by Penny Jordan
‘What kind would you like to make?’ Claire asked her. The baby had gone peacefully back to sleep, she noticed as she gently shepherded Tara out of the room.
She and Tara had almost finished their cookie-baking exercise before Mary-Beth and Brad reappeared, and during the half-hour or so that they had been together Claire had learned a good deal about her Mommy and Daddy and how much she loved them both from Tara, who had chattered happily to her as they worked together.
‘It looks like I’m going to have to go back to the States with Mary-Beth. I’ve managed to get us seats on a flight this evening,’ Brad told Claire tersely as he obeyed Tara’s demand that he come and see what she had been making.
‘I’m sorry about all this...’ he added grimly, making a small gesture that included his sister and Tara.
‘It’s all right,’ Claire assured him. ‘I’m just glad that you were able to respond so quickly to my message. I hadn’t expected you to come straight back—’
‘What message?’ Brad asked her, frowning.
Claire stared at him.
‘I rang the office to tell you about Mary-Beth, and when you weren’t there I left a message with Tim for you to ring me.’
If he hadn’t got her message then how had he known to come back? Claire wondered. But before she could say anything Mary-Beth was demanding his attention, wanting to know exactly what time their flight was and worrying about the fact that she had neglected to bring enough baby food for Abe junior with her.
‘You should have thought about that before you left,’ Brad told her sharply.
Whilst he was obviously making every attempt to sort out his sister’s problems for her, he did not appear to be as sympathetic to her plight as Claire had expected him to be, and was certainly nothing like as partisan, refusing to join Mary-Beth in condemning her husband and rather to the contrary suggesting to her that she should have discussed the situation more fully with Abe before walking out and subjecting her two small children to all the stress and bewilderment of a transatlantic flight.
Sensing that Mary-Beth was unhappy with her brother’s response, Claire quickly offered to take her to the local supermarket where she would be able to buy some branded baby food for her little boy.
‘Brad, could you take me?’ Mary-Beth appealed. ‘I just can’t think straight at the moment.’
It was only natural that Mary-Beth should want her brother with her rather than a stranger, Claire told herself firmly, and it was no doubt illogical of her to feel, on the strength of what little they had actually shared, so emotionally bereft and excluded from what was going on.
Several times since he had returned to the house Brad had looked as if he wanted to say something to her, Claire acknowledged, and it was obvious that he was none too pleased with his sister’s disruption of his life. But, in reality, what else could he do other than agree to her demands that he return home with her? Claire acknowledged.
It was plain to her, even without knowing Mary-Beth or having met her husband, that it would need all of Brad’s skilled counsel and wisdom to heal the rift in his sister’s marriage.
‘Claire,’ she heard him saying quietly, his hand touching her arm lightly, as though he wanted to draw her away from Mary-Beth and the children. As though... as though... what? Claire asked herself ruefully. As though he wanted to isolate both of them from his family, as though he wanted to have her to himself. That’s some imagination you’ve got there, she warned herself.
‘I really am sorry,’ he told her in a low voice. ‘If I thought there was any way I could persuade Mary-Beth to go home on her own—’
‘She needs you, Brad,’ Claire interrupted him gently. And so do I, her heart cried silently, but of course she couldn’t allow herself to voice such words and wouldn’t have done no matter what the circumstances; to have done so would have been immature and selfish. ‘She’s obviously very upset about...about her husband,’ Claire felt bound to add.
‘Yes.’ Brad looked rather grim. ‘She always has a tendency to flare up over nothing and I doubt that this will be any exception. Abe’s just not the type to stray from his marriage.’
‘Mary-Beth obviously doesn’t share that view,’ Claire pointed out wryly.
‘No,’ Brad agreed heavily, glancing at his sister, who was trying to soothe the children’s fretting. ‘This couldn’t have happened at a worse time...’ he began to say; his hand was still resting on her arm but now the light grip of his fingers had somehow or other become a gentle stroke.
An automatic reflex action to the feel of her skin beneath them or the tender, soundless reassurance of a lover? Claire wasn’t sure.
‘Brad,’ Mary-Beth called out impatiently, ‘you’re going to have to get to that supermarket.’
Was she imagining the regret she could see in Brad’s eyes as he released her arm and moved away from her? Claire wondered.
‘And so Brad’s gone back to America with his sister?’ Hannah asked as Claire started to unload her dishwasher.
‘Yes, that’s right,’ Claire agreed woodenly.
Hannah had come round half an hour ago, two hours after Brad and Mary-Beth had left with the children. By now, no doubt, they would be airborne and on their way back home.
‘I’m not sure when I’ll be coming back but it should be within the week,’ Brad had told her before he’d left. They had been standing in the hall, Brad frowning down at her, his expression grimly sombre—because he was concerned about his sister or because he was regretting what had happened between them the previous night? Claire had wondered.
She flinched now as she recalled her own brief moment of weakness when she had almost reached out to him and begged him to...
