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Starting Over
Starting Over
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Starting Over

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Starting Over

‘Do you think he’ll like it?’ David asked his wife as they stood arm in arm studying the just finished small suite of rooms they had had converted from a loft over what had once been stables but which were now a garage.

‘He’ll love it,’ Honor assured him with a smile, her breath racing in her lungs as he turned to kiss her.

‘You two!’ the elder of her daughters from her first marriage had complained the last time she had visited them. ‘I’ve never known a couple so besotted with one another.’

‘Mmm—are you besotted with me?’ David had asked her whimsically after Abigail had gone back to London.

‘Certainly not,’ Honor had denied sternly, her voice softening as she added, ‘Only just totally crazily head over heels in love with you—that’s all!’

‘I wonder when he’s going to arrive?’

They had been married a few short weeks ago and had known one another less than a year but Honor had never for one moment doubted that she was doing the right thing. She knew the story of David’s past with its shadows and secrets, its shame, and she knew too of his glorious resurrection, his rebirth from the shell of his own past. Now she was looking forward to welcoming into their home the man who had played such a large part in that rebirth—Father Ignatius—the Irish priest turned missionary who was presently in Ireland on a visit. David and Honor were pleased that they had managed to persuade him to leave Jamaica and make his home permanently with them.

‘He’s due to fly to Manchester from Dublin tomorrow,’ David said with concern. ‘I wanted to meet him off the plane but he wouldn’t let me. He said there were things he had to do.’

‘Yes, I know,’ Honor agreed patiently as though she hadn’t heard all of this a dozen or more times already.

‘And then he said that he wanted to make his own way here and not have me drive over to Dublin to collect him.’

Honor smiled soothingly again.

‘I just hope he’s going to be happy here with us.’

‘He will be,’ Honor told him positively, adding softly as she leaned close to him, ‘It’s you he’s coming here for, David … you he wants to be with….’

Honor had met the priest briefly when she and David had married in Jamaica and she had discovered that he was everything David had told her he was and more. They shared an understanding, a belief in the dignity of nature and a respect for the world.

A rueful smile lit David’s eyes and he laughed. ‘All right, so I’m fussing,’ he agreed.

There were still days when he had to pinch himself to make sure that he was really awake and not merely dreaming. It humbled him unbearably to reflect on how lucky he was—and how undeserving. He had said as much to Jon, but his brother had shaken his head in denial of his claim.

David had been given so many precious gifts in this fifth decade of his life. His friendship with the priest. The love he shared with Honor, his acceptance back into the hearts and lives of his family. David’s eyes became slightly shadowed because, of course, there was one member of his family who had not accepted him back, Olivia, his daughter. She had every reason not to do so. David understood that. He had not been a good father to her and she had been forced at a very young age to take charge not just of her own life but those of her younger brother and their mother as well. When you allied to that his own father’s dismissive attitude towards her whilst Jon’s son Max was praised, it was no wonder that she should feel so hostile towards the father who had failed to take her part.

But the pain he felt at their continued estrangement was not just for himself, it was for her as well. He was a different David from the one who had simply walked out of his old life because he wasn’t able to face up to what he had done. Now he knew and understood the power negative emotions had to hurt their owner even more than those they were directed against. And Olivia was hurting—David knew that.

‘Give her time,’ Jon had counselled him.

There was David’s son as well, but Jack had had the benefit of getting the parenting from Jon and Jenny that David and his ex-wife Tania had not been there to give him. Jack, unlike Olivia, was secure in himself … happy in himself. Jack might watch him with a certain wariness … waiting, judging … but there was none of the fury or the fear in Jack’s reaction to his return that there had been in Olivia’s.

Her point-blank refusal to see him or speak to him was perhaps understandable. Her father’s return had come as a shock to her—he knew that and he knew, too, that he had hardly given her any reason to either love or respect him; but he had hoped that she would mellow a little towards him and at least attend the wedding party he and Honor had given at Fitzburgh Place. He was desperate to make some kind of reparation to her, to talk to her, to explain … apologise.

He had no right to expect her love; he acknowledged that. But it was her pain that made him hurt more than his own … her pain, his blame.

Every time he looked at Max and saw what Jon’s son had become he reminded himself that Max had the very best parents any child could possibly have had, just as whenever he thought of Olivia he knew that she had not and that he and his selfishness were to blame for that.

