by Penny Jordan
‘Us being a couple isn’t the problem,’ Katie admitted. ‘Or rather... Where’s Nick?’ she asked, changing the subject and looking round for Louise’s little boy.
‘With Gareth,’ Louise told her promptly. ‘Gareth had a few days’ leave owing and so I told him it was time that he and Nick did a little bit of father and son bonding. They’ve gone to stay with friends for a few days.’
There was no way that Louise was going to tell her twin that until she had received her phone call she, too, had been planning to take part in this short family break. Gareth had raised his eyebrows but made no demure when she had told him that there had been a change of plan.
‘Katie never asks for anything,’ Louise had told him soberly. ‘Of the two of us I’m always the one who makes demands on her. She needs me, Gareth. I have to be here for her. I owe it to her,’ she had finished softly.
Now, as she looked at her twin’s pale face, Louise knew that she had been right to listen to that small inner voice.
‘Come on,’ she announced, taking hold of Katie’s arm. ‘You and I are going to go and have a proper girlie lunch. There’s this fabulous restaurant we’ve discovered not far away from the house.’
Katie started to protest and shake her head. The last thing she felt like doing was eating, but typically Louise wasn’t giving her the opportunity to object, tucking her arm through Katie’s and urging her towards the exit.
* * *
AS SEB DROVE towards the Yorkshire Dales, the site of Charlotte’s field trip, a sudden bottle-neck in the traffic slowed him down enough that he had the opportunity to reach for his mobile phone and punch in Katie’s number. He had made a mental note of it earlier in the morning while he had been on the phone to her mother, never guessing how soon he was going to need to use it.
Impatiently he waited as the phone rang, willing Katie to pick up the receiver, smothering the sense of anguish and disappointment he felt when there was no reply. Charlotte had been taken to the hospital nearest to the field trip site and although Seb had spoken to the staff nurse in charge of her ward and had been reassured that keeping her in was only a precaution and that she was fine, he knew his natural parental fears would not be allayed until he had seen her.
He just hoped that he would be able to reach Katie by telephone before too long. If he couldn’t... ‘You’ll have a boy child,’ the gypsy had said. A child...a boy...a son... Katie’s son... There was no way he was going to abdicate his parental responsibilities a second time. No way he was going to be an absent father. No way he was not going to be fully and totally a part of his child’s life...
Charlotte had been lucky... He had been lucky in that his absence had not damaged her, but he still had to carry the guilt of knowing he had not been there for her when he ought to have been, he still had to bear the guilt of knowing that his own selfish behaviour could have compromised her happiness and her life... Just as his own selfish behaviour could have resulted in the conception of another child.
Unplanned this baby may be, he acknowledged, but not unwanted. The sensation that had ripped through him at the thought of Katie carrying his child had shocked him. Charlotte was his daughter and he loved her, but he had never once felt anything for Sandra like he had just experienced now thinking about Katie conceiving and carrying his child.
He liked Sandra as a person, respected and admired her as a mother and as a wife—someone else’s wife—but he didn’t love her, had never loved her the way he did Katie. But Katie didn’t love him and if she should have conceived because of his lack of self-control... God, what a mess he had made of everything.
* * *
‘TRUTHFULLY, LOUISE, I’M just not hungry,’ Katie protested. ‘All I want...’ A single, solitary tear slid down her face, causing Louise to change her plans and the direction in which she was driving.
‘What are you doing?’ Katie protested in alarm as her twin did an illegal U-turn virtually in the middle of the busy city street.
‘Don’t worry.’ Louise grinned. ‘No one was watching... We’re going home,’ she added by way of explanation. ‘We can talk properly there.’
The house Louise and Gareth were renting in Brussels was down a pretty, leafy road; a small town house with a good-sized, private rear garden.
‘Come on.’ Louise smiled reassuringly at her twin as she parked her car and then got out, walking round to the passenger door and waiting for Katie and then taking hold of her hand almost as though she thought she might run away, Katie acknowledged wearily.
