Читать книгу Research Into Marriage - Пенни Джордан, Penny Jordan - Страница 6

JESSICA GRIMACED with exasperation as her phone rang, disturbing her train of thought. This was the fifth time it had rung this morning. How on earth was she going to get even the research done for this new book, with all these interruptions?

As she reached for the receiver she remembered that her sister had told her she ought to employ a secretary: with two definitive books in her particular field published already she was regularly in demand to speak at seminars and universities. Initially she had quite enjoyed these opportunities to lecture on her work, but now she was finding she was having to cut down on these activities. There was only three months to go before the draft of her third book was due at her publishers and as yet she was only half way there.

Rather abruptly she spoke into the receiver, her frown deepening as she heard her sister’s anxious voice on the other end of the line.

‘Jess … please … you’ve got to help me … I just can’t cope any longer. David’s behaving so oddly. I’m sure there’s someone else …. He’s so … so indifferent towards me …’

The mixture of pity and irritation churning inside her was not an unfamiliar one. Jessica had never wanted her elder sister to marry David Chalmers; right from the start she had recognised him as a weak, vain man who would soon grow tired of her sister’s open adoration and start to stray.

But what she had not bargained for, was that David would want to stray in her direction! Listening to her sister’s outpourings with one ear, she started to doodle absently on the pad in front of her, her frown deepening when she realised that what she had drawn was a caricature of her brother-in-law’s boyishly handsome features. Angrily she stroked through the sketch. The desire that David insisted he had for her was not something she returned. On the contrary she loathed the man; found him vain and shallow to the point where her irritation often threatened to boil over, but so far she had always managed to keep her temper under control, more for her sister’s sake than her own. Andrea had fallen head over ears in love with David during her university days when she had been one of his students. Delicate, blonde and rather fragile as Andrea had been in those days it was easy for Jessica to see why her sister had appealed to David, especially when one took into account the rather substantial amount of money both she and Andrea had inherited from their father on his death. Oh yes, David had always had a healthy respect for money and for all the comfort it could provide.

It was Andrea who had bought the large five-bedroomed house they lived in, on the better side of town; and it was Andrea’s investments that provided the money for the new BMW every two years, and private school for their son William. But the most damnable thing of all, at least as far as Jessica was concerned, was that when it came to revealing to her sister her husband’s inadequacies, her hands were tied.

From the moment her first book had started to be acclaimed a success David had been a nuisance. At first she had found his over-attentiveness in public, his constant claims to being what he termed ‘her only real male relative’, and his equally unacceptable physical overtures towards her whenever they met, more of an irritation than a threat.

She had presumed that Andrea, having gone ahead and married the man, was well aware of her husband’s weaknesses; and where better for a man with David’s taste for a succession of adoring, nubile young women in his life to be employed than at a university as a lecturer?

But as Jessica had discovered over Christmas, her sister seemed to have a facility for blinding herself to her husband’s true nature.

When she had come upon Jessica struggling in David’s arms, in the study, where she had gone to borrow some books, Andrea had immediately leapt to the conclusion that Jessica had been the one doing the inviting. For weeks afterwards there had been a coolness between the sisters, which Jessica suspected had affected her more than it did Andrea. Although Andrea was the elder, in many ways it had always been she, Jessica, who had been the stronger of the pair for all the three years’ difference in their ages.

It had been Andrea who almost collapsed following the death of their father from a heart-attack, her grief driving her to the edge of a nervous breakdown, even though neither of them had seen him since his divorce from their mother ten years previously.

Jessica had been stunned to discover that they had been included in their father’s will along with the two children from his second marriage. Following the break-up of their parents’ marriage her father had emigrated to Australia, where he had done very well for himself financially.

Jessica had gone to his funeral: Andrea had not been well enough to make the flight, but Jessica had felt totally out of place there; a stranger who had no right to be amongst the grieving family of a man whom she barely knew.

