‘I’m not lying,’ Philippa protested.
‘Yes, you are,’ Blake insisted. ‘There’s only one person stopping you from going to university,’ he told her harshly, ‘and it isn’t your father. It’s you. You want it all, Philippa, don’t you? You aren’t prepared to make any effort, any sacrifice… no, others can do that for you while you sit there prettily and accept it as your due.
‘Well, shall I tell you something about that prettiness, Philippa—shall I? In reality it isn’t prettiness at all, it’s ugliness… ugliness, because without intelligence, without character, all it is is just a vapid, empty mask. That’s all you are, Philippa… just an empty, pretty mask, not a real woman at all. Yes, you’re pretty, Philippa, as pretty and prettily packaged as a little doll and just as insipid and lifeless.’ And Blake poured out more painful words in the same vein.
He released her then, pushing her away from him with such force that she almost fell.
The hall door was still open and, reacting instinctively, driven by her desire to escape both from him and from his humiliation of her, she took to her heels and fl
ed.
He ran after her, following her right out to the car, and she thought he might actually open the door and drag her out of it, but to her relief there was a policeman walking down the road towards them and, taking advantage of his presence, she turned the key in the ignition and drove off.
The pain of Blake’s rejection of her, of knowing how he felt about her, was so intense that there were times in the following weeks, many, many of them, when she didn’t know how she was going to bear it. Only her pride kept her going. Her pride was, after all, all she had left.
She couldn’t believe how she had ever been stupid enough to imagine that Blake had wanted her, that he might share her feelings, and whenever she thought of what she had done she writhed inwardly in such self-inflicted torment that she felt as though she was being burned in the fire of her own self-loathing and contempt.
She hated herself so much that she had no energy left for anything else, and certainly not enough to fight with her parents.
Six weeks later, when she met Andrew, she told herself that he was the balm she needed to soothe and heal her wounds, that in view of everything Blake had said about her she was, as her parents were saying, lucky that Andrew so obviously wanted her.
It was easy then to deceive herself that she was doing the right thing; after all, she had deceived herself before, hadn’t she? Easier simply to give in to the pressure her parents were putting on her… easier simply to pretend to herself that she had never really loved Blake at all. But the fear he had instilled in her remained, the fear and the self-doubt…
What if he was right… what if in reality there was nothing there behind her prettiness?
He wasn’t right, she told herself fiercely now, and she was going to prove it. Wasn’t she?
Joel hadn’t seemed to find her too vacuous to confide in. He hadn’t been contemptuous of her looks.
He was a married man, she reminded herself, someone she barely knew, someone with problems enough of his own; but despite those problems there had been concern for her in his eyes, warmth in the way he’d talked to her… touched her.
They were poles apart in almost every way and yet, listening to him, talking to him, she had felt somehow closer to him than any other man she knew.
Closer to him and drawn to him. As a fellow victim of Andrew’s actions, or as a man?
The phone rang, releasing her from the necessity of finding an answer.
It was the boys’ headmaster, and she still hadn’t spoken to her parents. Coward, she derided herself as she acknowledged that she would have to apologise to him and ask him for a little more time, but before she could say anything she heard him telling her, ‘I think I’ve solved the problem of the boys’ trip. The school has a special fund for cases like theirs. I’ve checked with the administrator and he confirms that they are eligible, so unless you particularly want them home for Easter, which I wouldn’t recommend at the moment, they can go on the trip to Italy as originally planned. By summer, when they’ve had more time to adjust to their father’s death, things should be different.’
‘At least something seems to be going my way,’ she told Susie later when her friend rang.
‘Mmm, looks as if you’ve hit bottom and are on the way up,’ Susie suggested optimistically.
‘Right now I’d quite happily settle for on the bottom,’ Philippa told her.
But, even though she discussed quite openly with her friend the trauma of her visit to the social services office, she did not mention meeting Joel.
Why should she? she asked herself quickly as she replaced the telephone receiver. After all, it was not as though he had any real relevance to her life, or she to his, was it… ?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
JOEL tensed as he heard Sally open the kitchen door; his ears and his mind, now attuned to her routine, caught the sound of her exasperated indrawn breath.
‘Joel, where are you?’
She came into the living-room and demanded, ‘Haven’t you got anything better to do than watch television all day?’
‘Like what?’ he asked bitterly.