by Penny Jordan
‘Is it true that Nick only got in by a very small majority?’ Fern asked quietly.
‘Yes, I’m afraid so. This is considered a very safe seat for the party, otherwise I’d never have risked stepping down mid-term. Of course there’s always a smaller turnout for a by-election, but in view of all the rallying Venice and Nick did… and to listen to the speech Nick gave tonight, you’d have thought he was celebrating a landslide victory.’
She made a slight face. ‘Sorry… I’m letting my prejudices show. I’m sorry, Adam, but I can’t help wishing that it had been you, even though I understand why you felt you couldn’t stand.’
A little later on, when they were on their own, Fern watched Adam’s face as he watched Nick. ‘Have you really no regrets?’ she asked him quietly.
He turned towards her and touched her cheek lightly. ‘Do you really need to ask me that? What I said to Jennifer is true. I have all I want here, Fern. All I want and more than I ever dreamed I might have. I’m not a politically ambitious man, I make no apology for that…’
‘Not wanting gain for yourself,’ agreed Fern, interrupting him, ‘but for others. The Broughton House project, for instance…’
She broke off as she saw Jennifer Bowers making her way quietly back towards the podium, her stomach muscles tensing slightly. She knew what was coming, and how much it meant to Adam.
She had been worried at first when they had married that her past relationship with Nick, and the fact that he and Adam were stepbrothers, might have an alienating effect on others, but Adam had swiftly told her that he did not care what anyone else thought; that if anyone, anyone at all dared to make her feel uncomfortable in even the smallest way, then they would leave, move somewhere else and make a completely fresh start. But to Fern’s relief she had discovered that their marriage was received far better than she had anticipated, and that Nick was not the popular figure he had always claimed; that in fact she, to her surprise, was better liked than her first husband.
Of course initially there had been some curiosity and speculation, but that had soon faded.
Adam had insisted on their marrying as soon as they possibly could, and when Fern had suggested tentatively that he might prefer to wait until after the council reelection, he had taken her in his arms and told her firmly that the council and everyone on it could go to hell as far as he was concerned, and that if she thought that being a member of it came anyway near to mattering one jot to him, then she understood him and the nature of his love for her far less well than he had believed.
Even so, the fact that he had been re-elected, almost triumphally so, had been a tremendous relief to her.
To discover less than a month later that she was pregnant had almost been more happiness than she felt she had any right to have.
She and Adam were now looking for a new house, somewhere large enough for themselves and the twins. They already thought they had found somewhere, a large, early Victorian villa on the outskirts of town, set in a very good-sized private garden and yet close enough to its neighbours not to be too isolated.
The present owner, a widower, was selling up because he wanted to move closer to his married daughter. Fern had already spent a blissful week with Adam planning the new nursery.
‘What is it… what’s wrong?’ he had asked her anxiously the previous evening, when he had discovered her curled up on the sofa, slow tears running silently down her face.
‘I just can’t believe it,’ she had told him. ‘I feel sometimes that I don’t deserve to be so happy, Adam.’
‘Rubbish,’ he had contradicted her as he smoothed the hair back off her face and kissed her. ‘You deserve to be happy more than anyone else I know. You make me happier than I ever knew or hoped I could be, Fern…’
Jennifer had reached the podium now. People were breaking off their conversations to turn towards her.
She picked up the gavel and rapped it on the desk.
‘Ladies and gentlemen. While officially I may no longer have any right to command your attention, before I finally step down from public office there is one more task I have to perform. I shan’t say a duty because it is very far from that. I know the reason we are all here tonight is to welcome and congratulate our new member of parliament, but I’m sure that Nick won’t mind if I use this occasion to thank and congratulate someone else.
‘None of you here will not be aware of the work that Adam Wheelwright has done for our local community. I know Adam himself would be the last person to want to receive praise and thanks for what I know he considers to be his civic responsibility for something—a project—which reflects with shining credit not just on Adam himself but on the whole community as well. I am referring of course to the Broughton House project.
