Second Chances
Page 7
Christian paid the taxi, then got out first and put his hand out to help her, as if she were an invalid. Sarah kept her eyes down, looking for her door key in her bag, pretending that she had not seen Robert, who was watching her with curiosity. Christian took her key from her and opened the door for her. The ping of the alarm greeted them and she went straight in to turn it off. Christian followed her in and closed the front door behind him.
‘Can I do anything to help, get you some tea or something? That’s meant to be good for shock.’ He handed her back the key. He was watching her with concern, a slight frown puckering his brows. She felt intimidated, crowded in the corner by the alarm panel, not to mention embarrassed at him having been witness to her outburst.
‘No, thank you. It’s just… well, that was my daughter on the phone, and she said my husband is having a baby. It was such a shock.’
‘That’s terrible. But you’re still married?’ He moved away slightly and she went past him into the living room.
‘No. Well, legally we still are. Dan thought it better not to get the lawyers involved as they take so much money. I expect he’ll think differently now he’s going to have a child.’
The thought made her feel sick, but she had to stop pretending. There’d be lawyers to pay and she might have a fight on her hands to get enough money to live on. ‘The marriage is over,’ she went on. ‘He’s found this young girl, as I mentioned. He wanted a more exciting life.’ She forced a smile. ‘I was happy as we were, but he was not. He finds it more exciting to have a red sports car and a young woman – and I suppose it is, compared to an elderly Volvo and an ageing wife.’ She felt she was confessing a sin of her own.
Christian said gently, ‘The male menopause.’
‘I suppose so.’ She sat down on the arm of a chair, her legs suddenly feeling like cotton-wool. ‘Whatever it’s called, it’s hell for the rest of us. But some people think it’s quite funny, even admire it, in a man. But if I had bought a sports car and dashed off with a young man, everyone would have been horrified.’
‘Women are more sensible than men,’ he said. ‘They have more dignity.’
‘I don’t know that we do,’ she said. ‘I, too, might like a young, handsome man in my life who thinks that I’m beautiful and laughs at my jokes. But it’s not worth breaking up a happy family life for.’
‘True.’ Christian wandered across the room and sat down on the sofa opposite her.
‘Maybe this baby is not his,’ she went on, ‘but if it is, it throws up all sorts of problems for the children. Any money Dan might have left them will now have to be shared again. If there is any money left, and she probably wants it to have a private education’. She shivered. ‘He is a fool. I wonder if he’s thought of how much this will cost him. He’ll be retired just about the time the school fees really kick in.’
‘Don’t torture yourself with it all; it’s happened. Distance yourself from it as much as you can,’ Christian said. ‘After all, it is not your problem anymore.’
‘I just can’t get used to it – my marriage ending like that. I really didn’t think there were any problems with it. We both worked hard; possibly we did not spend enough time together talking. We sat together in what I thought was comfortable companionship, reading or watching something on TV.’ She sighed. ‘Perhaps I was too complacent, as we rarely rowed, and then only over small things. If only he had talked about his feelings, we could have changed things before they got so out of hand.’
‘I don’t suppose you did anything wrong,’ Christian said. ‘Life changes, people change. It’s a sad fact.’
‘Are you married?’ She wondered if his feelings had changed towards a wife and he could tell her why.
‘My wife died.’
‘Oh, God, I’m so sorry.’ She clapped her hand over her mouth as if she could pull back her question. ‘That is terrible.’
‘It was. Cancer, two years ago.’
‘Have you children?’
‘Two sons; both work in New York.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ she repeated. ‘That is the worst. I feel ashamed now, going on about my problems, when there are so many other people worse off than me. I know I’m lucky,’ she went on, trying to fill the awkward void after his news, ‘I have a house and a job and enough money, if I’m careful, to live on and if my husband doesn’t demand lots more from me for this coming child. Thousands of women are left destitute.’
‘Your problems are still hard to bear,’ he said. ‘It’s difficult when fate suddenly pulls the rug from under your feet and you have to reassess your life.’
She would have liked to tell him how she was trying to live a new life, but how things kept tripping her up, like Robert wanting her house and now this news of Dan’s baby, but she did not. She had done nothing this evening, she realised, but whinge and weep. No man would want to put up with that, especially one who had lost his wife in such tragic circumstances.
Christian was sitting on the sofa, his face serious with concern, hands clasped in front of him. She liked the feel of him sitting there in his smart suit, his blue-and-green tie. But what should she do with him? Just now she didn’t feel she had the energy to be cheerful, to sing and dance for him. What if he wanted to sleep with her? She couldn’t cope with that, not yet. If ever. What a nightmare it would be, undressing in front of another man, laying bare all her defects, the less than taut skin, the bulgy tummy. If they had put off her own husband, how much worse it would be in front of a stranger.
It would be impossible ever to have a love affair now, after hearing about Dan’s baby; not that she hadn’t already tortured herself with visions of them in bed together. It would be worse now, thinking of him, with his spasmodic back, impregnating her, listening for the heartbeat of his child inside her as he had done with their own two. But then why was she thinking of every man as a potential lover – even that Robert next door? Was it because she was afraid she would never make love again for the rest of her life?
