Читать книгу For Better For Worse - Пенни Джордан, Penny Jordan - Страница 9

ELEANOR frowned as she thought she heard a sound coming from the boys’ room. She put down the text she had been studying and got out of bed, reaching for her robe. The Vivaldi tape she had been playing in the background as she worked was not on loud enough to have disturbed her sons, and, still concerned about Tom’s bout of sickness, she hurried into their room.

Both of them were fast asleep and when she leaned over to place the back of her hand against Tom’s forehead it felt reassuringly cool.

Straightening up, she watched them both for several seconds.

Both of them had been much wanted and dearly loved, by her at least. Allan, her first husband, had not really snared her joy in their conception, and had certainly never wanted her to have a second child. He had deeply resented their claims on her time and attention, half wanting to be mothered himself.

Things were very different now, and he was a far more responsible and participating father to his daughter with his second wife than he had ever been with his sons. But then, when they had married, he had been very young, and very ambitious, and with hindsight, and the calm detachment that came from recognising that both of them in their separate ways had been victims of their totally different perceptions of what marriage should be, she acknowledged that he had perhaps been justified in claiming that she had put the children before him, had loved them more intensely and more exclusively than she had him.

He still kept in touch with them, and she had been scrupulous about ensuring that they saw as much of him as was feasible. His new wife, Karen, was a maternal woman who made it clear she had enough love for everyone, and she and Eleanor got on very well, surprisingly. In fact, it had been Karen’s idea that Tom and Gavin come to them during the day in the school holidays now that she was at home with her young baby, instead of rather impersonal childcare arrangements. Eleanor had even begun to pride herself a little on the way things had worked out, on the way both her sons had adapted so easily and contentedly to her marriage to Marcus.

But today, with his one brief sentence of accusation and unhappiness, Tom had totally destroyed that complacency.

‘You don’t want to be with us any more,’ he had told her. ‘You just want to be with him.’

And even allowing for a certain amount of childish exaggeration; even allowing for the fact that he had been feeling extremely sorry for himself, and possibly subconsciously trying to offload his own share of responsibility for his sickness, there had still been enough real despair and fear in his voice to unleash the spectres of guilt and anxiety which were tormenting her now.

Marcus had been less than pleased when she had announced that she could not go to the Lassiters’ with him, but he had accepted her decision without trying to pressure her into changing her mind.

That was one of the things about him which had first broken down her reserve, her doubts about the wisdom of embarking on a second attempt at marriage.

Allan had been inclined to behave petulantly and manipulatively when he couldn’t get his own way, forcing her to make choices between him and their children, putting such an unbearable burden of pressure on her that in the end his announcement that there was someone else and that he wanted a divorce had come almost as a welcome relief.

Marcus wasn’t like that, though. He respected her rights as an individual, even while he cherished her as a woman. In contrast to most other men, he seemed to know instinctively when she needed the reassurance of a certain amount of male possessiveness, a certain degree of proprietorial but wholly adult determination to have her undivided attention focused on their own very personal relationship, and when their relationship had to take a back seat to her maternal and professional duties.

Tonight, though, she had been aware that, beneath his outwardly relaxed calm acceptance of her decision to stay at home with Tom, inwardly he was irritated and annoyed.

‘There is nothing really wrong with Tom,’ he had pointed out coolly to her, and that, in giving in to his demands that she remain at home, she was potentially making a rod for her own back.

Logically he was quite right, Eleanor had admitted, but a small maggoty worm of resentment at his lack of understanding had made her wonder if he would have been quite so logical had it been his own child. Now, having satisfied herself that Tom was comfortably and healthily asleep, she acknowledged that at least part of her resentment had also been caused by her own totally illogical feelings of hurt because he had not recognised that it was more than Tom’s sickness which had made her feel she must stay with her son.

Men were not like women, she reminded herself as she went back to their own bedroom and got back into bed. They did not possess a woman’s understanding and intuition of emotions and needs that were not directly voiced.

