by Penny Jordan
‘Oh, yes, we were the first to see it. Stuart wanted his father’s opinion straight away.’
His father’s opinion or his mother’s approval? Abbie wondered bitterly.
‘It’s a good size, and well built,’ Stuart’s mother continued, before adding dismissively, ‘It is a semi-detached, though. Stuart’s father feels he’s got off very lightly. Neither of our girls would settle for anything less than a detached—but then, of course, I suppose it all depends on what you’ve been used to. I must say, I found the rooms dreadfully poky, but then I suppose Catherine will be used to that.’
Mortified by the hot flood of angry tears burning the back of her eyes at hearing the home she had so lovingly provided for her daughter so disparaged, Abbie had to turn away…inside her jacket pockets her hands were balled into two small fists.
Mentally she willed her daughter, who she knew must have overheard the comment, to come to her defence, but Cathy had turned her back on her and was talking very quickly and energetically to Stuart’s father about their plans to extend the kitchen and to add a new garage and a laundry room to the side of the house.
‘I always think it’s a mistake to do too much to this kind of property,’ Stuart’s mother was saying. ‘They do have a ceiling value, and, as I’ve already said to Stuart, now that the girls are gone there’s really no reason why he and Catherine shouldn’t move in with us for a little while, whilst they save up and look around for something a little more suit—a little bit larger.’
Now it was Cathy’s turn to look imploringly at her, Abbie saw, her heart aching at the tension and anxiety she could see in her daughter’s face, and she denied quickly, ‘Oh, no, that—’
‘That’s a wonderfully generous offer, Anne.’ Sam interrupted Abbie calmly, smiling warmly in Stuart’s mother’s direction. ‘Especially as both you and George must be looking forward to having some time on your own together. However, personally I don’t think it does any harm at all for young people to have to struggle a little bit—as I’m sure that you and George must have done when you were first married.’
As Abbie looked on in mingled anger and astonishment she saw Stuart’s mother responding to Sam’s subtle flattery like a cat being stroked, the look she gave him in response to his comment both slightly arch and complacent.
‘Well, yes, we did both have to work very hard,’ she agreed. ‘George’s parents had a huge house in those days, but George was the first to leave home and there was certainly no question of us being invited to make our home with them. No, we had to do it the hard way…’
‘And look at the success you’ve made of your lives,’ Sam told her warmly. ‘An example which I’m sure that Stuart and Cathy both want to emulate. You mustn’t spoil them too much,’ he added outrageously—or so at least Abbie thought. Was she the only one who was aware of what he was doing? she wondered indignantly as she saw the way Stuart’s mother bridled and patted her hair betrayingly. ‘Otherwise I shall be forced to do the same, and before we know it the pair of them will be playing one of us off against the other.’
‘Oh, no, Stuart would never do anything like that,’ Stuart’s mother denied immediately, leaping to her son’s defence. Her son’s—not her daughter’s, Abbie noticed bitterly.
‘However, you do have a point,’ she conceded graciously, still smiling at Sam. ‘And George has been talking about the two of us doing some travelling once he’s retired. I still think they could do better than this, though,’ she added frowningly. ‘The kitchen especially is so poky and dark—although I don’t expect that matters too much these days. Just so long as there’s room for a freezer and a microwave, modern girls don’t seem to worry too much.’
Modern girls. Abbie drew in a seething breath, itching to demand, What about modern boys? But as though he guessed what she was thinking…what she was wanting to say… Sam suddenly turned his head and looked warningly at her, giving his head a small shake.
It irked Abbie unbearably that he should have been the one to rescue Cathy from the threat of having to live with her prospective mother-in-law and not her, and she was sorely tempted to ignore Sam’s warning look and give vent to her ire, but common sense told her that the person who would suffer the most if she did would be Cathy, and so instead she turned to her daughter and, summoning all her will-power, said as naturally as she could, ‘Come on, then, darling, show me round…’
‘I’d take off that jacket first, if I were you,’ Stuart’s mother warned her. ‘The house is very dusty. I always think that cream is such an impractical colour; navy is so much more useful.’
