A Marriage to Remember

by Carole Mortimer

  No, it was Maggi he was angry with. And he had no right to be. No right at all.

  ‘This is real life, Celia, not one of your films,’ Adam added affectionately. ‘Reality rarely has a happy ending. You and Geoffrey have one, but mine escaped me,’ he said hardly, before turning back to Maggi. ‘Don’t worry, I meant what I said last time about being out of your life; this won’t happen again,’ he told her harshly. ‘Have a good life, Maggi.’ And, with a smoothness that took her totally by surprise, he was the one to very quietly leave.

  And Maggi very quietly cried, the tears like hot rivers down her cheeks, blinding her as Celia took her into her arms next to the baby. Both women were crying now, the baby sleeping on unconcernedly between them.

  Celia was finally the one to straighten. ‘I’ll just go and put Daniel down in his cot, and then I’ll be back. Go back into the sitting-room, Maggi, and finish your brandy. Then we’ll talk.’

  Maggi was too distraught to even locate the brandy glass, just sitting down heavily in one of the armchairs.

  Adam had called her Maggi. For the first time ever, he had called her Maggi. From their very first meeting he had told her she was too special a lady not to be called by her proper name, that her beauty demanded she be called Magdalena.

  She was no longer special to Adam…

  She had known it for such a long time, of course, but the stark reality of it—!

  ‘I know why I was crying,’ Celia said as she came back into the room. ‘But why were you?’

  It was too complicated to explain. It was also something Maggi had no intention of explaining to the other woman. ‘Adam has that effect on me,’ she dismissed self-deprecatingly, in control of her emotions again now.

  Celia shook her head. ‘I don’t understand you two at all. Adam loves you very much. And, after seeing the two of you here, I believe you love him too. So why aren’t you together?’

  Maggi was taken aback at the directness of the question. But Celia was wrong; Adam didn’t love her. Although she accepted that she had been wrong about his relationship with Celia; she’d only had to see the two of them together earlier in the hallway to realise that. There was affection and caring between them, genuine, deep affection, but it was that of brother and sister. She had clearly seen that. No matter what she might have said to Adam to the contrary…

  Besides, she had something much more pressing on her mind at the moment—needed to get home, needed to talk to her father.

  ‘Celia, I have to go.’ She stood up swiftly. ‘It was lovely meeting you, and one of your sons, but I—’

  ‘I wouldn’t have those sons if it weren’t for Adam,’ Celia interrupted with quiet determination.

  Maggi gave her a startled look; exactly what did she mean by that?

  ‘When Geoffrey and I discovered I couldn’t have children, I was devastated.’ Celia held Maggi’s gaze as she spoke. ‘I refused to even contemplate the idea of adoption, dragged Geoffrey to every specialist there was going in the hope that one of them would be able to help us. It became an obsession with me. Every time Geoffrey so much as mentioned adoption, I distanced myself from him. I wanted our own child, wanted to feel it grow inside me, to give birth naturally, to hold our child in my arms. In the end, Geoffrey and I were so far apart we were in danger of losing our marriage. Sound familiar?’ she prompted gently.

  Maggi frowned. Did it? She and Adam had never got to the stage of going to any specialist; they had lost probably the only child they would ever have, and after that she had refused to talk about any of it. Her pain had been too deep.

  ‘It wasn’t the same,’ she claimed huskily.

  ‘Oh, Maggi, it was the same,’ Celia groaned sympathetically. ‘Worse, probably. You conceived a child and then lost it. Don’t be angry with Adam for telling us, Maggi,’ she added quickly as Maggi stiffened defensively. ‘When he entered our lives three years ago, he was in a very bad way. He had lost you, and your child, and it was probably seeing his complete desolation at the fact that brought me to my senses where my own marriage was concerned.

  ‘A child of my own had been my obsession for over two years, so much so that I had forgotten it was Geoffrey I loved, that it was our relationship, our marriage, that was important. Seeing Adam, how he grieved for what he had lost, at least brought me to my senses concerning that. It was also because of him that Geoffrey and I went ahead with the idea of adoption. Adam made me realise how lucky I was to have Geoffrey, the other half of myself, and that I would love any child the two of us brought up together,’ she added emotionally.

