The Ultimate Betrayal

by Michelle Reid

  That’s right, thought Rachel. Blame Mandy. Blame everything and anything so long as it is not yourself.

  ‘Say something, for God’s sake!’ he ground out, making her blink, because Daniel rarely raised his voice to her like that. And she realised that she had been sitting here just staring blankly at him but not really seeing him. Her eyes felt stuck, fixed in a permanent stare which refused to focus properly—like her emotions—locked on hold until something or someone hit the right button to set them free. She hoped it didn’t happen. She had an idea she might fall apart when that happened.

  It must feel like this, she pondered flatly, when someone you love dearly dies.

  ‘I want a divorce,’ she heard herself say, and was as surprised by the statement as Daniel was, because the idea of divorce hadn’t so much as entered her head before she’d said it. ‘You can get out. I’ll keep the house and the children. You can easily afford to support us.’ Another shrug, and she was amazed at her own calmness when she knew she should really be screeching at him like a fishwife.

  ‘Don’t be damned stupid!’ he ground out. ‘That’s no damned answer and you know it.’

  ‘Don’t shout,’ she censured. ‘You’ll wake the children.’

  That seemed to do it, lift the top right off his self-control, and he surged to his feet. The glass was slapped down on the mantel top, whisky slopping over the side to splash on to white marble.

  He tried to glare at her but could not hold her steady gaze long enough to gain the upper hand, so he threw himself away instead, his shoulders hunching in the white shirt so that the material became stretched taut across his back, while his hands were thrust angrily into his trouser pockets.

  ‘Look…’ he said after a moment, struggling to get hold of himself. ‘It wasn’t what you think—what that bitch made it out to be! It was just—’ he swallowed tensely ‘—a flash in the pan thing—over before it really began!’ He slashed violently at the air with his hand, and Rachel thought, Poor Lydia, guillotined just like that. ‘I was under pressure at work. The Harvey takeover was threatening to kill everything I had worked for.’ He reached out for his glass of whisky, gulping at the contents like a man with a severe thirst. ‘I found I had to work night and day just to keep one step ahead of them. You were still recovering from the bad time you’d had carrying Michael, and I seemed to be spending more time with her than with you. Then the twins got measles—you wouldn’t even let me employ a nurse to help you!’ he flung at her in accusation. ‘So you looked worn out most of the time, and I was worried about you, the sick twins, Michael who refused to sleep more than half an hour at a time, work was getting on top of me and it seemed easier on you if I made myself scarce here, kept my problems confined to the office…’ He was talking about a period several months ago when she had believed that everything that could go wrong had gone wrong. She had never so much as considered adding her husband taking up with another woman to her list of problems. It had never entered her head!

  ‘Rachel…’ he murmured huskily. ‘I never meant to do it. I never even wanted to do it! But she was there when I needed someone and you were not, and I just—’

  ‘Oh—do shut up!’

  Nausea hit, and she had to thrust her fist into her mouth to stop herself being sick all over their beautiful Wilton carpet. She crawled to her feet, swaying, sending him a look of hostile warning when he instinctively reached out to steady her, and he flinched away, going grey. She stumbled over to the drinks cabinet and, with her hands shaking violently, poured herself some of his whisky. She hated the stuff, but at that moment felt a dire need to feel its burning vapours shoot through her blood.

  He was standing there just watching her, his pose one of violent helplessness as he watched her throw the drink to the back of her throat then stand with her head flung back, eyes closed, while she fought to maintain some control over herself.

  But it was all beginning to happen now. Her body was becoming racked by a whole sea of tearing emotions. Her heart was stammering out of rhythm; she wanted to suck in some deep steadying breaths of air but found her lungs unwilling to comply. They were locked up along with the torment. Stomach muscles, ribs, all were paralysed by reaction, while her brain was the opposite, opening up and letting out all the suppressed pain and anguish, letting it taunt her, sniggering and sneering at her until she thought she would pass out.