Marcus was a pragmatist and it was surely unfair of her to expect him to read her mind, to know what she was thinking and feeling. After all, she had not known what was on Tom’s mind, had she?

She frowned, pausing in the act of returning to her abandoned work. She found it easier to read like this, cocooned in the warm comfort of their bed.

Just as she liked feeling that she was cocooned in Marcus’s love? But surely that kind of need belonged to someone lacking in maturity; someone who could not accept a genuinely equal partnership… someone who expected her partner to meet all her emotional needs?

Her frown deepened. She had been increasingly aware lately of a growing imbalance in the way she believed she ought to feel and react and the way she actually was doing. This unexpected chasm of self-doubt and insecurity which seemed to have opened up within her worried and confused her.

Of course there had been other times in her life when she had suffered from insecurity and lack of self-worth, but those times were behind her now. So why had Tom’s unexpected accusation overset her so much? Why had it filled her with such panic and tension? Why, whenever she was confronted by Marcus’s daughter’s obvious aversion to her, did she feel she had to somehow conceal both the girl’s behaviour and her own reaction to it from Marcus himself?

The Vivaldi tape had come to an end. She was not, she recognised, going to get any more work done now. She had too many other things on her mind.

After Marcus had gone out she tried to talk to Tom, to reassure him that he was wrong to believe that Marcus was any kind of threat to his relationship with her, but when she had gently tried to draw him out, to question him about why he should believe that she no longer loved him, he had clammed up on her, refusing to discuss the subject.

The antique grandfather clock in the hallway chimed midnight. Marcus should not be much longer, she comforted herself.

The clock reminded her of the one her grandparents had owned. They had lived in the country and every summer she had spent two weeks of her holidays with them, before flying out to join her parents in whichever part of the world her father happened to be stationed. As a career diplomat, he had been constantly on the move, and as their only child Eleanor had never felt particularly close to her parents. Her father’s career had necessitated her spending most of her childhood at boarding-school, and, while she loved her parents and knew they loved her, they had never had the closeness she had promised herself she would share with her own children… a closeness she had genuinely believed they did have. Until this evening… How could they be close when she had not even known what Tom thought… when it had been Marcus who had correctly diagnosed the cause of his sickness and not her?

As a child she had looked forward all year to those holidays with her grandparents, to the unchanging security of their pretty house in its sleepy country setting.

Perhaps because of those childhood memories, she had been determined to maintain her own children’s contact with Allan’s parents. After all, they were their only set of grandparents; her own parents had died in an air crash before she and Allan married. But the last time they had visited, Tom had complained that things weren’t the same.

She frowned now, remembering how upset he had been to discover that the room at his grandparents’ which he had always thought of as his own was also the one Allan’s new baby from his second marriage slept in when they were there.

At the time she had dismissed his complaint as mere childish possessiveness and jealousy, but now, aware of how disruptive she herself was finding it every time Marcus’s daughter visited and she had to move her own sons out of their room, it suddenly struck her ominously that something more than mere childish resentment might have underlain Tom’s complaint.

Children needed security… needed to feel that they had their own special and protected place in adults’ lives, especially those children who had gone through the trauma of seeing their parents split up.

Now, when she thought seriously about it, she recognised that Tom had been increasingly truculent and withdrawn recently, especially when Vanessa visited, and it was unfair to expect him to give up his room to Vanessa… Just as it was unfair to expect Vanessa to be happy with the discovery that the room she had always thought of as her own was now someone else’s.

The answer was of course to buy a larger house, but she and Marcus had already discussed this and agreed that it was financially impossible.

She glanced at her watch. Marcus should be home soon. Their large bed seemed empty without him. She smiled wryly to herself, acknowledging the direction her thoughts were taking.

When she and Allan had married she had been sexually naïve, and they had never really been sexually compatible. This had been another source of friction between them. Secretly she had always blamed herself for her inability to respond as fully and passionately to his lovemaking as Allan had wanted her to, and then, after the birth of the boys, he had become less and less interested in making love to her.