  Maggi swallowed hard. ‘I never knew Adam was like that.’

  ‘Because you wouldn’t listen to him,’ Celia chided gently. ‘I can’t blame you for that; sometimes the person closest to you isn’t the one you listen to but the one on whom you take out your pain and hurt. That’s what I did with Geoffrey.’

  And what Maggi had done with Adam? Had she done that, after the accident, after the loss of the baby, when she’d been told there might not be any more children? If so, perhaps Adam couldn’t be blamed for turning to someone else, someone who would show him a little warmth and understanding! I

  ‘You’ve seen Daniel, Maggi,’ Celia continued. ‘Believe me, Michael is just as beautiful, because they’re identical twins. I’ve loved the two of them since they came to us at six weeks old. They’re ours, Maggi, mine and Geoffrey’s, because we have loved them, nursed them when they weren’t well, laughed with them when they did something funny. Being a parent isn’t just about biologically carrying a child; true love begins once they’re born and become real people to you. I couldn’t love Daniel and Michael any more than I do now,’ she added simply. ‘They’re our children, Maggi, and they always have been.’

  Maggi understood what she was saying, accepted it, but her marriage to Adam hadn’t been the same. ‘Adam left me, Celia,’ she said abruptly. ‘Not the other way round.’

  ‘Have you ever asked him why?’ the other woman persisted. ‘Because I certainly did. The man loved you, so why would he leave you—even if you had told him to?’

  ‘And?’ She held her breath as she waited for the answer.

  ‘Oh, no, Maggi.’ Celia shook her head regretfully. ‘Adam is my friend. I won’t break his confidences to me. If you want to know the answer to that, you’ll have to ask him yourself.’

  ‘He isn’t here to ask,’ Maggi pointed out bluntly.

  Celia gave her a sympathetic look. ‘Then you’ll have to go to his home yourself and ask him. Would that really be so difficult to do, Maggi?’ She paused as Maggi visibly paled, then went on, ‘Hasn’t Adam been the one, up to now, to do all the running after you? It almost killed him waiting for the day he knew you would be singing again, so that he could finally come back into your life.’

  ‘He was horrible at the music festival,’ Maggi recalled. ‘Every inch his arrogant self.’

  Celia gave her a pitying look. ‘How long were you married to him, Maggi? Two years, I believe.’ She answered her own question. ‘And you never got to know him at all—’

  ‘Yes, I did, damn you!’ Maggi defended heatedly. ‘And he was loving, and fun to be with—until something didn’t go his way!’

  ‘And how often did that happen?’ the other woman prompted softly.

  Not very often. They had been so much in tune with each other, emotionally, physically, professionally, that nothing had really gone wrong in their marriage until the accident—and then everything had gone wrong! But had that been because of Adam or because of her? Had Adam changed—or had she?

  ‘Maggi, I’m going to give you Adam’s address—if you don’t already have it—’

  ‘I don’t,’ she said quickly.

  Celia nodded, standing up. ‘Very few people do. He’s been like an angry lion living there, licking his wounds.’ She wrote on the pad lying next to the telephone. ‘It’s up to you whether or not you go and see him.’ She handed Maggi a slip of paper. ‘But I’m almost positive he won�
�t come to you. Not again. Isn’t it worth just one more conversation together before you finally call it a day?’

  ‘The divorce is almost complete,’ Maggi told her distractedly.

  ‘Divorces can be undone,’ Celia dismissed easily. ‘What do you have to lose, Maggi?’

  Nothing. Not any more. She loved Adam, knew she would never love anyone else as much as she loved him. But could she actually go to his home, risk being rejected on the doorstep? Could she try to speak to him, to forge some sort of friendship between them? Wouldn’t that be better than nothing at all?

  ‘You’re a nice woman, Celia.’ Maggi hugged her. ‘And a good friend to Adam.’

  ‘You believe that’s all I am now?’ She laughed as Maggi looked uncomfortable. ‘Reporters have never heard of a man and woman being just friends; Geoffrey and I have both been well aware of the rumours going around about Adam and myself—in fact we’ve all had a good laugh about it. I’m a one-man woman, Maggi, and Geoffrey is that man.’