‘I don’t want to hold you up, Christian,’ she said, with a semblance of a smile. ‘It was so kind of you to bring me home. I’m fine now. I’ve got to ring my daughter, and no doubt my son, and talk it over with them.’
‘I thought perhaps…’ Christian began, then obviously thought better of it. ‘I could stay, if you would like me to,’ he said tentatively.
They heard Robert’s front door slam behind him. He was going out again. She did not want to open her front door and come face to face with him outside.
She said, ‘That’s really kind, but I’m not much company tonight.’ She wondered whether she could ask him to dinner, or to the theatre, to make up for this dismal evening. But she didn’t know how to. He might not want to come, and there would be cringing embarrassment as he made his excuses. She fought to hide her feeling of rejection and disappointment. He was a kind man, and in other circumstances they might have got on well together. It would be safer not to suggest another meeting at all.
‘If you’re sure I can’t do anything…’ He got up from the sofa. She studied him covetously, his slightly square face, his thick grey hair. Was he relieved or disappointed? She couldn’t tell.
‘I hope to see—’ he began, and her mobile rang.
‘I’ll be off,’ he said awkwardly, and made for the door.
Sarah hovered between answering the strident phone and saying goodbye to him.
Seeing this he said, ‘I’ll see myself out. Goodbye.’
‘Goodbye, and thank you so much, Christian.’ She reached for her mobile, about to tell the person on the other end to wait a moment so she could go to the door with him.
‘Mum, are you all right? It’s awful news, isn’t it? Dad took Tim and me out to lunch today and told us. We were nearly sick.’
‘Darling, I’ll talk in a second.’ She tried to wedge the words into Polly’s tirade, but she heard the front door open and close. Christian probably thought he’d had a lucky escape. No man in his right mind would want to get
involved with a hysterical middle-aged woman. And why should they, when there were all those thirty-somethings, starving themselves to stick-insect proportions while yearning for a man?
In her eagerness to tell her story, Polly did not hear her words. ‘I just think it’s disgusting, a man Dad’s age having babies. He’ll be seventy when it’s a teenager.’
So he would, Sarah thought; would he have the stamina for it? To her intense annoyance, she felt sorry for him. Perhaps he had been tricked into this, but surely he must have known she might get pregnant?
‘We both walked out, said we didn’t want to see him again,’ Polly went on. ‘How could he, Mum? How could he?’ She began to wail with all the pain of a selfish adolescent.
‘I don’t know,’ Sarah said, when Polly paused for breath. ‘But he is your father and—’
‘He’s not the father we knew! He’s changed into someone completely different,’ she cried.
What could she say to comfort her, comfort herself? The old Dan would never have behaved like this. Had this different man been lurking inside the old one all along, waiting for the moment to break loose? He could not have talked about it to her, for she would not have understood. She would have laughed, told him not to be such a fool, that fantasies seldom translated well into reality, and this would have upset him more. Deep down he must know he was being a fool, but he did not want her to confirm it.
Polly went on describing the lunch. Dan had managed to find a day when they could both make it from the holiday jobs they were doing in Cambridge.
It killed Sarah to know, but she had to ask. ‘Was he pleased at the news?’
‘Not really; more ashamed, I’d say,’ Polly said tartly. ‘He didn’t bring her, said she was visiting her father. Tim said he was more embarrassed than when he asked him if he knew the facts of life. I mean, Mum, do you think Dad knows about contraception?’
Sarah could not help smiling at the irony of her remark. She recalled some fearful fumbles when she and Dan started to sleep together. The irony was, they had both done all they could to warn their children not to have babies outside marriage or a stable relationship. Now Dan, their own father, had fallen into the trap.
The next morning, she was greeted by a cream vellum envelope addressed to her lying on the mat. She opened it, and with cramping horror saw it was from Robert’s solicitor. It was written in the usual legal jargon, so complicated she could not make much sense of it. She hid it under the papers on her desk. She could not, would not, cope with it. She would pretend that she had never seen it.
Eight
‘Going away?’
To her horror, Robert appeared from his house and saw her putting her suitcase into the taxi. Ever since receiving that letter from his solicitor, she had managed to avoid him. She didn’t want him to know she was going away in case he somehow managed to infiltrate her property. What if he trained his orchids to grow their sinister way through the floorboards, or infested her garden with something nasty?
‘Only for a few days. My daughter is house-sitting with her boyfriend,’ she said archly, getting into the taxi.
She had jokingly told Tim and Polly about Robert’s insistence that the house had been promised to him, but she played it down so as not to alarm them.
‘Joe and I will watch out for any sabotage,’ Polly promised, becoming quite animated at the challenge.
Robert came up to the taxi to shut the door after her. ‘Have a good time. I wanted to talk to you about that letter I put through your letterbox, but we’ll leave it until you get back. I won’t hold you up now.’ He threw her a curt smile and shut the door, leaving her tingling with anxiety.
