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For a moment Bobbie thought that Olivia was complaining that Caspar would not have sex with her but then when Olivia continued angrily, ‘I just didn’t … I just couldn’t …’ Bobbie realised her mistake.
‘Caspar seemed to think I was just being bloody minded … just withholding myself from him to score points. That’s how far apart we’ve grown,’ Olivia burst out. She had started to tremble visibly, her hands moving in quick agitation. ‘We had the most awful rows about it. It was so destructive and damaging for the girls. I tried but Caspar …’
‘Did you think of trying counselling?’ Bobbie asked her softly.
Olivia’s pain and despair were almost a visible physical presence in the room with them. She was normally such a calm, contained sort of person, so controlled that Bobbie was shocked by the change in her.
‘Counselling!’ Olivia gave a mirthless bitter laugh. ‘You mean like my mother ought to have had? I’m sorry,’ she apologised to Bobbie. ‘I know …’ She stopped speaking, pressing her hand against her mouth as though she were trying to silence herself, Bobbie recognised compassionately.
‘It’s too late for that now,’ Olivia told her. ‘Our marriage is over.’
‘What will Caspar do?’ Bobbie asked her.
‘He’s taking a sabbatical. He’s had it approved by the university that he can take time out from lecturing. He says he’s going to ride around America on a bike, a Harley-Davidson,’ Olivia told her derisively. ‘It’s something he’s wanted to do since he was a boy.’
To her own shock she suddenly discovered that she was crying without knowing why.
‘Oh, Livvy, Livvy,’ she heard Bobbie saying emotionally; but as Bobbie stepped towards her holding out her arms, Olivia backed away shaking her head.
There was so much she needed to do, so many arrangements she needed to make. She wanted to be in her office before eight when she started work on Monday. That would give her an extra hour to start going through the post that would be waiting for her and then, if she brought the rest of it home with her on Monday night, she could read it whilst the girls were in bed. At least now that she didn’t have Caspar to consider she would have more time in the evenings to work.
‘Something’s wrong,’ Bobbie told Luke that evening after she had broken the news about Olivia to him.
‘Of course something’s wrong,’ he agreed dryly. ‘She’s left Caspar.’
‘No, I mean apart from that … something’s wrong with Livvy,’ Bobbie persisted. ‘She was … different somehow….’
‘She’s upset. That’s only natural.’
Bobbie sighed under her breath. Much as she loved her husband there were times when they just weren’t on the same wavelength. Another woman would have understood immediately what she meant.
‘I wonder if Jenny knows yet?’ Bobbie said. ‘She must do, surely. She and Olivia have always been so close.’
Jenny was Jon’s wife and she had acted as surrogate mother for Olivia through all her difficult childhood. Olivia was now a partner in the family legal practice of which Jon was the head.
Quickly Bobbie reached for the phone and dialled Jenny’s number.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ Jon asked Jenny when she walked into the study looking worried.
‘Bobbie’s just been on the phone. She went over to see Livvy this afternoon. I would have gone myself but I had a Mums and Babes committee meeting. Livvy and Caspar have separated. Livvy’s come home without him.’
‘What!’
Jon’s reaction mirrored Jenny’s own shock. He started to shake his head.
‘I thought they were so happy.’
‘They were,’ Jenny agreed, ‘until David came home….’ Try as she might she could not keep the accusatory note out of her voice.
She could see from Jon’s face that her words had upset him and she knew, too, that they were unjustified and unfair but she couldn’t make herself call them back.
Jon had changed since his brother’s return. He seemed almost to live, breathe and think David these days. So much so that she felt that she was being shut out, excluded almost from his life, which was ridiculous, of course. They had been married for over thirty years and these last years of their marriage had brought them very close, brought a new depth to their marriage … their love…. These last years … the years without David.
But now David was back and Jon wasn’t exclusively hers any longer. It was David this and David that. Jenny could see his love for his brother in his eyes, hear it in his voice, every time he spoke his name.
‘David isn’t responsible for the breakdown of Livvy’s marriage. He can’t possibly be,’ Jon objected.
‘Maybe not,’ Jenny was forced to concede. ‘But he is responsible for what Livvy is, Jon … you’ve said so yourself often enough.’
‘Livvy didn’t have a very happy childhood,’ Jon agreed. ‘But that wasn’t just down to David….’
Jenny gave a small impatient sigh.
‘Before David came home you said yourself that you were concerned about her, that you felt she was working too hard.’
‘Yes. She was … is,’ Jon acknowledged.
It had disturbed him to discover in her absence just how much extra work Olivia had taken on and quite unnecessarily. Had she said that she needed help, Jon would have seen to it she got some. But she had insisted that she did not, becoming almost angrily defensive. With that kind of workload it was no wonder her marriage was under stress. The locum he had hired to cover the period she was away had not come anywhere near being able to cope and Jon had had to take on some of the extra workload himself and share the rest between Tullah who worked part-time and his daughter Katie who was also part of the family practice.