Abbie didn’t make any response; she was too busy trying to conceal her dismay at the way Stuart’s father had stepped forward courteously to help her off with her jacket. ‘Don’t bother with the bra,’ Sam had murmured suggestively, and God alone knew why she had witlessly done as he had asked.
Stuart and his father might not notice that her breasts were bare beneath their thin covering of cotton, but she hadn’t a hope in hell of concealing the fact from her sharp-eyed daughter without the protection of her jacket, Abbie acknowledged, her heart sinking as she reluctantly and uncomfortably allowed Stuart’s father to relieve her of it.
The temptation to cross her arms protectively in front of her chest, as she had done when Sam had walked so unexpectedly into her bedroom, was one she only just managed to resist. Cathy had already done a brief wide-eyed double take as she glanced at her mother and then looked back again, her eyes rounding sightly. As Abbie felt her face start to burn with openly embarrassed colour, Sam calmly detached himself from Stuart’s father’s side and walked over towards her, standing somehow so that the bulk of his body threw her own into its protective shadow, making her feel at once both relieved and somehow safer. Relieved…? Safer…? With Sam? Impossible.
‘Are we going to go in the front door formally or the back door as family?’ she heard Sam teasing Cathy as he put his hand on his ex-wife’s arm and guided her towards the house, just as though for all the world they were genuinely a couple, just as though they were actually…together…reconciled…a pair…lovers…
Abbie swallowed painfully, unable to look directly either at Sam or anyone else, but most especially not at Sam. What was she afraid he might see in her eyes? she asked herself fiercely, but she already knew it was a question she could not bring herself to answer.
Half an hour later, when she and Cathy were alone in the house’s small dark kitchen, Abbie touched her daughter gently on the arm and told her comfortingly, ‘Don’t worry about Stuart’s mother’s criticisms, darling. I think this house has an awful lot of potential.’
To her chagrin, Cathy shrugged away from her, telling her curtly, ‘Stuart’s mother isn’t criticising; she’s just trying to be helpful. And I wish that you… Will you and Dad be getting remarried before our wedding?’ Cathy asked, changing the subject.
Still trying to deal with the hurt Cathy’s initial rejection of her own opinion and support of Stuart’s mother had caused her, Abbie couldn’t trust herself to speak.
‘Your mother and I haven’t made any concrete plans yet, but when we do you’ll be the first to hear about them.’
Abbie whirled round. She hadn’t heard Sam come into the kitchen. For such a big man, he was disconcertingly light-footed.
‘You won’t forget that we’re expecting you for lunch, will you?’ Stuart’s mother reminded Sam archly as she too entered the kitchen.
‘No, we’ll both be there,’ Sam promised her, whilst Abbie held her breath. Surely Sam must have realised, just as she had, that the invitation had been extended only to him?
But Stuart’s mother was now acknowledging Abbie’s new role in Sam’s life, her smile slightly forced as she concurred a little too heartily, ‘Yes, of course—both of you. That will be lovely.’
It was Cathy who put the final blot of misery on Abbie’s afternoon as she walked her parents to Sam’s car, taking advantage of the fact that Sam was deep in conversation with
Stuart to hiss angrily to Abbie, ‘I appreciate how things are between you and Dad, Mum, but you might have…have dressed properly. I mean, that kind of thing looks so tacky…especially at your age…and Stuart’s mother is bound to have noticed.’
As she and Sam walked towards the car Abbie wasn’t sure what emotion she felt the most strongly—pain or anger.
CHAPTER NINE
ABBIE sat in silence next to Sam as he drove her home, saying only when he had stopped the car outside her cottage, ‘Thank you. There’s no need for you to come in with me…’
‘We do have rather a lot to discuss,’ Sam pointed out.
