Читать книгу The Inward Storm - Пенни Джордан, Penny Jordan - Страница 6

AS ALWAYS when she drove down Woolerton’s main street Kate felt a warm glow of contentment. Moving to Yorkshire from London had been the best thing she had ever done. She loved the Yorkshire Dales with their ageless grandeur, and she also loved the villages with their clusters of stone-built cottages, their gritty timelessness that said they had withstood for centuries and would continue to do so for many centuries to come. If man allowed them to do so. She grimaced faintly, as she stopped her small car outside the woolshop she owned jointly with her friend and partner Margaret Bowes.

When she had first come to Woolerton she had been looking for escape, and she had not visualised, when she bought the small, out-of-date handicrafts shop, just how successful and stimulating a career she would make of it; a career that now took her regularly to London and New York, where the hand-knitted jumpers she designed and had knitted by her faithful local circle of workers were pounced on avidly by the buyers of top stores. And this latest batch far surpassed anything they had done before, Kate thought enthusiastically as she climbed out of her car, opening the hatchback to remove the garments she had spent the day collecting.

At first when she had approached local farmers’ wives, through the medium of the vicar’s wife, to ask if they would be interested in knitting up the patterns she designed, they had been sceptical, but once they had discovered how well the jumpers sold, their enthusiasm had kept pace with Kate’s own, and now she had a regular circle of knitters, all of whose work she could rely on. Dales wives learned young how to pass the cold dark evenings when their husbands were out with the stock, and this latest batch had been finished well ahead of schedule. Tomorrow she and Margaret could sort and pack the garments ready for despatch.

‘Ah, there you are. I was just about to close up,’ Margaret smiled in welcome as Kate walked in.

‘I stopped off to see Sarah,’ Kate explained. Sarah Keddy was one of her favourite knitters, and one of the oldest. There had been Keddys in Ebbdale as long as there had been an Ebbdale, but Sarah Keddy was now alone. Her grandson and his wife, together with their children, had emigrated to New Zealand two years before Kate came to the valley, and although she had many friends Kate knew she suffered from their absence. The hill farm that had been her home for so many years had had to be sold after her husband’s death and now she had a cottage at the far end of the village.

She was a ‘warm’ woman, or so Kate had been told by some of her other knitters, but there was never any evidence of wealth in the tiny but immaculately clean terraced cottage down by the river; rather the opposite. In many ways life in the valley was still hard, but Kate wouldn’t change it for luxurious city living. It was here in Woolerton that she had found peace and hope for the future after … Her mind swerved violently away from the past, as always reluctant to dwell on the events that had brought her to Ebbdale. Two years had passed since then. Two years in which she had grown new tissue over the old scars. But new tissue didn’t totally obliterate the pain; and tranquillity couldn’t entirely wipe away her sense of failure at having a broken marriage behind her.

Margaret had helped her so much in those early days. Kate had found Woolerton by accident. Driven mad by a need to get away from London she had driven north, heading for Scotland, but her car had broken down just outside Woolerton, and Meg had then been working in the Woolerton Arms where she had gone to enquire if they had a room for the night.

The one day it was to have taken to get her car back on to the road became three and then four, and by the fifth day Kate had known that she never wanted to leave this quiet valley. Meg, widowed and on the point of being made redundant, had leapt at Kate’s suggestion that they buy the craft shop, and although they did quite a brisk trade in local crafts in the summer months and during the winter wool always sold well, it was from the jumpers Kate designed that they made the majority of their profits.

‘Matt’s picking me up in half an hour,’ Meg told her, as she relieved Kate of the pile of jumpers. ‘There’s a cottage pie in the oven …’

Meg had taken on a new lease of life since she met Matt Wrexley, Kate mused as her friend went upstairs to change for her date with the hill farmer. Widowed like Meg, they had met through his daughter who attended the local Youth Club where Meg helped out three evenings a week. That they would marry Kate did not doubt, although in the Dales such things were not rushed. What would she do when they did? She would have to employ someone in the shop for those days when she was visiting her knitters or away seeing buyers. Time enough to worry about that when it happened, Kate reflected as she locked up the shop and followed Meg upstairs to the small flat they shared above the shop.