To what? To tell her that their lovemaking had been as earth-shaking, as cataclysmically, emotionally and physically intense for him as it had been for her? That, like her, he had been confronted by a revelation of emotions for her—love for her so strong that he knew his life would never be the same again?
Fortunately, she had been able to stop herself before she had done anything more than stretch out her hand towards him.
Mary-Beth had hugged her warmly before she’d left, thanking her appreciatively for all that she had done, but Brad hadn’t made any move to touch her, Claire had noticed.
‘How long will he be gone for?’ Hannah pressed. ‘You’re going to miss him. There’s something about having a man about the house...’
‘He’s only been here a couple of days, Hannah,’ Claire reminded her neighbour tersely, and was instantly ashamed of herself when she saw the hurt expression in Hannah’s eyes. The trouble was that Hannah was right—or almost...
It wasn’t just a matter of her going to miss Brad, she was already doing so—missing him, aching for him, yearning for him, filled with all manner of insecurities and doubts, wondering if as far as he was concerned his sister’s marital difficulties had occurred most opportunely—contrary to what he had said before he’d left. It was a galling thought and an extremely painful one.
So you went to bed with him and had sex, Claire taunted herself later when Hannah was gone. So what? Why should that have had any deep meaning for him?
Did Brad even remember what had happened between them? she pondered starkly. He had, after all, been in the grip of an extremely strong fever earlier in the evening.
Which was the worst scenario for her? she wondered painfully. For him not to have remembered a single thing about them being together, or for him to have remembered but to have decided that it was something that he simply felt had no real meaning for him?
And, given the choice, which would she have preferred—to have experienced all that she had in his arms, to have discovered her capacity for emotional and physical love and endure all the pain that must surely now follow, or to have remained in celibate obliviousness?
It was a question she didn’t feel she could answer, not with all the long, empty nights ahead of her without Brad beside her.
CHAPTER NIN
E
A WEEK went by without Claire hearing anything from Brad, and then another, and then halfway through the third she received a telephone call from Tim advising her that Brad had been in touch with him.
‘He did try to ring you but he said there was no reply. His uncle—the one who runs the business—has had a heart attack and is in Intensive Care and Brad has had to step in and take over from him, so obviously there’s no question of him returning here in the immediate future.’
‘But what about his things? They’re still here,’ Claire protested. Her body felt numb with shock; until she’d heard Tim telling her that Brad wouldn’t be coming back she hadn’t realised how much she had been depending on him returning...how strongly she had been clinging to that frail link between them.
Now Tim had severed it, leaving her feeling that she was crashing through space, tumbling helplessly from a great height, her stomach seized with fear and nausea as her whole world dissolved around her.
‘I expect he’ll want us to make arrangements to ship whatever he’s left behind out to him,’ Tim told her. ‘Just let me know what there is and we can sort all that out for you.’
After she had replaced the receiver Claire went upstairs, moving like a sleepwalker as she went into the room that Brad had occupied. Was she imagining it or did the very air in there still carry a faint scent of him— of his soap, his skin, himself? Her whole body bowed with misery and loss.
She went across to the bed, smoothing her fingertips over the pillow, hot tears filling her eyes.
It was ridiculous for her to be behaving in this fashion, she derided herself. She was a grown woman. Grown women didn’t fall intensely and passionately in love in the space of a handful of days—or at least they weren’t supposed to. Their hearts weren’t supposed to ache with all the intensity and anguish with which hers was aching right now, and nor were their bodies.
Their bodies...her body... Her body. Oh, how it had deceived her, led her into a trap of false security, letting her believe that it was impossible for it to feel, to want, to need the way it was doing right now.
Brad had said that he’d tried to ring her, Tim had told her. Her head dipped defensively as she remembered those last, frantic hours before he had left, his sister’s resentment at what she had seen as Brad’s support of her husband in his insistence that she needed to return home to talk to him and that it wasn’t fair on her children—on their children—simply to walk out, no matter what provocation she might think she personally had had to do so.
Brad had tried to talk privately to her then and foolishly she had hoped that he had wanted to reassure her, to offer her if not his love then at least the reassurance that there was something between them worth pursuing. But now she wondered if she might have been wrong, if what he had wanted to say to her was more along the lines of Thank you, it was very nice, but now it’s over.
Over... Her throat constricted on a small half-sob, a painful spasm of emotion. It had never really properly begun. What was there, in reality, to be over? All they had had, all there had been was simply a...a one-night stand... a bit of a sexual adventure, and she had been a fool to believe that it was anything more.
And, that being the case, there was precious little point in compounding her folly by thinking about what might have been, tormenting herself with implausible, unrealistic daydreams. No, she would be better off simply forgetting about the whole incident...about Brad himself—forgetting it and firmly locking the door on it and throwing away the key.
It was an easy enough resolve to make, but a much harder one to keep, Claire discovered in the weeks that followed.
Irene commented in a slightly miffed manner on her lacklustre response to life in general and to her own good news in particular that Tim had responded so positively to Brad’s suggestions, including his recommendation that Tim should consider going on a self-assertion training course.