It had been following her father’s death, as a catharsis for the guilt she had unexpectedly felt, that she had written her first book; basing it on research which she had spent almost two years gathering. The book dealt with the problems arising from the break-up of family units and its effect on the members of those families and its publication so soon after she had obtained her degree in psychology had caused quite a stir.

She had followed it up eighteen months ago with a more detailed study on the long-lasting effects of childhood events, including parental divorce, on children, and that book too had been received very well. She had, or so her publisher claimed, a facility for explaining the most obscure technical data in a way that made for easy reading and absorption.

However, as Jessica had discovered, success brought its own problems, and in her case the most unpleasant of these was the decidedly unpleasant knowledge that her brother-in-law appeared to have switched what shallow affections he had from her sister to herself.

Had Andrea been a stronger character Jessica could simply have told her how unwelcome her husband’s advances were, but then had she been a stronger character, she would have never married a man like David in the first place.

Physically as well as emotionally Jessica found that he repelled her. It had come to the point now where if he so much as touched her she could feel her body stiffening, his effect on her much the same as that on a cat whose coat has been stroked the wrong way. If it hadn’t been for Andrea she would have had no compunction in telling him exactly what she thought of him, but that was not possible.

Her sister, now in her third month of a very precarious pregnancy, had developed a paranoid fear of losing her husband, which seemed to focus on what she believed to be Jessica’s desire for him, and David, recognising the weapon his wife had put into his hand, was taking every opportunity of using it.

It was useless for Jessica to tell her sister that she had no emotional interest in David. Andrea would not be convinced. Jessica suspected that Andrea did not want to be convinced, because privately she was well aware that David was unfaithful to her, and for some reason she preferred to believe that this unfaithfulness involved her own sister rather than someone else—a stranger whom she could not manipulate by using the emotional tie between them.

‘Jessica … promise me you won’t see him again … I know you saw him last night … he was out until gone two … I rang you … you were out too … Please don’t insult me by lying about it … I know how you feel about him.’

Holding on to her self-control Jessica muttered beneath her breath, ‘I wish to God you did.’ Her fingers gripping the phone were damp and she could feel the tension spiralling up inside her. She knew quite well that Andrea needed medical attention, but David, because it suited him to pretend otherwise, refused to consult their doctor about her deteriorating mental condition.

Only last week when Jessica had pointed out to him how debilitating and dangerous her sister’s neuroses were becoming, especially in her pregnant condition, David had merely shrugged his shoulders and suggested slyly, ‘Well, since she already thinks we’re having an affair, why don’t we?’

His vanity and cruelty both sickened Jessica; sometimes she felt as though she were caught in a miasma of deceit from which there was no escape. She personally loathed lies and deception. It had shaken her world to its foundations when their parents split up, even though her mother had explained carefully to her at the time that it was a mutual decision.

Certainly as far as divorces go it had been reasonably amicable. Her mother had re-married nine years ago when Jessica started university and now lived in Canada with her new husband, who had offered both Andrea and herself a home. Guy was a nice enough man; he adored her mother but, as Jessica had learned from her own research, what a child wanted, no matter what the impracticalities and impossibilities as far as the adults were concerned, were for its two parents to be together, and since all adults carry within them the ghost of the child they had been, the feeling of desertion and betrayal that comes from being a child of a broken marriage never completely fades. It can be rationalised away, analysed and accepted, but something of it is always there.

She had no delusions about herself, or others; David wanted her now because she had something Andrea did not have—academic success. It would suit David very nicely to be the husband of a successful woman, but not for long. A man of David’s low emotional stature would very soon find those small cruel ways of undermining such a wife; those tiny, unkind gibes in public that she had so often heard exchanged by other couples. But there was no question and never had been of her marrying David, or anyone, come to think of it, she thought wryly. Her life had been so busy that there had never been any time for her to form a lasting relationship, and for her, marriage was something that had to be based on more than mere physical lust. Love, or what commonly passed for it, was no basis for security; better to marry for political, financial and practical reasons; to make a contract with another person and stick to it than to risk so much on the mere irrational whim of one’s hormones!