As Meg switched on the light, warmth flooded the pale apricot-painted room. Meg had been slightly dubious when Kate explained how she wanted to decorate the flat, but the shop property was Kate’s, bought with the mortgage she had raised when they first set up in business, and Meg had been generous in her praise when she saw the finished results.

Rusts, apricots and soft creams dominated the colour scheme, the cane furniture was glossed in the same apricot as the walls, the cushions covered in cream cotton with a rust and apricot design. The floorboards had been stained and a couple of beautifully soft sheepskin rugs were their only covering.

Meg disappeared into her bedroom, while Kate wandered into the kitchen, checking on the cottage pie. When she had lived in London she would have laughed at anything as homely as cottage pie. Orphaned very young, Kate had been brought up by a sophisticated godmother, many times divorced, who spent her life travelling from one glamour spot to another, trailing Kate in her wake as soon as she was old enough to leave school. It had been a hedonistic existence and one which Kate would have said she enjoyed … until she met Jake.

At first she had thought he was one of Lyla’s latest young men, but even at twenty she had dimly perceived that Jake lacked the malleability Lyla looked for in her handsome escorts. He was too hard, too ungiving to ever be at the beck and call of a woman like Lyla; pretty and vague as a butterfly. And Lyla had been nervous of him. Kate had sensed it that night at dinner. They had been staying in Cannes; they always spent June in Cannes, and she remembered that Lyla had introduced him with that girlish laugh of hers as ‘my stepson, darling … Jake Harvey.’ And Kate had realised that this Jake Harvey must be the son of one of Lyla’s many husbands. Lyla’s last venture into matrimony had ended just as Kate left school and she had long since forgotten the names of Lyla’s various husbands. Her heart had started to thump as Jake Harvey studied her, insolently, she thought as her heartbeat increased, her cheeks flushing as she realised the sexual speculation behind the ice-sharp grey glance.

‘Jake, you’re embarrassing the child,’ Lyla had said sharply, and he had smiled sardonically, relating leasing her from that hard grey imprisonment. She had wondered about him later that night when Lyla dismissed her, saying that she and Jake had business to discuss. Had his father looked anything like him? If so, no wonder the marriage hadn’t lasted long. For all his powerfully male good looks, the lean arrogant body that was so vibrantly masculine that even she had been aware of its potency, there was something about him that chilled and repelled her, a hardness of purpose perhaps, a taunting insistence that where he was concerned there was no other will but his. She would have been well advised to listen to those earlier misgivings, Kate sighed, when Meg emerged from her room, her face faintly flushed. ‘How do I look?’

Matt was taking her out to dinner, and Kate assured her that the silk blouse and velvet skirt she was wearing looked very attractive. ‘Not mutton dressed as lamb?’ she asked anxiously, grinning a little when Kate exploded into laughter and teased, ‘Definitely not! Matt would recognise that immediately, as a sheep farmer. Meg, you’re forty-five, not ninety,’ she added, sobering up a little.

‘But that still makes me old enough to be your mother,’ Meg reminded her dryly. ‘You’re the one who should be going out on dates, not me.’

‘No, thanks.’ Kate had her back to her, pretending to fiddle with the oven.

‘Kevin Hargreaves is keen on you, I’m sure,’ Meg pressed, mentioning their local doctor. ‘He must have telephoned you half a dozen times last week.’

‘That was just to arrange about the petition to stop any expansion of the nuclear plant,’ Kate told her firmly. ‘Oh, why do they want to expand it still more?’ she complained, her eyes bitter with hopelessness. ‘Don’t they realise the potential danger—not just for this valley, for possibly the whole country? Disarmament is the only way, and the politicians have got to be made to realise …’

‘Kate, I know how strongly you feel about all this,’ Meg told her softly, ‘but sometimes strong views can be blinkering. Have you thought how many jobs the plants provide? Without those jobs the valley would be almost bereft of young people. We have to find new forms of power for the future …’

‘New ways to maim and destroy,’ Kate said bitterly. It was an argument they had had often before. Meg didn’t share her views on nuclear disarmament, but Kevin Hargreaves did. Like her, he was keen to form a group of protesters against further expansion of the plant.

