by Penny Jordan
She woke up in the early hours, stiff and cold, her muscles cramped. She undressed and had a bath before crawling into bed. She could never remember feeling so exhausted. Her stomach felt hollow and empty, and she tried to remember when she had last eaten before last night.
She was appalled to discover that her last proper meal had been the breakfast she had shared with Guy. She had only picked at food since then. No wonder she was feeling ill.
She was woken by the alarm call she had booked, and got up feeling lethargic and drained. She ordered a room-service breakfast, but when it arrived she could only pick at it, her stomach rebelling at the sight of food. She packed her case and rang down for a porter, and then went down stairs to meet the publishers’ agent who was accompanying her on the tour, as previously arranged.
Kyla Harris was a plump, efficient girl in her mid-twenties, with a mass of dark curls and a warm smile.
‘Are you all right?’ she frowned when she saw Campion’s pale face.
‘I think I’ve picked up a bug.’
‘Oh dear, and just before Christmas as well.’
Campion realised that Kyla was looking anxiously at her, probably dreading hearing her say that she wanted to cancel the tour, but what was the point? She could be sick just as easily here in Cornwall as she could in London, she told herself sardonically.
‘Oh, by the way,’ Kyla asked, when their cases were stowed in the back of her car, ‘someone was looking for you last night. Did he find you?’
‘Someone?’ Campion felt her heart leap. ‘Who?’
Kyla shrugged. ‘I don’t know. One of the girls on reception said that someone came in, asking for us. She gave him your room number. Local press, I expect…’
‘Oh, yes,’ Campion agreed dully. ‘Press, of course.’
For a moment, she had been stupid enough to hope that her visitor might have been Guy.
If Guy wanted to speak to her, he was hardly likely to come rushing down to Cornwall. He knew where she was. All he had to do was to lift the telephone…
* * *
In Falmouth, she did a radio interview and then a signing session. By five o’clock in the afternoon she was exhausted. One day left and then back home; and she still had all her Christmas shopping to do.
Lucy and Howard always made a big event of Christmas, with lavish presents, and she always liked to repay their generosity with carefully chosen gifts.
A display in a shop window caught her eye as she and Kyla made their way back to the car, and she stopped to glance at it.
An old-fashioned polished crib was hung with hand-made appliquéd quilts and matching bolsters, some brightly coloured, others delicately pastel.
One in particular caught her eye; she knew that Lucy would love it, but might it not be tempting fate to buy it for her for a Christmas present, especially in view of her past problems?
She could buy it and keep it until the baby was born, she told herself and, asking Kyla to wait, she went inside.
When they reached their hotel, she apologised to Kyla, and asked her if she would mind if she ate in her room.
‘No, you go ahead. You look washed out. Are you sure you want to go on?’
‘There’s only one more day,’ Campion reminded her.
One more day, and then it would be a week since she had last heard from Guy. A week. She shivered, huddling deeper into her coat.
* * *
The tour was over, successfully, so Kyla said. Somehow or other, Campion had smiled and talked her way through a succession of interviews and chat shows. Somehow, she had managed to sign books and answer questions, and now at last it was over.
Like her relationship with Guy, she thought, as Kyla saw her safely on to the London train.
Her bloom had gone; it had been a brief flowering indeed, before shrivelling in the forest of loneliness and pain. Lynsey’s story had carried her away into fantasy, making her believe that she could be what she was not—a woman for loving. Now she had to face the rest of her life without Guy, because she couldn’t bear to hear the words of rejection on his lips, as they had once been on Craig’s rejection had crippled her; Guy’s, she knew, could kill her. Better to go back to the old, cold life and never see him again. Try to ride out the hurt. Perhaps one day she’d be able to put it into a book, she thought hollowly.
The journey seemed to take forever. London was cold and wet, and when she let herself into her flat all she wanted to do was to fall into bed.