And that was to be the basis of her next book. At the moment she was deeply engrossed in her work on this book and what she had researched so far confirmed her views that so called ‘arranged’ marriages, provided they were motivated purely by a parental desire to achieve the best possible chance of happiness and contentment for a child, had more chance of succeeding than any others.

It was to be a radical and challenging book when it was finished, and Jessica had no doubt that she would receive an awful lot of flak about it, but she was sincerely convinced that she was right in her views.

In a surprising number of cases though, she had discovered that love had grown from these ‘arranged’ marriages, and although she was rather loath to admit it, that rather upset her theory that ‘love’ was not a necessary ingredient for success.

‘Jessica, are you listening to me?’

Andrea’s voice was high-pitched with hysteria. ‘Promise me that you’ll give David up, that you won’t see him again.’

This was getting ridiculous. She fought down an urge to tell her sister not to be so stupid, and instead said patiently, ‘Andrea, David means nothing to me.’

‘You’re lying. I know he’s seeing someone and if it isn’t you then …’

The high-pitched voice was suddenly silent, tension humming along the wire as though her sister had suddenly discovered a chasm had opened at her feet. As indeed she probably had, Jessica thought tiredly. Poor Andrea. If she was to accept that her sister was not having an affair with her husband then that meant she must accept that he was in all probability having one with someone else, someone she could not control so easily. And it wouldn’t be his first affair, Jessica thought angrily.

‘Andrea, try to calm down,’ she said quietly. ‘Think of the baby.’

It was obviously the wrong thing to say as it provoked a storm of weeping and hysterical demands that ‘no, you think of it, think of it when you’re making love to my husband,’ and then before Jessica could retort the phone was slammed down.

Jessica knew what that meant. Tiredly she stood up, flexing her muscles, where they were strained from tension. A tall woman, with long legs and full breasts above a very narrow waist, she had a shape which she remembered from her teens as being distinctly out of fashion. That view had stuck, and now she tended to wear clothes that concealed rather than revealed her almost lush femininity.

Her hair was thick, with a natural curl to it, a deep shade of copper; her skin almost translucently pale, except in summer when it freckled. Her eyes were a curious shade somewhere between green and gold, and depending on her mood could look either colour.

Up until the success of her first book she had disdained make-up, but several appearances on television without it had convinced her of the necessity of adding at least some colour to her pale skin, and thanks to the make-up departments of the various television studios she had visited she was now able to apply it with a fair degree of skill.

She would have been openly astonished if anyone had referred to her as looking sexy; as a teenager she had been so conscious of the differences between herself and all the other girls she knew, who all seemed to have fragile, slender bodies, with thirty-two inch chests that she had firmly imprinted on her mind as the type of women preferred, these almost androgynous females.

David’s desire for her she put down quite simply to money, and the fact that she was indifferent to him.

She was wearing her normal working clothes which consisted of a track-suit and a pair of ancient trainers. Most mornings she liked to go for a run or a long walk before she started work, it helped to get her mind in gear and made up for all the long hours she spent shut up in her study. When she moved it was with a loose strong gait that, had she but known it, drew every male eye she passed in a mixture of fascination and frank awe.

Now she would have to go round and see her sister. Despite her present exasperation with her, she was truly fond of Andrea, and if privately she thought that her sister would be far better off without David, she was wise enough not to voice these thoughts.

It only took fifteen minutes to drive from her flat, one of half a dozen in a large Victorian mansion with its own grounds, to her sister’s house.

She found Andrea in the kitchen, her face swollen with pregnancy and tears, and genuine fear for her sister’s health drew Jessica’s eyebrows together in a frown.

Andrea had been warned by her doctor that if she wanted to carry her baby to full term she must rest and relax as much as possible, but that was proving almost impossible, what with Andrea’s ridiculous suspicions about David and herself, and her sister’s highly strung nature.

As she walked into the kitchen Jessica noticed that the date was ringed round on the kitchen calendar as being one on which Andrea should have attended her ante-natal classes, but when she questioned her about it, Andrea shook her head and said bitterly, ‘How can I concentrate on anything like that when my own sister’s having an affair with my husband?’