  ‘I’m sorry—’

  ‘Don’t be,’ Celia dismissed. ‘Having Adam reputed to be my lover has done wonders for my image!’ She touched Maggi’s cheek lightly. ‘But I’m your friend too, Maggi; always remember that. No matter what happens.’

  Maggi wasn’t sure she deserved the other woman’s generosity after the uncharitable thoughts she had harboured against her.

  Did she deserve to have Adam listen to her either? she wondered as she sat in a taxi on the way to his home. What did she have to say to him that he would want to listen to?

  That night, after they had made love, she had wondered if Adam loved her. Did he? Or was that hoping for too much? Even if, by some miracle, he did still love her, could they work out their differences and go on from there?

  Yes, of course they could! Love had to be the deciding factor in all this. It could forgive, if not forget, anything…

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  MAGGI didn’t feel quite so confident as she stood on the other side of Adam’s door, waiting for him to answer the ring of the bell! Perhaps he hadn’t come straight home. Perhaps he had—

  ‘Magdalena!’ Adam opened the door and looked stunned to see her standing there, obviously the last person he expected to see.

  Which wasn’t surprising; she hadn’t exactly given the impression earlier that she ever wanted to see him again, and now she was here, at his home, of her own volition.

  Where he lived was something of a surprise to her. She had expected he would live in a luxurious apartment somewhere, but instead he owned a three-floor Victorian house in an elegant area of London. Alone, if the fact that he had answered the door himself was anything to go by. And by alone she meant there appeared to be no housekeeper, or anyone else, in fact, who would care for him and the house. Which probably meant he had chosen to do that for himself…

  Maggi didn’t know what to say to him now that the time had actually come!

  He raised his eyebrows at her silence. ‘Do you want to come in, or have you changed your mind?’ he ventured.

  ‘I—’ She cleared her throat as her voice came out as a choked squeak. ‘I’ll come in—if that’s all right with you?’

  ‘Be my guest.’ He stood back with exaggerated politeness to usher her in. ‘Come through.’ He passed her to enter a room to the left of the hallway.

  Maggi went into what was obviously his ‘den’, where there were bookcases filled untidily with books, dozens of cassettes littering the table, and several comfortable chairs also littered with newspapers and books.

  Adam moved without haste to clear one of those chairs for her to sit down. ‘I haven’t got any tidier, I’m afraid,’ he told her dryly.

  It used to be a joke between them that one day she would find him buried under his own debris.

  She sat down heavily. ‘This is a lovely house,’ she said. What was she doing here? Was she about to make the biggest fool of herself?

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Adam ignored her politeness, seeming instead to read her panicked thoughts.

  She swallowed hard. ‘I—I’m not really sure,’ she admitted ruefully.

  Adam stood looking down at her. ‘Did you talk to Celia?’ he asked hardly.

  She looked up at him with unwavering blue eyes. ‘Not in the way I think you mean, no.’

  ‘Your father, then,’ he pressed. ‘Have you spoken to him?’

  Maggi shook her head, frowning. ‘I came straight here from Celia’s,’ she told him slowly. ‘She’s nice, by the way, obviously a good friend to you. I meant that exactly the way I said it, Adam,’ she added firmly as his mouth tightened. ‘But I’m curious about my father; what could he possibly want to talk to me about concerning you?’

  Adam turned away. ‘I’ve told you before. It isn’t important—’

  ‘It is to me,’ she said with feeling, standing up again, at too much of a disadvantage being seated while he stood. ‘Adam, it wasn’t easy for me to come here, and now that I am—Adam, we need to talk. Really talk, instead of just arguing all the time.’

  ‘And whose fault is that?’ he challenged.

  She sighed. ‘At the moment, yours!’ she told him pointedly.

  He glared. ‘Does Mark know you’re here?’

  Mark…? Of course—Adam still thought she was romantically involved with his cousin. ‘You really should keep up with the family news, Adam,’ she said evenly. ‘In three weeks’ time, unlike you, I will be singing and dancing at Mark’s wedding.’

