear their parents apart to see their two daughters engaged in such bitter conflict. She couldn’t do that to them. She couldn’t risk her father’s health, either. Her hand fell heavily back on to her lap. Alex had won, after all. Alex always won.
* * *
THE WEDDING TOOK PLACE five days later. Vickie took sick last moment, and phoned the vicarage to say she was down with gastric ’flu. Steven had spent most of the intervening period begging Kerry to tell him what was wrong with her. On several occasions she nearly broke down and spilt it all out: her ever-mounting sense of injustice. Four years, she kept on thinking, four wretched, miserable years that had practically crippled her emotionally because she had been enslaved by her own guilt.
She was like a statue during the brief ceremony in a London register office. They came out to a barrage of photographers. The Veranchetti rematch, someone quipped. Alex was all smiles, the two-faced swine that he was. Antipathy raced through her in a stormy wave, and as he met her eyes, his narrowed perceptively.
“What’s wrong?” he enquired.
Kerry almost laughed. What’s wrong? she thought wildly. Oh, there’s nothing wrong, Alex. You forced me into this marriage, you’re forcing me to share my son, you’re forcing me back into a life-style I hated…really, Alex why should there be anything wrong?
“Are you feeling all right?” She guessed he could afford the solicitous look. He thought he had won. Well, he hadn’t won. All hell would break loose if he dared to try and exert his marital rights.
He carried her firmly off into the car, away from the loud voices asking quite incredibly impertinent questions. “I have a headache,” she lied.
“Stress.”
What the heck would he know about stress? She turned her flushed profile aside. There was still the meal with her parents to be got through with a civilised show.
“Why didn’t Glenn attend the wedding, if he was such a good friend?” Alex drawled softly.
“I try not to involve my friends in burlesque shows.”
“I’m sorry that you feel that way about our wedding.”
“What wedding?” Her green eyes flashed at him. Although she had promised herself that she would not start until her parents were safely off-scene, she could no longer control her ire. “You got me here at the point of a gun. Why the polite hypocrisy? I don’t need it.”
His lustrous dark eyes rested on her unreadably. “I don’t want to argue with you today.”
Why was there something special about today? Her contempt showed, and his aggressive jawline set. For the space of a heartbeat she thought Alex was about to lose his cool. But his thick, dark lashes screened his gaze. She admired his control. The limousine filtered to a halt in front of the hotel. She pinned a smile to her lips for her parents’ benefit. Another couple of hours and the need even to smile would be over.
CHAPTER SIX
THEY WERE flying straight to Rome. It seemed that Alex could not wait to parade his bride to the family again.
“It will be easier if it is done immediately,” he pronounced during the flight. He actually reached for Kerry’s clenched fingers. “Believe me, no one will say anything
to hurt your feelings.”
His family could not afford to offend him; Alex either employed them or supported them. They would have had to accept Frankenstein’s Bride with a smile had Alex made the demand! Her generous mouth thinned. Well, she wasn’t the trusting and na;auive teenager she had been on her last visit. Nobody would intimidate her this time.
“Is it the prospect of meeting my family again which is worrying you?”
She raised a brow. “Nothing’s worrying me.”
Nicky climbed up on her knee and planted himself bodily between them. “This is my mummy.” There was a miniature Veranchetti stress to the possessive tone employed. Ever since Nicky had adjusted to the sight of his parents together, he had been growing increasingly less certain about whether or not he liked the combination.
“And my wife,” Alex murmured.
“She’s not.” Nicky’s mouth came out in a pout. “I’m going to marry her when I get growed up. You’ve got Helena.”
Kerry forced a laugh. Alex surveyed her over the top of Nicky’s dark, curly head in cool question. “I don’t find that funny.”
“It makes pretty clear sense to him. He’s seen you with too many different women,” Kerry riposted drily.
“Helena happens to be an eleven-year-old,” he interposed. “And the women you talk about are at an end now.”
She shrugged as Nicky slid down restlessly and crossed the cabin to play with the jigsaw she had set out for him. “I wouldn’t speak too soon,” she replied. “After all, I’m not going to share a bedroom with you again. Touch me and I’ll disappear into thin air, Alex. I swear it. You can’t have me watched all the time.”
Long fingers tipped up her chin. “Don’t utter foolish threats.”
“It’s not a foolish threat. It’s what will happen,” she informed him steadily, her eyes icy-cold. “You’ve got your son, you’ve got a wife who will behave like a wife in public, but in private, as far as I am concerned, the act dies.”