‘Like what?’ Abbie demanded. ‘The kind of clothes Cathy expects me to wear when we have lunch with Stuart’s parents?’
Sam looked at her gravely.
‘That was my fault and I’m sorry, even though the sight of those deliciously feminine breasts of yours was the only enjoyable part of an otherwise thoroughly unenjoyable outing.’
‘If you’re trying to blame me for that—’ Abbie began aggressively.
‘I’m not blaming anyone,’ Sam soothed her. ‘But it’s obvious that Anne feels very much in awe of you—and that, in turn, makes both Stuart and Cathy overly protective of her.’
‘She’s in awe of me?’ Abbie spluttered. ‘How on earth do you work that one out? All she did practically all afternoon was criticise me and try to put me down…?
To her irritation she saw that Sam was smiling at her.
‘Oh, come on, Abbie,’ he challenged her. ‘You’re far too intelligent, far too good a judge of character to be taken in by such defensive behaviour. You must have asked yourself why she is so defensive.
‘Look at it from her point of view. All she’s done with her life is stay at home looking after her husband and raising her children, whilst you—’
‘She thinks I’m a dreadful mother…that I’ve neglected Cathy and put my own needs first,’ Abbie protested, but Sam was shaking his head.
‘No, that’s what she tries to pretend she thinks,’ he told her firmly, ‘but in reality it’s very obvious to see that she’s terrified of losing Cathy and Stuart to you and your influence over their lives.’
‘What? That’s ridiculous,’ Abbie objected.
‘Is it?’ Sam asked her, adding firmly, ‘Look, let’s continue this discussion inside. As I’ve already said, there are several things we need to talk about…’
‘Such as?’ Abbie demanded ungraciously, even whilst she was inwardly acknowledging that he was quite right.
He opened his car door and came round to open hers for her.
After the drab disuse and forlorn emptiness of Cathy and Stuart’s prospective first home, the warm cheerfulness of Abbie’s kitchen was strikingly apparent. Sam glanced round it appreciatively and told her with genuine admiration, ‘You always did have a special gift for turning a house into a home.’
‘I wouldn’t call it a special gift,’ Abbie denied. ‘It’s something that’s almost second nature to a lot of women, I believe. In the way that some men are attracted to tinkering with anything mechanical,’ she added wryly.
‘Ah, yes, the coffee percolator,’ Sam agreed with a grin. ‘That was a mistake, I admit…’
‘A mistake? It was rather more than that when it exploded, covering the kitchen we’d just decorated in wet coffee grounds,’ Abbie corrected him. Her mouth had started to twitch into a smile which very quickly became a giggling bubble of laughter.
Across the kitchen their eyes met as both of them remembered the incident, a small scene from the first days of their marriage.
Abbie had cried at first when she had seen the devastation the exploding coffee pot had wreaked on her new kitchen, but Sam had assured her that no lasting damage had been done and she had guilelessly allowed him to draw her upstairs away from the scene of devastation to ‘check that there’s no damage up there’.
There hadn’t been, of course, but once upstairs it had been an easy task for Sam to coax her into their bedroom.
He had claimed, she remembered, that the coffee grounds he had licked off her skin had had the most delicious and aphrodisiac flavour.
She shook her head ruefully now.
‘It honestly wasn’t my fault. The percolator was quite definitely faulty,’ Sam complained.
‘It certainly was,’ Abbie agreed, fresh laughter gurgling in her throat and lightening her eyes.
‘So I made a misjudgement…a mistake,’ Sam conceded with a mock-injured air. ‘Everyone’s allowed one mistake.’
‘One mistake.’ The laughter died from Abbie’s eyes. She, it seemed, had made far more than one mistake and misjudgement where her daughter was concerned… Too many for the gulf which had developed between Cathy and herself ever to be properly bridged.
‘What is it…what’s wrong?’ Sam asked her quietly, watching the pain replace the earlier happiness and amusement in her eyes.