  ‘God, the two of you aren’t wasting any time are you?’ Adam burst out disgustedly. ‘After telling me you wouldn’t marry him, you’re now going through with it before the ink is even dry on our divorce papers! You—’

  ‘As his bridesmaid.’ Maggi finished what she had been saying, her gaze easily holding Adam’s. ‘Mark has been engaged to my physiotherapist for the last year, Adam,’ she explained. ‘He and Andrea are getting married soon.’

  ‘But he said—You said—’

  ‘You said, Adam,’ Maggi corrected him firmly. ‘I never actually said I was involved with Mark; you have just always assumed I was.’

  ‘You never denied it,’ Adam accused her. ‘Neither of you did,’ he added angrily.

  ‘You were always so willing to believe the worst, and—well, in truth, it was easier on my part to let you go on thinking that.’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘Why?’

  They were facing each other across the room like adversaries, and it wasn’t how Maggi wanted things to be. There had been too much antagonism already, and it had brought them to this angry point.

  ‘Adam.’ She swallowed hard, willing herself to carry on. ‘How did you feel when I lost the baby three years ago?’

  He stiffened. ‘That’s history, Magdalena,’ he said grimly.

  His continued use of her full name gave her encouragement. ‘It’s our history, Adam, and I need to know. It’s when our problems began, and—I need to know,’ she repeated huskily.

  He gave a heavy sigh. ‘The loss of our baby was—devastating.’

  She felt her heart sink. It was as she had thought, then; losing the baby had changed things between them for ever.

  ‘But not as devastating as losing you would have been,’ Adam went on. ‘It was sad to lose the baby, and I know how deeply it affected you, but—a child can never be as real to a man during pregnancy as it is to a woman. Once it’s born, it’s a different matter, but during pregnancy we have none of the advantages of feeling that life growing inside us. We can’t really bond with the baby the way a mother does until it’s actually born and we can hold it in our arms.

  ‘It was our child, Magdalena, and I loved it. And to lose him in the way we did—!’ He bowed his head. ‘But if it had been you that had died, then I would have lost everything.’ His mouth twisted with bitterness. ‘As it turned out, I did that anyway!’

  ‘Why?’ She held her breath, almost couldn’t breathe for the tightness constricting her chest.

  He sighed wearily.
‘You tell me. You were the one who couldn’t stand to have me around, the one whose health and mental welfare deteriorated every time I visited—to such a degree that in the end the hospital thought it better if I stayed away. The distress my presence caused you was seriously hindering your recovery,’ he remembered.

  ‘Is that—?’ She swallowed hard again, her mouth suddenly dry. ‘Is that why you turned to Sue Castle? I’m not blaming you for that, Adam,’ she added quickly as his face darkened ominously. ‘I just need to know.’

  ‘I never “turned to” Sue Castle,’ he told her firmly. ‘We sang together for a while. But that’s all. I never understood how you came to that conclusion.’

  ‘I spoke to her.’ Maggi moistened her lips. ‘She told me—she said—’

  ‘She said what?’ Adam prompted harshly. ‘When did she speak to you?’ he added, more slowly.

  ‘The morning after—When you didn’t come home that night because of the snow. I…’ Her lips felt stiff and unmoving, making it difficult for her to talk at all. She drew in a deeply controlling breath. ‘I telephoned the hotel you said you were staying at. They put me through to your bedroom and—Sue answered.’ There were tears in her eyes as she looked at him.

  ‘Sue did?’ He looked puzzled. ‘But—’

  ‘She said she was sorry, but that these things happened sometimes when you worked closely with someone.’ Maggi swallowed down her tears. ‘I—I felt as if my world had finally come to an end,’ she admitted haltingly.

  Adam was still puzzled. ‘We’re talking about the night we were caught in London by a snowstorm? Is that the night?’

  ‘You know it is,’ Maggi choked. ‘It was the only night you were actually gone all night, and I—I called the next morning to say hello, to see whether or not you would be able to make it home that day. I never actually spoke to you—because after what Sue had said I—I couldn’t!’ She shook her head. ‘I felt so betrayed that night, Adam, so let down. But I’m older now, and not as emotionally vulnerable as I was then. I realise that these things do happen, that sometimes—’