As Jenny walked past the back of his head without bothering to stop and kiss the top of it as she normally did he hesitated, wanting to reach for her but before he could do so she had gone.
Since David had come back Jon was so involved with him that he hardly seemed to notice she existed, Jenny reflected crossly as he let her walk out of the study without sliding his arm around her waist to give her his usual hug.
She knew how much he loved his elder brother. Did he perhaps envy him a little as well? Did he compare their own staid comfortable marriage with the excitement of David’s obviously passionate relationship with his new wife Honor? Honor who was so much more glamorous and exciting than she was herself.
Stop that, Jenny warned herself as she walked into the kitchen. She might have felt inferior to David’s first wife, nicknamed Tiggy, the glamorous model, but there was no way she was going to allow history to repeat itself.
The large kitchen seemed so empty now that their family had virtually all grown up.
Of their four children only Joss, the youngest, still lived at home, although soon he would be following Jack to university.
Of course Maddy and the children, her grandchildren, were regular visitors—there was scarcely a day when she didn’t see them, but …
Empty nest syndrome they called it, didn’t they, when a woman began to suffer the pangs of missing her grown-up children.
Firmly Jenny reminded herself of how fortunate she was—unlike her niece-in-law.
Poor Livvy. Jenny’s heart ached for her.
‘Maddy. Are you all right?’ Max queried anxiously as he caught her indrawn breath and saw the way her hand lifted to the pregnant mound of her belly.
‘It’s nothing,’ Maddy assured him. ‘I just felt a bit nauseous.’
‘Come and sit down,’ Max instructed her, shaking his head when she insisted that she was all right.
This fourth pregnancy which they had both greeted with such joy was tiring her far more than Max remembered the previous three doing and he cursed himself for allowing her to become pregnant again when she already had three children to look after plus his elderly grandfather.
He would have a quiet word with his mother and ask her to keep an eye on Maddy for him, make sure she wasn’t overdoing things.
‘Livvy was due home today,’ Maddy commented. The sickness had subsided now, thank goodness. The last thing she wanted was for Max to start worrying, fussing.
‘I know they’ve only been away for a matter of weeks but so much has happened that it feels as though it’s been much longer,’ Maddy continued.
‘Mmm …’
‘I wonder how she’s going to cope with having her father back? Honor says that David is desperate to heal the breach between them but that he feels he owes it to Livvy not to force anything on her.’
‘Give it time,’ Max counselled her. ‘David’s return has been a shock for all of us but especially so for Olivia.’
Maddy was just about to remark that her concern for Olivia, his cousin, wasn’t limited to her troubled relationship with her father. She was also uncomfortably aware of the sentiments and grievances about his marriage that Caspar had once revealed to her—but just as she was about to speak a fresh sickening wave of nausea struck her.
It was probably nothing, she assured herself. She was due to visit the antenatal clinic—an overdue visit, in fact, since she had had to miss her last appointment because Ben had not been feeling well. Her swollen ankles and the fact that she felt so nauseous and tired were nothing to worry about. Why should they be? She had not experienced any problems with her other three pregnancies.
‘You’ve done what?’ Sara’s father laughed as she held the telephone receiver closer to her ear and explained to him just what had happened.
‘… and you’ll never guess what,’ she continued. ‘Some of the Crighton clan are booked in for dinner tonight so I shall get a first-hand view of the “enemy.”’
‘I’ve told you before, you’ve only heard one side of the story,’ her father reminded her forthrightly.
‘I don’t care. If only half what Grandmamma Tania has told me is true then they treated her abominably.’
On the other end of the telephone line Richard Lanyon suppressed a rueful sigh. His daughter was very much inclined to champion lost causes and underdogs and he just hoped that life wouldn’t strip her of too many of her ideals and illusions.
Privately he considered his father’s second wife to be an almost naively childlike but totally selfish woman. His father adored her and protected her but he sometimes found her irritating and exasperating.
‘Well, I’d caution you against trying to slay too many dragons,’ he warned Sara drolly now.
‘I won’t,’ she agreed. ‘But it’s time someone took the Crightons down a peg or two. Enjoy your holiday,’ she added warmly.
Her father was an architect and he and her mother owned a villa on a luxury complex in the Caribbean which he had helped to design. Sara knew she could have gone with them and enjoyed a long holiday at their expense but she had too much pride and independence to do so. She had chosen teaching as her career because she wanted to help others and in her book the gift of education was one of the most precious that could be given; but the realities of modern day teaching were eroding her ideals and dreams.
Now, she was dauntingly aware that she was having second thoughts about her professional future. A short spell of working here in Haslewich would give her time to think through her options—as well as taking up cudgels on behalf of Grandmamma Tania?
Sara wasn’t going to deny that she felt that the Crightons had treated Tania badly despite what her father had said.
