by Penny Jordan
As Tania told her, she particularly loved the clouds Ann had painted on the ceiling.
‘When I’m lying in the bath I look up at them and make believe I’m lying on some idyllic beach,’ she told Ann teasingly.
She had started to regain a little of her lost weight, but her face was still too finely drawn, her eyes and mouth haunted and shadowed with sadness.
Lucy, who had mentioned James’s name virtually in every sentence she spoke for weeks after the Sunday they had spent with him, now only referred to him occasionally, but with such a wistfulness that she never failed to bring tears to Tania’s eyes.
It was December and she and Ann had had several forays into Chester on Christmas buying trips. Now that she was regaining a little of her strength, Tania was determined to make this Christmas a happy and special one for Lucy.
Because she was so thin, there was no chance of anyone guessing she was pregnant and she had guiltily put off doing anything about selling her shop until after the New Year. She didn’t want to move. She liked the town and its people. She had felt settled here, at home…but how could she stay now, bringing up James’s son or daughter so close to James himself? No, it wouldn’t be fair to any of them. Unacknowledged at the back of her mind lay the fact that she had already decided that James must never know she was pregnant. Once he did… Once he did, he would never let her go. And heaven alone knew how very, very tempted she would be to give in to him if he were to insist on marrying her.
As the weeks went by, she missed him more and not less; ached for him more as a man, her man, her lover…and yearned for him emotionally as well as physically, yearned to be able to share with him her joy in having conceived his child, yearned for him to be there with her, to take her in his arms and kiss away all her loneliness and pain, to tell her that everything was going to be all right and that they would always be together.
Sometimes she dreamed that it had actually happened and then she woke up to discover that she was after all alone, and the tears would come again and she would spend the rest of the night in restless agonising, in weakly wishing that somehow things might be different.
Halfway through December, she insisted on moving back to her own home.
Lucy was wildly excited about Christmas. The Fieldings and Tania and Lucy were all going out to Delamere Forest the Sunday before Christmas to buy themselves a Christmas tree, and although Tania had refused Ann’s generous invitation for them to join her family for Christmas lunch she had agreed to spend the afternoon with them on Boxing Day.
Lucy was excitedly praying for snow, and the temperature was certainly dropping, although the long-range forecast did not promise a white Christmas.
And then one Sunday afternoon, when Tania was baking mince pies and Lucy was busily making and writing her Christmas cards, James arrived.
Immediately he rang the bell, Tania knew who it was, but cravenly she sent Lucy downstairs to answer it rather than going herself.
When James walked into her kitchen, she was standing defensively on the other side of her small table, watching him with wary, pain-filled eyes.
She had visualised him so often in her dreams, in her most private and intimate thoughts, remembering him, aching for him, that the shock of seeing him in the flesh and of realising that like her he had suffered destroyed her hard-won composure.
She could feel the emotion clogging her throat, the weakness enveloping her body.
He too had lost weight. He too had suffered and known pain, and for a moment all she wanted to do was to step out from behind the table and to hold him in her arms.
As though he sensed her need, he took a step towards her and immediately she tensed, remembering why she must not weaken.
‘Don’t come too close,’ she warned him. ‘I’m covered in flour and it will ruin your suit. I heard you were all coming back for Christmas. Have you been back long? And Clarissa…is she well?’
She was chattering non-stop, trying to fill the aching void of pain welling up inside her, trying to stop herself from cravenly bursting into tears and telling him that no matter what she just could not live without him.
‘We flew in on this morning’s transatlantic flight,’ he told her quietly. ‘Clarissa is fine. Tania…please—’
He broke off as Lucy came into the kitchen.
‘Here’s your card,’ she told him importantly. ‘Mum said I could send you one, but I might as well give it to you now.’
James bent down and picked her up, and to Tania’s consternation told her gruffly, ‘Why not keep it for me until Christmas Day?’ And then, looking directly at Tania, he told her quietly, ‘I want you and your mummy to come and spend Christmas with me at my house, Lucy. Would you like that?’
‘Will Rupert be there?’ Lucy asked him.
James laughed.
‘Yes, Rupert will be there.’
How could he do this to her? How dared he use Lucy against her like that? He knew she could not, must not accept such an invitation…
‘I’m sorry,’ she began stiffly, formally, ‘But I’m afraid that’s impossible—’
She stopped and made the mistake of looking at him. The pain, the love, the agony in his eyes twisted her heart and made her want to cry out to him that nothing else mattered other than him.
‘Nothing’s impossible,’ he told her huskily.
At her side, Lucy was pleading with her, begging her to say yes, leaning her head against her, so that she was immediately and emotionally conscious of James’s child, as yet unnoticeable, but growing there within her none the less, and even though it was the last thing she had intended to say she heard herself accepting shakily and agreeing that, yes, they would spend Christmas at Dove Court with him.
After that it seemed that she was caught up in a roller-coaster, so speedily did James insist on making all the arrangements. He would collect them on Christmas Eve and they would spend until after the New Year with him.