The phone woke her, and for one crazy moment she thought it must be Guy. She picked up the receiver, her hand shaking.
‘Campion, are you all right?’
The incisive tones of her agent’s voice made her heart drop.
‘Helena, I’m fine,’ she lied. ‘What about you?’
‘Oh, I’ve been given the all clear now, and I’m raring to get back to work. In fact, I am back. That’s why I’m ringing you. How did the tour go?’
‘Quite well.’
There was a small silence, as though something in her colourless tone had reached the other woman.
‘Well, I’ve got some good news for you. The publishers are thrilled with your last manuscript. Guy’s left me a note saying that they want to get it into production as quickly as possible…Campion, are you there?’
She was gripping the receiver so hard, her bones hurt.
‘Yes…yes…I am. Guy’s away, then, is he?’
Oh, God, what was she doing to herself? If he wanted her to know his movements, he would have told her himself. Was this what love did to you, reducing you to begging for scraps of information, destroying all your pride and integrity?
‘Yes. He hasn’t had a proper break this year, and he suddenly decided that he wanted to get away. He’s gone to visit his sister, apparently. Look, when can we meet? The publishers are keen for you to do something else for them. A family saga this time, perhaps—historical again, of course—’
She had wronged Guy, Campion thought numbly. His absence was nothing so personal as a snub, nothing to do with Craig’s kind of petty revenge. She had simply been put back into her proper perspective as a very small part of a successful man’s life; a professional challenge that had had some importance for as long as the job lasted, but now just one more name on his agency’s list, another writer whose work he had an interest in selling.
Work…the universal panacea. Campion closed her eyes.
‘I seem to have picked up some sort of bug, Helena. Can we leave it until after Christmas?’
She could tell from the small silence that Helena was surprised, and no wonder. In the past, she had allowed nothing to interfere with her work.
‘Well, yes, of course. You’ll be spending Christmas with Lucy and Howard as usual, I expect?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I had hoped to tempt you out to a celebratory lunch…’
A celebratory lunch. Campion’s stomach heaved, and she felt guilty at her lack of enthusiasm.
‘I’d love to,’ she lied, ‘but this tour has left me rather behind. I’ll have a think about another book over Christmas and get in touch with you after the New Year,’ she added as a conciliatory gesture.
When she hung up, she sat and hugged her arms around herself, as though by so doing she could contain the fiery spread of her pain.
Surely Guy could have given the good news himself? Or was this his way of underlining the fact that their relationship was over, that she was now in his past and that that was where he wanted her to stay? Was that how these things were done? He wasn’t an unkind man, far from it, and she did not have the experience to judge how a man was likely to react when he wanted to end an emotional involvement.
Emotional? For her, perhaps, but for him?
Don’t think about it. Don’t brood, she chastened herself. All she really wanted to do was to pull the bedcovers round her body and lie there and mourn, but she couldn’t do that. She had to find a way of going on with her life without him, of finding a purpose—a r
eason for going on.
In the meantime, she had promised Lucy her help, and she had also virtually promised Helena a new book.
She dialled the number of Lucy’s London home. Her housekeeper answered and then put her through to Lucy.
‘This is ridiculous! Neither Mrs Timmins nor Howard will let me lift a finger. I keep telling them that pregnancy is a perfectly natural state. How did the tour go?’
‘Fine. Do you still want my help with your Christmas preparations?’
‘Yes, please. I’ve had the most wonderful idea for the drawing-room. I think this year we’ll go all traditional. Real fir branches, a huge tree, Victorian decorations…’
Campion did her best to sound enthusiastic.
Lucy wanted to leave for Dorset on Tuesday, she told her, and before then she had heaps of shopping to do.
‘Howard is insisting that I take Paul and the Rolls wherever I go. Isn’t it ridiculous? He won’t so much as let me carry one parcel,’ she complained.
They agreed to meet mid-morning. She found she tired easily, Lucy told her, and often had to have a rest in the afternoon.