Holding her breath and slowly counting to ten Jessica sat down and said gently, ‘Andrea, I promise you I am not having an affair with David.’

‘But he wants you,’ Andrea interrupted shrewdly.

It was not something she could deny. She had never been a good liar and she doubted that she could start now.

‘He does want you, doesn’t he?’ Andrea demanded, her face flushing alarmingly as she picked up on her sister’s inability to deny the charge. She was trembling visibly, her body far too thin and frail. ‘Why don’t you find a man of your own?’ Andrea demanded hysterically. ‘Why must you take what’s mine? If you want a husband …’

Unable to bear the torment in her sister’s face Jessica turned away, her attention momentarily caught by the newspaper on the table. It was open at the personal columns and absently she noted all the ads for potential mates both of a temporary and a permanent nature. Apparently it was quite commonplace these days to advertise in this way, proof, if she had needed it, that more and more people were beginning to realise that it was possible to have a marriage based on something other than mere physical attraction. Her mind once more on her work, it was several seconds before she realised her sister was speaking.

‘Jess, please, please give him back to me.’

Andrea was crying now, ugly, gulping sobs that shook her thin body. Jessica could feel the exhaustion of trying to cope with her sister’s disturbed mental state creeping over her. It would kill Andrea if she lost this child; she had already had two miscarriages in the years since William’s birth, but another miscarriage was exactly what she would bring on if she continued to torment herself in this fashion. But what could she do to convince Andrea that there was nothing going on between David and herself?

She hadn’t realised she had spoken her last thoughts out loud until she heard Andrea saying thickly, ‘Find a husband of your own, marry someone, Jess, and then I’ll believe you.’

On the point of retorting that Andrea was being ridiculous, her eye was unwillingly drawn to the newspaper again. Who replied to these personal ads? How many of those replies were genuine ones and how many were not? Why did they reply? Perhaps for the sake of her research this was an avenue she ought to pursue?

Even as the denial formed in her mind Jessica found she was asking herself just how much she cared about her sister’s welfare and health. Marriage these days did not necessarily involve a lifelong commitment, it could be a business arrangement—sometimes for illegal purposes such as when someone wanted to become a British citizen, or perhaps even when a husband or wife was needed for some other reason—as in her case. It might even be a way of discovering at first hand how viable her theories on arranged marriages were.

Suddenly a tiny thrill of excitement pierced her. She of course did not intend to fall in love—but if she could prove to herself that such a marriage would work, what a wonderful way of confounding her literary attackers! Dare she? Or was she being totally ridiculous?

It took her an hour to calm Andrea down to the point where she could safely leave her, but even once she was back at her desk, Jessica found it impossible to concentrate on her work. The ridiculous idea which had taken root in Andrea’s kitchen refused to be dislodged. When she thought about it logically there were several advantages at present to her having a husband; most importantly it would force Andrea to accept that there was nothing between David and herself, and it would also make David realise the pointlessness of pursuing her any longer; and not just David, but also those other men who had shown an interest in her since she had become something of a public figure.

Of course she would have to make sure that legally and financially she held the upper hand, but pre-marriage contracts were not entirely unheard of these days. She frowned, startled by how much thought she was giving to what was surely a ridiculous idea.

By early evening she had completely dismissed the thought from her mind and was busily studying the notes she had made the previous summer, so that when the doorbell rang it was several seconds before the sound penetrated her consciousness.

When it eventually did she was annoyed by the interruption. But her visitor, whoever it was, seemed determined not to go away. When she opened the door and saw her brother-in-law standing outside, his fair skin flushed by alcohol, his blue eyes faintly glazed, her own narrowed in biting contempt.

‘Whatever it is you want, David, I don’t want to know,’ she told him curtly. ‘Go home to your wife.’

He grinned at her, the inane, self-satisfied smirk of a man whose conceit overshadowed everything else.