  ‘It’s over, Rachel!’ he repeated hoarsely, appealing to her in a voice she had never heard before. ‘For God’s sake, it’s over!’

  ‘And when was it over?’ Tipping her head upright, she shrivelled him with a look. ‘When my body became yours to indulge yourself in once again? Poor Lydia,’ she drawled, the whisky having the desired effect and numbing her from the neck down. ‘I wonder which one of us you played for the bigger fool?’

  He shook his head, refusing to get into that one. ‘It happened,’ he stated grimly, raking a shaky hand through his neat dark hair. ‘I wish it hadn’t, but I can’t turn back the clock, no matter how much I want to. If it helps any, I’ll admit to feeling utterly ashamed of myself. But as God is my witness,’ he added huskily, ‘I give you my word that it will never happen again.’

  ‘Until the next time,’ she muttered, and was suddenly moving to get out of the room before all the ugly feelings working inside her overflowed in a storm of bitter bile.

  ‘No!’ He made a grab for her arm, his fingers biting into her flesh as he pulled her roughly against him, hugging her close while she fought to be free. ‘We have to talk this through!’ he pleaded thickly. ‘Please, I know you’re hurting but we need—’

  ‘How many times?’ she threw at him, grinding out the words on a complete loss of control. ‘How many times did you come home with the scent of her still clinging to your skin? How many times did you have to f-force yourself to make love to me after losing yourself in her!’

  ‘No, no no!’ he groaned, his arms like steel around her while she struggled angrily to be free. ‘No, Rachel! Never! I never let it get that far!’ Her huff of scornful disbelief sent him white. ‘I love you, Rachel,’ he stated hoarsely. ‘I love you!’

  For some reason that strangled declaration tipped her right over the edge and, on a totally alien burst of violence, she brought her hand up and hit him right across his unfaithful face.

  It rocked him—enough to make him let go of her. Rachel stepped back out of reach, her eyes at that moment revealing a murderous kind of hatred that no one who knew her would ever have believed her capable of. And Daniel stood stock-still, digesting the full horror of that look, and was silent.

  Without another word she turned and left the room. At the door to their bedroom she paused, then moved away, towards Michael’s room.

  The child didn’t stir when she entered. Rachel walked over to him, leaned gently on the side of the cot and just stared blindly down at her younger son, wondering if the intolerable ache inside her could actually make her physically ill.

  Then the dam burst, and on a sob she only just managed to contain while she stumbled over to the single bed which would be Michael’s when he grew older, she crawled beneath the Paddington Bear duvet to muffle the sounds of her wretched sobs, sobs which went on and on until she slid into a dark dull sleep.

  Morning came with the gurgling of Michael, awake but content at the moment to kick playfully in his cot. And it took Rachel several moments to remember why she was sleeping in his room rather than in her own bed with Daniel.

  There was a single crashing feeling inside her as memory returned, then she felt herself go calm again, last night’s storm of weeping seeming to have emptied her clean of everything.

  She got up, grimacing when she realised she was still wearing the same clothes she’d had on when Mandy called. A hand went to her head, finding the elastic band still partly holding a clump of hair in a tangle of silky knots. She tugged it out then shook her long tresses free. She looked a mess, felt a mess—she hadn’t even bothered removing her trainers! She di
d that now, sitting down on the bed to pull the hot and uncomfortable shoes from her feet just as the baby noticed her and let out a delighted shriek.

  She went to bend over his cot, his welcoming smile a balm to her aching heart. And for a while she just immersed herself in enjoying him, tickling his tummy and murmuring all those little nothings mothers shared with their babies, which only babies and mothers understood.

  This was hers, she thought wretchedly. No matter what else life wanted to take from her, it could never take away the love of her children.

  This, she declared silently, is mine.

  He was soaking wet, and she stripped him before attempting to lift him from his cot. Michael was always lively in the mornings, chirping away to himself, bouncing up and down against her while she carried him through to the small bathroom to run the few inches of bath water needed to freshen him up for the day.

