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‘Our marriage.’
‘Mac, we don’t have a marriage.’ Georgia sighed. ‘We agreed to separate four years ago. It was a mutual decision and since neither of us has changed our mind since then, there doesn’t seem much point in carrying on being married on paper only. Surely you can see that it’s sensible to sort everything out now?’
Sensible. There was a word to describe Georgia, thought Mac, studying her over the desk. She looked tired, he decided, and there were new lines around her smoky-grey eyes, but her blonde hair was still drawn neatly away from her face in a French plait, and she was as immaculately groomed as ever, wearing one of those little suits that always made her look crisp and elegant and just a little buttoned up.
The contrast in the two sides of Georgia had always intrigued him. There was the cool, controlled Georgia who faced the world, and then there was the other, much more alluring Georgia who shed her inhibitions with her neat suit and her sensible shoes, whose smile as she shook her beautiful hair free of its tidy plait had never failed to send a frisson of excitement down his spine.
Look at her now, sitting at her perfectly organised desk, crisp and capable in a scoop-necked silk top and discreet earrings. Who could guess that behind that practical façade was a warm, vibrant, alluring woman? Mac liked to think that he was the only one who knew, the only who had glimpsed the potential in the steady, sensible girl who had escaped the confines of a small Yorkshire town for London all those years ago, the only one to be fascinated and infuriated by her in equal measure.
The realisation that he might not be the only one after all had brought him all the way back from Mozambique, jealousy churning in his gut.
The amusement evaporated from Mac’s face. ‘The thing is, Georgia, you said that neither of us had changed our mind, but that’s not quite true. I have.’
She stared at him. ‘What do you mean, you’ve changed your mind?’
‘About being better off apart than together. I don’t think that any more.’ The navy-blue eyes looked directly into hers. ‘I don’t want a divorce.’
For one long, long moment Georgia couldn’t say anything at all. She was too busy struggling to control her wayward heart which, contrary to all its hard training over the past four years, had done the equivalent of leaping to its feet and punching the air with an exhilarated yes!
How pathetic was that? All those tears, all that heartache. The pain, the confusion, the desolation…she had got over it all. She had survived, she was over him, and now all her body could do was thrill at the mere suggestion that he might, after all, still want her.
Georgia was disgusted with herself. Well, her heart could do what it liked, but her will was stronger now—it had had to be—and she had absolutely no intention of going back to the arguments and the disappointments and the being taken for granted. It had taken her a long time to recover and be ready to move on. This was not the time to slide back down the slippery slope of desire, however sweet and seductive it might be.
‘You may not want a divorce, Mac, but I do,’ she said, hoping that her face didn’t show the turmoil inside her. ‘We’ve been perfectly happy separated for the last four years. What’s the point of us staying married?’
‘What’s the point of us getting divorced?’ he countered.
Tension began to tug at the edge of Georgia’s eye, in spite of her best efforts to stay calm. That tic was a bad habit, one she thought she had kicked along with their marriage.
She could feel the old familiar frustration uncoiling inside her, leaving her taut and jittery. She had tried so hard to get rid of that feeling. Yoga, Pilates, relaxation classes, exercise…all utterly pointless when all it took was for Mac to walk into the room to bring it all back.
Breathe deeply, Georgia told herself. Don’t let him get to you. You’re forty-one, a professional woman, and you don’t need to prove anything to anyone, least of all Mac.
‘I want to move on,’ she said as calmly as she could.
‘Move on?’ Mac echoed, raising derisive brows. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You know what it means, Mac.’ Georgia had to clamp down hard on the irritation that threatened to boil over. She was not going to let this descend into one of their old, circular arguments.
‘Look, we agreed,’ she reminded him. ‘We wanted different things, and neither of us was prepared to compromise, so we decided to separate, and we’ve both led our own lives since then. We should have got divorced four years ago, but it was difficult with you away so much and, since nobody else was involved, there didn’t seem any particular reason to go through all the hassle of a divorce.’
‘But now there is?’ said Mac in a hard voice.
‘Yes.’ Georgia let out a breath. ‘Yes, there is. My life has changed.’
‘So it seems.’
Mac looked pointedly around her cramped office, with its dreary beige walls, old-fashioned filing cabinets, chipped desk and its view through the one glass wall of a newsroom so dated that it was almost a surprise to see computers instead of antiquated typewriters on the desk.
