So she thought his children were lucky to have him as a father? He doubted whether Sally would agree.
As they reached the front gate to her house Philippa stopped. Joel gave a small start of surprise. He hadn’t realised they were there. They only seemed to have been walking for a few seconds.
He didn’t want to end their conversation, to let her go, he recognised; there was something about her that had a soothing, warming effect upon him, that somehow made him feel good about himself. He couldn’t explain exactly what it was, he only knew that during those few seconds while he had held her and felt her body tremble slightly against his he had been intensely aware of her vulnerability.
‘It was kind of you to walk me home,’ Philippa told him now.
‘I enjoyed it,’ Joel told her truthfully. ‘It was… good to have someone to talk to.’
‘Yes,’ Philippa agreed, acknowledging all that he had left unspoken.
‘I could come round tomorrow and take a look at your car for you if you like,’ Joel offered.
Philippa felt her heart give a small betraying flurry of half-beats.
‘Oh, I couldn’t put you to so much trouble,’ she protested.
‘It’s no trouble,’ Joel assured her. ‘It will give me something to do…’
‘Well, if you’re sure you don’t mind…’
She shouldn’t be doing this, Philippa acknowledged on a small burst of panic.
‘I… I can’t afford to pay you,’ she told him awkwardly. ‘I’ll…’
‘There’s no need… As I said, it will give me something to do. Come on,’ he added, glancing up the drive. ‘I’d better see you inside…’
She ought to have invited him in for a cup of coffee, Philippa acknowledged guiltily when Joel had gone, but she had already nearly consumed her small stock of coffee this morning with Susie’s visit, and according to the Social Services, unless she had misunderstood the woman, it might be some time before she actually received any money.
It hadn’t helped discovering that, while the owner of the second-hand shop was more than delighted to sell her clothes, she wouldn’t actually receive any money for them until a customer came into the shop and bought them.
‘I work on a flat commission basis,’ the woman had told Philippa briskly, ‘and I’ll account to you at the end of every month.’
So much for hoping that she could use the money for the boys’ school trip… which meant that she now had no option other than to go to her parents… It made no difference knowing that her father could easily afford the relatively modest amount involved; she was a grown woman of thirty-four and, even if her relationship with her parents had been a good one built on mutual love, she still wouldn’t have wanted to approach them for money. She was not, despite what others seemed to think, a woman who enjoyed being financially dependent on others; she never had been. Even as a teenager, she would have preferred to be allowed to earn her own pocket money, but there had been no question of her father allowing her to do that.
She remembered how scathing Blake had been about her financial dependence on her parents.
‘Can’t you see what you’re doing? They’re buying you, Philippa, and you’re letting them. If you really wanted to go to university, to be independent, you’d find a way of financing yourself.’
‘How?’ she had demanded tearfully.
She had loved him so much… worshipped him in dumb, heart-aching silence. He had filled all her teenage dreams with fantasies of how it would feel to have Blake’s mouth touching hers, kissing her the way she had seen lovers kissing in films, open mouth pressed to open mouth in hungry, fierce need. Her body had grown hot and achy just thinking about how it would feel to have Blake kiss her like that.
In the privacy of her bedroom she had studied her naked body, shivering as she’d watched her nipples grow into hard, urgent points when she’d imagined Blake touching her, but a fantasy was all it had been, and after that final quarrel between them, when he had made it clear to her what he thought of her, she had been almost feverishly grateful that they had not been lovers, that she had been spared the final humiliation of being used sexually by him in the way that she herself had pitifully and stupidly invited.
But she had no illusions left. That restraint had been for his sake and not for hers.
The pain of loving him and of forcing herself to destroy that love had left her very weak, with no energy to spare for any further battles with her father.
Andrew’s intense and determined courtship of her had been a panacea, a means of distracting herself from a pain she could neither suppress nor deny. Her father had approved of him, and at least marriage to Andrew would be some form of escape.
Only by convincing herself that she had found someone else to love would she be able to banish the humiliation of Blake’s rejection of her, by convincing herself that she was worthy of being loved.
Sometimes, just occasionally, when she was feeling particularly reckless, she allowed herself to wonder what her life might have been like if she had not visited Blake that evening.
* * *
All through the winter and then the spring she had been looking forward to the summer holidays, to what she feared would be Blake’s last visit to her home, since Michael would soon have completed his course. She was eighteen now, not a child any longer but a woman, a woman who was determined to put to the test what all her feminine senses were telling her. It wasn’t enough any more to watch Blake smile, to listen to him talk and to dream her dreams of him alone in bed at night. The kisses she wanted from him now were no longer merely the fantasy ones she conjured up for herself.