  She took him, wrapped snugly in a towel, back to his room to dress him. Normally she would then take him downstairs for his breakfast without bothering to get dressed herself. That usually waited until they were all out of the way—at work or at school—but there was no way she could greet the twins looking as she did. They were just too sharp not to wonder out loud why she was still wearing the same clothes she’d had on the night before.

  But it took a great gathering together of her courage to enter the room where she knew Daniel would only just be stirring from sleep. She let herself in quietly, searching the gloom for a glimpse of his lean bulk huddled beneath the duvet.

  He wasn’t there, and it was then that she heard the tell-tale sounds coming from the bathroom. He appeared a moment later, already dressed in a clean white shirt and the trousers of his iron-grey suit. He saw her almost at once and came to an abrupt halt.

  In all the years of knowing him, she had never felt so vulnerable in his presence, or so aware of her tumbled appearance: her puffy eyes, made so by too much weeping, her tousled hair hanging limp and untidy around her pale face.

  Nor so aware of him: his height, the length of his long, straight body and the tightness of its superbly honed muscles. Wide chest, flat stomach, narrow hips, long powerful legs with…

  No. Dry-mouthed, she flicked her gaze warily up to clash with his.

  He looked tired, as though he hadn’t slept much. He would have been thinking, working things out, trying to find the right solution to an impossible situation. He was good at that—making a success out of a disaster. It was the most fundamental source of his outstanding business success.

  His gaze lingered on her face, his own a defensive mask. He had just shaved; his stubborn chin looked clean and shiny-smooth. Rachel caught the familiar scent of his aftershave, and felt her senses stir in response to it. Sexual magnetism held no boundaries, she acknowledged bitterly. Even now, while she was hating and despising him, she was disturbingly aware of him as the man she had loved for so long and so blindly.

  Shifting jerkily, she moved over to the bed, lifting a knee on to the soft mattress so that she could lay Michael in the middle. It was only then that she realised that the bed had not been slept in, and the only evidence that Daniel had used it at all was in the imprint of his body on the smooth peach duvet.

  Michael was kicking madly, trying to catch his father’s attention—attention that was firmly fixed on Rachel. The baby let out a frustrated cry, going red in the face in his effort to pull himself into a sitting position, and Rachel smiled instinctively at his efforts, capturing a waving hand and feeling the instant tug as the child tried to use it for leverage.

  Daniel came over to the bed, stretching out to recline on the other side of their son and automatically reaching for the other small hand, which was all Michael needed to lever himself into a sitting position.

  ‘Da!’ he said triumphantly, twisting free of both of them so that he could pat his satisfaction on the soft duvet.

  Rachel kept her eyes firmly on her son while she felt the searing appeal in Daniel’s gaze sting into her pale cheeks. ‘Rachel please look at me.’ It was a gruff plea that twisted at something wretched inside her, but one she refused to comply with, shaking her head.

  ‘No,’ she whispered, keeping her voice level with effort, and Daniel sighed heavily, then reached for Michael, lifting him to kiss the soft baby cheek before placing him further up the bed.

  Alerted, Rachel moved to get up, but Daniel was too quick for her, his hand circling her wrist and pulling gently until he had hauled her across the small gap separating them, then enclosing her in the warm strength of his arms.

  It’s not fair! she thought piteously as her insides dipped and dived with a need to immerse herself in the comfort he was offering her. Her chest became tight, then began to throb with the need to weep, and she let free a constricted gulp in an effort to stop the flood.

  ‘Don’t,’ he murmured unsteadily.

  It had been the wrong thing to say, because the instant he showed her tenderness her control went haywire and she was sobbing deeply into his shoulder. He tightened his arms around her, and lowered his head on to hers. ‘Sorry,’ he kept saying, over and over. ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry…’

  But it wasn’t enough, was it? It would never be enough. He had killed everything. Love, faith, trust, respect—all gone, and sorry would never bring them back to life again.