When she picked up Celine at her flat – they were going to Victoria to take the train to Gatwick – she was so excited about the trip she didn’t want to say anything to spoil it. There was nothing she could do anyway, unless she cancelled the trip and stayed at home to guard the house, and that would be giving in to him. She might as well enjoy this week, get up strength for the battle when she returned.
She experienced that old excitement as the plane took off, the thrill of throwing off the cares of her life for a while, being someone different in a new environment. But, once in Italy, as the taxi took them to the Fielding’s place, old memories reared up and hit her. She and Dan had once come here for a romantic weekend. Her mother had been alive then, and they had left the children with her. They’d hired a car at the airport and driven to Sienna. How golden was that place and how golden their love. How could it all have gone so dreadfully wrong?
Flora and Patrick Fielding were in their early sixties and lived here most of the year. They welcomed people to their villa: their children, children’s friends, friends of their own and, in her case, their friends’ friends. They left them to their own devices, the only house rule being that everyone had to take it in turns to provide and cook dinner. A local woman who came in to clean washed up their efforts in the morning.
Celine had been a friend of theirs for a long time. To pay them back for their hospitality, she always brought over some clothes from their new collection for Flora.
‘I’m so thrilled to meet the designer of my favourite clothes!’ Flora greeted Sarah, her round, tanned face lighting up with a smile. Sarah liked her at once, and Patrick too, though he was much quieter, and alternated his time between reading and communing with his beloved plants.
It was a beautiful old villa, once expensively decorated but now fading elegantly and gently into sun-washed mellowness. Sarah loved it, but the ache in her heart lay in wait in the shadows of her mind, pouncing unheralded like a physical pain. The sight of Patrick in his battered straw hat bringing Flora flowers from the garden, or fetching her jacket in the cool of the evening. The small, familiar, almost instinctive things between a couple long used to each other, and content with each other’s company, smote her heart with the yearning pain of loss. Would a man ever love her again, and what would she become if none did? A dried-out empty vessel, her heart torn out?
Christian had not got in touch with her again, but that was hardly surprising. What man in his right mind wanted to go out with a hysterical old bat who cried in trendy wine bars for everyone to see? Five weeks had passed since that disastrous evening, and she had not heard a squeak out of him since.
She’d heard more than a few squeaks from Robert, though. Living beside him, hearing the sounds from his side of the house, unnerved her. It was like living together, and yet they did not. His water ran early morning, as did hers, as they both showered before work. She dismissed pictures in her mind of them both naked in the shower on either side of the wall. Sometimes she could hear the mumble from his radio, which convinced her that he listened to the same news programme in the early morning as she did. Did he, too, think of her getting on with her life beside him as he thought up devious plans to get rid of her so he could have both houses to himself?
She kept out of his way. If, and fortunately it was not often, she saw his broad-shouldered figure ahead of her going into his house, she would drop back and wait until he was safely inside. Through the wall she could hear the long buzz as he set his alarm, so if she was also going out she would wait until he had left the street. The worst time was when they were both in their respective gardens: she could sense him on the other side of the wall and this distracted her.
It was such a relief to be here with people she had never met before, who did not know her history. Apart from the Fieldings, there were two male friends of Patrick’s, Marcus Benson and Julian Gilmore. Marcus had his wife Ruth with him. Julian, who had recently divorced, had brought a young French girl he had picked up somewhere. Flora’s much younger stepsister Alexia and her partner Jeff were also there.
They were nice, easy people, and to Sarah’s relief not the sort you had to make an effort with. The only ‘single’ man was Julian. He was tall, with a lean, pointed face, sparse, greying hair and wore glasses. He was the chairman of some prestigious firm in the City.
Julian reminded Sarah of a turkey cock, strutting about doing his best to impress her, regaling her with stories of his sporting exploits and his prowess in the boardroom and possibly later in the bedroom.
Yvette shrugged and pouted and grunted, while he boasted of his life, telling of deals he had pulled off, scams he had unearthed. He saw himself as her mentor, explaining things patiently to her: how the garden was planted in an English style; the etiquette of bridge, which he would call out to her while he was playing, much to the annoyance of the Fieldings and Ruth.
Leave it, Sarah said silently to him. Would you really jump through all these hoops with a woman nearer your own age? She wondered if Dan behaved like this. Did he boast so nauseously to his mouse? She suspected Julian was on some power kick, behaving as if he thought he was superior to Yvette socially and in the ways of the world, and had taken it upon himself to instruct her about it.
‘Do you think he instructs her in the bedroom, too?’ Celine commented, when they were alone reading by the pool one afternoon.
‘I don’t think they sleep in the same room,’ Sarah said. ‘She’s in that little room over the garage.’
‘Flora always puts her least favourite people there,’ Celine said. ‘Silly man can’t see what a fool he is making of himself. Is it really worth it for a bit of fun in bed? Or maybe there is no fun in bed.’ She stretched out luxuriously on the sun-lounger. ‘If there’s no chemistry between two people, why bother to go to all that trouble? Life is too short.’