‘Oh, come on Jess.’ He was slurring his words, his voice overloud in the enclosed hallway, and she glanced anxiously at the other doors, hoping that none of her fellow tenants would emerge and see David standing there. But she was also reluctant to invite him in, knowing it would take her ages to get rid of him.

‘You know you want me,’ he told her thickly. ‘Stop fighting it. It could be so good for us, babe.’

His arrogant egotism coming on top of her own tension snapped the frail cord on her temper, and before she could stop herself she heard herself saying furiously, ‘You’re quite wrong, David. Far from wanting you I loathe you, a fact that even you will have to accept now that I’m getting married.’

‘Married!’ It socked him into momentary sobriety. ‘You’re lying, Jess.’ He said it harshly, coming towards her as though he meant to take her in his arms. ‘You’re not the marrying type. You never have been. You’re too bloody independent for marriage. You’re incapable of wanting a man—any man—to the extent that you’d marry him,’ he went on, betraying the fact that he was quite well aware of how little she cared for him. ‘The only thing that matters to you is your work, your research …’ He paused and then stared at her, his eyes glittering with spite. ‘I get it,’ he said quietly. ‘That’s what it is, isn’t it, Jess? This marriage of yours is just an experiment. A way of testing out the theories behind your new book.’

It had been impossible to hide from David what the subject of her new work was to be, and now temper ignited inside her that he should have so completely read her mind, but she toyed with the idea of denying it and telling him that the only reason she was contemplating such a course was quite simply to save her sister’s health, when it struck her that it would be far wiser to let him believe what he had just said. Apart from anything else it would be a mammoth blow to his pride to know that she would marry a stranger rather than submit to him, and so with a smile that was entirely false she said sweetly, ‘Yes, that’s quite right, David,’ and then with a slam she shut the door in his face and locked it.

Now that she was committed, incredibly she was very calm. Before she went to bed she drafted out her advertisement, keeping it as brief and general as possible, quoting merely her age and sex. It was the most quixotic thing she had ever done in her whole life, and amazingly she felt neither anxiety nor guilt at the thought of it.

THE LIFE OF A COUNTRY GP, when he was the sole doctor for a radius of twenty miles with only the back-up service of an understaffed cottage hospital behind him, was certainly no sinecure, Lyle Garnett decided tiredly as he folded his long frame into his shabby estate car.

When he had voluntarily given up the brilliant career specialising in micro neuro-surgery that had been forecast for him his friends had thought he was mad, and privately he tended to agree with them, but the involvement and commitment needed to succeed in that sort of field were not something he could give and bring up two children as well, especially not two boys as rebellious and difficult as Stuart and James.

It was because of his career that he had seen so little of them during their early years. Even before their divorce he and Heather had been living in semi-estrangement; he devoting long hours to the advancement of his career, and Heather constantly complaining about the two small children which had made the continuation of hers impossible.

The fact was that they should never have married. Heather hadn’t wanted to. When she discovered that their affair had led to a pregnancy she had wanted to go for an abortion, but he had been young and idealistic in those days and he had stubbornly held out for marriage. He had loved her then, or had thought he did, he acknowledged wryly, but what in effect he had loved had been a very young man’s dream of a woman, not the reality. He had wanted Heather to be the mother to his children that he himself had never known. His mother had been an actress, someone he saw very infrequently and whom he had yearned for desperately all his childhood. She had died when he was sixteen from a brain haemorrhage, and her death had sparked off his interest in medicine, filling in with a crusading and totally impractical dream of curing the world of all its ailments.

Time and reality had hardened that idealistic teenager into the man he was today, a world, and almost twenty years, away from that boy of sixteen. Now he recognised that for his own sake he should have allowed Heather to have her abortion. If he had maybe she would still be alive today … but that was an old guilt and one he had learned to live with in a way that he had never learned to live with his guilt towards his sons. He loved them but they were hostile towards him. They resented the fact that they had lost their mother and in her place gained a father who was virtually a stranger to them. He and Heather had divorced when James was two and Stuart four and Heather had died two years ago, running directly into the path of an oncoming car, having just had a row with him.

