‘So you have.’
Without another word he got up and walked through the door, closing it behind him.
All desire to work had left her, inside she felt awash with conflicting emotions. Why had she been so anguished at the thought of him saying the marriage must end? Because she cared very deeply for the boys of course. It was a comforting explanation, but something still niggled at her. She couldn’t help remembering how often when she had interviewed those couples whose marriages had been arranged by caring parents, both parties had confided that although they had come to the marriage as strangers, love had grown between them.
Was that what she was so afraid of? That she might grow to love Lyle as well as his sons? How ridiculous. Their marriage was a world away from the type of arranged marriages she had analysed.
* * *
TWO DAYS LATER Lyle announced that he had to go to a conference on drugs following the changes in Health Service prescriptions, and that it was likely that he would be away overnight. Any emergency patients during his absence were to be directed to the cottage hospital, and since a locum could not be spared to take his place there would be no normal surgery.
He left on the Wednesday morning, straight after breakfast. Wednesday was Jessica’s day for taking the boys to the local sports centre fifteen miles away. It was well equipped, with squash courts, a swimming-pool and a variety of other facilities, and once a week they spent most of the day there.
On discovering that neither of them could swim particularly well, Jessica had instituted lessons for them both.
They always concluded the outing with a visit to McDonalds for hamburgers and thick sticky milkshakes, which Jessica privately found nauseating, but which the children seemed to enjoy. She was gradually making small changes in their eating patterns, replacing tinned and frozen vegetables with fresh, and substituting wholemeal bread for white. She had noticed that Lyle, who during the early days of their marriage seemed totally uninterested in food, now did full justice to the meals she provided. Cooking was something she enjoyed, preferring simple fresh foods to those smothered in heavy rich sauces, and she repressed a faint grimace as James demolished two of the revoltingly anaemic-looking soft rolls she had bought them to go with their hamburgers.
It bothered her that neither boy seemed to have any friends, and she was determined that once they went back to school she would encourage them to bring schoolfriends back home with them. The school they had attended in Oxford was now too far away but Lyle had discovered a very good private school locally which took day pupils. Both boys were clever, although in differing ways. James was fascinated by her computer, and she had privately resolved that for Christmas he must have one of his own, while Stuart was far more interested in his environment, and was also an avid reader. Stuart was the one who helped her in the garden; James the one who enjoyed watching her work on her computer.
They now had a firm of contract gardeners who came out once a week to mow the large lawns and generally keep the place tidy, although the flowerbeds were so large that Jessica found she needed to spend some time each week herself weeding them. It was a task she found strangely pleasurable and she had even bought herself some books on gardening and was now ambitiously toying with the idea of a two-tone cottage-garden border for next year.
Family life appealed to her and had revealed to her a side of herself she had never previously suspected existed. She put it down to the fact that her teenage years had been so unhappy and often wondered if by trying to give the boys the security she herself had never known she was trying to rewrite her own past and thus obliterate its pain.
Although he didn’t spend much time with them, she was acutely conscious of Lyle’s absence when they returned home. All three of them were tired, and Jessica herself was in bed by half-past ten, glad to close her eyes and go to sleep.
In the early hours something woke her and she lay for several minutes sleepily disorientated, wondering what it was that had disturbed her. When no sound was forthcoming she tried to go back to sleep, but by now she was wide awake, and thirsty besides.
Not bothering to pull on a robe she pattered downstairs in her nightdress, the thin cotton cool against skin chilled by the night air.
As always she had left the landing light on. She had discovered quite early on that Stuart in particular was afflicted by nightmares and had a horror of the dark. The easiest solution she had found was to leave the landing light on and his door slightly open so that she could hear him if he called out. Yawning slightly she pushed open the kitchen door and came to an abrupt halt.
Lyle was standing in front of the hotplate, apparently waiting for a pan of milk to boil. He turned as he heard her, frowning slightly. Apart from the towel wrapped round his hips he was nude, his skin and hair damp.
‘Something wrong?’
A curious weightlessness seemed to have descended upon her; an inability to drag her gaze away from his body. He was magnificently male, his body hard and muscled, shadowed across his chest with fine dark hair.
‘Jessica?’
Somehow she managed to look up at him. ‘I thought you weren’t coming back tonight.’
‘I changed my mind. The conference was over earlier than I anticipated. What are you doing downstairs? Don’t you feel well?’ His gaze sharpened and ridiculously she was acutely conscious of the thinness of her nightdress and the fact that the kitchen light was probably strong enough for him to see right through it.
What did it matter if he could? The female body was scarcely an unfamiliar mystery to him, and she already knew that he had absolutely no sexual interest in her.
‘No, just thirsty,’ she told him. ‘Something woke me up.’
‘Probably me running a shower. I’m sorry.’
She walked towards the sink, turning on the cold tap and letting the water run.
‘I wanted to have a word with you about your computer.’
She swung round, watching him deftly pouring the milk into his mug.
He came towards her carrying the pan and instinctively she stepped back, hating herself for the way her muscles tightened beneath her skin as he came close. Why was it she always felt this need to keep a certain distance between them?
‘Don’t worry.’ His voice was sardonic. ‘I’m not about to invade your precious personal space.’