‘As you may know, there was a good deal of serious opposition to the proposal when it was first mooted. People, quite understandably, were concerned that by turning Broughton House into a residential learning centre for young male offenders they would be putting their own property and peace of mind at risk.
‘Why should we, a small, quiet, peaceful middle-class market town, take on the responsibility and all the potential problems that would go with having within our community these young people who had already proved that they had scant respect for the law?
‘What sane community would actually welcome into its midst what amounted to an open prison?
‘It is to Adam’s credit that he managed, quietly and calmly, to re-educate us all; to show us that we had a duty to help these young people; that by establishing Broughton House as a place where they could serve out their sentence and at the same time learn not just the physical skills which will help them to earn a living, but also the social and emotional skills which will help them to integrate fully into society, we would hopefully benefit not only them but ourselves as well.
‘It is by example that we can help them and, in doing so, ourselves, not by rejection, Adam told us. I know there are still those who are doubtful, those who will be watching what happens when Broughton House has its first intake of young offenders, those who will secretly be hoping that Adam is proved wrong, but thankfully their number grows smaller and smaller every day, and I suspect that it is not just his erring boys that Adam secretly hopes to convert, but all our Doubting Thomases as well.
‘For a crusader and innovator, Adam is a man of extreme modesty, preferring what our media moguls refer to as a “low profile”, but no one having seen him in action these last few months can doubt that he is a man of very serious determination and intent, ready to move mountains to achieve his goals if he perceives it necessary.
‘I am not going to ask Adam to make a speech—not here this evening, though I am sure he will have plenty to say to us at the official opening of Broughton House next month; but what I would like to do is to thank him on behalf of all of us for opening our eyes to the needs of others, and for teaching us that it is our fear of our fellow man and his potential power against us which is more destructive, more dangerous than our hatred.
‘Adam…’
Smiling at him, Fern disentangled herself from her husband’s side, watching him walk towards the podium. Where were they now, his detractors, those who had scoffed that he was out of his mind even to suggest such a plan, that he was deliberately trying to destroy the community to advance his own half-baked ideas?
Well, one of them was here.
Fern’s smile died as she looked across at Nick.
Despite his Armani suit, despite all the expensive hype that surrounded him, despite all the money Venice had poured into publicising and promoting him, despite the fact that he now surely had all that he wanted, his face, his expression had an unhappy, pinched bitterness about it. Poor Nick. She almost felt sorry for him.
* * *
‘He can’t do this!’ Nick exploded as he watched Adam take the podium. ‘I’m not letting him or that bitch Jennifer Bowers get away with this. I’m the MP, not him. He’s nothing… nothing… just a small-town
councillor. I’m going to…’
‘You aren’t doing anything,’ Venice corrected Nick coldly, taking hold of his arm. ‘Don’t make even more of a fool of yourself than you need, Nick. Peter and I have worked hard on you, on your image; don’t go and wreck it all by having one of your tantrums. Let him enjoy his petty moment of triumph. What does it matter? Once the place is open and his precious delinquents start making their presence felt…’
‘You told me he wasn’t going to be re-elected to the council,’ Nick interrupted her bitterly. ‘You said he had no chance of getting permission to use Broughton House as a rehabilitation centre. You…’
‘When I said he wouldn’t be re-elected, we still thought he was after planning permission to convert the house into a shopping centre. Now that he’s taken on this saintly mantle of public do-gooder, there’s nothing we can do to shift him. Not yet, anyway.
‘Stop worrying about him, Nick, for God’s sake. What is he, after all? Just some small-town councillor, as you said. You’ve got far more important things to worry about. Like convincing the party stronghold that you’ve got what it takes to play a far more high-profile role than that of mere MP.