She had always had a terrible temper, something he had pushed to the back of his mind when as a young houseman of twenty-odd he fell in love with her, and when he had refused to take the children so that she could emigrate to America with her lover and take up the medical career she had been forced to abandon when she became pregnant, she had flown from his flat in such a fierce rage that she had never even seen the car.

She had been killed instantly, the driver distraught with shock; and in death she had achieved what she had not been able to achieve in life. He had had to take on the responsibility for his sons. Not that it had been a lack of love for them or reluctance to care for them that had prompted his refusal, merely the belief that their place was with their mother. But Heather had never wanted them. She had told him so often enough. And so he had had little alternative but to give up his career as a neuro-surgeon, and instead look around him for something less demanding and time-consuming that would mean he could take charge of his sons.

He had heard of this rural practice from a friend of a friend, and the local medical board had been astounded and delighted at the thought of getting such a highly qualified man for the job.

Within a month of Heather’s death he and the children were established in Sutton Parva, several miles west of Oxford, where his married sister and her family lived.

Justine had promised to do all she could to help him with the boys and had been as good as her word, but there were still problems. He frowned as he drove homewards. The boys were both rebellious and sullen; and being older than their cousin tended both to dominate and persecute him. Although he told himself that their bad behaviour sprang from insecurity and pain, there were times when he was so exasperated by them that he almost wanted to be able to resort to the old-fashioned parental hard hand in a place where it hurt the most. So far he had managed to restrain himself.

Added to all his other problems was the fact that as a widower and a doctor, not to mention what Justine called his ridiculously unfair share of good looks, he was constantly having to fend off the romantic and sexual overtures of some of his female patients.

It took him half an hour to drive home. The house he had bought from the previous doctor was large and rambling, with a garden that he made infrequent and haphazard attempts to tame.

Far from enjoying their country environment his sons never ceased bemoaning the lack of facilities. Raised as city children, even after eighteen months they were still not at home in the country. The new bikes he had bought them for Christmas were virtually unused, and obvious but nonetheless effective method of showing their dislike and resentment of him.

A large part of the problem was that Heather had never made any attempt to hide from the children how little either parent had genuinely wanted them, and they in turn were fiercely determined to show the rest of the world, especially their father and his family, how little they wanted him.

Even while he understood and sympathised with them, Lyle found they exasperated him.

He knew the moment he entered the kitchen that there had been another scene.

Justine, who like him had inherited the strong family profile and thick dark hair, was standing belligerently by the table, the silence thick and taut with angry resentment.

‘I’ve sent the boys upstairs,’ she told him without preamble. ‘I had to bring them back early. They tied Peter up in the garden and built a bonfire under him. They told me they were playing at Guy Fawkes.’ Her eyes darkened as she said unsteadily, ‘Dear God, Lyle, if I hadn’t caught them in time …’

She had no need to go on. He himself felt physically ill at the thought of what could have happened.

‘I can’t look after them for you any more, Lyle,’ she told him bluntly. ‘I know their problems aren’t necessarily their own fault, but I’ve tried everything, and nothing works. They need someone of their own.’

She watched sympathetically as her brother sat down; a big lean man, with a shock of thick dark hair, and eyes of a vividly intense blue, who at this moment in time looked older than his thirty-five years.

She loved him and she sympathised with him, but she could not risk the safety of her own dearly loved eight-year-old any longer with a pair of children whom she frankly considered to be beyond her ability to help.

‘God, Justine, what the hell am I going to do?’ He looked so tired and depressed that she was tempted to retract, but she hardened her heart against him.

‘Well, for one thing, this,’ she told him firmly, placing a folded newspaper down on the table in front of him. ‘Go on, read it,’ she demanded, waiting until he raised his eyes to hers in incredulous disbelief, finely mixed with anger.

‘You’re seriously suggesting what I think you’re suggesting, are you? That I reply to this ad from some crazy woman who wants a husband, sell myself?’