After their divorce she had been cautious about allowing herself to get involved with other men. Sex had been something she had pushed to the back of her mind and out of her life. She had the boys, and the excitement of a burgeoning career to keep her fulfilled and busy.

And then she had met Marcus. He had patiently encouraged her to put aside her wariness and caution and to learn to celebrate and enjoy her sexuality. He was a very sensual lover. And a very experienced one?

She frowned as she felt the tiny tremor of anxiety touch her spine. What was she worrying about now? Marcus had always been open and honest with her, making no secret of the fact that there had been other women in his life before they had met. He was not a promiscuous man but it would have been naïve of her to believe that he had lived a celibate life in the years between the break-up of his first marriage and their first meeting.

Her frown deepened as she remembered how, the last time she had visited them, Vanessa had asked her if she ever got jealous or worried that Marcus might leave her for someone younger.

‘Most men Dad’s age marry someone a lot younger,’ Vanessa had commented. ‘Women aren’t attractive to men once they’re middle-aged.’

‘That’s not true, Vanessa,’ she had countered as firmly as she could, trying to dismiss her own personal feelings and to concentrate instead on her concern that already, while still only in her teens, Vanessa was being dragged into the female trap of perceiving her own sex as only being able to have a valid sense of self-worth when rated by their desirability to men; but Vanessa had shrugged her shoulders and walked away from her, telling her unkindly over her shoulder, ‘You’re only saying that because you’re old.’

Old… at thirty-eight?

Marcus arrived home just after one. She had been asleep but she woke up when he walked into the bedroom, smiling sleepily at him as she asked, ‘Did you have a good time?’

‘Yes, but not as enjoyable as it would have been if you had been there,’ he told her, coming over to the bed and bending his head to kiss her briefly.

‘Did the Lassiters understand?’

‘Yes. As luck would have it, they’d had an extra unexpected guest, a young American lawyer, who’s over here on a year’s sabbatical. She came with Paul Ferrar and his wife. Her parents are friends of theirs.’

‘Pretty, was she?’ Eleanor asked him, and then immediately wondered what on earth was wrong with her as she caught the acerbic, almost hostile note in her own voice.

No wonder Marcus was looking at her like that.

‘Not exactly pretty,’ he told her judiciously. ‘She was very fresh and enthusiastic in the particularly American way. She seemed to find our legal system outdated and old-fashioned. When she returns home, she plans to specialise in international law.’

‘Like you?’

Marcus gave her another thoughtful look. ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘How’s Tom?’

‘He’s fine,’ Eleanor responded. Suddenly she wanted to talk to him about her concern for her son; about the doubts and guilt his accusation to her had aroused, but as she started to speak Marcus turned away from her. Her sons were not his problem, she reminded herself, and he had already hinted once today that he thought she was fussing too much; being over-protective.

‘Hang on,’ he told her. ‘I’ll just go and have a shower.’

She lay where she was for several seconds, and then, suddenly restless and wanting to be with him, she got up and followed him.

From the open bathroom door, she asked him, ‘Marcus, this American girl. What was her name?’

‘What?’ He stepped out of the shower, shaking his head, smoothing his wet hair back from his face.

‘The American girl—what was her name?’

He looked surprised. ‘Oh, her… I… Sondra something. Cabot. Yes, that’s it… Sondra Cabot.’

‘Very WASP.’

His eyebrows rose slightly as he smiled at her. Silently Eleanor watched him, wondering if she would ever cease to be slightly astonished by the intensity of her own desire for him. When she and Allan had married, Allan’s body had still had some of the thin gawkiness of youth, and in those days of course people had not been as aware of the importance of physical exercise… the fitness boom had not yet swept the country and she had assumed it was quite normal for a woman not to be particularly aroused by the sight of a man’s naked body, that it was in fact necessary for the man to arouse the woman by touching her.

Of course she had learned long before she had met Marcus that this was not the case, but it was not until she had actually met him that she first experienced for herself her own arousal caused not by Marcus touching her, but simply by her own awareness of him and her desire for him.