‘I’ve had a word with Peter and we’re going to organise a dinner in town next month, not too early in the dinner-party season—the timing will be very important. Peter knows a few names he can get to come; a couple of titles and there’s an ancient ex-PM he can drag out of mothballs. The old boy’s practically gaga, but it looks good, creates the right impression. Oh, and that reminds me, I’m going to have to go up to town for a couple of days next week to check on how the work’s going on the new house. There’s no need for you to come. You can’t anyway, you’ve got that dinner to attend, haven’t you?
‘Peter will drive me up and bring me back…’
Venice smiled sensuously to herself as she listened to Nick’s petulant protests. She had been lucky; she had got her figure back completely from the baby now. Peter had remarked on how smooth her skin was, how supple her flesh. Her smile widened. He was an adoring lover, amusing for the moment, but not for much longer. Ending their affair would also give her an excuse for changing PR agencies. She needed someone more upmarket now, someone with more political clout.
She glanced at Nick, contempt curling her mouth. It had been even easier to get him to toe the line than she had expected. She looked towards the podium where Adam was now stepping back down, immediately reaching out to draw Fern close to him.
Ridiculous for a man like him to be so obviously and so intensely in love, and with dull, stupid Fern of all women.
Adam was completely wasted on her, and it was a pity that her plans precluded her from teaching Adam that fact.
She looked back at Nick. He was looking edgy and irritable, his face slightly flushed with petulance and frustration.
She would have to let him back into her bed tonight; she had seen the way he had looked at Peter’s secretary this morning. She smiled cynically to herself. It wasn’t very difficult to keep him to heel. Sex to Nick was like sweets to a child.
* * *
‘Ready to go home?’
Fern looked up at Adam. ‘We can’t leave yet,’ she protested. ‘No one else has.’
‘Someone has to be the first; besides, I’m tired of looking at you and not being able to touch you, not being able to show you how much I love you…’
‘You show me all the time,’ she told him, softly smiling at him—and knew that it was true.
* * *
‘Are you sure I look all right?’
Marcus tugged uncomfortably at his tie as though he felt it was too tight.
‘You look fine,’ Eleanor assured him.
‘Are you sure this is the right thing? I mean, won’t she be expecting all of us…?’
‘You’re doing the right thing, Marcus. She’ll be thrilled…’
‘I’m not even sure I’ll be able to recognise her,’ Marcus groaned. ‘Not after six weeks in New York with Jade.’
Eleanor laughed. ‘Hurry up, otherwise you’ll be late for her flight.’
She kissed him briefly and then more lingeringly, looking into his eyes, her own soft and tender with emotion.
‘It will be all right, Marcus,’ she told him softly.
‘You say that, but…’
‘It will be all right,’ Eleanor repeated.
* * *
‘Why couldn’t we go with Marcus to meet Vanessa?’ Gavin complained once Marcus had gone. ‘I wanted to see the plane come in and—–’
‘You know why we couldn’t go,’ Tom told his brother before Eleanor could respond. ‘It’s a surprise for Vanessa.’
‘Well, I want to tell her about the pond and the fish and…’
‘She already knows about them, stupid,’ Tom told his younger brother dampeningly. ‘She saw the house before she went to New York.’
‘Yes, but she didn’t see the fish, did she?’
‘No, but she knows about them because you wrote to her about them, didn’t you?’
‘Stop it, both of you,’ Eleanor interrupted them firmly. ‘You’ll both see Vanessa soon enough, and no, Gavin, you can’t take her out to show her the goldfish this evening, and remember, this is Vanessa’s home as well as yours and she might want to discover some things for herself.’
She would never have believed what a difference a few months could make, Eleanor admitted as her sons reluctantly settled down with their homework. With hindsight, she felt it was probably the news from Julia that she intended to stay in America which had brought the first crack in the wall Vanessa had erected against them.