  ‘I’m all right now,’ she mumbled, making the monumental effort to pull herself together and draw away from him.

  But his hold tightened. ‘I know I’ve hurt you unbearably, Rachel,’ he murmured, trying to keep a rein on his own distress. She could feel the tension in his chest, in the erratic thump of his heart. ‘But don’t make any rash decisions while you’re in such an…’ Emotional state, she guessed he was going to say, but he stopped himself. ‘We have everything going for us if you’ll just give it another chance. Don’t throw it all away because of one stupid mistake on my part. You can’t throw it all away!’ he insisted thickly.

  ‘I didn’t do the throwing away,’ she countered, and this time, when she pulled, he let her go, his eyes dark and bleak as he watched her get up from the bed to begin moving around the room searching out fresh clothes, an electric current of suppressed emotion following her as she went from wardrobe to drawers then back again without really being aware of what she was choosing to wear.

  All those years of blind trust she had given him, years of quiet understanding and acceptance of his deep personal need to achieve his ambitions. Through all those years she had stayed at home like some pampered pet dog and, so long as he gave her frequent pats of affection, fed the few basic needs she had, like food to eat and water to drink and the occasional trip out in the evening, she had been quite content with her lot.

  What a pathetic creature you are! she jeered at herself now. What an utter bore!

  Michael let out a wail, and they both started. He wanted his breakfast, and the playful game he had been having with himself had now turned into a demand for some attention.

  Rachel stood hovering in the middle of the room, with her clean clothes clutched in her hands while her bemused mind grappled with the problem of what she should do next. Get dressed first or see to Michael first. A simple choice, but she couldn’t seem to make it.

  It was, in the end, Daniel who lifted the baby into his arms and walked towards the bedroom door. ‘I’ll see to him,’ he said. ‘Take your time. It’s still quite early.’ He let himself out, and Rachel literally sagged beneath the strain of it all.

  Breakfast was awful. She seemed intent on flying off the handle at the slightest provocation: from Kate for talking too much, Sam for not putting enough milk on his Weetabix so the biscuits congealed in his dish like two cement bricks which he proceeded to hack at with zeal. She put too much coffee in the filter bag so that it tasted so bitter it was barely drinkable. In the end, angry with herself for over-reacting to everything, frustrated with her inability to cope with her own distraught emotions, she turned on Sam, remembering that he had left his computer out the ni
ght before with his selection of games spread all over the floor. By the time she’d finished Sam was stiff and pale, Kate was appalled, Michael silenced and Daniel…Well, Daniel just looked grim. The rest of the morning routine went off in total silence. The children looking openly relieved when Daniel eventually sent them off to their rooms to collect their school things.

  ‘There was absolutely no reason for you to let fly at Sam like that!’ Daniel gritted as soon as there was only Michael left to listen. ‘You know as well as I do that he’s usually the tidiest one of us all! You’ll have all three of them a bag of nerves if you don’t watch out,’ he warned. ‘They’re good kids. Well-behaved kids for most of the time. I won’t let you take it out on them because you’re angry with me!’

  She whirled on him. ‘And since when are you around enough to know how they behave?’ she threw at him, seeing to her deep and bitter satisfaction that he stiffened as the thrust went home. ‘You see them at breakfast, but only from behind your precious Financial Times! You don’t even know you have three children most of the time! Y-You love them like you 1-love that…Lowry painting you bought—when you remember you’ve got them, that is. So don’t…don’t you dare start telling me how to bring up my children when as a father you’re damned useless!’

  What was happening to her? she wondered as she took a jerky step back and Daniel lurched angrily to his feet, glowering at her across the kitchen table and looking fit to hit her. I’m cracking up! she realised dizzily. I’m going to shatter into a million tiny pieces and I don’t know if I can stop it!