'Olivia,' she called out from the bottom of the stairs,
'It's me—Bobbie. Can I come up?'
When Olivia appeared on the landing Bobbie saw from her expression that she hadn't been able to conceal the shock the sight of Olivia had caused her. She had lost weight and her skin looked grey, lifeless, like her eyes. She looked...she looked...Bobbie swallowed painfully. Now it was Olivia herself she wanted to hold and comfort.
'The girls have told you, have they?' Olivia guessed tiredly.
'They said something about Caspar staying on in Philadelphia,' Bobbie agreed awkwardly.
'You'd better come up,' Olivia said. 'Caspar and I are separating,' she informed her when Bobbie got to the top of the stairs. 'It's for the best, for all of us.
Things haven't been good between us for a long time and...he isn't the man I married, Bobbie...and I...'
Olivia's voice thickened and Bobbie could see the tears standing out in her eyes as sharp as broken glass.
'No,' Olivia denied as Bobbie reached out towards her. 'No. Don't sympathise with me...I don't need it...I'm not sorry. I'm glad. Our marriage just wasn't working,' she told the other woman tensely. 'I think once he got over his initial shock of hearing that I wanted to end it, Caspar was actually relieved.'
As she heard the pain in her own voice Olivia started to frown. Why should she feel pain? She didn't love Caspar any more. It was a relief not to have him standing at her shoulder complaining that she spent far too much time at work and far too little with him and the girls. It was a relief, too, to only have her relationship with them to worry about. Now that her father had come back people would be watching her even more closely, waiting to see her fail...fall...
'I know sometimes things happen between a couple that can seem to be very aggravating, small issues really but like a stone in a shoe they can—' Bobbie was saying quietly.
'Small issues?' Olivia interrupted her with a bitter laugh. 'This isn't about small issues, Bobbie. The last time Caspar and I had sex was months ago....'
For a moment Bobbie thought that Olivia was complaining that Caspar would not have sex with her but then when Olivia continued angrily, 'I just didn't...I just couldn't...' Bobbie realised her mistake.
'Caspar seemed to think I was just being bloody minded...just withholding myself from him to score points. That's how far apart we've grown,' Olivia burst out. She had started to tremble visibly, her hands moving in quick agitation. 'We had the most awful rows about it. It was so destructive and damaging for the girls. I tried but Caspar...'
'Did you think of trying counselling?' Bobbie asked her softly.
Olivia's pain and despair were almost a visible physical presence in the room with them. She was normally such a calm, contained sort of person, so controlled that Bobbie was shocked by the change in her.
'Counselling!' Olivia gave a mirthless bitter laugh.
'You mean like my mother ought to have had? I'm sorry,' she apologised to Bobbie. 'I know...' She stopped speaking, pressing her hand against her mouth as though she were trying to silence herself, Bobbie recognised compassionately.
'It's too late for that now,' Oh via told her. 'Our marriage is over.'
'What will Caspar do?' Bobbie asked her.
'He's taking a sabbatical. He's had it approved by the university that he can take time out from lecturing.
He says he's going to ride around America on a bike, a Harley-Davidson,' Olivia told her derisively. 'It's something he's wanted to do since he was a boy.'
To her own shock she suddenly discovered that she was crying without knowing why.
'Oh, Livvy, Livvy,' she heard Bobbie saying emotionally; but as Bobbie stepped towards her holding out her arms, Olivia backed away shaking her head.
There was so much she needed to do, so many arrangements she needed to make. She wanted to be in her office before eight when she started work on Monday. That would give her an extra hour to start going through the post that would be waiting for her and then, if she brought the rest of it home with her on Monday night, she could read it whilst the girls were in bed. At least now that she didn't have Caspar to consider she would have more time in the evenings to work.
'SOMETHING'S WRONG,' Bobbie told Luke that evening after she had broken the news about Olivia to him.
'Of course something's wrong,' he agreed dryly.
'She's left Caspar.'
'No, I mean apart from that...something's wrong with Livvy,' Bobbie persisted. 'She was...different somehow....'
'She's upset. That's only natural.'
Bobbie sighed under her breath. Much as she loved her husband there were times when they just weren't on the same wavelength. Another woman would have understood immediately what she meant.
'I wonder if Jenny knows yet?' Bobbie said. 'She must do, surely. She and Olivia have always been so close.'
Jenny was Jon's wife and she had acted as surrogate mother for Olivia through all her difficult childhood.
Olivia was now a partner in the family legal practice of which Jon was the head.
Quickly Bobbie reached for the phone and dialled Jenny's number.
'What is it? What's wrong?' Jon asked Jenny when she walked into the study looking worried.
'Bobbie's just been on the phone. She went over to see Livvy this afternoon. I would have gone myself but I had a Mums and Babes committee meeting.
Livvy and Caspar have separated. Livvy's come home without him.'
'What!'
Jon's reaction mirrored Jenny's own shock. He started to shake his head.
'I thought they were so happy.'
'They were,' Jenny agreed, 'until David came home....' Try as she might she could not keep the accusatory note out of her voice.
She could see from Jon's face that her words had upset him and she knew, too, that they were unjustified and unfair but she couldn't make herself call th
em back.
Jon had changed since his brother's return. He seemed almost to live, breathe and think David these days. So much so that she felt that she was being shut out, excluded almost from his life, which was ridiculous, of course. They had been married for over thirty years and these last years of their marriage had brought them very close, brought a new depth to their marriage...their love.... These last years...the years without David.
But now David was back and Jon wasn't exclusively hers any longer. It was David this and David that. Jenny could see his love for his brother in his eyes, hear it in his voice, every time he spoke his name.
'David isn't responsible for the breakdown of Livvy's marriage. He can't possibly be,' Jon objected.
'Maybe not,' Jenny was forced to concede. 'But he is responsible for what Livvy is, Jon...you've said so yourself often enough.'
'Livvy didn't have a very happy childhood,' Jon agreed. 'But that wasn't just down to David....'
Jenny gave a small impatient sigh.
'Before David came home you said yourself that you were concerned about her, that you felt she was working too hard.'
'Yes. She was...is,' Jon acknowledged.
It had disturbed him to discover in her absence just how much extra work Olivia had taken on and quite unnecessarily. Had she said that she needed help, Jon would have seen to it she got some. But she had insisted that she did not, becoming almost angrily defensive. With that kind of workload it was no wonder her marriage was under stress. The locum he had hired to cover the period she was away had not come anywhere near being able to cope and Jon had had to take on some of the extra workload himself and share the rest between Tullah who worked part-time and his daughter Katie who was also part of the family practice.
As Jenny walked past the back of his head without bothering to stop and kiss the top of it as she normally did he hesitated, wanting to reach for her but before he could do so she had gone.
Since David had come back Jon was so involved with him that he hardly seemed to notice she existed, Jenny reflected crossly as he let her walk out of the study without sliding his arm around her waist to give her his usual hug.