Force of Feeling

Emotional? For her, perhaps, but for him?

Don’t think about it. Don’t brood, she chastened herself. All she really wanted to do was to pull the bedcovers round her body and lie there and mourn, but she couldn’t do that. She had to find a way of going on with her life without him, of finding a purpose—a r

eason for going on.

In the meantime, she had promised Lucy her help, and she had also virtually promised Helena a new book.

She dialled the number of Lucy’s London home. Her housekeeper answered and then put her through to Lucy.

‘This is ridiculous! Neither Mrs Timmins nor Howard will let me lift a finger. I keep telling them that pregnancy is a perfectly natural state. How did the tour go?’

‘Fine. Do you still want my help with your Christmas preparations?’

‘Yes, please. I’ve had the most wonderful idea for the drawing-room. I think this year we’ll go all traditional. Real fir branches, a huge tree, Victorian decorations…’

Campion did her best to sound enthusiastic.

Lucy wanted to leave for Dorset on Tuesday, she told her, and before then she had heaps of shopping to do.

‘Howard is insisting that I take Paul and the Rolls wherever I go. Isn’t it ridiculous? He won’t so much as let me carry one parcel,’ she complained.

They agreed to meet mid-morning. She found she tired easily, Lucy told her, and often had to have a rest in the afternoon.

‘And you should see me! I’m huge… enormous…and only four months…’

As she hung up, Campion found that her eyes were stinging with tears. Lucy was so lucky. A husband she loved, his child to look forward to…

Stop feeling so sorry for yourself, she derided. Compared with millions of women, she was lucky. Maybe, but she didn’t feel it.

* * *

Despite her claim that she was taking things easy, Lucy managed to fit in an exhausting amount of shopping. Or was it simply that, because she herself could not get into the spirit of Christmas, she found it exhausting? Campion wondered late one afternoon, after Paul, the chauffeur, had dropped her off.

‘Heavens!’ Lucy had exclaimed in concern when they finally left Harrods. ‘You look ready to drop, and Campion, you’re losing far too much weight. Are you sure you’re all right?’

All right? Physically, there could be nothing much wrong with her; but emotionally…that was a different story.

Somehow or other, she had managed to fit her own shopping in between helping Lucy. She had seen the nursery being planned for the new baby, and had heard all about the one being designed for the Dorset house, and she had listened as attentively as she could, but all the time it was as though her real attention was turned inwards, waiting to hear a voice she suspected she would probably never hear again.

She had to accept it. Guy was not going to get in touch with her.

It was over. Finito. Finished.

But that didn’t stop her from thinking about him, from wondering where he was, what he was doing, who he was with, whether he ever spared a thought for her.

Why should he? His self-imposed task to ensure that she finished her book on time and successfully was over. If he did think about her, it could only be to congratulate himself on having achieved his aim, she thought bitterly. No doubt now all his time and attention was given to another writer’s problems.

She remembered how, on first seeing him, she had automatically pictured him in expensive, exclusive surroundings, wining and dining high-powered publishing executives, while he sought the best possible deal for his clients. She had seen him as smooth and sophisticated, as the kind of man it would be impossible to trust. She had seen him as being without depth, all plausible surface charm hiding instincts as rapacious as those of a shark; a man whose loyalty to his writers only went as far as their last successful book; but she had been wrong, as he had proved to her.

But she wasn’t wrong about his lack of desire to pursue their relationship. Over and over again she had reflected on everything he had said to her, on every nuance of every word. Never once had he mentioned them having a future together, and so perhaps it had been naïve of her to hope that he would want to get in touch with her. Face it, she told herself brutally, you aren’t the first woman he’s made love to. And yet there had been times when he had touched her when she had felt so sure that he was experiencing exactly the same deep intensity of feeling as she was herself.

Wishful thinking, she told herself acidly. Foolish daydreams that had nothing to do with reality.

* * *

Tuesday dawned, icy cold with grey clouds. Snow was forecast, Lucy told her excitedly when she joined her in the car.

A dull inertia possessed Campion, an inability to do anything other than simply be. She felt like an animal wanting desperately to go into hibernation. She felt…she felt as though there was no meaning, no purpose in her life any more.