They had been lovers for almost two months before he had told her how much it had turned him on to look at her and see in her eyes that she wanted him, and to know that she was doing her best to pretend that she didn’t.

Marcus’s body was nothing like Allan’s. Once, when she had told him dreamily that for her, physically, he embodied all the sensuality and masculinity so admired by the ancient Greek sculptors, he had laughed gently at her, saying that no mere mortal man could hope to rival that sort of perfection, reminding her that he was forty-two years old.

Now he was forty-five and his body still had the power to make her hold her breath at the build-up of a slow, sweet tide of desire he caused to flow through her.

When he got into bed and turned to take her in his arms, she told herself that they could talk about Tom later.

‘Mmm…’ he told her softly as his hand cupped her breast and he started to feather small kisses along her throat. ‘Have I told you lately how very sexy you are?’

Smiling, Eleanor moved closer to him.

‘No,’ she whispered back. ‘But you can tell me now if you like.’ She paused, her voice thickening a little as she added huskily, ‘Tell me and show me…’

Eleanor bit off a sharp little sound of pleasure, voluptuously abandoning herself to the delightful sensations Marcus was giving her as his mouth slowly caressed her clitoris, his tongue stroking delicately over and over her receptive flesh in the way he knew she most liked. In another few seconds, her pleasure would become almost too intense for her to bear and then she would cry out to him that she wanted him; that she needed him; that she couldn’t wait any longer to be a part of him.

She felt the orgasmic tension seize her and trembled deliciously.

‘Marcus…’

She shuddered deeply and opened her eyes, and then froze as she saw their bedroom door opening, wrenching herself away from Marcus’s embrace and pulling up the duvet in one quick automatic reflex action as Tom came into their room.

At her side, she heard Marcus groan. Her own body was reacting rebelliously and angrily to Tom’s interruption, but emotionally she was already responding to Tom’s entrance, pulling on her robe as she slid out of bed and hurried towards her son.

‘What is it, Tom? Are you feeling sick again?’ she asked him anxiously, guiding him back to his own room.

By the time she was able to leave Tom, Marcus had fallen asleep. He was lying on his side facing away from her side of the bed.

Quietly she slid in beside him and tiredly closed her own eyes.

‘Nell, could you spare half an hour? There’s something I need to discuss with you.’

‘Louise—yes, of course.’ Eleanor smiled warmly at her partner. ‘If you want to ask me how I’m getting on with narrowing down the job application lists for the freelancers, I’m afraid I’m going to have to admit that I’m not making very much progress. What with Tom not being very well and one thing and another…’

‘No… no, it isn’t that,’ Louise told her curtly. ‘Well, that does sort of come into it, but…’

Eleanor could see how unhappy and ill-at-ease Louise looked as she sat down, and a feeling of disquiet began to ice up her own spine.

‘Louise, what is it? What’s wrong? Everything’s all right at home, isn’t it… with you and Paul… ?’

‘Yes, of course it is,’ Louise told her almost snappily.

Her question had offended her partner, Eleanor recognised with concern as she saw the angry red flush staining Louise’s skin.

She was on the point of apologising, but Louise didn’t give her the chance.

‘Why shouldn’t everything be all right?’ she demanded almost aggressively. ‘Just because you’ve never liked Paul… Well, he’s my husband, Eleanor, and I think he’s right when he says that your antagonism towards him is bound to affect our business relationship. That’s why I wanted to talk to you, as a matter of fact.’

Eleanor stared at her. It was true that she didn’t particularly like Louise’s husband, but she had certainly never said anything against him, not even when he had tried to interfere in the business.

‘I’m sorry if you think that I’m antagonistic towards Paul,’ she began quietly, ‘and I guess that it’s something we ought to have discussed before—–’

‘That’s not what I want to talk about,’ Louise interrupted her quickly. ‘It’s the business itself.’

A presentiment iced warningly down Eleanor’s spine, her anxiety escalating as she waited for Louise to continue.

‘Paul and I are moving to France.’