An hour later when she had eaten her shepherd’s pie and cleared away the dishes Kate sat down, intending to work on some fresh designs for their spring range, but her mind, normally so active, refused to be confined to the work in hand. Instead she found herself thinking about Jake; something she had not allowed herself to do except in brief snatches since their break-up. They should never have married in the first place, and, she suspected, had she been a more sophisticated twenty-one; had she not been living with Lyla, all they would have had would have been a brief affair. Jake had been at first disbelieving and then openly amused when he discovered her innocence. He had told her after they were married that once he did know he couldn’t leave her to be destroyed by the style of life Lyla enjoyed.

‘Such an intense, emotional little thing,’ he had said huskily in that deep voice he used when he was making love to her, the sound shivering across her aroused senses and barely impinging until much later. ‘Everything you feel, you feel so deeply …’

She had been a child to Jake; a child who had given herself trustingly to him, and who had married him without a thought of what marriage really entailed, living only for the times when he held her in his arms, turning her body to boneless, liquid fire. But the honeymoon couldn’t last for ever. He had a job to do, Jake had reminded her. That job had been at Greenham air-base, using his knowledge to perfect missiles which could destroy hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

She had been such an innocent. Kate shivered, remembering how angry Jake had been when he came home to find her studying the literature the anti-nuclear faction had put through their door. His anger had chilled her, as had his insistence that she throw the stuff away. It was almost as though he wouldn’t allow her to have any views that weren’t his; as though she were a mechanical doll designed purely for his pleasure and nothing else. And that had been how it had started. She had revolted against his veto, calling him a petty dictator and worse. That night he had made love to her with angry intensity and she had resisted him; not with her body—that was impossible—but with her mind. A chasm seemed to have opened up beneath her feet and with every day that passed it grew deeper and wider, until she no longer even wanted to cross it. She became involved with the Peace Movement, and Jake had been furious. How well she remembered the row they had had about it. If she had nothing better to do with her time than waste it with a bunch of hysterical women then he would give her something to keep her busy, he had stormed at her—a child.

And she had screamed back that a child of his was the last thing she wanted; that she would never give birth to the child of a man who felt as he did; that she would never have a child that could be destroyed by its father’s monstrous obsession with destruction. And so it had gone on, day after day, week after week, until that final row. It had been just before Christmas, the annual dance at the base. They had been invited, and she hadn’t wanted to go, but Jake had insisted. So she had gone, and it had been in a mood of burning resentment that she had responded to the overtures of some of the other guests and the base personnel, letting her views and hatred of what they were doing spill out into the silence that gradually grew in intensity until it reached Jake and they were staring at one another down the length of the room, antagonists in a bitter conflict in which there could be no end.

He had taken her home and she had trembled inwardly in fear and anger, but the words he had spoken were not those she had anticipated. He had stood in the door to their bedroom, watching her with cold eyes, and he had said simply, ‘This can’t go on. I married a child thinking she would mature into womanhood, but all she has done is regress into adolescent puerility. I’m leaving you, Kate. If you ever manage to grow up you can come and find me, but don’t expect me to hang around and wait.’ He had gone without another word, and she had left the house in the morning, driving north, not wanting to wait until he came back, in case she made a complete fool of herself and begged him to change his mind. She had written to Lyla, who had recommended a lawyer—her own, and who had offered her a home, but she had grown up enough by then to know that Lyla’s life style was not hers.

That had been two years ago. The last time she had been in London she had called to see her lawyer to ask what progress he had made with their divorce, but he had told her that Jake was not willing to divorce her.

Her stunned ‘But why?’ had brought a brief smile to his mouth.

‘Many men find it … convenient to let their marriages stand in such cases. It affords them splendid protection,’ he had added dryly, when she looked puzzled. ‘They have their freedom and they also have protection.’

