For The Babies' Sakes

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Dan’s astonished indignation was masterly. ‘Of course!’

‘You’re a saint among men.’

‘Don’t be sarky!’ he said angrily, his brows lowered over glittering eyes. ‘There’s no point in talking to you if you’re not going to listen—’

‘Oh, I’m listening, Dan,’ she replied despondently. ‘I’m just sickened by what I’m hearing.’

He slung her a furious glare as if she was doing him an injustice. Past experience told her that this kind of reaction was common when people were in the wrong. They dealt with their fall from grace by seeking excuses for their behaviour, or finding fault with the accuser. It was the only way they could live with themselves.

‘If you ask me,’ she said coldly, ‘you’re lucky you’re not splattered all over the wall.’

Rage crackled in his eyes. ‘That’s it. I’m going. You’re not prepared to believe me—’

‘You’re giving up?’ she cried, sitting bolt upright, her whole body taut with outrage. He wasn’t walking out on her! Not till he’d been forced to tell the truth. ‘Don’t you have faith in your own story?’ she challenged.

‘You don’t. That’s the problem.’

He studied her with a chilling coldness. Fear clutched at her heart as she realised that his love had now died. Nothing would resurrect their marriage now. Other than a miracle.

Please let there be one. She couldn’t live without Dan. Close to breaking-point, she clasped her trembling hands over her knees, her eyes huge and pleading.

‘I want to believe you,’ she croaked. ‘I honestly do.’

Her words seemed to placate him slightly. The high jut of his shoulders inched down a little.

‘OK. I left her in no doubt that I was furious with her. I went back into the bathroom and locked the door to make it clear I wasn’t interested. And I waited so she had time to get dressed. Clearly she didn’t bother. I assume she heard you and went out onto the landing. When I came out into the bedroom, I heard your voice too and realised you’d come home.’

‘That must have been a shock,’ she muttered.

‘My whole life passed before my eyes,’ he admitted grimly. ‘When I saw Celine still in that towel, I realised how bad it would look.’

‘Bad is an understatement. And you’re telling me that I came back just in time to prevent anything taking place?’

‘Yes! I mean—no, dammit, I mean nothing would have taken place—’

‘Supposing I go along with your version. What was her purpose in all this?’

‘To get me into bed, I imagine!’ he yelled, looking annoyed.

‘And yet up to now she hadn’t given you the least suspicion that she might be interested in you?’

‘No.’

He scowled and thrust his hands into the pockets of his robe aggressively. Even he was seeing that his story was unlikely.

Helen closed her eyes. ‘It won’t wash, Dan. There are no coffee-stained clothes. And the idea of Celine nipping up and down the stairs like a demented yo-yo is ludicrous.’

‘That doesn’t make it untrue!’ he declared.

She inhaled harshly, stoking up her courage to face the truth and accept it before moving on. Maybe they could pull things together. He could be made to see that you had to be straight with people and earn their love by never letting them down.

‘Why don’t you admit you’ve been having an affair,’ she said shakily, ‘and we can go on from there?’

‘Because I haven’t! I wouldn’t!’ he seethed, beginning to stride up and down. ‘It’s the last thing on earth I’d do. You don’t really know me at all, do you?’

‘No. I don’t,’ she agreed unhappily, stunned by his air of deep injury.

His shoulders slumped. ‘Well, that’s crystal-clear. You can’t have any idea how much you disappoint me.’

Her mouth opened and closed like a fish coming up for air. ‘I disappoint you? How arrogant can you get? You’re in the wrong, Dan, and yet you won’t unbend your stupid pride and confess! Instead, you come up with a story so weak that it’s laughable! I don’t believe any part of it!’

‘You must!’ he warned. ‘Or we’re finished.’

How dared he issue an ultimatum? Stifling an urge to cry, she fixed him with a steely gaze.

‘I’d like to be alone. You’d better use the guest bedroom tonight. Unless, of course,’ she added bitterly, her heart one huge ache, ‘you prefer to stay at Celine’s.’

Dan’s mouth tightened into a thin line of anger. ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence,’ he muttered scathingly, collecting up fresh clothes with feverish haste. ‘Nice to know how highly you rate my moral values and my commitment to this marriage.’

