by Penny Jordan
Ben barely glanced at the plans. He was frowning, Zoe saw now in irritation, his face shuttered and slightly bleak.
* * *
‘What on earth’s wrong with you?’ she demanded when they had left Clive’s office. ‘The house is ideal, you said so yourself. You’ve got what you’ve always wanted…’
She checked abruptly, hearing the sharp note of bitterness in her voice.
‘We haven’t got anything yet, Zoe,’ Ben told her curtly. ‘You heard what Clive said about the possibility of our not getting planning permission…’
Zoe made an exasperated noise. ‘That wasn’t what he said at all,’ she argued. ‘You weren’t listening to him…’
‘No,’ Ben contradicted her. ‘You’re the one who wasn’t listening. Look, I’ve got to get back to work,’ he told her curtly.
Zoe stared at him. ‘Work? But you’re supposed to be having the whole day off…’
‘Aldo changed his mind.’
* * *
Only another day, Zoe told herself tiredly, and then tensed as she felt the fine shiver that convulsed her.
Had she discussed things with her partner? the counsellor had asked her. But, even if she had wanted to, she couldn’t. They didn’t seem to be able to discuss anything these days without quarrelling.
She bit her lip, mentally acknowledging that she was more than half to blame for that, sometimes almost deliberately picking at Ben, goading him.
She knew he was worried about the hotel, but she sensed that there was something else bothering him as well. So often these days she felt torn between her desire to protect him and her resentment at having to do so, of always being the one who was the strong one. She had told him over and over again that he was worrying unnecessarily about the hotel, looking for problems where none existed. How would he cope if he really had something to worry about… if, like her… ?
She shivered again. No, she was not going to think about that now. After all, it would soon all be over… finished… terminated…
Everything was organised. She finished work at lunchtime. She would come back here to the flat and then go on to the clinic for her appointment.
How long after that would it be before… ? Her body trembled as the feelings which had been growing within her and which she had been fighting so desperately to suppress threatened to overwhelm her.
Why, when everything should have been so easy, so logical, was she feeling like this? she wondered so despairingly. She could not have a child, she didn’t want a child, so why… why did the thought of what lay ahead of her make her tense her stomach muscles so fiercely, so protectively? Why did it make her feel such a surge of anger and resentment against Ben? Why did it weaken her so frighteningly, make her so vulnerable, when she so desperately needed to be strong, not just for her own sake but more importantly for Ben’s?
Ben needed her.
I love him, she whispered into the silence. I love him and there isn’t room in my life for both of you—can’t you understand that?
* * *
Ben watched as Zoe got ready for work. Her hands trembled as she zipped up her skirt. She looked so pale and withdrawn, and she was losing weight. Who was she thinking about when she had that distant look in her eyes? The man he was losing her to?
When was she going to tell him about it? Who was he? he wondered jealously. Someone she worked with… a married man perhaps? Was that the reason why she had said nothing—because he wasn’t free to love her? Immediately he felt a surge of angry protectiveness at the thought of someone hurting her.
Zoe was so vulnerable, even if she herself did not know it.
He watched her broodingly for a few seconds. The hotel and their future, which had been so important to her, no longer seemed to matter to her. She couldn’t even see, as he could, that Clive was seriously concerned that they might not get planning permission.
When he had tried to talk to her about it she had shrugged impatiently, calling him a pessimist.
His throat ached with love for her. There was nothing he wanted to do more than to reach out and take hold of her, but every time he’d tried to touch her recently she had shrugged him off.
‘What time will you be in?’ he asked her quietly as she picked up her coat.
‘Uh… I’m not really sure. I might have to work late.’ Bright colour stung her face as she dipped her head forward, trying to conceal her guilty blush with the tumble of her curls, but Ben had seen it.
‘Again?’ he asked her wryly.
‘We’re… we’re very short-staffed…’
She hated lying to Ben, Zoe acknowledged miserably later as she left the hotel and made her way home, but wasn’t it partly his fault that she was having to do so? She tensed as she felt the now familiar surge of mingled guilt, pain and love storm through her.
She had a shower and then dressed carefully in clean, easily removable clothes. The doctor would want to examine her, of course. Her body tensed.
She was just brushing her hair, trying not to think about what lay ahead, when Ben unlocked the door and walked into the flat.
Zoe stared at him in shock.
‘Ben… what are you doing here?’ she asked him weakly.
His eyes hardened and he looked at her.
‘I could ask you the same question,’ he told her evenly.
‘What? Oh, they didn’t need me after all… but I’m not staying. I… I have to go out… I… I’m seeing Ma,’ she lied desperately.
‘You don’t normally have a shower just to see your mother.’
Zoe stared at him. The bathroom door was open, the steam still escaping, the damp towels on the floor at her feet.
‘No, well… I felt hot and sticky. I… Why are you back so early?’ she demanded, unable to continue lying.
‘Primarily because I’ve been sacked.’
Ben cursed himself as he saw her expression. He hadn’t meant to tell her like that, but coming home and finding her here, listening to her lying to him so obviously, had made him want to reach out and shock her into realising what she was doing.