But where, after all, was there for her to run to? Who was there for her to run to? Nowhere and no one. She just wished she hadn’t made that ridiculously over-emotional statement at the airport. No wonder Louise was treating her as though she had less common sense than her small son Nick.
‘We’ll sit out in the garden,’ Louise announced as she led the way into the house and then through it out onto a pretty paved patio area, virtually pushing Katie into one of the comfortable garden chairs before telling her, ‘Stay there. I’ll go and get some wine...’
‘I don’t...’ Katie began but Louise shook her head and told her ruefully,
‘Well I certainly do. Just one glass,’ she suggested in a more gentle voice. ‘It will do you good.’
The wine Louise poured for them both was clean and crisp and deliciously cold. It tasted good, Katie admitted, shaking her head over the plate of sandwiches Louise was offering her.
‘So...tell me everything,’ Louise commanded her. ‘You’re in love with Seb. Well, I could see that. What’s troubling you? Is it the thought of making such a big commitment...marriage can seem very scary. I know.’
‘No. It’s nothing like that,’ Katie interrupted her, taking a deep breath before saying starkly, ‘What I let you think before, what I told you, simply wasn’t true. Not then... Seb and I weren’t...hadn’t... There was nothing between us and...’
‘But there is now,’ Louise cut across Katie’s stumbling explanations. ‘Now you’re in love with him...’
‘Yes...’ Katie looked down at her almost empty wine glass feeling her face grow hot as certain memories flooded through her. Then she drained the last of her wine and turned to face Louise, telling her with a bluntness that ordinarily would have been totally out of character for her, ‘It... I... I went to bed with him. We had sex...and it was...’ She paused, her face growing even hotter, but when she searched Louise’s face and could see no hint of shock or criticism there she took another deep breath and continued, ‘It was wonderful. I hadn’t... I never thought... He was angry at first. Angry with me because he’d discovered that people were talking about us as a couple. I tried to explain and apologise, but...he took hold of me and started to kiss me and then what had started out as... I couldn’t help myself... I just wanted him so much,’ Katie confessed in a low voice.
‘I’d never imagined I could feel like that. Not me. My own feelings just overwhelmed me... I just wanted him so much. I know this must be hard for you to understand,’ she told Louise, unable to fully look at her now. ‘You and Gareth...you love one another and...’
‘I didn’t love him the first time I had sex with him,’ Louise interrupted her to tell her matter-of-factly. ‘Actually...’ She stopped. ‘Perhaps we’re even more alike than either of us has ever recognised. Gareth was very angry with me the first time we made love, Katie, and I felt just the same as you’ve said you felt. I was the one who drove things on, who insisted...who seduced...’ she underlined ruefully.
Katie lifted her head and listened warily.
‘The first time I went to bed with Gareth I was convinced it was Saul I loved, not him. I was furiously angry with Gareth and with myself and he was equally furiously angry with me, but somehow all that anger became transmuted, transformed into something else.’
Katie closed her eyes and then opened them again
.
‘When I went to bed with Seb,’ she confessed gruffly, ‘I thought...’ She stopped and bit her lip and then, looking right at her twin, she confessed huskily, ‘I thought...felt...believed that it was really Gareth I loved.’
For a moment the silence between them was so intense, so profound, that Katie feared that she had gone too far, said too much, violated their twinship so severely that their lifelong bond had been severed, but then Louise moved, pushing back her chair, coming towards her, taking hold of her and hugging her so hard that Katie had to gasp for breath.
‘Oh, Katie, Katie, it’s so awesome that we should both have experienced the same thing, that we should both have shared almost exactly the same things. You know what this means, don’t you?’ Louise demanded in a portentous voice.
Katie looked at her, her heart starting to beat heavily and painfully. What was Louise going to say? That because Katie had admitted to having loved Gareth things could never now be the same between them, that Louise could never again trust her...?
‘No...what does it mean?’ Katie forced herself to ask.