How like Jake, Kate had thought at the time, even now he was still using her. Her eyes filmed over as she felt the familiar tug of memory, and tried not to give in to it, but to concentrate on what she was doing, but the pattern she was working on blurred in front of her, and as clearly as though he was in the room with her she could hear Jake saying softly, ‘My little Cat, when I touch you like this you’re as boneless and sensual as any feline of the species.’

Her throat dry, Kate started to shiver, passing her tongue over dry lips suddenly tormented by memories she had suppressed ever since they parted. Her skin seemed to burn as she remembered the way Jake had touched her; there had been nothing adolescent about her reaction to him, nor the way his body had taught her to respond to his lovemaking. But that was only a memory now. She had not allowed any man to get close enough to her to make love to her since and she had no intention of doing so. The male instinct to possess and repress was as strong today as it had always been; man wanted woman in his bed subservient to his desires, and she could never forget that Jake had dismissed her views and thoughts as carelessly as though they were those of a two-year-old. He had frightened her the first time she had seen him, that aura of power and masculinity he possessed overwhelming her, but in the sexual haze of wanting him she had forgotten to be afraid, and that had been her downfall.

What on earth was she doing allowing her thoughts to meander down such dead ends, Kate thought tiredly, thrusting her work aside and running slim fingers through the chestnut mass of curls that reached down to her shoulders. Lyla had wanted her to have her hair cut that summer she met Jake, and that had been the first time she had realised that he wanted her, the day he had looked at her and said sharply, ‘No, leave her hair as it is, Lyla,’ to her stepmother, adding under his breath, ‘One day some man’s going to thank you for it when he sees it fanned out across his pillow …’ and she had known that Jake wasn’t thinking in terms of ‘some man’ but himself. How that knowledge had excited her! She bit her lip, trying not to remember, irritated to discover that it was only nine o’clock. Far too early to go to bed. The ringing of the telephone was a welcome relief.

‘Kate?’ She recognised Kevin Hargreaves’ voice instantly and responded to it warmly. ‘I thought you might like to know that they’ve appointed a new Head of Operations at the station. I found out about it today.’ Kevin was one of the doctors on stand-by for the plant, and he went on to explain that although he had no other details about the new appointee he was hoping to persuade him to adopt several new safety measures.

‘Oh, safety measures!’ Kate exploded. ‘They’re all very well in their way, but what we should be campaigning for is to get the plant closed down completely.’

Kevin’s chuckle reached her from the other end of the wire. ‘That’s impossible, I’m afraid, Kate. Nuclear power is here to stay, and that’s a fact of life. If we can just get them to adopt a more aware attitude to the possibilities I’d be well pleased. As soon as I find out who the new Director is I’m going to invite him round for dinner. I was hoping you might cook it for me and play hostess,’ he added, coaxingly. ‘Mrs Mac is all very well in her way, but she isn’t a patch on you. It will give you an opportunity to put forward your views as well,’ he added. When Kate agreed he thanked her and rang off, explaining that it was his evening on call and that he couldn’t stay too long on the phone in case any emergency calls came through. At least Kevin wasn’t like Jake, Kate thought when she had replaced the receiver. He accepted that she had her own views and listened to them, but pleasant though he was Kevin did nothing for her sexually; he was a pleasant, attractive man in his mid-thirties, and she liked him as a friend, but there was none of the electricity Jake had generated. Jake had been thirty when she first met him and even then there had been a forcefulness about him, a raw maleness that alarmed even when it aroused, and she had been young and silly enough to be excited by the fear his potential to dominate and master had aroused inside her. It was only later that she had learned to despise that need to dominate and to despise herself for ever wanting it.

It was quite late when Meg returned. Kate was already in bed, but she heard her come in, and she was shocked to discover that she was wondering if Meg, like her, ever missed the warm male presence in her bed at night.

‘SO WHEN’S the wedding to be?’ They were in the shop sorting out the jumpers Kate had collected the previous day, the solitaire diamond on Meg’s left hand winking brightly as her fingers moved deftly through the pile.