‘I was just thinking that some mistakes can’t be forgotten or forgiven,’ Abbie told him curtly, turning her head away so that he couldn’t look properly at her, suddenly annoyed with herself for being vulnerable and emotional enough to admit her fears to him.
Why should he care if Cathy turned away from her? As far as he was concerned, such an occurrence could only be to his benefit. She was a fool to let him see what she was thinking…what she was feeling. She was a fool to have let him come in with her in the first place.
‘Abbie, if you’re referring to what happened between us, I know that—’
‘Between us?’ Abbie cut in sharply, shaking her head, her voice thickening with tears as she told him, ‘No…I was talking about Cathy… about the mistakes I’ve made with her, the misjudgements.’
She couldn’t help it. She knew her emotions were going to get the better of her. Why was this happening to her, to her of all women, when she had always so determinedly refused to give in to her emotions in public, when no matter how desperately unhappy she had felt she had kept her tears for the privacy of her own solitude and her pillow?
‘The mistakes you’ve made with Cathy?’ Sam was frowning at her now, his voice concerned. ‘Abbie, you haven’t. You’ve been an exemplary mother…an exemplary parent. Look, why don’t you go and sit down in the sitting room? I’ll make us both a hot drink and we can talk the whole thing through…’
‘What good will talking about it do?’ Abbie protested, but she was already turning towards the inner door and opening it, walking through it and into her small pretty sitting room with its French windows overlooking the garden.
It had gone dark enough for her to need to switch on the lamps—the overhead light would be too harsh, too revealing—and it was cool enough for her to welcome the heat from her gas flame fire.
Because the room was so small she had decorated it in natural colours and fibres—soft cream cottons and hessian, her junk shop find of a heavy old Chesterfield sofa re-covered in a cream damask fabric she had bought at a bargain price because it had a small flaw.
She had finished re-covering it just in time for Cathy’s eighteenth birthday, and she remembered how proud she had felt at the small adults-only party she had given to celebrate the occasion, when Cathy had praised her cleverness.
‘The cleverest thing I’ve ever done was producing you,’ she had told her daughter lovingly then—and she had meant it. She still felt it. The cleverest and the best. And it hurt to know that all her shining pride and love in her daughter was something that Cathy found more of a burden than a joy.
She embarrassed Cathy, she decided as she curled herself up into a small mock-foetal ball on the sofa, kicking off her shoes to tuck her feet up underneath her—something she only did when she was feeling particularly vulnerable and unhappy. Cathy would much rather have had a mother like Stuart’s. A mother whose name would not have to stand glaringly alone on her wedding invitations. A mother who was the living proof of the solid security in which she had brought up her family. A mother whose photograph collection
included a silver-framed photograph of her wedding and alongside it another of her silver wedding; that was the kind of mother Cathy wanted, not the kind like her, minus a marriage, a husband and her underwear.
A small sob of mingled misery and guilt hiccuped past Abbie’s lips into the silence of the small room, causing Sam, who had just walked in, to pause and glance at her frowningly before carefully depositing the two mugs of coffee he had been carrying onto a small covered side table.
‘Abbie, you can’t really believe that Cathy would have preferred to have a mother like Anne,’ he chided her gently as he sat down beside her and took hold of her hands before she could stop him, holding them warmly in his own.
‘Can’t I?’ she demanded, once again amazed by Sam’s apparent ability to read her mind, and inwardly acknowledging that it would be undignified and no doubt impossible to try to pull her hands free of Sam’s warm male grip.
‘You’re everything that any child could want in a mother,’ he continued, the intensity of his voice making her forget his unauthorised hold on her hands and look directly into his eyes to search for some sign that he was secretly being sarcastic about her; but there was none.
‘You’ve done so much, achieved so much…’
‘Have I?’ Abbie questioned tiredly. Tears sparkled emotionally in her eyes. She tried to raise her hand to dash them away and then realised that Sam was still holding it.
As her fear of her own emotions swamped her she cried out fiercely, ‘Let me go, Sam…’