As Honor saw the sadness in his eyes she guessed what had put it there—Olivia … She couldn’t imagine how she would feel if one of her daughters were to reject her … to feel so hurt by her and detached from her that they refused to let her into their lives; or rather she could, and it was so untenable that it made her shiver.

Honor was a good listener and she had heard a lot about Olivia from other members of the family, not because they had gossiped about her or criticised her. No, the Crightons if they were nothing else, were fiercely loyal to each other. No. What she had learned was how very concerned in their different ways all her relatives were for her.

‘She was so happy when she and Caspar married,’ Jenny had said. ‘And when the girls arrived …’

And her inference had been that the happiness had gone.

‘She works too hard,’ someone else had said and there had been other comments, all made with loving anxious concern which Honor had correctly interpreted as meaning that Olivia’s life was shadowed and unhappy.

‘Sometimes she seems almost … afraid to let herself relax and have fun….’ had been the most telling statement of all made by Tullah, Saul’s wife, her magnificent eyes darkening as she spoke. There had been, Honor guessed, enough damage done to Olivia as a child for her to feel a need to take refuge in controlling and pushing herself to reach self-imposed targets. And to have a very fragile sense of self worth.

Leaning over to nibble on David’s ear Honor whispered enticingly, ‘Let’s go to bed.’

‘What!’ David pretended to be shocked. ‘It’s still afternoon….’

‘Mmm … siesta time.’ Honor smiled seductively.

Arm in arm they made their way across the gravelled space that separated the house proper from the outbuildings.

Honor was looking forward to the arrival of David’s old friend and mentor and as she walked past the lavender she paused to brush her free hand against its leaves and breathed in the scent she had released.

It was her plan to grow a wide variety of herbs here and to make her own herbals and potions from them.

Olivia reminded her a little of her lavender … outwardly sturdy and tough but inwardly so sensitive that the merest touch could bruise and damage.

CHAPTER THREE

BOBBIE, LUKE CRIGHTON’S wife, was the first member of the family to hear Olivia’s news. She had called at the house knowing that Olivia, Caspar and the girls would have arrived home, eager to learn all about their trip and to see if there was any shopping she could get for Olivia whilst she did her own.

‘Mummy’s upstairs,’ Amelia informed Bobbie as she knocked on the open kitchen door and then walked in.

‘Yes, she’s packing Daddy’s things,’ Alex added innocently.

‘Dad’s staying in Philly … in America….’ Amelia supplied and both of them stood and looked at her with such grave-eyed sadness that Bobbie ached to sweep them up into her arms and hold them tight.

‘Olivia,’ she called out from the bottom of the stairs, ‘It’s me—Bobbie. Can I come up?’

When Olivia appeared on the landing Bobbie saw from her expression that she hadn’t been able to conceal the shock the sight of Olivia had caused her. She had lost weight and her skin looked grey, lifeless, like her eyes. She looked … she looked … Bobbie swallowed painfully. Now it was Olivia herself she wanted to hold and comfort.

‘The girls have told you, have they?’ Olivia guessed tiredly.

‘They said something about Caspar staying on in Philadelphia,’ Bobbie agreed awkwardly.

‘You’d better come up,’ Olivia said. ‘Caspar and I are separating,’ she informed her when Bobbie got to the top of the stairs. ‘It’s for the best, for all of us. Things haven’t been good between us for a long time and … he isn’t the man I married, Bobbie … and I …’ Olivia’s voice thickened and Bobbie could see the tears standing out in her eyes as sharp as broken glass.

‘No,’ Olivia denied as Bobbie reached out towards her. ‘No. Don’t sympathise with me … I don’t need it … I’m not sorry. I’m glad. Our marriage just wasn’t working,’ she told the other woman tensely. ‘I think once he got over his initial shock of hearing that I wanted to end it, Caspar was actually relieved.’

As she heard the pain in her own voice Olivia started to frown. Why should she feel pain? She didn’t love Caspar any more. It was a relief not to have him standing at her shoulder complaining that she spent far too much time at work and far too little with him and the girls. It was a relief, too, to only have her relationship with them to worry about. Now that her father had come back people would be watching her even more closely, waiting to see her fail … fall …

‘I know sometimes things happen between a couple that can seem to be very aggravating, small issues really but like a stone in a shoe they can—’ Bobbie was saying quietly.

‘Small issues?’ Olivia interrupted her with a bitter laugh. ‘This isn’t about small issues, Bobbie. The last time Caspar and I had sex was months ago….’

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.

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