by Penny Jordan
He left on the Wednesday morning, straight after breakfast. Wednesday was Jessica’s day for taking the boys to the local sports centre fifteen miles away. It was well equipped, with squash courts, a swimming-pool and a variety of other facilities, and once a week they spent most of the day there.
On discovering that neither of them could swim particularly well, Jessica had instituted lessons for them both.
They always concluded the outing with a visit to McDonalds for hamburgers and thick sticky milkshakes, which Jessica privately found nauseating, but which the children seemed to enjoy. She was gradually making small changes in their eating patterns, replacing tinned and frozen vegetables with fresh, and substituting wholemeal bread for white. She had noticed that Lyle, who during the early days of their marriage seemed totally uninterested in food, now did full justice to the meals she provided. Cooking was something she enjoyed, preferring simple fresh foods to those smothered in heavy rich sauces, and she repressed a faint grimace as James demolished two of the revoltingly anaemic-looking soft rolls she had bought them to go with their hamburgers.
It bothered her that neither boy seemed to have any friends, and she was determined that once they went back to school she would encourage them to bring schoolfriends back home with them. The school they had attended in Oxford was now too far away but Lyle had discovered a very good private school locally which took day pupils. Both boys were clever, although in differing ways. James was fascinated by her computer, and she had privately resolved that for Christmas he must have one of his own, while Stuart was far more interested in his environment, and was also an avid reader. Stuart was the one who helped her in the garden; James the one who enjoyed watching her work on her computer.
They now had a firm of contract gardeners who came out once a week to mow the large lawns and generally keep the place tidy, although the flowerbeds were so large that Jessica found she needed to spend some time each week herself weeding them. It was a task she found strangely pleasurable and she had even bought herself some books on gardening and was now ambitiously toying with the idea of a two-tone cottage-garden border for next year.
Family life appealed to her and had revealed to her a side of herself she had never previously suspected existed. She put it down to the fact that her teenage years had been so unhappy and often wondered if by trying to give the boys the security she herself had never known she was trying to rewrite her own past and thus obliterate its pain.
Although he didn’t spend much time with them, she was acutely conscious of Lyle’s absence when they returned home. All three of them were tired, and Jessica herself was in bed by half-past ten, glad to close her eyes and go to sleep.
In the early hours something woke her and she lay for several minutes sleepily disorientated, wondering what it was that had disturbed her. When no sound was forthcoming she tried to go back to sleep, but by now she was wide awake, and thirsty besides.
Not bothering to pull on a robe she pattered downstairs in her nightdress, the thin cotton cool against skin chilled by the night air.
As always she had left the landing light on. She had discovered quite early on that Stuart in particular was afflicted by nightmares and had a horror of the dark. The easiest solution she had found was to leave the landing light on and his door slightly open so that she could hear him if he called out. Yawning slightly she pushed open the kitchen door and came to an abrupt halt.
Lyle was standing in front of the hotplate, apparently waiting for a pan of milk to boil. He turned as he heard her, frowning slightly. Apart from the towel wrapped round his hips he was nude, his skin and hair damp.
‘Something wrong?’
A curious weightlessness seemed to have descended upon her; an inability to drag her gaze away from his body. He was magnificently male, his body hard and muscled, shadowed across his chest with fine dark hair.
‘Jessica?’
Somehow she managed to look up at him. ‘I thought you weren’t coming back tonight.’
‘I changed my mind. The conference was over earlier than I anticipated. What are you doing downstairs? Don’t you feel well?’ His gaze sharpened and ridiculously she was acutely conscious of the thinness of her nightdress and the fact that the kitchen light was probably strong enough for him to see right through it.
What did it matter if he could? The female body was scarcely an unfamiliar mystery to him, and she already knew that he had absolutely no sexual interest in her.
‘No, just thirsty,’ she told him. ‘Something woke me up.’
‘Probably me running a shower. I’m sorry.’
She walked towards the sink, turning on the cold tap and letting the water run.
‘I wanted to have a word with you about your computer.’
She swung round, watching him deftly pouring the milk into his mug.
He came towards her carrying the pan and instinctively she stepped back, hating herself for the way her muscles tightened beneath her skin as he came close. Why was it she always felt this need to keep a certain distance between them?
‘Don’t worry.’ His voice was sardonic. ‘I’m not about to invade your precious personal space.’
Her skin flushed as she realised he had seen her recoil. Rather shakily she asked him, ‘What was it you wanted to know—about the computer, I mean?’ She was desperately conscious that while she was conversing quite normally with him on the surface, at another, deeper, more primitive level she was acutely aware of him in a way that set off a thousand alarm bells ringing in her nerve-endings.
‘Whether it could be adapted to help me with some of my paperwork. I was talking to a colleague who uses one.’
‘I don’t see why not. It’s an advanced model and capable of taking a variety of software.’ She forgot to be wary as her mind concentrated on what he was asking her, and as he stepped forward to put the pan into the sink his arm touched her own. A frisson of totally unfamiliar sensation shot through her, the almost silk-like brush of his skin against her own causing an electric reaction that made her muscles seize and her breath lock in her throat. She could feel him looking at her, but there was no way she could meet his eyes. To feel so vulnerable and afraid was a new feeling for her, and one she knew she did not like. Slowly backing away from him she said formally, ‘Perhaps we could discuss it in the morning.’