Louise couldn’t quite meet her eyes, Eleanor noticed absently as her body absorbed the shock of what Louise was saying to her.

‘It’s something we’ve both wanted to do for a long time. Paul already has business connections there, several of our friends have moved there, and, as Paul says, with 1992 and the effects of the Common Market we owe it to ourselves and to the boys to do anything we can to make ourselves financially secure.

‘I can work just as easily from France as I can from London—more easily really. We’ll be so much more conveniently situated for Brussels, Paul says, than London. This whole country really will become a total backwater. And you’ve only got to think of our overheads here.’ Louise was speaking much more quickly now as her words gathered momentum, her eyes sharp and defiant when she finally raised them to Eleanor’s face.

So this was why Louise had been so on edge with her recently; so sensitive… Eleanor felt as though her brain had gone into slow motion as she tried to deal simultaneously with both the emotional shock and the practical aspects of the bombshell Louise had just dropped on her.

‘But Louise, we’re a partnership,’ she protested quietly. ‘We’d made plans… You never said anything…’

‘We hadn’t made up our minds then.’ Louise flushed defensively. ‘Besides, Paul feels that my Russian will have more commercial value than… after all, most European countries already speak English.’

Eleanor winced. What was Louise trying to say to her; that her language skills were of more value to the partnership than Eleanor’s own?

She was tempted to point out what Pierre Colbert had said: that with the break-up of the Soviet Union no one as yet had any real idea of what language the re-emerging independent states would eventually choose to do business in, but what was the point in getting embroiled in a pointless battle of scoring off against one another?

If only she had recognised what was happening earlier; before Louise had made so many plans. If only Louise had had the consideration to tell her… give her some warning, she realised bleakly.

And she had thought they were such good friends… such good working partners. She had believed that they trusted one another… that she could rely on Louise to deal honestly with her.

‘You do understand, don’t you, Nell?’

Louise’s voice had taken on a pleading note now, and Eleanor tensed, resenting her familiar use of her shortened name, the name by which those closest to her—her friends—knew her.

‘It will be so much better for the children. London is no place for them to grow up. Paul and I have found the most marvellous château… it’s unbelievably cheap.’ Louise was starting to gabble nervously now, Eleanor recognised numbly. No doubt with relief that she had discharged the task Paul had undoubtedly set her.

‘You must all come out and see us once we’re settled out there. I’ve enjoyed working with you, but you can, I’m sure, understand how it is… and with our rent due to go up again…’ Louise gave a small shrug. ‘As Paul says, we would be fools to pass up on this kind of opportunity.’

‘Yes… Well, I hope it all works out for you, Louise.’

Try as she might, Eleanor knew her voice lacked warmth and pleasure. Her face felt stiff and cold, her body wooden.

As Louise came towards her she found herself automatically stepping back from her, physically rejecting her, not wanting her anywhere near her.

It wasn’t so much Louise’s desire to end their partnership that was responsible for her feelings, Eleanor acknowledged, it was the feeling that Louise had been dishonest with her, that she had in fact betrayed her… betrayed the relationship Eleanor had believed they shared.

She could remember so clearly now, when Louise and Paul had first married, Louise telling her vehemently, ‘Of course our marriage won’t make any difference to the business, Nell. Paul knows how important our partnership, our friendship is to me!’

Eleanor had sensed then that, whatever he might have said to Louise, Paul was the kind of man who liked to feel that he was in control of every aspect of his life and the people in it.

‘You know, I’m surprised that you and Marcus haven’t thought of moving to France,’ Louise burbled on. ‘The financial benefits alone are just too good to ignore and when I think of the freedom the boys will be able to have… It isn’t just that the French education system is far superior to ours… The boys have been having extra French coaching and Paul has become amazingly fluent. We all speak French every evening during supper now and—–’

‘I’m sorry, Louise, but I have to go out,’ Eleanor lied.

Her head was beginning to ache and her body still felt cold with shock. How long had Louise known that she was going to do this? Why couldn’t she have said something earlier?