‘It’s too long,’ she protested. ‘Christmas Day… Boxing Day…’
‘Too long?’
The smile he gave her was brief and bitter and inside her a small voice demanded rebelliously that she give in, that she allow herself this last small space of time with him.
When she told Ann, apologising that they would not after all be seeing them on Boxing Day, her friend was not in the least offended.
‘I’m delighted you’ve come to your senses at last,’ she told Tania frankly, totally misunderstanding the situation. ‘Have you told him about the baby yet?’
‘Er—no…’
‘Saving it for Christmas Day?’ Ann asked her with a knowing smile. ‘A very special present for him.’
Tania said nothing. She had no intention of telling James about their child. She had been weak enough as it was in giving in to his invitation to spend Christmas with him.
Since Christmas Eve fell on a Sunday, there was no necessity to open the shop but even so Tania was startled to find James had arrived while she and Lucy were still having their breakfast.
Fortunately they were already virtually packed, right down to the brightly wrapped present which Lucy had insisted on choosing for James all by herself. Privately Tania wasn’t sure that he would totally appreciate a china replica of Rupert, but she hadn’t had the heart to say so to Lucy.
She herself had merely bought him a tie, a plain silk one, anonymous in the extreme and in no way to be compared with the gift she had already given him, nor the one she herself had received from him in turn.
Her child…their child… She touched her stomach lightly and then tensed as James followed the movement and asked her tersely, ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, of course,’ she told him brittly. ‘Why shouldn’t I be?’
He said nothing, but she could see his eyes measuring the loss of weight.
‘You’re a little earlier than I expected,’ she told him.
‘That’s because I need Lucy’s help with the tree,’ he told her, smiling at Lucy’s
ecstatically delighted smile.
‘Is it a very big tree?’ she asked him later, as they left the flat. Tania couldn’t help noticing the trusting, natural way Lucy slipped her hand into James’s as they walked out into the street.
‘Fairly big,’ James told her.
‘Well, I might not be able to reach to the top,’ Lucy told him anxiously. ‘Will—?’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll do the high bits,’ James reassured her.
* * *
They had had a sharp frost overnight and as the Jaguar turned in between Dove Court’s pretty gate houses the lawns were still white and crisp with their riming of frost, so that Lucy caught her breath in delight, and Tania felt her heart ache with melancholic grief.
She must make this holiday a happy one, she told herself as James drove up the drive. She must store up from it only good memories, only happy thoughts, not just for Lucy’s sake but for the sake of the child in her womb as well. Perhaps it was fanciful of her to believe that somehow that child could sense her mood, could be affected by her misery, and could also surely sense her happiness as well, and might somehow come to know of the great love she had shared with its father if only she could put aside her grief and pain and allow herself to believe that this wretchedly brief span of time they would have together could last for ever.
She forced herself to concentrate on this as James stopped the car and came to help her out.
Just the mere touch of his hand on her arm was enough to make her acutely aware of how much she loved him. She had already noticed that he was careful not to touch her, not to torment her or himself by reminding both of what they could not have.
James opened the front door and shepherded them inside, and then Tania froze in shock as she saw Clarissa there.
She looked accusingly and bitterly at James. Somehow she had never expected this. She had not even asked him about Clarissa because she had assumed that he would never risk having them both in the same house. And yet she realised she ought to have asked him, ought to have at least made some enquiries as to where Clarissa would be spending Christmas.
James returned her look, aware of her anger and despair. He took a step towards her and she stepped back from him, feeling her body grow tense with anguish.
She was just about to call out to Lucy, to insist that James took them home immediately when she saw that Clarissa was approaching her daughter. Immediately she started forwards, but James gripped her arm stopping her.
While she glared at him in outrage, she heard Clarissa saying easily, ‘Hello, Lucy. I don’t know if you remember me?’
‘Yes. Rupert lives with you, doesn’t he,’ Lucy responded a little shyly.
Tania, frozen within James’s silent custody, stared at them, her heart pounding with anger and fear. How dared James do this to her…and why? What was the purpose of this dangerous charade?
‘Yes, he does,’ Clarissa agreed. She turned to Tania.
‘Tania, it’s lovely to see you,’ she greeted her warmly. ‘I’m looking forward to us all getting together tomorrow, and the boys are both longing to meet Lucy.’
Tania stared at her, unable to believe her ears, unable to believe her eyes as she focused on this new, unbelievably relaxed woman who had Clarissa’s face and voice, and yet who seemed to be a completely different woman from the one Tania remembered.
Before Tania could say anything, the sitting-room door opened and Clarissa’s two sons came out, accompanied by Nicholas and Rupert. Whilst Lucy bent down to fuss the dog who obviously remembered her, Clarissa was saying to her husband, ‘Nicky, darling, why don’t you take Lucy and the boys for a walk? We could do with some more holly and I think there’s some with berries on the tree down by the lake.’ She came towards Tania and took hold of her free arm. ‘I’ll show you up to your room, Tania.’
Like a dream walker, Tania went with her, pausing on the stairs to give James a confused, angry look.