Georgia followed his gaze, knowing that he was remembering the newsroom in the national newspaper where she had worked in London, all steel and glass and technology and endlessly ringing phones. Did he have any idea how trapped she felt here?
‘Why Askerby?’ he asked abruptly. ‘It’s the last place I expected to find you. You couldn’t wait to get away, and it was only guilt that brought you back to sort out family problems. Every time you came home, you’d breathe a sigh of relief to be back in London.’
It was true. She had never wanted to come back and live in Yorkshire, but sometimes you didn’t have a choice.
‘I had my reasons,’ she said in a restrained voice.
His expression hardened. ‘To do with the little boy you’ve adopted?’
‘Yes, Toby. You remember him, don’t you?’
Expecting her to be defensive about her adopted child, Mac was thrown. ‘No…Toby? Who’s Toby?’
‘He’s Becca’s son.’
He might have known Becca would have been behind all this. Mac remembered Georgia’s sister all right. Talk about chalk and cheese. Becca was wild and chaotic, Georgia cool and determined. Forever held up as a contrast to her clever, ambitious sister, Becca had, perhaps inevitably, taken to her role as the black sheep of the family with gusto.
He sighed with exasperation. ‘What’s Becca up to now?’
With Becca you could never tell. She might be in prison, or simply have abandoned her child to go off and live in a commune, and either way it would no doubt fall to Georgia to clean up the mess she had left behind her. Becca had always relied on Georgia to help her out of whatever trouble she was in. Mac hadn’t liked the emotional blackmail she had exerted, implying that it was somehow Georgia’s fault that she hadn’t made a success of her life.
‘Just let her sort it out herself,’ he used to tell Georgia. ‘She’ll never learn to look after herself if she knows all she has to do is pick up the phone to you when things go wrong. I’d let her stew.’
But Georgia never would. ‘She’s my sister,’ she would protest, but Mac knew she felt guilty about being their parents’ favourite, guilty about having the brains and the beauty, guilty about the fact that Becca had never really been able to struggle out from under her shadow.
And now it seemed Becca never would.
‘She’s dead,’ said Georgia tonelessly.
Mac stared at her, shocked. ‘Dead? How? What happened?’
Georgia sighed and ran her fingertips under her eyes. ‘A car accident. She’d been out at a nightclub in Leeds, and she’d been drinking. She should never have been driving at all, but you know Becca.’ Shaking her head, she blew out a breath. ‘It was just fortunate that no one else was involved. Sometimes she could be so…so…’
‘Irresponsible?’ Mac suggested, watching Georgia’s hands clenching and unclenching with frustration.
Her grey eyes met his and then slid away. ‘She was my sister, and I loved her, but sometimes I feel so angry with her for what she’s done to Toby,’ she confessed in a low voice, not looking at him.
‘It’s normal to feel angry at times when you’re grieving,’ said Mac in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘You shouldn’t feel guilty about it.’
He was wasting his breath, of course. He didn’t need to look at her face to know that. Georgia was bound to feel guilty. She always had felt guilty about Becca, and Becca dying wasn’t going to change that.
‘I’m sorry about Becca, Georgia,’ he said sincerely. ‘It must have been a shock for you.’
‘Yes.’ Georgia remembered that terrible phone call, more than a year ago now. Her mother’s distress had been so acute that it had taken ages before Georgia could understand what had happened and, when she had finally grasped what her mother was trying to tell her, she had known at once that her life would never be the same again.
‘Yes, it was,’ she said. ‘It was terrible, but not as terrible as it was for Toby. He was only seven, and he’d lost his whole world. Becca might have been irresponsible, but she did love him, and she was his mother. No one else will ever be able to take her place.’
‘But you’re trying?’
Georgia looked up at that. ‘I’m doing the best I can,’ she said quietly. ‘But it’s never going to be enough.’
‘Why you?’ asked Mac after a moment. ‘Where’s Toby’s father?’
‘Who knows?’ Georgia lifted her shoulders helplessly. ‘I don’t think Becca did. He took off before Toby was born, and she never tried to find him. Even if it were possible to somehow track him down, I couldn’t hand Toby over to a perfect stranger. That’s why I adopted him.’