You know why, a small cynical inner voice told her. She… Paul wanted to make sure, to secure their own future first.

A telephone call to their accountants later in the afternoon confirmed, as Eleanor had already suspected, that it was simply not financially viable for her to continue to work from their existing premises on her own, and that without a partner to share the load it was impossible for her to generate enough income on her own to service the costs involved.

Which meant… which meant what? she asked herself tiredly after she had replaced the receiver. She had a small amount of capital of her own, thriftily garnered over the years, a small bulwark to protect her and the boys, but nowhere near enough to cover all her existing expenses for any real length of time.

When she and Marcus had married she had been determinedly insistent that she wanted to be financially self-sufficient, at least as far as the boys were concerned. She knew from odd comments which Marcus had made that his first wife had been recklessly extravagant, using whatever income she earned as an actress for maintaining the kind of wardrobe and polished appearance she insisted was essential to her career.

And, while it was true that Marcus commanded high fees, he also had considerable expenses to meet. Vanessa attended an exclusive private school and Eleanor knew and applauded the fact that after the divorce he had assumed full financial responsibility for her.

Then there was also the Chelsea house which was expensive to run and maintain, and, while Eleanor knew that Marcus would willingly support both her and the boys, she did not want him to have to do so.

They had discussed her career before their marriage and she had told him that not only did she enjoy her work but she felt she needed the sense of self-worth and satisfaction she got from being financially self-sufficient; that she was proud of the fact that she was able to support both herself and her sons, that she did not want to go back to being financially dependent on someone else, no matter how generously that support might be given.

But how was she going to be able to maintain that financial independence now? As their accountant had pointed out, their expenses had risen uncomfortably high, and the number of commissions they were receiving was less than it had been; the recession meant that everyone was cutting back. Some of their smaller clients had even gone out of business altogether; everyone was having to fight hard just to survive.

The thought of working for someone else, even if she could have found a job, held no appeal for her; she was too used to being her own boss. And looking for another partner? The way the thought made her flinch was its own answer. Louise’s defection was too new and raw for her to even think of risking entering another partnership. The reason she and Louise had worked so well together was because they operated in different but complementary fields. To find another partner like that would be time-consuming and probably impossible. No, she would be better off working alone.

Louise had disappeared after making her announcement. No doubt to inform Paul that she had broken the bad news, Eleanor reflected bitterly.

Why hadn’t she realised what was happening… guessed what lay behind Louise’s recent odd behaviour? It had never occurred to her that Louise might want to end their partnership. Nor had she realised that Louise felt resentful because she thought her languages were of more benefit, contributed more to the partnership than did Eleanor’s own. Paul’s handiwork, no doubt. But she couldn’t put all the blame for Louise’s perfidy on Paul’s shoulders; Louise herself must bear some of the responsibility, and so perhaps must she.

She was uncomfortably aware of how blind she had been to what was happening. As blind as she had been to Tom’s fear that somehow her relationship with Marcus threatened his place in her life; as blind as she had been to the fact that, with her marriage to Marcus, Vanessa would turn against her.

What was happening to her?

Had she been guilty of being over-confident of successfully handling all her diverse roles? Twice in the space of a few short days she had been forced to confront the knowledge that she had been completely unaware of what those whom she had thought of as being closest to her were really thinking.

Her heart thumped uncomfortably. She was beginning to feel as though she was losing control of her life and what was happening to it. The problem was that she had so little time and so many demands to meet.

How long was it, for instance, since she and Louise had shared an evening or even a lunchtime together, excitedly discussing their plans and their business? And yet once those occasions had been so much a part of the fabric of her life.

And how long had it been since she had been able to spend any real amount of time alone with her sons, concentrating on them exclusively?

These days her weekends seemed to flash past in a blur of frantic organisation for the following week, her conversations with her sons seemed to be limited to terse discussions about the need for football kits and enquiries about the whereabouts of the partners of the four or five odd socks disgorged from the washing-machine with monotonous regularity. And that was on a good week.