‘Oh, not until next summer. In the lull between lambing and shearing,’ Meg twinkled, flushing a little as she added half shyly, ‘I still can’t believe I’ve been so lucky. David and I married young and I was so happy with him. I thought I’d never get over his death, and I certainly never dreamed I’d find the kind of happiness with anyone else that I’ve found with Matt.’

‘I’ll have to start looking for someone to work in the shop after Christmas,’ Kate told her. ‘Any ideas?’

‘What about Lucy?’

Lucy was Matt’s daughter, a pleasant plump girl of seventeen. ‘She wants to find a job, and Matt and I both think she’s far too young to leave the valley yet. She was thinking of going for secretarial work and finding herself a job at the plant, but she’s a marvellous knitter, and rather on the quiet side.’ Meg glanced thoughtfully at Kate. ‘You know, Kate, the girls at the youth club would enjoy a few lessons from you on the design aspects of knitting. You stay in far too much, and this bee you’ve got in your bonnet about the station. Most of the people round here welcome it. There’s the jobs, for one thing …’

‘They welcome it because they have no other choice,’ Kate said fiercely, ‘Do you think they would honestly welcome it if they knew that it could maim and kill their children; that the mere existence of places like Greenham means that Russian missiles are constantly directed towards this country …’

‘Ebbdale doesn’t have a missile base,’ Meg told her quietly, ‘It has a nuclear power station, and missiles give protection as well as making us a target.’

‘With multilateral disarmament missiles wouldn’t be needed,’ Kate argued, but Meg merely sighed.

‘Oh, my dear,’ she said softly, ‘human beings aren’t like that. Can’t you see? You only have to look at children, any group of children, to see the tendencies that are inside all of us to dominate and manoeuvre. Wonderful though it would be if human beings could live in peace with one another, first we all have to be capable of giving and receiving absolute trust, of making ourselves acutely vulnerable, a fundamental something which the majority of the human race is incapable of doing, the flaw that makes us human.’

Even though part of Kate knew that Meg was right, stubbornly she refused to admit it. These arguments were old and much used ones, but that did not make them right. How vividly she remembered how she had felt when Jake talked about them having a child. A child who would be forced to live and grow under the threat of the nuclear holocaust his own father had helped to build against him. And if that threat was not averted, and there was war, how many generations into the future would be maimed and diseased because of it? It didn’t bear thinking about.

A phone call from one of their knitters on one of the more remote hill farms had Kate setting out in her small car immediately after lunch to collect the jumpers she had ready. It took her about an hour to reach the farm, and she was warmly greeted by Beth Carr as she got out of the car and walked across the cobbled yard.

A heavenly scent of baking bread greeted her when she followed Beth into the kitchen. Cookery was another skill Kate had developed since coming to the Dales. When she lived with Jake they had often eaten out, or she had bought convenience foods. ‘Umm, one of the best smells on earth,’ Kate commented as Beth indicated one of the chairs beside the fire.

‘I finished the last jumper last night,’ Beth told her, ‘and I’m afraid I won’t be able to do any more for a while.’

‘Oh, Beth!’ Kate was surprised when Beth turned towards her, her plump face wreathed in smiles.

‘It’s happened at last,’ she told her proudly. ‘I’m having a baby. After all these years, Pete and I had stopped hoping, but Dr Hargreaves has confirmed it, and from now on all my knitting will be white and small.’

‘Beth, I’m so pleased for you.’ Kate knew how unhappy Beth had been at her inability to conceive, and was genuinely pleased for her, even though it meant losing one of her best workers.

‘I think I’ve found you another knitter, though,’ Beth told her cheerfully. ‘Pete’s cousin—she lives out Highmoor way. I was getting that worried about telling you I couldn’t do any more, Pete went down and asked her. Said he wasn’t having me fretting myself into flinders. Not now.’ Her hand rested fondly against her stomach and Kate was attacked by the most acute sense of pain and deprivation. What on earth was the matter with her? ‘We were happy enough before, I suppose,’ Beth said softly, ‘but there’s nothing like knowing you’re carrying your man’s child inside you. Sort of makes you feel complete, somehow. And as for Pete …’ she gave a warm laugh, ‘well, he’s like a dog with two tails and no mistake. Anyone would think no man had ever had a child before, but then it takes some of them that way, I suppose, and we’ve waited that long.’