‘And you should see me! I’m huge… enormous…and only four months…’
As she hung up, Campion found that her eyes were stinging with tears. Lucy was so lucky. A husband she loved, his child to look forward to…
Stop feeling so sorry for yourself, she derided. Compared with millions of women, she was lucky. Maybe, but she didn’t feel it.
* * *
Despite her claim that she was taking things easy, Lucy managed to fit in an exhausting amount of shopping. Or was it simply that, because she herself could not get into the spirit of Christmas, she found it exhausting? Campion wondered late one afternoon, after Paul, the chauffeur, had dropped her off.
‘Heavens!’ Lucy had exclaimed in concern when they finally left Harrods. ‘You look ready to drop, and Campion, you’re losing far too much weight. Are you sure you’re all right?’
All right? Physically, there could be nothing much wrong with her; but emotionally…that was a different story.
Somehow or other, she had managed to fit her own shopping in between helping Lucy. She had seen the nursery being planned for the new baby, and had heard all about the one being designed for the Dorset house, and she had listened as attentively as she could, but all the time it was as though her real attention was turned inwards, waiting to hear a voice she suspected she would probably never hear again.
She had to accept it. Guy was not going to get in touch with her.
It was over. Finito. Finished.
But that didn’t stop her from thinking about him, from wondering where he was, what he was doing, who he was with, whether he ever spared a thought for her.
Why should he? His self-imposed task to ensure that she finished her book on time and successfully was over. If he did think about her, it could only be to congratulate himself on having achieved his aim, she thought bitterly. No doubt now all his time and attention was given to another writer’s problems.
She remembered how, on first seeing him, she had automatically pictured him in expensive, exclusive surroundings, wining and dining high-powered publishing executives, while he sought the best possible deal for his clients. She had seen him as smooth and sophisticated, as the kind of man it would be impossible to trust. She had seen him as being without depth, all plausible surface charm hiding instincts as rapacious as those of a shark; a man whose loyalty to his writers only went as far as their last successful book; but she had been wrong, as he had proved to her.
But she wasn’t wrong about his lack of desire to pursue their relationship. Over and over again she had reflected on everything he had said to her, on every nuance of every word. Never once had he mentioned them having a future together, and so perhaps it had been naïve of her to hope that he would want to get in touch with her. Face it, she told herself brutally, you aren’t the first woman he’s made love to. And yet there had been times when he had touched her when she had felt so sure that he was experiencing exactly the same deep intensity of feeling as she was herself.
Wishful thinking, she told herself acidly. Foolish daydreams that had nothing to do with reality.
* * *
Tuesday dawned, icy cold with grey clouds. Snow was forecast, Lucy told her excitedly when she joined her in the car.
A dull inertia possessed Campion, an inability to do anything other than simply be. She felt like an animal wanting desperately to go into hibernation. She felt…she felt as though there was no meaning, no purpose in her life any more.
‘Tell me about the new book,’ Lucy commanded, once Paul had stowed Campion’s cases in the boot of the Rolls, with her own parcels. ‘I bumped into Helena the other day. She was raving about it. She says it’s the best thing you’ve ever done. And all with Guy French’s help, so I understand.’
Campion’s mouth went dry. She knew that her very silence was causing Lucy to look at her speculatively, but she wasn’t ready to talk about Guy yet, not even to her best friend.
She turned her head away.
‘Oh, Campion—it’s Guy, isn’t it? You’re in love with him. I’m sorry.’ Lucy’s hand touched hers. ‘I didn’t mean to pry.’
How easily she had betrayed herself. So easily, that surely Guy himself must have known how she felt about him. Maybe that knowledge had contributed towards his decision not to see her again. He didn’t want the burden of her emotional hunger for him.
Stop thinking about him, she told herself. It won’t do any good.
‘I felt the baby move this morning. It was the most wonderful sensation. Howard’s like a dog with two tails!’