‘It means that you and Seb are quite definitely meant for one another,’ Louise told her excitedly. ‘Just like Gareth and I were...’
Katie hated to disillusion her but she had to. Sadly she shook her head.
‘No. Seb doesn’t love me,’ she told her positively.
‘He took you to bed, made love to you,’ Louise reminded her.
‘He wanted me,’ Katie agreed. ‘But he doesn’t love me,’ she said painfully. She hesitated and then looked uncertainly at Louise.
‘You won’t say anything to Gareth about...about me having thought I loved him, will you?’ she begged Louise. ‘I realise now that...’ She stopped. Even if she hadn’t already recognised how unreal and unsupportable her supposed love for Gareth had really been, she knew that hearing Louise describe his anger with her when they had made love, and recognising that Gareth was the tender almost detached gentle lover she had imagined was nothing more than an unreal fantasy would have destroyed the fragile romantic image she had built up around her brother-in-law.
She had believed she loved him because there had been no one else there in her life for her to love, she realised with sudden wisdom. Loving Gareth had been a subtle form of emotional protection, of safeguarding her emotions. Rather like that thicket of briars which had grown up around Sleeping Beauty, and like the prince who had hacked his way through that thicket, Seb had found a way through her emotional protection and into her heart.
If she had gained nothing else from what had happened, she had at least gained maturity and a much deeper knowledge of her real self. And of course, she had regained the special closeness with Louise her twin.
An hour later as they strolled together through Brussels’s shopping area, Katie paused to study the display in a small boutique window.
The dress, a cobwebby knit creation that clung lovingly and seductively to every curve of the mannequin’s body, was both impossibly expensive and even more impossibly provocative.
‘He’ll be furious with you for wearing it in public where other men’s eyes could see what he wants to keep only for himself,’ Louise murmured to her before adding temptingly, ‘Why don’t you buy it?’
‘Certainly not,’ Katie demurred. ‘Have you seen the price, and besides, where would I wear it? Mind you I could do with something,’ she admitted ruefully. ‘There’s Gramps’s “do” coming up...’
Louise rolled her eyes expressively and groaned, ‘Don’t remind me,’ and then, as her voice changed tone and became quieter, she asked gently, ‘What will you do?’
‘...about Seb?’ Katie responded. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps I should look for another job...move away...’
‘Why not move here?’ Louise suggested promptly. ‘You’d get a job easily enough and we’ve got plenty of spare bedrooms... Or,’ she added, pausing and then looking at Katie before saying firmly, ‘you could always tell him how you feel, and then he...’
‘No! That’s impossible,’ Katie denied immediately.
Ten minutes later while they were sitting in a café drinking coffee, Louise suddenly gave a small exclamation and got up. ‘I’ve just remembered, I didn’t put enough money in the parking ticket machine. You wait there while I go and get another ticket. I shan’t be long...’
‘No,’ she insisted when Katie started to get up. ‘There’s no need for you to come. Finish your coffee and order us both a second cup... You don’t know what a treat...a luxury...it is for me to simply be able to sit and drink coffee. I love Nick to pieces but just occasionally it’s absolute bliss to have some time to myself. When you and Seb have that baby of yours you’ll understand what I mean,’ she added wickedly before hurrying down the street.
* * *
‘DAD! WHAT ARE you doing here?’
Seb grimaced as Charlotte came bounding into the foyer to the ward, stopping dead as she saw him. He had arrived at the hospital ten minutes earlier and had just reached the ward where Charlotte had been hospitalised.
‘What do you think?’ he responded grimly.
‘You came because of me?’ Charlotte shook her head. ‘But I’m fine, I promise. In fact I’ve just been discharged. Heaven knows why they insisted on keeping me in here.’
‘You had a bad fall,’ Seb pointed out curtly.
Charlotte rolled her eyes protestingly.