‘No! You can’t have been!’ Zoe protested. ‘You said you weren’t going to leave until the hotel was finalised.’
‘I wasn’t given any choice. It seems Aldo has a nephew who can cook ten times better than me and whom he can pay five times less. Oh, it’s all right… I’ve been in touch with one of the agencies and they’ve got some temping work for me, and at better money than Aldowas paying me. It isn’t as secure as having something permanent, of course, but it’s better than nothing.’
‘But, Ben…’ Zoe protested.
‘Hadn’t you better go?’ he asked her, giving her an unkind smile. ‘You don’t want to keep your mother waiting, do you?’
* * *
The doctor was pleasant but brisk, calmly outlining the procedures and explaining to Zoe just what would be involved.
‘The optimum time for a termination is just around the twelve-week mark, the time nature normally chooses when she decides to terminate a pregnancy. That would mean… let me see… some time next week, yes?’
‘Yes,’ Zoe agreed.
When she left the clinic she felt sick and light-headed. With relief, she assured herself fiercely as she tried to breathe deeply and calmly.
She didn’t return to the flat straight away. For one thing, Ben would be there, and she didn’t feel she could face him without betraying what she was feeling.
Instead she wandered numbly around the shops. The window display of one of them caught her attention and she stood staring at it for a long time, until the reflection of the heavily pregnant woman standing next to her made her realise what she was doing.
Shakily she turned away. What was she doing, staring at a window dressed as a child’s nursery? She had made her decision and she knew it was the right one. The only one…
Ben was changing for work when she got back to the flat. He looked at her silently for several minutes before asking calmly, ‘Did you have
a good time?’
A good time… If only he knew!
‘Yes,’ she lied, giving him a falsely bright smile.
‘And your mother? How is she?’
‘She’s fine,’ Zoe told him.
Ben turned his back on her. His hands had started to tremble. He knew she was lying to him. Her mother had rung ten minutes after Zoe had left and from her conversation it had been plain that Zoe had not gone to meet her. Which left only one plausible explanation.
He could feel the emotions building up inside him: the pain, the anger, the sense of betrayal and loss… and most of all the helpless, aching intensity of his love.
It was no good. He couldn’t go on ignoring it, and perhaps after all this was what Zoe actually wanted—that he should take the burden of explanation and revelation off her shoulders and carry it for her.
He turned round to face her.
‘Zoe… is there someone else?’
Someone else…? Zoe stared at him in shock, immediately opening her mouth to deny it, and then she closed it again, recognising on a suddenly sharply illuminating and painful burst of truth what she had previously refused to admit.
There was someone else… someone who, with each day that passed, came more firmly between them, driving them apart, tearing her apart, tormenting her with conflicting emotions and loyalties… It was a strong fighter, this new life inside her, using every emotional power at its disposal to protect its frail hold on life, but her commitment had already been made and given long before it had even existed.
I can’t, she whispered silently in the shadows of her mind. I’m sorry, but I can’t…
‘Zoe…’ Ben pressed. The look on her face hurt him with its pain and confusion.
She focused on him, staring blankly at him for a second before telling him huskily, ‘No, Ben. No… there’s no one else. There’s no one else.’ She repeated more fiercely, ‘No one. There never has been and there never will be!’
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
‘So YOU’RE back, are you… ?’
Calmly Fern ignored the aggressive hectoring tone of Nick’s voice, carefully putting her case down on the kitchen floor, her mind absorbing the information that the kitchen sink was stacked full of unwashed things, the floor unswept and dusty, the table Uttered with the remains of not one but apparently several meals.
The air in the kitchen smelled stale and thick; she could smell the heavy unpleasant scent of Nick’s body… his aftershave, or was it just that after several days in an exclusively female environment meant her nostrils were too sensitively attuned to the maleness Nick exuded?
It was odd how a certain male smell, the right male smell could be so strongly erotic, while the same mingling of heat and sweat and musk from another man could cause almost revulsion.
‘Nothing to say for yourself? What the hell do you think you’re playing at, Fern? What was this disappearing act of yours supposed to prove?’
‘We need to talk, Nick, but first I want to unpack and get this mess cleaned up…’ She wrinkled her nose fastidiously. ‘Couldn’t you even have managed to wash up?’
Fern watched as shock mingled with anger momentarily silenced him, but it was only momentarily. Fern could see from the tension coiling his body; any moment now he would start, and once he had… She took advantage of his brief silence to add quietly, ‘Oh, by the way, I hope you’ve thanked Venice for returning your tie. It was very thoughtful of her.’
She looked him full in the face, refusing to let the rage she could see burning in his eyes bully her into looking away.
‘What tie? What the hell are you talking about? Just what did you mean by your note?’ he demanded, but the angry red tide of colour flushing his face had given him away.
Fern said nothing, simply turning away from him and picking up her case.
It was a new and very heady feeling, this sense of being in control, of having the advantage, of being the one to direct things… very, very heady.
She must be careful not to get too carried away, she warned herself as she opened the door and walked upstairs.
