For Better For Worse

‘It is very striking,’ Fern acknowledged.

Amanda Bryant and her husband Edward had been their fellow guests at Venice’s dinner party, a very wealthy and flamboyant local couple who had made a good deal of money from a variety of shrewd investments. There were certain staid members of the local community who tended to disapprove of them, but Fern liked them both. Amanda made her laugh with her robust good-natured humour, and her very genuine and down-to-earth enjoyment of their new-found wealth. They were not in the least pretentious and their annual summer barbecue was one of the best attended and most popular local events, probably second only in popularity to Lord Stanton’s New Year’s Eve ball, ranking there with the river race which Adam organised each year to raise money for charity.

‘Venice has given us masses of stuff as well. All of it designer-label by the looks of it and hardly worn. I only wish I were a smaller size,’ Roberta added wistfully. ‘There’s a suit here that would fit you perfectly, Fern,’ she added, eyeing her own plump figure with resignation. ‘It’s just your colouring.’

Fern could feel the tension crawling down her spine; revulsion at the thought of wearing something that Venice herself might have worn when she was with Nick… In her mind’s eye, Fern could see Nick removing it from the other woman’s body… touching her… caressing her…

She felt no sexual or emotional jealousy at the scene she had mentally conjured up, only a deadening sense of futility and despair.

Was it for this that she had spent the last two years of her life desperately trying to piece together her marriage… to convince herself that in staying in it she had made the right, the only decision… that ultimately what she was enduring would prove worthwhile once she and Nick were through the turbulence of these painful years; that ultimately the need he said he had for her would… must conjure up an answering spark within her, that would allow her to cease searching hopelessly for whatever it was that had drawn her to him in the first place and make her believe that she loved him?

Without turning round to see what Roberta was showing her, she said quietly, ‘I’m afraid I’m not really the type for drop-dead glamour outfits. They’re not really my style.’

As she watched her, Roberta repressed a small sigh. Fern might not have Venice’s extrovert vibrant personality, but she had a marvellously slender and supple figure, a femininity which shone through the dullness of her clothes, a serenity and tranquillity which drew others to her in need of the gentle warmth of her personality.

She had a very pretty face as well, and as for her hair!

Roberta’s own husband, a pragmatic and very down-to-earth Scot, had once confessed to Roberta that he was never able to look at Fern’s hair without wondering if it felt as sensually warm and silkily luxurious to touch as it did to look at.

‘It’s the kind of hair that makes a man want to reach out and…’

He had stopped there looking slightly shame-faced and sheepish, while Roberta raised her eyebrows and commanded drily, ‘Go on!’

He had not done so, of course; there had been no need, and neither had Roberta been annoyed or jealous. She knew him far too well, and Fern as well. Now, if it had been Venice they had been discussing… There was a woman who would enjoy nothing more than the challenge of taking another woman’s man. Fern, on the other hand…

‘There are one or two children’s outfits here,’ Fern commented, interrupting her train of thought.

‘We’ll keep them separate from the rest,’ Roberta told her, ‘although I don’t think there will be very many. Most mothers these days seem to operate their own exchange system.’

‘Well, it does make sense,’ Fern pointed out. ‘Children’s things are very expensive and often they’re not in them long enough to wear them out.’

‘Mmm… it’s all very different from when mine were young,’ Roberta agreed. ‘These days it’s all designer trainers and the right kind of jeans virtually from the moment they can speak.’

Even with only a very short break for a sandwich and a cup of coffee, it took them until well into the afternoon to work their way through all the clothes which had been donated.

Fern’s knees ached from the draught coming in under the church hall’s ill-fitting doors when she eventually got to her feet. Outside the sun was still shining although it was chilly now inside the hall.

Nick had said that he wanted to leave at five, which meant that he would arrive at his London hotel in good time for dinner.

He hadn’t told her where he would be staying, though. Fern frowned as she remembered how tense and on edge he had been earlier… how irritable with her.

After she had left Roberta and started to walk home, she wondered tiredly why it was that she and Nick just could not seem to grow closer to one another. It was after all what they both wanted.

Was it? a small bitter voice demanded. If it was, why was Nick paying so much attention to Venice?

She was one of his clients, Fern reminded herself firmly, and Nick was after all human and a man. It was only natural that he should be aware of Venice as a woman. What man would not be?

But Adam had not looked at Venice with the same barely concealed sexual interest that she had seen in Nick’s eyes…

She tensed briefly, fighting off the wave of emotion she could feel threatening her.

As she had done on her arrival, she carefully skirted Adam’s office, keeping her head averted as she hurried past it on the opposite side of the square, increasing her walking pace as she left the town behind her.

If she didn’t linger too long, she just about had enough time to take in one of her favourite detours, to enjoy a special piece of self-indulgence. After all, if Nick was right, she wasn’t going to be able to do so for much longer, she reflected.