‘Of course.’
She saw his shoulders shrug, half fascinated by the play of flesh and muscles.
‘You really don’t like my sex, do you? Or is it just me who affects you this way?’
She stiffened and stopped moving, her voice unsteady as she lied, ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Like hell.’ His arm shot out, his fingers curling round her wrist, dragging her forwards with such force that she couldn’t withstand him. He brought her to within inches of his body, refusing to slacken his grip on her, his voice dry with irony as he said, ‘You should see yourself, Jessica. You’re frozen with rejection, your body’s practically screaming at me to let you go, and you do that every time I come anywhere near you. Oh, don’t worry, I’m going to let you go.’
When he released her, her whole body started to shake and she stepped back from him immediately, at a loss to understand the dark anger glittering in his eyes. She couldn’t endure another moment in the kitchen with him, and forgetting her thirst she turned and stumbled towards the door.
All the way up the stairs her heart thudded against the wall of her chest, her legs so weak that she could feel them tremble. She was as unable to explain her own reaction as she was to understand Lyle’s response to it.
CHAPTER FIVE
LIKE THE WARNING implicit in a spasmodically aching tooth, her inability to be totally open and honest with herself whenever she tried to rationalise her reactions to Lyle continued to niggle at Jessica’s conscience. The tiny spurts of adrenalin that raced through her veins whenever he came too close to her urged flight rather than fight, caution rather than confrontation, but what was there
after all to confront him about?
Once his initial antipathy towards their marriage had subsided, in so far as the terms of their contract were concerned he was practically a model husband. He had even explained to her that part of his original irritation had sprung from the fact that at the time Justine had delivered her ultimatum he had been right in the middle of the hay-fever season, with all its attendant extra work.
The hours he worked honestly appalled Jessica, and she found herself getting illogically irate about the unfairness of a system that demanded so much from one man. Her tentative suggestion that she might be able to help him to process his work on to the computer he was thinking of buying, regretted the moment she had made it, had been surprisingly well received, and for the last ten days or so they had spent an hour or more together each evening after surgery, and once the boys were in bed, steadily working through his files.
Watching him surreptitiously to observe him, Jessica was caught off-guard by the degree to which her own perceptions of him had changed. The ill-mannered, arrogant man she had first come up against had virtually been superseded by the caring, hard-working, if sometimes understandably irritable human being she was discovering him to be.
As they worked together in his office, sometimes he would make a comment as he handed her a file.
‘Mrs Meadows,’ he said briefly handing her a particularly bulky folder. ‘She’s sixty-two years old and suffering from senile dementia. Her condition has grown progressively worse over the last four years, and there’s very little we can do to help her. And there are thousands of people suffering from the same affliction.’ He frowned and got up from his desk, going to stand in front of the window. Without looking at him, Jessica knew that his frown was deepening; that his concern for the plight of Mrs Meadows was genuine and went deep.
‘And it isn’t just Mrs Meadows herself who suffers; her complaint affects her whole family—or what’s left of it,’ he turned round, and grimaced faintly. ‘Mrs Meadows lives with her daughter because technically senile dementia is not a condition that requires the patient to be hospitalised. However, with her it has now reached the stage where she’s virtually bedridden, although no bed can be found for her in either our local hospital or the old people’s home, so the burden of caring for Mrs Meadows falls on her married daughter. And it is a burden. Mrs Meadows requires twenty-four-hour-a-day care—like a small child, she cannot be safely left. Imagine the burden that places on her daughter. Because of it her marriage has broken up—her husband simply could not endure life with a wife who was constantly tied to someone else, never able to go out with him or take part in any activities that meant leaving her mother alone.
‘They have three children, and the whole family live in a rented three-bedroomed cottage. The eldest girl has just left home—she’s sixteen, still little more than a child, but she says she won’t live at home any more. She’s both resentful of her mother because of the time she has to give to her grandmother, and frightened that as she gets older she too will be pressed into the same caring role as her mother. The most damnable thing of all is that because of the care she receives from her daughter, Mrs Meadows could well live, physically at least, for another twenty years.’
Jessica was horrified by what he was telling her. ‘But surely the Social Services…’
‘They do what they can, but they’re already overstretched. If there were the money available Mrs Meadows could go into private care, but there isn’t. It’s a problem to which there’s no answer, and Mrs Meadows’s daughter is only one of hundreds of thousands of women all over this country who have virtually had to give up any idea of living what the rest of us consider to be a normal life, because of the burden of looking after older relatives. In a hospital patients are bodies, symptoms and operations, but as a GP…’
He shook his head without finishing what he had been saying and went back to his desk to extract another file.
‘Mrs Meadway…’
* * *
THE WEATHER had suddenly turned hot; not a pleasant heat, but a muggy, threatening one, sultry with storm warnings.