Having put away her few belongings in the pleasant accommodation Frances Sorter had shown her, Sara made her way back to the restaurant where Frances greeted her arrival with a warm smile.
‘We wouldn’t normally expect you to work in the evening,’ Frances told her, ‘but if you were prepared to make a start now …’
‘I’d be glad to,’ Sara told her and meant it, grimacing as her stomach suddenly gave an embarrassingly loud rumble.
‘Oh, good heavens, you must be starving,’ Frances exclaimed. ‘Normally staff meals are eaten when we’ve finished serving but I can arrange for something to be sent into the office for you.’
‘A sandwich would be fine,’ Sara told her.
‘A sandwich!’ Frances looked horrified. ‘This is an award-winning restaurant,’ she told Sara mock primly, an amused smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. ‘How do you feel about chargrilled vegetables and wild salmon?’
‘I’m in love with it already,’ Sara told her solemnly, her eyes full of laughter. She was going to enjoy working here. Frances had a good sense of humour even if she was slightly frazzled at the moment.
Nearly an hour later Sara grimaced as she took her eyes off the computer screen to take a final mouthful of the delicious meal she had been served. She had become so engrossed in what she was doing her food had gone cold—not that she was still hungry! The more than generous portion she had been served would easily have satisfied two people.
She frowned as the computer refused to give her the information she needed to complete the task she was working on. She would need to have a word with Frances about this.
Getting up she opened the office door and walked down the short corridor that separated it from the restaurant, hesitantly going inside.
Frances had told her that she was ‘fronting’ the restaurant tonight but Sara couldn’t see her anywhere. The restaurant was very busy, every table taken.
‘Bobbie rang me earlier,’ Tullah told Saul as the waiter filled their wine glasses.
‘Livvy’s back but Caspar hasn’t come with her. He’s staying on in America and according to Livvy the marriage is over.’
Tullah frowned a little. At one time Saul and Livvy had been very close and Saul himself had admitted to her that he had been very attracted to his second cousin, but that was all in the past now. She was Saul’s wife.
‘It’s the girls I feel sorry for,’ she continued.
‘It’s so hard for children when their parents split up.’
Saul had three children from his first marriage and Tullah could still remember how fragile and lost they had seemed when she had first met him and them.
Saul’s first wife had abandoned not only her husband but her three children as well, claiming that there was no place for her son and daughters in her second marriage to a man who was not family oriented.
It had not been easy for any of them when she and Saul had first fallen in love and married, Tullah acknowledged, even though now the children totally accepted her. A child of their own had completed their family but Tullah knew she felt a fierce extra protective love for Saul’s eldest three children, especially his daughter Meg, and her heart went out to Amelia and Alex.
‘If you ask me, men and women should be kept strictly apart except for purposes which are purely recreational,’ Nick told them both tongue-in-cheek, his eyes dancing with wicked amusement.
Like all the Crighton men he was outstandingly good-looking, but Nick had an added air of excitement and danger, an added aura, a certain very challenging maleness about him Tullah recognised as she gave a small admonishing shake of her head and told him, ‘You’re incorrigible, Nick, you really are.’
‘Nope, I’m just determined never to fall into the trap of allowing my emotions to ruin my life,’ Nick told her firmly.
Saul said nothing. He was thoroughly familiar with his younger brother’s antipathy towards marriage and commitment.
‘One day you’ll change your mind,’ Tullah warned him. ‘You’ll see someone and fall in love with her….’
‘What is it?’ she asked anxiously as Nick suddenly yelped in pain. A girl was standing next to his chair, her face flushed and pink as she started to apologise. She had obviously bumped into him accidentally as she crossed the dimly lit room. She was extremely pretty, Tullah recognised, amused to realise that Nick was receiving her apology with something less than his normal savoir faire. He might spurn marriage and commitment but that did not mean that her brother-in-law was averse to female company—far from it. Although to be fair to him, so far as Tullah knew his ‘relationships’ were limited to women who shared his views on the advantages of their short shelf life.
Her face crimson with mortification, Sara stammered an apology to the man she had inadvertently bumped into, but her embarrassment was replaced by indignation as he gave her a look of biting scorn instead of accepting her apology in the spirit in which she had given it.
She was still trying to find Frances and having seen her on the other side of the room had been attempting to make her way through the packed restaurant, her eyes on her quarry instead of what was in front of her.
Was it really her fault anyway, she asked herself indignantly as she returned Nick’s angry glare with one of her own. He had been sitting at the table at an odd angle with the chair pulled out more than was surely necessary.
‘You look cross. Is everything all right?’ Frances asked in concern when Sara eventually caught up with her.
‘I’ve just had a bit of a run-in with one of your diners,’ Sara admitted ruefully. ‘I bumped into him but when I tried to apologise—’
‘Which one?’ Frances interrupted her.
‘That table over there,’ Sara replied, showing her.