As they walked upstairs together, Clarissa kept up a gentle, meaningless flow of chatter in a soft, reassuring voice that Tania realised half hysterically was meant to soothe her. What was happening here? Why hadn’t James warned her?
‘James has put you in this room,’ Clarissa told her, opening one of the doors and going inside so that Tania had no option but to follow her.
‘This was originally the master bedroom,’ she heard Clarissa telling her. ‘Of course I expect you’ll want to redecorate it. I know my mother did when she married James’s father. It’s a lovely house, isn’t it, although it does need a woman’s touch? When we lived here mother always kept every room filled with flowers. She enjoyed living here so much. We both did. I think after the loneliness and poverty of the years without my father, to come and live here—’
She broke off when Tania stared at her and then demanded huskily, ‘What do you mean, I’ll want to redecorate it?’
Clarissa turned round and looked directly at her.
‘I know about you and James, Tania,’ she told her quietly. ‘I can’t deny that at first I was… I felt deserted, bereft… I was very, very angry, hysterical really, and very, very jealous, but Dr Martin—he’s my therapist at the clinic in California… Well, he’s helped me to understand that my dependence on James all springs from my feelings towards my father; the great sense of loss and guilt I felt when he left my mother. He’s helped me to understand that there were emotions locked up inside me, left over from that time, which were poisoning my whole life and not just mine. I won’t bore you with all the details of my therapy, of my growing up, if you like. It wasn’t always a painless or an easy process, but I feel I have learned from it. I may not ever be the kind of woman who never feels an atom of jealousy. I’ll probably always be inclined to be possessive of those closest to me, but at least now I know that trait within myself and I’ve learned how to deal with it.
‘Dr Martin helped me to understand how much my jealousy was damaging not just me but everyone around me, how I was destroying them along with myself.
‘I was so pleased with myself because I was responding well to the treatment. I couldn’t understand why James was so remote, so…so very obviously unhappy, and then he told me about you. I can’t deny that at first I was bitterly resentful. I won’t tell you about the scenes I staged, about the mean, cruel things I said, not just about you but about James as well. I even told him that he had to choose between us.’ Her voice almost broke but she continued firmly, ‘A stupid thing to do, and it served me right when he told me that he would always, always choose you. He then went on to tell me that you had refused to ask him to make such a choice; that you were wise enough, generous enough, loving enough to know that I would always have a special place in his heart, in his life. Then he told me that he couldn’t live without you. That you were as necessary to him as air itself.
‘I had to work very hard to accept that, Tania. To make myself not merely accept outwardly, but to accept inwardly as well that another woman meant more to James than me, that you would always have first place in his heart, whether you were there with him in person or not.
‘Yes, it was very, very hard for me to accept that. It was Nick who helped me, who told me that I was destroying James, that I was hurting one of the people I professed to love. What would happen when the boys grew up, he asked? Would I prevent them from finding happiness just as I was preventing James? Would I turn them away from me, make them hate and resent me?
‘I accused him of not loving me. He told me that he had always loved me, that he had married me even though he had feared that I loved someone else. He even told me…’ she took a deep breath ‘…he even told me that at times he had doubted that Alec was his child, but that he loved him anyway because he was mine.
‘I was so shocked. I had had no idea. Of course Alec is his, and I love him too… I always have done… My affair with…with someone else had meant nothing. I just let Nick think it did because I was so unsure of him.
‘Two weeks ago, I walked into James’s room and
I found him sitting there with his head in his hands, and tears pouring down his face. I was so shocked. He’d always seemed so strong, so inviolate. I’d never seen him like that before, never thought of him as being vulnerable. I asked him what was wrong. He told me that you were refusing to speak to him. He told me that you’d refused to marry him. That you felt you couldn’t make a commitment to him because of me. Is that true, Tania?’
Tania looked at her, and then moistened her lips. She had no idea how to deal with this new Clarissa, or what to say to her.
When she remained silent, Clarissa said unsteadily. ‘Very well, I’ll ask you another question. Do you love James?’
The look on her face gave her away before Tania spoke.
‘That’s all that matters, really, isn’t it?’ Clarissa told her softly. ‘You love him and he loves you. Your place is with James just as mine is with my husband. I know now that I will always have a place in James’s heart, that in marrying he won’t be excluding me from his life…
‘I want you to know, Tania, that James’s happiness is far more important to me than my own fear and jealousy. James needs you far more than he needs me, and I’m strong enough now to let him go, to live my own life with my own husband and children and to let James live his with you…and just to prove it…’ She turned her back to Tania and walked over to the window, staring out of it for several seconds before saying huskily, ‘Just to prove it, Nick and I have decided to start a new life together in California. We both like it out there. Dr Martin believes it’s a good step for me to take. That putting some physical distance between myself and James is all a good part of my recovery. I don’t say I’m not going to miss him, that there won’t be times when I just can’t stop myself from picking up the phone and speaking to him, but I do promise you that you need never fear that either you, or any child of yours, either Lucy or any child you might have with James, will ever suffer in any way through me.