‘Why not? Other people do it all the time,’ she interrupted evenly. ‘Only they call it self-sacrifice. You’re a doctor, Lyle,’ she reminded him, hoping he wouldn’t guess how much she hated doing this to him. ‘But how long can you go on calling yourself that? How long will it be before all the problems you’ve got here occupy so much of your mind that you make a mistake? A mistake that could cost someone’s life?’

She was only echoing his own inner thoughts, but to do what she was suggesting! He put his hand to his forehead and found that he was sweating slightly.

‘I just can’t look after them any more,’ Justine pressed on. ‘I’ve got Peter to think of. They need someone of their own,’ she added more gently, ‘someone who can give them what you and I can’t.’

‘And you think this … this stranger, a woman who needs a man so desperately she’s forced to advertise for one, will do that?’ he demanded harshly, expelling the pent-up breath from his lungs so tensely that it hurt.

Justine lowered her eyelids so that he wouldn’t see the sympathy and pain in her eyes.

‘I know that after Heather you said you’d never marry again, Lyle, but the children need a mother, even if you don’t need a wife. Of course, you could always marry one of your patients. Sylvia Hastings, for example.’

She saw the grimace and understood why. Sylvia was a pretty divorcee with a tendency to develop minor ailments, and an avid look in her eyes whenever they rested on the doctor.

‘She’s not capable of looking after herself, never mind two kids.’

‘No, and she would demand something from you that you’re no longer capable of giving, wouldn’t she, Lyle?’

She said it quietly, hating herself for delivering the blow but knowing she had to. After Heather’s death, he had told her that his guilt had affected him so strongly that he felt completely unable to touch any other woman. Physically he was as capable of being aroused as the next man, but mentally there was something there, stronger than that physical need, which had destroyed his desire for sex.

‘A marriage with someone with whom you can make a proper business arrangement would solve all your problems,’ she told him quietly. ‘I’m not saying that you marry the woman in this particular advertisement. But its one way of looking for someone. And to help you make a start, I’ve replied to this on your behalf.’

For a moment she thought he might actually hit her, but then the angry colour died out of his face, leaving it white, a muscle beating sporadically against his jaw.

‘By God, Justine, you push your luck,’ he told her thickly. ‘I don’t want or need your interference in my life.’

Her own anger beat up inside her, reminders of how they had quarrelled as children filling her mind. He had been so stubborn, a trait both his sons had inherited.

‘Maybe not, but you do need my help, and it is my right to decide what form that help will take,’ she told him evenly, adding for good measure, ‘I’ve replied to the advertisement suggesting that the woman calls here to see you.’ She saw his look of incredulous fury and held up her hand. ‘I had to do it, Lyle. I know you, if I hadn’t you’d find a way of wriggling out of it. I’m not asking you to marry the woman, not at this stage. I’m simply telling you that your children need someone in their lives that they can trust and relate to, and it seems that neither you nor I can fulfil that role. They are your children, Lyle.’

‘Yes.’

He said it wryly, his voice heavy with acceptance, and Justine felt herself relax just a little. Knowing of his decision never to marry again she had realised what she had taken on in adopting such a high-handed course of action, but she was convinced that it was the only way to help Stuart and James. Lyle might not need or want a wife, but they both needed and wanted a mother. It was after all no worse than the arranged marriages organised by many Eastern parents for their children, and on balance these worked.

‘Good.’ She smiled briefly and glanced at her watch, squashing her guilt. ‘I’ll have to go. The boys had something to eat. I think it’s best from now on that they don’t come to me. It just isn’t working out, so instead I’ve arranged for my daily, Mrs Davies, to come here and look after them, but it can only be a temporary arrangement,’ she warned him.

Watching her drive off, Lyle stuck bunched hands into his trouser pockets. Damn her for her interference! He scowled blackly, unaware of how much he looked like his recalcitrant sons. What kind of woman would advertise for a husband, for God’s sake? But he supposed he would have to see her now, otherwise Justine would raise merry hell and he depended too much on his sister to risk antagonising her.