‘Everything’s OK, then?’ Campion roused herself enough to ask.
‘Yes, thank God. I couldn’t have borne to lose this baby. The specialist thinks I should be safe now, although he warned me to take things easy…’ She laughed, a clear, trilling sound that stirred envy in Campion’s normally unenvious heart. ‘I don’t get much opportunity to be anything else. Howard and Mrs Timmins between them have me wrapped in cotton wool.’
Lucy’s housekeeper had left for the house ahead of them, and when the Rolls turned in between the stone gate-posts they could see smoke curling from the house’s many chimneys, and lights glimmering in the windows.
‘Mmm—you know what I’m looking forward to now? Some of Mrs T’s home-made scones, dripping with butter, and a huge, hot fire…’ groaned Lucy.
Lucy’s grandfather had removed all the original fireplaces, bricking them up in the bedrooms, but, although he had installed central heating, Howard had scoured architectural salvage depots for period replacements, and Campion had to admit that it had been worth while.
All the guest rooms had their own fires, and Lucy was fortunate in having a devoted and extremely well-paid staff who kept them cleaned and lit.
It was one of the pleasures of Christmas with Howard and Lucy to go up to one’s room and bask in front of the luxury of a real fire. A luxury indeed, when combined with the discreet central heating the house also boasted.
The house had once been the hub of a small country estate. Virtually all the land had been sold off in the past, although Howard had bought back a few fields.
Howard was a traditionalist, and one of the traditions he had revived, and which Campion suspected he thoroughly enjoyed, was playing Father Christmas for the local children at a party which they always gave the Sunday before Christmas.
As Mrs Timmins opened the door to welcome them in, Campion saw that a huge fir tree was already in place in the hall. Clucking and fussing, Mrs Timmins hurried them into the sitting-room. This room was particularly Lucy’s own. A half-finished tapestry she enjoyed working on when she stayed at the house stood to one side of the fire. The colour scheme of soft peaches with touches of blue was essentially feminine and light. Lucy had a gift for décor, Campion acknowledged, admiring the carefully chosen antiques and the bowls of winter greenery which highlighted their soft sh
een.
This house, for all its elegance, was very much home, and it was easy to picture children sitting in this room, playing.
‘George says we’re going to have snow tonight,’ Mrs Timmins warned them.
George lived in the village and looked after the gardens; he was also famous for his weather predictions.
‘I know, isn’t it exciting!’
Mrs Timmins gave Lucy an indulgent look, which changed to a slight frown as Campion took off her coat.
‘Why, miss, you have lost weight,’ she exclaimed disapprovingly. ‘What have you been doing with yourself?’
Mrs Timmins, herself a comfortably padded woman in her fifties, had strong ideas about diets and what she termed ‘faddy eating’.
‘Be warned, she’ll do her best to feed you up while you’re here,’ Lucy prophesied when the older woman left the room. ‘Actually, she’s right, Campion. You are too thin.’
The sympathetic look that accompanied the words told her that her old friend suspected the reason for her rapid weight loss.
‘You look tired as well. Would you prefer to go straight up to your room? Howard won’t be back in time for dinner, but I was hoping we could get most of the decorating done tomorrow, so that means an early start…’
‘I am tired,’ Campion admitted. ‘In fact, I feel tired all the time.’
‘Well, I can sympathise, that’s exactly how I felt the first weeks I was pregnant. I think Howard thought I’d got sleeping sickness!’
Pregnant. Campion stood up jerkily. Oh, God, no! She couldn’t be, coud she? Guy had always been so careful. Apart from the first time and the last.
‘Campion, are you all right?’
‘Fine. I think I will go and lie down, if you don’t mind.’
* * *
Pregnant. Of coure she couldn’t be. Campion lay on the bed, staring up at the pleated silk ceiling of the four-poster. She would know, surely? There would be unmistakable signs.
Like being sick and feeling tired, a traitorous voice whispered.