For some reason Kate was glad to escape from the warmth of the farm kitchen, glad of the cold biting wind from the east that burned into her still vulnerable skin and brought the sting of tears to her eyes. What on earth was the matter with her? she asked herself bitterly as she wrenched the car round and headed back towards the road. Just for a moment then in the kitchen she had wished … no, longed, to be able to share Beth’s happiness, to feel Jake’s child inside her, with a feeling just as intense as that she had experienced when she had denied him. She could barely understand her own emotions. It was as though a stranger had suddenly appeared inside her skin, masquerading as her. She hadn’t wanted Jake’s child because she couldn’t bear to think of bringing a child into the world in which they lived—besides, there had been Jake’s arrogant assumption that he could impose his will on hers; that he could simply announce that they would have a child and that was it! He hadn’t so much as consulted her. Treating her like a child, refusing to listen to her views … calling her an idealistic adolescent.

‘UMM, YOU MISSED a treat,’ Meg told her when she got back. ‘Rita’s just left. She was full of the man who’s taken over from Henry Cousins at the station. You should have seen her, she was practically drooling over him! According to her he’s superman and Apollo all rolled into one, and very, very macho with it.’

‘They should make a good pair, then,’ Kate said snappily. She didn’t care very much for Rita Sutcliffe, the daughter of Woolerton’s wealthiest man. She was reed-slim, blonde, with the instincts of a tigress defending her kill when it came to men, and Kate and Rita had never got on together. Rita had openly taunted Kate for her views about the station. As far as Rita was concerned, it was a new source of men, and since Rita much preferred being a large fish in the very small pool of Ebbdale to living as a very small fish indeed in London, new men were always of interest to her. She was a sensual egotist who made no secret of her enjoyment of the same sort of hedonistic life so much enjoyed by Lyla, and Kate knew that secretly Rita despised her just as much as she disliked the other woman.

‘I’m sure they will if Rita has anything to do with it. You didn’t tell me that Kevin is planning to throw a “welcome to Woolerton” dinner party for him? Rita was most put out to learn that Kevin has asked you to act as his hostess for it.’

‘Primarily because he wants me to do the cooking,’ Kate assured her dryly.

‘Umm. Our dear Rita might be a Cordon Bleu between the sheets, but in the kitchen she’s a real no-hoper!’ They both laughed. ‘By the way,’ Meg added, ‘Rita bought one of the new sweaters. You might not like her,’ she added to Kate, ‘but she’s good for business. We got at least half a dozen sales from the last one she bought. Her father has influential friends all over the Dales, and Rita gets around.’

‘In every sense of the expression,’ Kate agreed sardonically. She would have to ring Kevin to find out exactly what arrangements he was making for this dinner party. She grimaced. Rita couldn’t have been too pleased to discover that Kevin had asked her to be his hostess. Until her arrival Rita had looked upon Kevin as very much a member of her court, and she hadn’t appreciated his defection. Not that she needed to worry. Kevin did nothing for her except as a friend. Jake had called her a delightful little sensualist, but that part of her nature seemed to have died with her love for him, and certainly she doubted that any man would see anything sensual about her now, she reflected, studying her reflection subjectively in the mirror which hung in the shop. Small, barely five foot four, her jeans clinging to hips that were almost boyishly slim, accentuating the fullness of breasts Kate had always privately thought too full. Her face, free of make-up, was almost triangular in shape, her eyes large and slightly almond-shaped, a dark, dense sapphire colour, oddly exotic in the creamy pallor of her skin. With her chestnut hair tumbling down round her shoulders she looked closer to eighteen than the twenty-four she would be next month, and Lyla would have a fit if she could see the way she was dressed. Her aunt had always insisted on her wearing sophisticated and expensive clothes. That was one thing she could say about Lyla, she had never stinted when it came to money. Why, the wedding dress she had bought her …

