The Ultimate Betrayal

She spent her days worrying about it, frightened because she knew that if anything was likely to send him back into Lydia’s arms, then it was surely her stupid if unintentional hot and cold tactics.

That Daniel saw this as the form her retribution was to take only made her feel worse, because retribution was the very last thing on her mind when he would reach for her in the night.

And knowing this only made her more tense, more aware of how her own self-respect suffered every time she let him try to love her, because she knew she should be scorning him even before it started. Yet she needed him, even while her ability to respond was sadly retarded, she needed what small amount of succour she could glean from his loving—and she needed to know that Daniel needed her.

CHAPTER FIVE

DANIEL’S mother began spending more time with her during the day. She never mentioned the Sunday Rachel had escaped, but it was always there in the careful guard she kept on her expression, in the stealthy way she trod around certain subjects.

Jenny Masterson was proud of her son. He had dragged himself up from lean beginnings, made a success of his career when all the advantages had been stacked against him. But she wasn’t blind to what temptation could be put in the way of a man of Daniel’s calibre. He was quick, shrewd, and clever. He was nearly thirtytwo years old and already a respected member of the business community. The whiz-kid who had to be watched.

Star quality, with the looks to go with the label.

Women had to be interested in him because those dark good looks and his ability to make money out of nothing made him interesting to them. And, although nothing had been said to her as to why her son’s marriage was suddenly very rocky, Jenny was no fool, and most probably had had a fairly accurate idea of the truth. So she spent more time with Rachel, offering moral support in her quiet solid way, and Rachel was grateful, for she had also come to the bleak realisation that Jenny was her only friend in this new alien world she was living in right now.

Which in turn made her feel restless, utterly dissatisfied with herself and the empty person she had allowed herself to become. Her home, which had once been her pride and joy, now became a place to see criticism in every corner. It was good enough for her, but not for Daniel. His advancement in life meant he deserved something grander—something which would reflect the successful man he had become. And she would flay herself by remembering all those times when he had tried to talk her into moving into something bigger, better, and, with this new way she had developed of looking at him, she began to understand why. No wonder he never brought any of his business colleagues home with him— he was most probably ashamed of the place!

Then, contrarily, she would be angry with him for not letting her into that other world he moved in. She might be guilty of being a silly blind fool who had barely changed in seven long years, but he had helped keep her that way by hiding her away like some guilty secret that did not fit his smart successful image!

Anger became resentment, and resentment a restlessness that made her quick-tempered and irritableunpredictable to the point where she knew those around her trod warily, yet she couldn’t seem to do anything about it.

What are you, Rachel? she asked herself one evening when—as had been perhaps inevitable after weeks of being home on the dot of six-thirty—Daniel was working late, and the restlessness grew worse because he wasn’t there and she wanted him to be—needed him to be to feel any kind of peace with herself.

You can’t blame Daniel for everything that has gone wrong, she told herself. You’ve been existing in oblivion. So wrapped up in your own cosy little world that you didn’t even bother

to wonder about the one he moves in beyond your sphere! You knew he went to business dinners a lot. You knew he had to move in certain circles if he was to keep his ear to the ground, but you never once wondered whether you should be moving there with him, listening with him—helping and supporting him!

You didn’t even know the Harvey take-over had been wrapped up until Mandy told you! And the only reason you knew there was a thing called a Harvey take-over was because Daniel’s mother had risen in his defence one night when you were bickering on about never seeing him. ‘He’s tied up with this Harvey take-over!’ she’d said. ‘Don’t you realise how important it is that he wins this one?’

No, she hadn’t, and no, she still didn’t, because she had never bothered trying to find out! What did that make her in this marriage between two people that was nothing more than a house and a bed and three children they shared?

‘I’m not even beautiful!’ she sighed into the mirror one morning. Not in the classical sense of the word anyway. My figure is OK, I suppose, when you take into account that I’ve had three children. And my legs aren’t that bad. But my face wouldn’t stop traffic. It isn’t the kind of face you would expect to see on the wife of a man like Daniel Masterson, is it? My eyes are too big, nose too small, mouth all cute and vulnerable-looking.

She scowled at her reflection in distaste.

And just look at my hair! she thought, lifting it up so that the long twisting strands fanned out on a crackle of golden static. I’ve been wearing my hair like this since I was Kate’s age!

‘Talk about Peter Pan!’ she muttered in disgust. ‘He has nothing on me!—even my choice of clothes is utterly juvenile!’

Then do something about it, an impatient-sounding voice inside her head challenged.

Why not? she mused, on a sudden new surge of restless defiance.

‘I tell you what, Mike,’ she turned to say to the baby playing happily on the bedroom carpet, ‘I’m going shopping for a whole new wardrobe of clothes! We’ll see if Grandma will come and look after you. And if she won’t, well—’ her full bottom lip took on a mulish pout, just as Kate’s did when set on some determined course ‘—we’ll just go and dump you on your papa for the day—and let him stew in that for a change!’

But Daniel’s mother was quite happy to mind the baby, which took the wind out of Rachel’s sails somewhat. She’d quite liked the idea of marching into Daniel’s ultramodern office building and dumping his youngest child into his stunned arms! Mind you, she pondered as the taxi took her to London, it was one thing imagining herself doing something like that, but it was quite another actually carrying it out.

Underneath the defiance the timid Rachel still huddled, happy being just what she was and wishing she could stay like that.

And was it so wrong to be completely lacking in any personal ambition except to want to be a good wife and mother? she then demanded angrily of herself. She’d always loved her job. Loved being there for her children, having time to listen to them, play with them, or simply just enjoy them!

And Daniel. Daniel might stride like a lion through the cut-throat jungle of big business, but she knew how the tension would drain from his face and body when he came home to his ordinary family with their ordinary problems, waiting for him to sort them out.

He might come in through their front door at night looking grim and remote—wearing the face of a ruthless hunter, she realised now with clearer insight into the man himself—but within half an hour he would be stretched out on the floor with the twins, playing some really ordinary board game, or sitting cross-legged between the two in front of the television set, his mental processes dropped right down to their level while they battled against each other at one of Sammy’s computer games— and there wouldn’t be a sign of grimness or tension in him, only that relaxed boyish grin that was so like his son’s, which said he had shrugged off the other world he moved in and sunk himself into the sheer relief from it all that his family offered him.

But now she wondered if that same process worked in reverse. She had never so much as considered it before but, when Daniel walked out of the house, did he shrug off the mantel of husband and father as easily? Was it a relief to get back into that other, more exciting world he moved in? Be the big man who wielded power over others and was treated as someone very special? And did the little woman and three small children at home fade into nothing once he was back in the sophisticated arena of sophisticated people with sophisticated intellects, who wore sophisticated clothes and could converse with him on his own sophisticated level?

Sophisticated, she repeated to herself for the umpteenth time. That was what Daniel had become—a matured and sophisticated man, while she had stagnated.