‘I had a bit of a tumble,’ she corrected him. ‘Hardly a fall at all and if I hadn’t bumped my head I doubt there would have been any of this silly panic. Heavens, if I’d been rushed off to hospital every time I fell over when I was growing up I’d have spent half my life there. Mum always used to complain that it must be the Cooke gene that made me so clumsy and so addicted to danger. According to her, she never so much as sustained the smallest scratch when she was growing up. I suppose I was a bit of a tomboy,’ Charlotte allowed ruefully, a huge smile dimpling her face as she slid her arm through Seb’s and teased him, ‘You’re going to have to get used to visits like this if you and Katie have that baby boy. No,’ she corrected herself firmly, ‘when you have him... How is Katie, by the way, is she here with you?’
Here with him?
‘No, why should she be?’ Seb demanded sharply.
‘No reason,’ Charlotte pacified him. ‘I was just hoping...thinking...that it would be nice to see her.’
Normally her teasing and almost maternal probings would have been something he could have sidestepped with ease but today, after last night, it was activating pain cells he hadn’t known he was capable of possessing. Just the sound of Katie’s name was enough to produce a series of flash cards inside his brain.
Katie wearing just that damned towel. Katie, her mouth swollen from his kiss. Katie reaching out to touch him. Katie as he touched her... Katie...
‘Dad...where are you?’
Collecting himself he frowned down at Charlotte.
‘Are you sure you’re well enough to be discharged?’
‘Ask the doc if you don’t believe me,’ she retaliated flippantly.
An hour later, having spoken with the duty doctor, the admissions staff and, in addition, having insisted on seeing the specialist in charge of the ward, Seb acknowledged that Charlotte had been right when she claimed that she was in perfect health.
‘Dad, you’re over-protective. You’re practically Neanderthal,’ she said as they finally left the ward.
‘I’m your father,’ Seb reminded her tersely, looking at her in bafflement as she suddenly gave him a smile and hugged him.
‘Yes, I know,’ Charlotte conceded. ‘But when the time comes when I finally meet a man...the man, Dad,’ she emphasised with a sidelong look at him and a soft pink tinge to her skin, ‘there’s no way that I’m going to tell you about it. At least not until afterwards.’ Her skin
colour deepened a little more betrayingly as she added defensively, ‘You’ll terrify him.’
‘Good,’ Seb told her, but her semi-teasing words had set off a chain of thoughts of his own and there was no way he could share them with her.
The man, she had said, meaning quite plainly the man who would be her first lover. Charlotte and her peers looked on sex as a responsibility that had to be treated with caution and respect and that, of course, was a legacy of the tainted inheritance other generations had left them.
He had been Katie’s first lover. What would Jon Crighton think of him if he knew? Jon would not love his daughter any less than Seb loved Charlotte and Jon Crighton thought that he and Katie were a pair, a couple.
If he were to disappear out of Katie’s life now, what would Jon Crighton think of him? Would he think that he had used Katie, betrayed her, abandoned her? Would he condemn him as being every bit as bad as the worst of his Cooke ancestors? Would Seb be tarred by the same brush as them, a man totally without morals, without any kind of finer feelings?
‘Dad... Dad...’ Abruptly he realised that Charlotte was talking to him. ‘Dad, are you okay?’ Charlotte asked him in concern. ‘You were miles away again...’
‘I was thinking about...something...’ Seb told her quickly.
‘Something or someone?’ Charlotte suggested, her face breaking into a wide smile when he wasn’t quite quick enough to hide his reaction.
‘I knew it. It is Katie, isn’t it? You do love her, don’t you, Dad? Oh, I’m so pleased,’ Charlotte said, hugging him excitedly. ‘But just don’t expect me to be a bridesmaid and dress in a pink tulle meringue.’ Charlotte pulled a face. ‘Okay, I know, Katie has far too much taste to want me to wear anything so uncool.’
‘You’re running ahead of the game,’ Seb admonished her gently, changing the subject determinedly by telling her, ‘Come on, let’s get you back to Manchester.’
‘Manchester! No way!’ Charlotte announced firmly. ‘I’m finishing my field trip first.’