Take this evening, for instance… She would be working until six and then she would have to drive across the city to the boys’ school to collect them and take them home for supper. She was lucky in that their school ran after-lessons sports and activities groups every evening, but it was not perhaps an ideal situation… Not like the one Louise had described so lyrically and which her children would enjoy.

Fresh air. The space to run free in proper open countryside, the security of a small close-knit community.

Only last week she had had to refuse Gavin’s request that he be allowed to have some school friends over on Saturday because Marcus’s daughter had been coming and there would have been nowhere for them all to play. Things were difficult enough with Vanessa as it was. Eleanor could imagine her reaction all too well had she arrived to find ‘her’ bedroom full of eleven-year-old boys.

Suddenly she ached almost physically for Marcus, and then guiltily she reminded herself that she had promised herself when they married that theirs would be an equal partnership and that she would never fall into the trap of using him as an emotional prop.

Tiredly she pushed her hair back off her face. Only another hour and she would have to leave to pick up the boys, and she still had this translation to finish.

‘Marcus, what is it? What’s wrong?’

Eleanor had just come downstairs from putting the boys to bed and had found Marcus standing in front of the window, staring into space.

He had been slightly withdrawn all evening, speaking curtly to Gavin when he and Tom had started arguing during supper.

‘You aren’t annoyed about last night, are you?’

‘Last night?’ He turned round to look at her, frowning.

‘The dinner party, and then Tom.’

He shook his head.

‘No, of course not. No… I had a phone call from Julia this afternoon. She’s been offered a part in a film which necessitates her spending a month or so in Hollywood during the summer holidays. She wants me to have Vanessa.’

‘Oh, no. How can we?’ Eleanor protested. ‘We haven’t got the room, Marcus!’

‘No, I know,’ he agreed. He was frowning again, Eleanor noticed.

‘Unfortunately, though, there isn’t anywhere else for her to go. And after all, she is my child.’

Eleanor winced, sensitively aware of the slight edge of defensive irritation creeping into his voice. Was he privately thinking that had it not been for Tom and Gavin there would be room for Vanessa?

‘Did you explain to Julia how difficult it would be for us to have her?’

‘I tried,’ he told her drily. ‘But Julia has the gift of hearing only what she wants to hear. And it seems that she’s already announced to Vanessa that she’ll be coming here.’

Eleanor closed her eyes in helpless dismay. She felt no personal animosity towards Marcus’s ex-wife, nor any deep jealousy of the relationship they had once shared-after all, she knew enough from what Marcus had told her about his first marriage to accept that he meant it when he said that the marriage had been a disaster from start to finish and that they had been so wildly incompatible that they should never have married in the first place. In a different moral climate they would probably have contented themselves with a brief affair, he had told Eleanor, but in those days such things were not as permissible or acceptable.

However, she was bitterly aware that when it suited her to do so Julia was inclined to feed Vanessa’s suspicion and resentment by casting her in the traditional role of wicked stepmother, and if they refused to have Vanessa now, no doubt she would be blamed for that refusal.

‘Oh, Marcus…’ she protested helplessly, and then to her horror she did something she couldn’t remember doing in years. She burst into tears.

‘Hey, come on,’ Marcus told her gently as he took her in his arms. ‘Things aren’t that bad…’

‘No,’ Eleanor contradicted him, as she looked up with a small sniff. ‘They’re worse than you think. Louise told me today that she wants to end our partnership. She and Paul are going to live in France. In a château…’

Half an hour later, having calmed down enough to have told Marcus the full story, she sipped the glass of wine he had poured her and asked him quietly, ‘Marcus, what am I going to do? I can’t afford to keep on the office and I can’t work from here. There simply isn’t room.’

‘No,’ he agreed. ‘We don’t really have much option, do we? We’re going to have to find somewhere bigger, and soon. We’d better start making a trawl of the estate agents and arrange to have this place valued.’

‘Oh, Marcus… I’m so sorry. I know how much you love this house.’