‘Of course it will mean that someone will have to come over from America to take charge of things for a while,’ Irene had confided. ‘But Brad says he has someone in mind for that—their top distributor over there. Tim is already in contact with him and they seem to be getting on very well.’
But even her sister-in-law’s plans for the future failed to move Claire to anything more than dull indifference—a reaction which she herself felt barely registered as a meagre one out of ten on the scale of her emotionally misery, but which apparently Irene had seen fit to accord a much higher anxiety-rating, as Claire discovered when she received an unscheduled visit from her stepdaughter in the middle of what had so far been a particularly harrowing day.
She had discovered earlier in the morning that the school where she worked was to be closed, its pupils amalgamated with those at another school on the other side of town.
It wasn’t so much the fact that her voluntary services would no longer be required that upset her but the knowledge of how difficult some of their children would find it to adapt to new and, to them, potentially threatening surroundings and routines, and she was still worrying about the fate of the children when Sally arrived unexpectedly.
‘Is something wrong?’ Claire asked her stepdaughter anxiously, knowing that she should have been at work.
‘According to Aunt Irene I’m the one who should be asking you that question,’ Sally told her forthrightly, adding more gently, ‘I haven’t wanted to pry, but it’s been obvious ever since we got back from honeymoon that something is wrong. Every time I’ve spoken to you it’s been almost as though you’re not really... You’ve been so...so distant almost that I had begun...’ Sally paused and bit her lip, her face flushing slightly.
‘It isn’t anything to do with the wedding, is it...and with that trick Chris and I played on the three of you with the wedding bouquet? Only when I rang Star the other day she was very curt with me and said she was too busy to speak to me, and as for Poppy—well, I know how she’s always felt about Chris, but she was so young when she first developed her crush on him.
‘I never meant to hurt any of you,’ Sally told her urgently, coming over to kneel down beside Claire and to lay her head on her lap as she had done when she was a little girl in need either of a confessional for some minor crime or some extra cosseting and reassurance.
Automatically Claire reached out to stroke the shining head of hair just as she had done so many times when Sally had been growing up.
‘If you’re cross with me about the bouquet, please believe me, we...I only did it because—well, because Chris and I...Well, I’m so happy myself, I just wanted all of you—but most especially you...’
Sally bit her lip, her voice slightly strained as she continued emotionally, ‘You’ve been...you are such a wonderful mother to me, much better than...a much better parent to me than Dad ever was. I’ve always known that and, well...I’ve always loved you...more...best...but it wasn’t until Chris pointed it. out to me that I realised that your marriage, that my father...’
She raised her head and looked at Claire. ‘It must have been very difficult for you. After all, he never made any secret of the fact that Paula...that...’
‘He still loved your mother,’ Claire supplied for her. ‘She was your mother, Sally,’ she reminded her stepdaughter gently, ‘and I honestly don’t mind you referring to her as that... You see, I know I have my own place in your love and in your life, and if anything it isn’t jealousy or envy I feel for her, but sadness and pity because she was deprived of so much pleasure in not being here to watch you growing up.
‘When you have children of your own they’re going to want to know about her and you’re going to want to tell them, but I shall be the one who cuddles them and tells them stories and gives them forbidden treats...’
‘You’ll always be Mum to me,’ Sally told her tearfully. ‘Always... I know there’s been a bit of gossip about the bouquet and the pact the three of you made not to get married because of it—Hannah told me and I’ve heard it from someone else as well—but I honestly never me
ant to cause any of you any embarrassment or to hurt you...
‘I know that, Sally,’ Claire reassured her.
‘Well, if that’s not what’s wrong, then what is it?’ Sally persisted. ‘And don’t tell me “nothing”, because it’s obvious that something is wrong.’
‘I heard this morning that they’re going to close the school,’ Claire told her.
‘Oh, no. I am sorry... I know how much you’ve enjoyed working there.’ She stood up, her face and voice lightening with relief as she added, ‘Irene was convinced that the reason you’ve been so withdrawn has something to do with that American you had staying with you. Bart—’
‘Brad,’ Claire corrected her quietly, getting up to go and fill the kettle to make them both a hot drink and keeping her face carefully averted just in case something in her expression should betray her.
Just saying Brad’s name had made her heart somersault violently and it was now thudding so heavily against her chest wall that it was practically making her dizzy and slightly faint.
For the first time ever Claire actually felt glad when her stepdaughter had gone. Right now Sally was still living in a cloud of post-honeymoon euphoric bliss, but once that started to fade and she was back to being her normal sharp-eyed self Claire doubted that she would be able to keep the truth from her for very long. If Irene had already guessed that something was wrong—and, even worse, why—what chance did she have of concealing the truth from Sally?
The answer lay in her own hands, Claire told herself firmly. If she didn’t want the pain and humiliation of her nearest and dearest discovering how stupid she had been, then she was going to have to make much more of an effort to force herself to forget Brad and her love for him.
More of an effort. She gave a small, twisted smile. Right now simply getting through the day without him was just about as much effort as she was capable of making, which was pathetic and ridiculous given the fact that she had only known him a matter of days.