Kate heaved a sigh. She was dwelling far too much on the past. It wasn’t good for her, especially when she had vowed to put it all behind her. But Jake had been furious about that dress she couldn’t help remembering, saying it was far too sophisticated for her, and demanding to know why pale peach when she had every right to wear white? She could remember how worried she had been, worried about offending Lyla and worried because Jake was so annoyed. She had told him she was still a virgin the day he proposed to her, or rather he had proposed after she had told him. And that in itself ought to have been a warning, only she had been too bemused to see it. According to his views he had probably been doing the honourable thing, marrying her instead of merely making love to her, but in the long run it would have been kinder simply to have taken her innocence, initiated her into womanhood and then gone … kinder and far less painful than a marriage built on desire on one partner’s side and infatuation on the other. Even while adoring him she had resented him, Kate reflected, savouring the knowledge, knowing she had never realised it before. She had resented him for inhabiting a world which was still barred to her, for being adult and experienced, for controlling her as though she were a wooden puppet on a string, for eliciting responses from her body she hadn’t known they could feel … the list was endless.

‘Kate, phone,’ Meg called. ‘It’s Kevin. He wants to talk to you.’

‘It’s all fixed, Kate,’ Kevin told her. ‘Next Wednesday, if that’s okay with you. I spoke to Harvey myself. He seems quite a pleasant sort, but extremely decisive … Kate? Are you still there?’

Part of her was, Kate thought numbly, the rest was still trying to come to terms with what Kevin had just said. ‘Did he … do you know his first name?’ she croaked.

‘His first name?’ Kevin sounded puzzled. ‘Oh yes, let me see. It’s Jay … or …’

‘Jake,’ Kate supplemented, having known the answer long before Kevin gave it. It was too much of a coincidence to expect another man in Jake’s field to share his surname.

‘Yes, that’s right … heard of him, have you?’ Kevin chuckled. ‘I’ve warned him about you. Our anti-nuclear firebrand!’ Her palm was moist where it came into contact with the phone. ‘By name?’ she managed through a dry aching throat, ‘or merely by reputation?’

‘Oh, by name,’ Kevin told her. ‘He wanted to know who his fellow guests were to be.’

‘Yes, he would, and that meant that she could hardly back out now. How he would gloat if she did, knowing that she had preferred flight to fight. Dear God, Jake here! How could it have happened? How could the fates have chosen with such fine irony, destroying the fragile shell she had built for herself? Was Jake planning to turn Ebbdale into a missile storehouse? Her lip curled bitterly. This time she wouldn’t let him toss aside her arguments and destroy all her objections. This time she would show him … And she would start by hostessing Kevin’s dinner. She would show Jake that he couldn’t exert any power over her any longer. She was free and she was adult. Ex-husbands and wives met on countless of thousands of occasions these days; there was nothing of any note in it.

It was only as she replaced the receiver that the final irony struck her. Rita’s fabulous new man was her husband. So why did she feel more like howling than laughing? And Jake, what was he feeling right now? Nothing, she assured herself tartly, she knew enough to know that in fact he was probably deriving sadistic amusement from the potential of the situation. He must have known she was up here. Lyla would have told him, just as she had kept her informed of his movements. Poor Lyla, for all the fact that she had been married so often herself she had never ceased to try and get them back together, but she had ignored all her well-meaning hints, and presumably Jake had done the same. The last she had heard about him was that he was working in the States, and she had half expected that he would make his life out there. Perhaps he had found the powerful pressure of the American lobbying groups too much for him, she thought grimly, wondering as she did so if she wasn’t being a little too sanguine. Nothing would be too much for Jake; he was tough and he was enduring, and he would relish the conflict.

Just for a moment she contemplated flight, but the moment was quickly gone. She had built a life here, she would still be here when Jake had gone on to the next prestige appointment. She would not be panicked into flight. Woolerton was now her home, she was accepted, she had friends; tolerant, kind friends who even when they didn’t share her views permitted her to express them, and listened politely, friends who didn’t dismiss her as a fractious child, and she wasn’t giving them up because of Jake!