‘Not as much as I love you,’ he told her firmly, coming over to her and removing her wine glass from her hands as he took her in his arms.

‘What do you think of our chances of remaining uninterrupted?’ he murmured against her mouth as he kissed her. ‘These days whenever we make love, I feel as though I’m holding my breath, wondering if we’re going to make it. A race against the all too likely arrival of one or other of our offspring. When we do find a another house, I intend to ensure that our bedroom is fitted with an early warning system, and a lock.’

Later, lying in bed next to Marcus, Eleanor told him sadly, ‘It isn’t just the break-up of our partnership that bothers me. It’s the fact that Louise so obviously didn’t feel she could talk to me. The fact that she waited until virtually the very last minute to say anything to me. I feel such a fool for not realising… for not suspecting…’

‘She deceived you,’ Marcus told her quietly. ‘And discovering any kind of deception on the part of someone we believe we know and trust is always hurtful. It hurts us where we’re most vulnerable. In our emotions and in our pride…’

‘Pride?’ Eleanor questioned him, lifting her head to look at him.

‘Mmm… Because it shows us that we’ve made an error of judgement… that our trust has been misplaced.’

‘Yes,’ Eleanor agreed, adding, ‘At first I just wanted to blame Paul and then I realised that Louise must have wanted to end the partnership as well. If only she’d said something to me sooner…

‘What’s happening to me, Marcus? I feel as though my whole life is falling apart. First Tom and now this…’

‘Tom?’

‘I didn’t even know he’d eaten the ice-cream,’ she told him sadly. ‘You knew, but I didn’t. And I didn’t…’ She stopped abruptly, not wanting to burden Marcus with the rest of her problems. ‘What kind of mother am I? What kind of wife when I can forget to organise a babysitter for a dinner party? What kind of partner when I don’t know, can’t see what’s going on under my nose?’

‘Hey, come on… You must accept that you can’t take on the responsibility for everyone else around you. You’re only human, Nell. Just like the rest of us… and, just like the rest of us, sometimes you get things wrong. You can’t be perfect, you know. After all, perfection is often a very sterile and empty concept. It’s our imperfections that make us human… loveable… and loving…’

He kissed her slowly and asked softly, ‘Do you know how much I want to make love to you?’

‘Again?’ Eleanor asked him, smiling at him.

‘Again,’ he confirmed as he reached for her. ‘Very, very definitely again.’

Three days later, when Eleanor was searching through her briefcase for something else and she inadvertently came across the advertisement she had torn from the magazine, it seemed almost like fate.

She told herself as she dialled the number of the estate agent that she was wasting her time, that the house was almost bound to have been sold.

When she discovered that the bids were still to come in, a feeling of unfamiliar and almost childlike excitement filled her.

She stared at the photograph again. It was the kind of house—the kind of home she had longed for so often as a child; solid, permanent, it offered the kind of security she had yearned for so desperately.

It would be a perfect home for them, close enough to London for Marcus to commute, rural enough to give Tom and Gavin the benefits of growing up in a country environment. More than enough room to accommodate them all comfortably, including Vanessa.

With a bit of careful planning there was no reason why she should not be able to work from there. Of course it would mean regular visits to London to collect and deliver translations, but the benefits of moving to the country far outweighed the disadvantages. She would have more time to spend with the children for one thing. More time to share with Marcus.

This would be a shared home, a new start for all of them, somewhere they could all have a stake in, feel a part of.

Vanessa would be able to choose her own room and its décor. Tom would feel secure in the knowledge that his room was solely his.

Surely with so much space at their disposal, with so much security, they would all be able to integrate far better. Life would be easier, free of the small but potentially very destructive tensions which now seemed to infuse it.

She couldn’t wait to share her excitement with Marcus. It was the ideal solution to all their problems and she was surprised that she hadn’t thought of it before.

She smiled to herself. Perhaps Louise had after all done her a favour in announcing that she intended to terminate their partnership.

She hummed happily under her breath, her face alight with happiness, and new purpose.