She was halfway up them when Nick came after her, bellowing her name.
She stopped and turned round, looking down at him, her expression mild and impassive.
‘I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing,’ she heard him saying furiously. ‘You disappear for damn near a week on some crazy whim of that bitch of a woman you call a friend…
‘Do you realise I had to go out and buy myself a new shirt yesterday because I didn’t have a clean one to wear? You’re my wife, Fern. It’s your duty to—’
‘To what, Nick? To allow you to humiliate and manipulate me? To force myself to pretend that I’m happy? To pretend that this thing we call our marriage is anything other than a mockery and a farce… to stand quietly to one side while you have an affair with someone else?’ She shook her head. ‘You think those things are my duty, Nick, but I don’t. My real duty… my first duty is to myself, to maintaining my own self-respect, and I can’t do that any longer while I remain married to you.’
Turning her back on him, she continued her way upstairs, ignoring the angry accusations which followed her.
She had made her decision and she was not going to change her mind no matter how much pressure Nick put on her to do so.
‘But why should he want to stay married to me when he doesn’t love me?’ she had asked Cressy in bewilderment.
‘Because Nick is one of those people who can’t bear to let anything or anyone go,’ Cressy had told her grimly. ‘And because he enjoys his power over you, Fern.’
The picture Cressy had drawn of Nick had shocked her at first, but now she was beginning to recognise the truth of her friend’s statements.
Carefully she unpacked her clothes, telling herself she was not going to be a coward and stay up here, too afraid to continue to confront Nick, but her hands were still shaking slightly when she had put the last item away and closed the case.
Nick was waiting for her in the kitchen, his mouth twisting into a bitter sneer as he told her, ‘Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to, Fern, but it’s no good going running to Adam. He doesn’t want you any more now than he ever did. You never did have much sense of timing, did you?’ he added goadingly. ‘Didn’t you know he’d gone away—with the Jameses and their daughter…? They’ve gone to Tuscany; the Jameses have a villa there… Trust dear old Adam to fall on his feet. Old man James is rolling in it. Still, Adam is going to need a rich father-in-law if his plans for Broughton House fall through—and they will, Anthony Quentin will see to that. He isn’t too keen on the idea of a new supermarket opening locally… What’s wrong, Fern? Not having second thoughts, are you, now you know that dear Adam isn’t around to let you crawl into his bed?’
‘This has nothing to do with Adam,’ Fern protested fiercely.
‘Don’t lie to me,’ Nick contradicted her heatedly. ‘This has everything to do with him. You’ve always wanted him… preferred him… but he’s never wanted you, Fern, and he never will. We used to laugh about you together, about the way you used to follow him around, hanging on his every word. He warned me against marrying you…’
She must not say anything… must not betray what she was feeling, how much he was hurting her, Fern told herself. Thank God Cressy had opened her eyes to what he really was.
‘I’m going out now,’ Nick told her. ‘But while I’m gone I want you to think about one or two things, Fern. Like how you’re going to live without me to support you? You haven’t got your parents to go running home to now, have you? No money… no home… no Adam. What are you going to do? One thing’s damn sure, you couldn’t earn a decent living on your back…’
He added something so crude and insulting that Fern winced. She thought herself shock-proof, armoured against everything he could say to her, but she was not, she acknowledged nauseously half an hour later as she slowly started to restore order to the chaotic kitchen.
; Her face still burned from the final insults Nick had hurled at her. She had known that Nick would make things difficult for her but she had not realised until today just how much he must have always disliked and despised her.
Her hands started to shake. She felt weak… dizzy… sick… as the after-shock of their quarrel washed over her.
Her body ached as though it had been beaten, tension locking every muscle; all she wanted to do was to crawl away somewhere safe and protected. She found herself longing for Cressy, wishing that she had taken her friend’s advice and stayed on with her for a few more days.
Cressy had counselled her not to confront Nick directly but to telephone or write to him.
‘He’ll bully you into staying with him if he can, just for the pleasure it will give him to punish you for wanting to leave him,’ Cressy had warned her.
Fern had laughed then, telling Cressy that Nick was hardly as malevolent and destructive as she was painting him, but now, recalling the things he had said to her, Fern wondered if she had been wrong and Cressy right after all.
He had completely ignored her reference to his relationship with Venice. Had Adam discussed her with him… as he had said?
He must have done, even if Nick had exaggerated his comments.
Tears burned her eyes. She walked over to the sink, each step a physical effort.
She was not doing this for Nick’s benefit, she told herself half an hour later as she washed the final item, but for her own, and when she had finished cleaning the kitchen she intended to walk into town and visit the local estate agents. Somewhere someone must have a room she could rent; her modest resources would allow her to do that. She could also call in at the employment agencies as well, although what kind of work she could find…
* * *
The phone rang just as she was about to leave. She picked up the receiver and said her number.
‘Fern?’ She recognised Venice’s voice immediately, and was grimly amused to hear the surprise in it. Plainly Venice was not aware that she had returned.
‘I need to speak to Nick,’ Venice told her quickly. ‘It’s… it’s very important… a business matter…’