It had been Marcus who had told his daughter that her permanent home was going to be with them. Marcus, who had held her stiff, angry body when she had told him that she didn’t want their charity, that she knew they didn’t really want her; Marcus who had told her that she was wrong. But it had been Tom, of all people, who had really made the first breakthrough, funny, emotional, over-sensitive Tom, who out of his own spending money and entirely of his own volition had bought and made the cheap pegboard noticeboard which he had independently and unknown to Eleanor hung up crookedly in the bedroom he and Gavin had vacated.
‘Tom, you’ve forgotten something,’ Vanessa had announced tersely, after her silent arrival and even more silent walk up to her bedroom.
‘No, it’s for you,’ Tom had told her stoically. ‘Me and Gavin have one. Grandad and me made that one for you. It’s for your photographs and things. Me and Gavin have one of Dad and Karen on ours and—–’
‘Yes, and we’re getting a new one of baby Hannah, only she isn’t a baby any more because it’s her birthday next week, and she’ll be having a birthday party, but not until half-term so that we can be there.’
Nothing else had been said, and, despite the contempt and bitterness Eleanor had been sure she had seen in Vanessa’s eyes, the board had remained where it was.
There was no point in her changing schools, Vanessa had informed them. She could board, and besides, she knew really they would be glad to have her out of the way, but she had still asked for a camera for her birthday, and the photos she had taken of the boys, ostensibly to test the quality of the camera and film, had been removed from the board when she went off to school, only to return with her at Christmas.
It hadn’t been easy; she had still been openly hostile towards Eleanor, but now that Eleanor no longer felt that Vanessa threatened her relationship with Marcus she was able to deal with it better, even to the point of firmly dealing with Vanessa’s bad behaviour with the sort of punishment she would have given her had she been her own daughter.
‘Treat her as you would if she was your child,’ Jade had advised her. ‘She won’t love you for it, but she will respect you.’
And Jade, it had seemed, was right.
But, surprisingly, the one single thing which had altered their relationship most of all was the correspondence Jade had instigated between herself and Vanessa.
&n
bsp; When Jade had said casually that Vanessa was going to write to her, Eleanor had been stunned; she had been even more surprised when the correspondence turned out to be a regular exchange of letters, culminating in Jade’s inviting Vanessa out to New York to spend almost the entire school summer holiday with her.
Vanessa had wanted to go, a final fling before she settled down to work towards her GCSEs, and, uncertainly, Marcus had agreed.
Before she had left, almost twelve months since they had first made the decision to move, Eleanor and Marcus found their home.
It wasn’t in the country, not unless you classified Wimbledon as such; it didn’t have as large a garden as Broughton House, nor as many rooms, but Eleanor found it surprisingly appealing, and, much to her astonishment, so, it seemed, did Vanessa.
Admittedly she had shrugged and appeared uninterested when they all viewed it, but later she had said she supposed it was a good idea, even adding that it was time Tom had a room of his own and that he must be sick of Gavin’s sports stuff filling the room they shared.
Completion had taken place just before Vanessa flew to New York.
She would have to choose the furnishings and décor for her room before she left, Eleanor had told her.
‘What’s the point?’ Vanessa had responded. ‘I don’t spend that much time in it. I’m away at school and…’
She and Eleanor had been alone at the time; Eleanor had taken a deep breath and warned herself not to get excited; keeping her voice as neutral and casual as she could she had responded, ‘You could always change schools, Vanessa. In fact, your father has already made tentative enquiries; there’s an excellent one locally. Of course, I know you’re at a very important stage with your exam courses…’
‘Dad wants me to come and live here with him…?’
Vanessa’s face had been slightly flushed, her eyes sparkling.
‘Well, yes, of course he does,’ Eleanor assured her gently. ‘You’re his daughter, Vanessa, and to be honest, I sometimes think he feels rather left out of it here with me and the boys…’
It wasn’t true, of course; her sons, confident now of the love of their father and stepmother and their grandparents, as well as their mother, had formed a very good relationship with Marcus.