Broughton House lay on the outskirts of the town, close enough to her own house for her to be able to turn off into the quiet lane which led to it.

The railway which had led to the erection of their own small cul-de-sac had also heralded the end of the town’s busy prosperity, preserving it as it had been in the middle of the nineteenth century virtually so that it remained compact and neat, without the urban sprawl which had overtaken so many other towns.

Although it was less than a mile from the town, Broughton House was still surrounded by fields, with an outlook over open countryside, the builder having cleverly sited it so that the side overlooking the town had the least number of windows.

It had originally been built by a wealthy merchant, a ‘nabob’ returning from India, who, disdaining the existing properties, had commissioned himself a new one in the countryside surrounding the place which had been his original birthplace.

The grounds, which covered an area of almost four acres, had become overgrown during the last eighteen months or so of Mrs Broughton’s life, but Fern liked the soft wildness of the over-long grass with its sprinkling of spring bulbs; the moss which coated the paths and the general air of what to others might be neglect but to her gave the place more a sense of somehow sleeping mysteriously, waiting for the magical touch of an owner who would love it to restore it to its original splendour, but these were thoughts she kept to herself, knowing how derisive Nick would be were she to voice them to him.

As she walked through the formal rose garden, bare now at this time of year, she paused to watch the young heron standing on the mossy edge of the round goldfish pond.

Somewhere within its depths lurked a dozen or more fat lazy goldfish, but Fern suspected they were far too wise and knowing to risk surfacing in such cool weather, and that the young marauder for all his bravura would have a disappointing wait for his dinner.

Through the rhododendron bushes now gone wild and desperately in need of some attention Fern could see the house itself, but today the house wasn’t her destination.

Instead she turned away from it, finding her way through what had once been an attractively planted shrubbery.

Alongside the neglected path there flowered remnants of what must once have been a two- to three-foot-deep ribbon of spring bulbs naturalised in grass.

Today these survived only in broken patches and clumps.

It took Fern almost ten minutes to force her way through the tangled undergrowth obscuring the pathway to the small bowl-shaped enclosure at the centre of the shrubbery.

The stone seat set back from its rim was encrusted with lichen, the lion masks of the seat pedestals and arms badly weathered.

Today, at this time of the year, all that could be seen in the bowl were the emergent shoots of the lilies which when in flower filled the bowl with band after band of massed drifts of flowers in rings of colour from palest cream to deepest gold and from lightest blue to almost purple.

It was Mrs Broughton herself who had first brought her to this spot and told her its history, explaining to her how her husband’s grandmother had had the bowl made and planted, having fallen in love with the same design but on a much grander scale on a visit to America.

The lilies had been in flower then and Fern remembered how the sight of them had made her catch her breath in wonder, tears stinging her eyes, her senses totally overwhelmed by their beauty.

If Nick was right and Adam was part of a consortium planning to buy the house and use the land, this would be the last year she would be able to witness the small miracle of the lilies blossoming.

As she sat down on the stone seat, tears blurred her eyes.

Tears for the destruction of this small oasis of beauty or tears for herself? she wondered cynically as she blinked them away.

‘Fern!’

She tensed, automatically controlling and absorbing her shock, and, even more importantly, concealing it, knowing without having to turn her head to whom the quiet male voice belonged.

Why pretend to be shocked? an inner voice taunted her. You must have known that he might be here. That’s really why you came, isn’t it? Not to mourn the passing of the garden but because…

She got up quickly, her face tight with tension as she turned to face him.

‘Adam!’

Her voice betrayed nothing of what she was feeling; of the unending destructive war within her that was so much a part of her life that the wounds it inflicted on her had long ago ceased consciously to hurt and were something she simply accepted as part of the price she had to pay for her own culpability.

Automatically she retreated into the shadows of the shrubbery, carefully distancing herself from him, protectively concealing her expression, her eyes from him just in case…

‘So Venice was right,’ she said lightly. ‘You are planning to buy this place. What will you build here, Adam? Is it going to be a supermarket as she suggested?’

She could hear the brittle tension in her voice, feel the way her body was starting to tremble as she faced him across the distance which separated them.

It had been almost two years now and yet her senses, her emotions, her flesh could remember with devastating accuracy how it had felt to be held by him, to touch him, not with the knowingness which had come later and for which she must eternally pay the price of her own guilt and searing, suffocating loathing, but with the innocence of loving someone for that first precious and very special time; the wonder of experiencing that love, the joy, the tremulous seesawing between awed delight and disbelief.

He had been so tender with her, so caring… so protective… so careful not to hurry or rush her.