He turned away from the window and looked at the door. Now he would have to go upstairs and tackle the boys. Cravenly he found himself longing for a restorative whisky and soda before doing so, but he refused to give in to the urge.

Justine had been right about one thing. They were his children … his responsibility and one that he was not tackling very well at all. It was all very well to know in theory what to do, but in practice two sulky and silently condemning children seemed to be able to frazzle his nerves far faster than the most awkward patient

He found them in the room linking their bedrooms, which was designated as a study. Both of them were sitting down, so close together that their bodies were touching.

They looked more like him than Heather. They had his height and colouring, but their eyes were Heather’s, deeply hazel, and now both of them gazed accusingly but mutely at him.

He sat down, feeling ill at ease and ill equipped to deal with them. What on earth had possessed them to play that stupid and dangerous game with their cousin? They were not unintelligent kids, far from it.

He took a deep breath.

‘Okay … your Aunt Justine has told me all about this afternoon. What you were doing was very, very wrong, and very dangerous. Peter could have been seriously injured if you had set that bonfire alight, killed even.’

Two pairs of unblinking hazel eyes regarded him without expression. It was like talking to a brick wall. He knew that he was simply not getting through to them. Exasperated and exhausted, he pushed irate fingers through his hair. His hand itched to administer punishment of a more basic nature than a lecture, but Heather had been resolutely against any form of physical punishment and he had felt bound to abide by her wishes, even though he himself as a boy had felt his father’s hand against his backside on more than one occasion—events which he remembered without rancour when he recalled the misdeeds that had given rise to them.

‘Your Aunt Justine can’t look after you any more.’ He frowned, a solution presenting itself to him, and added slowly. ‘Perhaps I ought to send you both away to school.’

Briefly both sets of hazel eyes mirrored fear, and he had a momentary urge to reach out and enfold them reassuringly, but he knew that any attempt on his part to touch them would be fiercely repudiated. He had already talked over with Justine the wisdom of sending them away to school but she had been vehemently against it. ‘If you do they will grow up institutionalised, Lyle,’ she had told him. ‘They haven’t got enough self-confidence in themselves for that. They’d think of it as punishment.’ And now looking at them he could see that she was right.

‘Okay, no boarding school.’ He felt rather than saw them relax, and wished a little despairingly that they were not so close to the long school holiday. Previously they had stayed with Justine during the week, coming home to him at weekends, but today she had made it plain that that could not continue.

Justine had forced him into a corner with marriage as his only escape. But marriage was the last thing he wanted. His marriage to Heather had been a living hell, and he had loved her. But this marriage that Justine was promoting would not be like that, it would be a business arrangement, like employing a housekeeper or a nanny.

‘Why can’t the pair of you make more of an effort to get on with Peter?’ he demanded wearily as he got to his feet. ‘Your Aunt Justine loves you, but …’

‘No, she doesn’t.’ Stuart’s lip curled as he spoke. ‘She doesn’t love us at all,’ he continued, watching him. ‘She just puts up with us because you’re our father.’

There was enough truth in what he was saying for Lyle to be lost for a way to answer.

‘No one loves us,’ James piped up. ‘And we don’t love anyone, just each other.’

Slowly Lyle backed towards the door. Poor wretched little brats … But what on earth could he say to them? That he had loved the four and two-year-old sons he had been forced to leave when Heather wanted her divorce, but that the ten and twelve-year-olds they now were were strangers to him? Heather had demanded sole custody and had told him that she thought it would be better for the children if they didn’t see him, and his solicitor had advised him to accept her demands, so they had come to him virtually strangers.

Justine was right, he thought, opening the door abruptly. They did need someone of their own. She was also right about the pressure of his personal problems and the effect it was likely to have on his work, and as a doctor he could not afford to make mistakes.

What was she like, this woman who advertised so boldly for a husband, merely describing herself as twenty-six, single and self-supporting?

Well, thanks to Justine it looked as though he might soon find out.