A Spanish Marriage

Zoe had to be glad that Boysie wasn’t pining for her. That was the sensible and adult way of looking at the situation. But right now she felt as she had done when she’d first gone to live with her grandmother. As if she was of no importance to anyone, as if the loss she’d suffered was too great to be borne.

‘I think I’ll turn in now, it’s been a long day.’ A truly dreadful day. A stab at a yawn to indicate tiredness before she said her goodnights. She knew she wouldn’t sleep a wink.

Seeking her old room, she collected a glass of Javier’s whisky on the way in the hope that it would knock her out, stop her thinking.

It didn’t. Tormented emotions kept her staring into the darkness. She’d had a few easily dismissed suspicions in the past, but why hadn’t she guessed that the mistress who had lasted far longer than most in his bachelor life was still firmly in it?

She must have been laughably naive to believe for one moment that a man so highly sexed and sophisticated would have been content to remain celibate during the first barren year of their marriage.

Instead of her silly schoolgirlish fantasies of teaching him to fall head over heels in love with her, she should have faced the uncomfortable fact that Javier would want a real woman—a woman with Glenda’s obvious sexual experience, sultry mouth and voluptuous body—not a green and gangly girl, which she was sure was the way he continued to see her.

In the small hours it came to her that even the last, incredibly slender hope that—overlooking the plain fact that Glenda had been installed in the London apartment—for some warped reason of her own the other woman had been lying through her teeth, was dead in the water.

He’d been expected back from Milan this evening. Hours ago. Glenda had, as he’d instructed, been eagerly waiting for him.

Cat got the cream.

Would the other woman have broken the news that his wife had walked in and discovered her? Of course she would, if only to have warned him.

If Javier had been innocent and he’d arranged for Glenda to meet him at the apartment for some reason or other he would have completed his business with her, got rid of her and phoned her, Zoe, to let her know he was back at the apartment.

Ditching that unlikely scenario, she impressed the other on her overtired mind. Javier guilty, guilty as hell. The luscious Glenda greeting her lover with the news that their ongoing affair had been uncovered. His child bride taking off at speed.

If he’d had any respect for her at all, cared a toss for her well-being, he would have done everything he could to contact her. Not to beg her to go back to him—even he with his massive ego would see that that was impossible—but to make sure she was all right.

In the darkness she dragged the magnificent diamond ring off her finger and hurled it with force into a corner. A bauble to keep her sweet. As Glenda had maliciously pointed out, he’d turn on the charm to keep her unsuspecting and doting.

And he hadn’t attempted to touch her, much less make love to her until that night when she’d told him she’d had enough, that as far as she was concerned their paper marriage was over, she reminded herself furiously. He’d seen his callous plan to keep his father’s one-time partner’s fortune wedded to his own fly out of the window. So he’d gritted his teeth, done his duty.

Her wide gold wedding band followed the diamond.

Ethel watched Zoe’s descent of the main staircase with anxious eyes. She looked different. Older and harder. Her long blonde hair was piled in an elegant knot on top of her head, her slim body clad in deep turquoise silk that positively shrieked designer chic.

As usual since she’d arrived here out of the blue, alone, her ring finger was bare. Something was wrong with that marriage, very wrong. The past three days she’d been as jumpy as a kitten on a bed of hot coals, leaping out of her skin every time the phone rang, never leaving the grounds, pacing, always pacing, her straining eyes turned in the direction of the long drive.

This evening there was a marked difference. A difference that left Ethel feeling even more anxious.

‘Don’t wait up, Ethel,’ Zoe said as soon as her high-heeled mules hit the floor of the hall. ‘I’ll take the main door key so ask Joe not to bolt it when he locks up for the night.’

Ethel was well aware that Javier’s name hadn’t crossed his wife’s lips since she’d arrived late on Monday evening. Nevertheless, in case her employer did phone and ask to speak to his wife, she felt it incumbent to ask, ‘Where are you going?’

For long moments Ethel didn’t think she was going to get an answer. Zoe turned slowly on her heel, her suddenly and newly imperious eyes conveying the message that a child she was not, and would not be treated like one. Her titular status as mistress of the house had never been more strikingly in evidence.

‘To look in on Jenny and Guy’s housewarming party. The invitation was in the post waiting for my attention.’ A tiny pause when something of the old impetuous, heartbreakingly needy Zoe looked out from those clear golden eyes, then a frigidly cool, ‘Good night, Ethel.’

The early evening sun warmed Zoe’s skin but didn’t reach the cold spot inside her as she stood on the drive, stowing the main door key in her purse and searching for her car keys.

It was over. Three whole days of waiting for Javier to try to track her down if only to discuss the ending of their marriage, never mind one human being’s natural concern for another.

He didn’t give a damn!

Three endless days and nights of wanting to see him face to face one last time, for the release of telling him exactly what she thought of him, calling him all the bad names she could think of, getting the pain and the poison out of her system.

It wasn’t going to happen.

So she had taken a long, hard look at the pathetic creature she had become and taken the decision to put it all behind her. Get on with her life. Forget he’d ever been in it.

As she drove to Jenny’s brand-new home, part of an exclusive development on the outskirts of the village, she mentally ticked off her plans for the future.