Had he really cared about her at all, or had she simply imagined that he had, out of her own need? Was it merely pity which had motivated him? Whatever he might have felt for her then in that moment of intimacy, she knew what he must feel for her now… how much he must despise her. After all, what man could feel anything other than contempt for a woman who…

Who what? Who went to him and begged him, pleaded with him to make love to her, even after he had already tried to put her to one side, to end what had accidentally and inadvertently begun. Only she hadn’t let him… She had…

She shuddered tensely, desperately trying to block off her self-destructive thoughts, to channel the threatening power of what she was feeling in less lethal directions, to remind herself that she was Nick’s wife.

And the only way she had of reinforcing the view the outside world had to hold of her relationship with Adam, of reinforcing to Adam that he need never ever fear that she would seek to humiliate herself in such a way again, by repeating that idiotic, crazy behaviour of the past, was to treat him with the coldness and distance behind which she had learned to hide her true feelings.

Even when they did not have an audience. After all, it was even more important that Adam did not guess the truth than it was that no one else did.

What was left of her pride, a poor thin-skinned affair, she had somehow managed to patch together, but it could never be wholly mended or trusted, and would certainly never be strong enough to sustain any real blows against it.

‘Is that really what you think I would do, Fern?’

The harshness in his voice hurt her almost physically. She wanted to flinch back from it, to cry out in protest, but stoically she refused to let herself.

Physically Adam might not have that charmed, almost boyish look of youth which made Nick so attractive, but there was something about him in his maturity which appealed even more strongly to her feminine senses now than it had done when they had been younger.

There was a sensuality, a sexuality about Adam which, although covert and subtle rather than something which he himself was aware of and deliberately flaunted, had an effect on her that made her so aware of herself as a woman—aware of herself and aware of her need for him—that just standing here, what should have been a perfectly ludicrously safe distance away from him, was enough to raise the tiny hairs at the nape of her neck and send a frisson of aching desire twisting painfully through her body.

Adam had a masculinity, a maleness which no woman could possibly ignore, she acknowledged tautly. Even now, with her brain and her body screaming warnings of danger to her, she was intensely aware of it and of him.

Aware of it and achingly, desperately envious of the woman, the girl on whom it was bestowed.

Once she had thought she had been that girl, but Nick had questioned her, laughing at her as he asked her almost incredulously if she had really believed that Adam was attracted to her.

‘Has he ever made love to you?’ he had asked her, and she had shaken her head, wincing as Nick had shrugged and announced bluntly, ‘Well, there you are, then. If he had wanted you… really wanted you, he would have done so. I want you, Fern,’ he had added huskily. ‘I want you very, very much.’

She shivered slightly, forcing herself back to the present and to Adam’s question.

‘You’re a businessman,’ she responded tiredly.

‘I’m an architect,’ he contradicted her flatly.

‘But you are here,’ Fern pointed out, flushing slightly as she heard the anger edging up under his voice. ‘Something must have brought you.’

‘You’re here too,’ Adam retaliated coolly. ‘What brought you?’

Somehow Fern managed to swallow down the hard, hurting ball of tears which had locked in her throat. It was always like this when they met, their voices full of painful anger, her body stiff and tense with the effort of rejecting and controlling what she was really feeling, the indifference, the distance she forced herself to display taking so much out of her that she already knew that the moment he had gone she would be reduced to a trembling, shivering wreck, totally unable to do so much as put one foot properly in front of the other; that she would spend hours and not minutes trying to stop herself from reliving the past, from wishing… wanting…

‘You’re here,’ he had said. Tension crawled along her spine and into her nerve-endings. Did he think she had known he would be here… that she had followed him here… that she might… ?

‘I wanted to see the garden, before you destroy it…’

Try as she might, she could not keep the pain out of her voice. She turned to face him, her chin tilting, the sunlight catching her hair so that for a moment she seemed so ethereally a part of her surroundings that Adam found himself holding his breath, afraid almost to breathe as he watched her, mentally reclothing her in soft greens and yellows, the colours, the fabrics flowing and harmonious, enhancing the feminine suppleness of her body, highlighting the almost fawnlike quality of her features, so delicate that they were cruelly swamped by the dullness of the clothes she was actually wearing. Only her hair… Her hair…

Abruptly he looked away from her. She was Nick’s wife and she loved him, although how she…

As she watched him, Fern wondered what he would say if she told him that she had seen the brochure he had been carrying.

Pain flooded through her. It seemed unfairly cruel of fate that it should be Adam of all people who threatened the existence of somewhere that had come to mean so much to her… a solace… a refuge… a sanctuary…

From what? From life? From herself? From her marriage? Tiredly she knew that she wouldn’t challenge him… just as she couldn’t challenge Nick about Venice?

‘I… I must go. Nick… Nick is… will be expecting me. He… he’s leaving for London and…’

Without finishing her sentence she ducked her head to one side and hurriedly started to skirt a wide circle around him, heading back towards the path, sensing that he was watching her but knowing that she dared not look back at him.