Bristling with wounded pride, he spun on his heel and headed for the door, the ferocity and speed of his stride leaving her in no doubt as to his mood.

After a short while she heard the front door bang, the sound of his car starting up and being wrenched violently into gear. The shriek of wheels spinning on mud. And then a hostile silence.

That was it, she thought bleakly, shocked by the cold reality of his departure. They were enemies now. The end.

CHAPTER FOUR

TO HELEN’S surprise she didn’t burst into tears. Perhaps, she thought morosely, that was because her brain had turned to stone and it was incapable of thought any more.

Staying in bed was impossible. Her own restlessness was driving her mad. Desperate to do something, she got up and put on one of Dan’s T-shirts and a pair of his walking socks.

They were her comfort clothes, she supposed. She’d often wear them on a Sunday when she allowed herself a precious few hours of leisure.

Perhaps she’d do some housework. Despite not feeling very well, she was too angry to sit still. Cleaning would pass the time and use up some of her suppressed anger as she imposed her will on the hated farmhouse. So she gathered up some cleaning equipment and set to work.

In an odd way, she almost enjoyed the activity, and felt grimly satisfied to see that Dan’s study curtains quivered in subdued terror after she’d whacked the dust from them with a table-tennis bat.

‘Be afraid,’ she muttered, glowering at the rest of his room. ‘Be very afraid!’ And she cleaned it within an inch of its life.

All of the rooms had borne a sad and neglected air when she’d started. Housework had never been high on her list of priorities because the builders and plasterers kept ruining her efforts.

But by the time she’d polished and dusted and hoovered everything with manic attention to detail, the spiders had fled in shock and each habitable room hummed with the energy she’d expended.

The house almost looked homely, she mused grudgingly and pretended not to notice the deep sob which lurched up from nowhere into her throat.

It was only when she’d cleared rubble and plaster from the builders’ latest extension project—ironically the nursery-to-be—that she paused for breath, remembered where she was and suddenly found herself convulsed with weeping.

That was it. She spent a chilly hour in the nursery hunched up in the dust, mournfully twisting the knife into herself by gazing at the place where she’d planned to put the cot and its precious occupant.

The floodgates opened. Her burst of displacement activity was over. Almost too blurred to see through the curtain of tears, she dispiritedly made herself a fresh hot-water bottle and dragged herself up to bed.

Eventually her howling turned to intermittent sobbing and she found herself listening for Dan’s car, every sound outside rocketing her hopes up to a peak of anticipation, only for disappointment to follow. Dan didn’t come back at all. In her heart of hearts she knew he wouldn’t, not with Celine panting eagerly on the sidelines.

Most of the night she spent awake, morbidly cuddling his pillow, reflecting that she’d never been really unhappy before. Unlike Dan, she’d had a childhood unblemished by tragedy or trauma. Her parents—now enjoying life in the Californian sun—adored her. She’d been popular at school and clever enough not to worry about exams.

This feeling of deep misery was totally alien. For the first time she understood what it was like to be unhappy and to lose a person you loved. It was frightening, she mused, to surrender your whole self to someone and to have that commitment flung back in your face as if it were worthless.

She felt as if he’d crushed her. Trampled on her dreams, knocked the confidence out of her. He’d chosen someone else, effectively telling her that she wasn’t good enough. So her self-esteem was at an all-time low.

Wearily she crawled out of bed the next morning and rang in sick. All through the day she continued her onslaught on the house, with frequent breaks for a crying fit whenever she came across something that reminded her of Dan. Which was often. Yet she slogged on with dogged determination.

She still felt sick but she was learning to ignore that. The house needed to be in good shape if it was going to be photographed and put on the market. Tomorrow she’d speak to her solicitor. At the moment she couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t bawl down the phone. She had her dignity, after all.

Dusk was now falling. She’d been working since dawn, clad as before in Dan’s big T-shirt and the cosy socks.

A sudden dizziness made her clutch at the table in the hall that she was polishing. The duster floated to the floor and she stared vacantly into space, weak from her stomach bug, from exhaustion and lack of food.