Jessica was out in the garden. She found the work both therapeutic and relaxing. With both boys at home she didn’t have much time to work on her book and had put it on one side. It was less than two months since she and Lyle had married, and yet strangely now she could not imagine any other life.
Andrea’s pregnancy was advancing smoothly. Her sister had driven over to see her the previous week, and Jessica had been delighted to see how much calmer she was. The boys too were benefiting from her marriage. They turned to her more and more, and only this morning James had hugged her impulsively. She put down her trowel and sat back on her heels, remembering. She had been sorting out the washing and had shouted at him on discovering a rip in his new jeans. To her amazement, instead of being suitably penitent he had rushed over to her and hugged her fiercely, mumbling in explanation as he drew away, ‘When you shout you sound like a real mother.’
A real mother… Was that what she was becoming? Certainly she was more emotionally involved with the boys than she had ever imagined possible. She derived pleasure from their company even when they exasperated her. The feeling she had for them was in no way mawkish or sentimental, but it was a form of love, she recognised, startled by the discovery. How quietly and compellingly it had crept up on her, this concern and involvement with their lives, creating a bond which she knew she would hate to see severed. Her feelings for them had added a new dimension to her life; before she had loved Andrea, but now her relationship with the boys had brought a…yes, a richness to her life…a certain inner tranquillity she had not experienced from her literary and financial successes.
So this then was love, this mutual need and sharing of experiences, this knowing that in addition to teaching the boys, she was herself learning from them. Suddenly it struck her how acutely shut out Lyle must feel. Although James did not share Stuart’s resentment of their father, neither of them sought out Lyle’s company in the way they sought out hers. And now that she knew him better she realised how bitter this must make him feel. He was a complex man, and one who did not reveal himself easily to others. It gave her a warm, pleasurable sense of euphoria to know that when they were working together he shared with her some of his most intimate feelings, opening barriers which she sensed had been carefully constructed to keep the world at bay.
The boys’ mother must have hurt him very badly, she realised, and then tensed slightly, a warning impulse seizing her muscles, alerting her to some as yet hidden danger. Shaking off the feeling, she went back to work smiling slightly. She was being too defensive and protective, what was wrong with feeling compassion and concern for Lyle? He was after all her husband, the person with whom she had elected to share her life, and it made good sense for her to encourage anything within herself that made it easier for them to get along together. Children were very sensitive to bad atmospheres between adults. It would not help the boys if she and Lyle were constantly at loggerheads with one another.
She was still in the garden when Lyle came home. She stood up, feeling slightly self-conscious in her brief shorts and top as he came striding towards her, instead of making straight for the house. He looked tired and tense, his skin drawn tight over the bones of his face, and it struck her suddenly that he seemed to have lost weight. Too many rushed and skipped meals—he was so busy he never seemed to have time to sit down and eat properly with them. She couldn’t remember a single meal since they had married that hadn’t been interrupted by a telephone call or a caller.
Heat prickled disturbingly along her skin, the heavy, moist air pressing down on her body. She was aware of tiny beads of perspiration gathering between her breasts and on her forehead, and she pulled off one of her gardening gloves to push her hair back off her face.
‘You’ve been busy.’
‘I enjoy it. You look tired.’
She saw the surprise in his eyes and coloured hotly without knowing why.
Surely it was not breaking the rules of their marriage for her to comment on his drawn appearance?
‘Migraine,’ he told her briefly, ‘that’s why I came back. I’m going upstairs to lie down. Any emergency calls will have to be referred to the cottage hospital. If I’m lucky I might just be in time to stave off an attack, if not…’ He looked grim, his voice faintly harsh, and Jessica knew why.
Her mother had suffered from excruciating migraine attacks, some so severe that they had actually physically paralysed her. She would never forget the trauma of getting home from school one afternoon and finding her mother’s car parked in the drive, with her mother inside it, totally unable to move a single muscle. The doctor had told her mother that she had been lucky to get home before the attack became severe, and even now Jessica shuddered to think of the potential danger had her mother been paralysed while actually behind the wheel of the car, although their doctor assured her that most sufferers normally had sufficient warning signs to be able to anticipate when a bad attack was likely to hit them.
Already she could see that the pupils of Lyle’s eyes were tensely dilated, his bones showing almost white against his skin, and she made no attempt to detain him, waiting until he was inside before following him into the house. The boys were watching television, and she went into the sitting-room to warn them not to disturb their father.
Going back to the kitchen she hesitated before starting to make a pot of tea. Her mother had always found the drink relaxing and helpful when taking her medication. She had also found relief in having her neck and shoulder muscles massaged, Jessica remembered, and it had normally fallen to her to perform this task.
Instinct warned her that Lyle would not welcome her interference for a variety of reasons. He was after all an intensely private man, and one who would not welcome anyone seeing him at his most vulnerable. In that at least they were alike. She too loathed being fussed over, preferring to crawl off and be alone if ever she was feeling under the weather, and yet despite the warnings instinct flashed to her brain she still poured him a cup of tea and set off upstairs with it.