Adam! She could feel the heavy, dreary feeling of despair starting to settle over her as she half ran and half stumbled back down the path. Her body was trembling and she felt icy cold even though at the same time her face felt as though it was burningly hot, and her heart was beating so fast that she was finding it difficult to breathe properly.

Too late now to wish she had gone straight home… to wish she had not given in to the temptation to go to Broughton House and in doing so inadvertently and so very, very dangerously and painfully she now risked opening the Pandora’s box into which she had tried to lock away all her memories and thoughts of Adam.

CHAPTER SIX

ZOE woke up slowly and reluctantly, subconsciously aware of something unpleasant waiting for her, something she didn’t really want to recognise. It hovered threateningly, oppressing her, making her want to resort to the childhood tactic of squeezing her eyes closed and refusing to acknowledge that she was actually awake.

She rolled over in the bed, instinctively seeking the empty space which had held Ben’s body.

The bed felt cold and empty. It was gone ten o’clock. Ben would have been up at four to get to the markets early.

His original training had encompassed not only the preparation and cooking of food, but also the importance of its purchase; of knowing the difference between good fresh food and that which was sub-standard.

Her shift didn’t start until two, and after their late night the previous evening she would have been grateful to Ben for not disturbing her had it not been for the row they had had last night.

Or, rather, the row she had tried to have.

She had known that he was still awake when she got into bed—his body had been too rigid, too tense for sleep—but he had kept his back to her, refusing to turn round, refusing even to acknowledge that she was justified in her anger against him.

It wasn’t so much his attitude towards his sister’s pregnancy, although that had shocked her. What had hurt her most of all had been his emotional rejection of her, his refusal to acknowledge that she might possibly be able to understand how he was feeling; his use against her of the barrier of ‘class’, which they had always promised one another they would never allow to come between them.

It had almost been as though he had wanted to reject her, to shock and even disgust her by what he was saying.

And yet at the same time she had been aware of his pain and despair; of his love for his family, and for his sister, even though he had tried desperately hard to conceal it.

But why should she, just because she was female, a woman, be the one to make allowances… to understand… to forgive?

Why should he, just because he was male, a man, be allowed to offload the pain of what he was experiencing on her by attacking her?

His sister’s pregnancy and his reaction to it was something they should have been able to share, to talk about. Ben should have been able to accept that, even though she lacked his experience, his perception of what that pregnancy could mean, she was nevertheless capable of listening, comprehending… that she might even have a viable viewpoint to put, and one which, although different from his, was still worthy of being heard and discussed.

His final comment to her last night before he had flung away from her had been an acid, ‘You don’t really understand even now, do you? You just don’t have a clue. Outwardly you’re sympathetic, sorry; but inwardly you’re recoiling from what I’ve just told you, just like a healthy man recoiling from a leper!

‘Nothing’s really changed in two thousand or more years of civilisation, has it, Zoe? You in your nice, clean, sanitised, privileged world—and it is a privileged world no matter how much you might want to deny it—you just don’t have any conception of what life’s really like for people like my sister.’

Hurt, and close to tears, she had tried to defend herself, and it was then that she had made her worst mistake of all.

‘She could come here and stay with us,’ she had

suggested eagerly. ‘I could find her a job. The hotel is always looking for—–’

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Ben had interrupted her in disgust. ‘Have her here? She’s damn near seven months pregnant, Zoe, and all she wants to do is sit watching television all day long. She doesn’t want a job. She doesn’t want anything other than this damned baby which she thinks is going to miraculously transform her life.

‘And so it bloody well will, but not in the way she imagines, the little fool.

‘Are all you women the same, so blindly prejudiced that you can’t see what having a baby really means?’

She had tried hard to stand her ground, inviting him shakily, ‘What does it mean, Ben? Tell me.’

He had given her a bitter, cynical look.

‘It means an extra mouth to feed, and less money coming in; it means endless nights without any sleep, and the stink of sour milk and worse pervading everything. It means the total destruction of the relationship you thought you had with one another; that’s if you’re still together when the child arrives.

‘It means… Oh, God, what the hell is the point in trying to explain to you, Zoe? Children, pregnancy… to you they mean giving birth in some fashionable private ward of a hospital and then going home with a clean cooing bundle wrapped in something expensive and impractical bought by Mummy. It means agonising endlessly over finding a nanny, and then agonising even more over finding the right school. You don’t have any real idea.’

She had wanted to tell him that he was wrong, totally and utterly wrong, but instead she had asked him quietly, ‘And what does parenthood, fatherhood mean to you, Ben?’ But as she waited for his answer, she suspected she already knew.

Even so, his reply had shocked her.

‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ he had told her harshly. ‘Because I don’t intend to ever be a father.’

And with that he had got into bed, put out the light and pointedly turned away from her.