Mac shifted restlessly in his chair. He wanted to get up and prowl around, but the office was simply too small, so he was stuck there, struggling to assimilate what she had told him. It was totally unreasonable to resent Georgia for doing the right thing by her nephew, but he still did. He didn’t like the fact that she had gone ahead and changed her life for her sister’s child when she hadn’t been prepared to change it for a child of his.
He didn’t like himself for not liking it. He knew he was being unfair and unkind and unreasonable.
But that was how he felt.
‘What about your mother?’ he said. ‘Couldn’t she have taken Toby?’
‘She couldn’t cope, Mac. She used to babysit him when Becca went out, but he was really too much for her. And anyway—’ Georgia stopped as she felt her voice wobble treacherously.
Damn Mac. There was something about him that brought all her emotions to the surface and left her feeling raw and vulnerable. She hadn’t cried for ages, and she wasn’t about to start again in front of him.
Fiercely swallowing down the tears, she cleared her throat. ‘Anyway,’ she said again, more strongly this time, ‘Mum never got over the shock of Becca’s accident. She had a fatal stroke three months later.’
‘Oh, Georgia.’ Mac half rose out of the chair, then checked himself. Her father had died before they were married, and it was Georgia who had supported her mother and sister ever since.
He looked at her sitting behind her desk, her chin lifted defensively as if to ward off any attempts at sympathy for the fact that she had recently lost all her family. And he hadn’t been there to help her through any of it.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said inadequately.
Georgia gave a brief smile of acknowledgement, and then went on. ‘Mum did her best with Toby, and I came down every weekend, but it wasn’t really working, and the social services were suggesting that they tried to find him a foster family when she died. I was due to have a meeting with them after the funeral, but I just looked at Toby that morning and realised I couldn’t go through with it. I was the only family he had—and he was the only family I had.’
Her eyes darkened with the memory of those dreadful days. ‘I told them that I would take him.’
‘So that’s why you’re here in Askerby?’ said Mac after a moment.
She nodded. ‘I tried taking Toby to London, but he hated it. I had a super-cool loft apartment by the Thames, but no garden and there were no other children there. He was miserable at school and childcare arrangements were a nightmare…
‘Toby just closed down,’ she told him, shuddering at the very memory. ‘He stopped talking, and I realised I was either going to have to give up on him or give up on my career.’
She mustered a smile and looked at Mac. ‘I didn’t really have a choice. He’s been better ever since I brought him back. I’d sold Mum’s house, but I’ve bought a new one, and he’s back at his old school. I thought I might have to try freelancing, but then I got this job…and look at me now.’ She waved grandly around her tiny office, her expression ironic. ‘I always did want to be an editor.’
Of a national newspaper, maybe. Georgia’s plans had never included a dusty little local rag like this, Mac knew. She had given up a lot for Toby.
‘It can’t have been easy for you,’ he offered. ‘We all thought you were going far and that you would be editor of The Times at least by now!’
‘Oh, come now, why would I want The Times when I can have all this?’ said Georgia with a wry smile. Through the glass wall she could see the shabby newsroom whose only occupant, Kevin, the sports reporter, was leaning back in his chair reading a tabloid. God only knew where the others were. They seemed to drift in and out at will, as far as Georgia could make out.
The sense of torpor that hung over the place depressed her anew, and Mac’s presence only made the contrast with her previous life the crueller. He sat there exuding recklessness and an exotic mix of danger and glamour that belonged with breaking news and rush of adrenalin, the sense of being where important things were happening and news was being made, not just reported.
Mac looked as out of place in this dull, provincial office as she felt. He didn’t have to be here, though, and she did. It wasn’t about what she wanted any more. Toby came first now, she reminded herself fiercely.
But, oh, there were times when she longed to wake up and find that it was all a bad dream and that she was back at the newsdesk in London, two phones at each ear and emails from around the world bombarding her inbox, with the clock ticking towards the deadline and the whole office buzzing with excitement.
Georgia suppressed a sigh and focused on Mac once more. ‘This is my life now,’ she said, wishing she could sound more excited and positive about it. ‘I’ve accepted that I need to make a new life here in Askerby, and I can’t do that as long as I’m legally married to you.’
‘You’ve met someone else.’ It was a statement rather than a question.
She hesitated, although she couldn’t think why. ‘Yes,’ she said after the tiniest of pauses.
‘And you want to get married again?’ he asked in an abrasive voice.
‘No.’ She shook her head firmly, surprised at the way she had instinctively recoiled at the very idea of marrying anyone else.
Although, if she was honest, marriage was probably what Geoffrey had in mind. Georgia wasn’t prepared to go that far just yet, though.
‘There’s no question of marriage at the moment,’ she said. ‘It’s true that I’ve met someone…a nice man who cares for me and who I think can offer me what I need, but it doesn’t seem fair to embark on a serious relationship with him until I’ve resolved things with you. He’s made me realise that by always putting off the idea of divorce I’ve never really moved on, and that’s what I think I need to do now.’
Mac began to feel a little better. It didn’t sound as if this so-called ‘serious relationship’ had got very far. It was typical of Georgia to want to play fair and start a new relationship uncluttered by baggage from the old one—she always did like things tidy—but this man, whoever he was, couldn’t be that keen if he was prepared to hang around and wait until she had sorted everything out.
‘Who is this guy?’ he demanded, wondering why the man didn’t just sweep Georgia off her feet, the way he would do.
The way he had done, he remembered.
‘I don’t think he’s any of your business,’ said Georgia with a quelling look. Mac had met Geoffrey once, soon after they were married, and it couldn’t be said that the two of them had got on. It was hard to imagine two men more different from each other, in fact.
Typically, Mac wouldn’t let it go. ‘Do I know him? Who would you know in Askerby?’ He leant back in his chair once more, tipping dangerously, and pulled his upper lip down in an effort of memory, until it struck him. ‘Ah…I know! ‘It’s that guy who always pined after you, isn’t it? The one who came to dinner once when we were staying with your mother? Bit of a stuffed shirt?’
Georgia’s lips tightened, annoyed. Geoffrey could be a bit stuffy sometimes, but she had no intention of admitting that to Mac.
‘He’s a very nice man,’ she said defensively. ‘He’s been incredibly kind since I moved back here.’
‘What was his name again?’ asked Mac. ‘Gerald? Jeremy? Jim?’
‘Geoffrey,’ said Georgia coldly, knowing that if she didn’t tell him Mac was more than capable of going on speculating with more and more ridiculous names all night.
‘Geoffrey! That’s it.’ Mac seemed pleased to have had that little puzzle solved for him. He eyed Georgia narrowly. ‘Well, well…so Geoffrey’s your new man? You know, I wouldn’t have said that he was exactly your type, Georgia.’
‘Maybe I’ve changed,’ she said with a certain defiance. ‘I don’t see what it has to do with you, anyway. To be honest, I could just wait another year and the divorce would come through automatically, but I thought we could be civilized about the whole thing. I can’t believe you seriously want to stay married. You certainly never had any interest in being married before!’
Mac’s brows snapped together at that and he let the chair drop abruptly to the floor once more. ‘That’s not true!’
‘Isn’t it?’ Georgia met his look directly. ‘Oh, I dare say you didn’t mind having a wife who waited at home and dealt with things while you were away. It was easy for you to drop everything and go when there was someone there to pay the bills and get the boiler fixed and have some milk in the fridge when you came home, but you could get all that from a good housekeeping service. You weren’t interested in being married to me.’
The lazy humour had vanished from Mac’s face, to be replaced by a grimness she had never seen before. ‘Of course I was interested in you!’ he protested, rather white about the mouth. ‘I loved you!’
‘But what did you love, Mac? Oh, the sex was great, I’ll give you that, but the rest of the time I’m not sure you even saw me. How much did you know about what I thought and what I felt and what I wanted? It was wonderful when we were first married,’ she acknowledged, ‘but after a while you started to take me for granted, and you forgot about me.’
‘How could I forget you? You were my wife!’
‘Exactly, and that’s all I was. I was just your wife, someone who was always there, someone you could always rely on, who could see what needed to be done and got on and did it without making a fuss because what was the point? Someone had to do it, after all. I knew your job meant that you had to go away at a moment’s notice, but after a while it began to seem that my only role was to support you, and that wasn’t enough for me.’
She stopped and made herself breathe slowly, fighting down the old resentment. Mac had never understood this.
