For Better for Worse

All right, so maybe she had left it a little late to step into a high-powered career, but she could still earn her own living.

She had always disliked being financially dependent on Nick, she admitted when enough strength had returned to her body to enable her to complete the task she had been engaged in before Nick’s return.

As she climbed back up the ladders and reapplied herself to cleaning the kitchen windows, she reflected on Nick’s insistence right from the start of their marriage that he did not want her to work; that he wanted her at home.

Her parents had approved of this. Her mother had never worked and both she and Fern’s father had seen in Nick’s attitude confirmation of their old-fashioned belief in the traditional roles both sexes played within a marriage.

Faced with their united agreement with one another, it had seemed easier to simply accept what Nick had said.

‘It isn’t that I want to prevent you from having your own career,’ Nick had told her winningly. ‘It’s just that my own job is so demanding and I have to work such odd hours that, selfishly, I don’t want to come home and find you not there. Of course, if you’re worried that I won’t be able to support you properly, or if you think I’m going to turn into the kind of mean bastard who keeps his wife short of money and queries every penny she spends…’

Of course she didn’t think that, Fern had quickly assured him.

He had kissed her then. In those days they had of course still been on kissing terms.

However, while Nick had never precisely kept her short of money, he had not exactly been generous with it either, neither in practicality nor, more importantly, in spirit.

How and when had it happened? Fern wondered, stopping work for a second to stare unseeingly out of the window, staring not out into the garden, but back into the past and the early days of their marriage. When had she started to feel apprehensive about spending Nick’s money… about buying small luxuries? Not for herself… no, the kind of luxuries she meant were things like good quality food, fruit out of season, small delicacies and treats which, although he ate them with every appearance of rel

ish, Nick always seemed to make small critical reference to, some small but sharp allusion to her inefficient financial housekeeping. It was never anything too abrasive, at least not in those early days… sometimes little more than a smiling, almost teasing reference to her love of luxuries, and the spoiling her parents had indulged in; but his words had hurt none the less.

As for her buying herself the sort of luxuries Venice enjoyed… the expensive clothes, the expertly painted nails, the make-up, the chic salon-styled hair, the real silk tights—or more probably stockings, Fern acknowledged—the exclusive health-club membership that provided her with a year-round tan and the slim, svelte shape to show off on the tennis courts, plus the opportunity to parade around in the most minute of bikinis…

It was laughable, a joke to imagine that she could ever indulge in those kind of self-centred enjoyments, even on the simplest of scales.

In the early days of their marriage, Nick had made a big virtue out of giving her her own allowance.

That allowance, so much discussed and paraded for the approval of her parents and their acquaintances, had barely covered the cost of her underwear and tights in the days when he had first allocated it to her, Fern acknowledged tiredly.

She had once tried to broach the subject of it with him, assuming that he was perhaps unaware of just how much things actually cost, but he had been so angry with her, accusing her of being spoilt and unrealistic; of expecting him to support her as generously as her parents had done, making her feel so greedy and thoughtless that she wished she had never raised the subject in the first place.

When all the legal formalities had been attended to, she would inherit a small sum from her mother’s estate, but her parents had purchased an annuity with the bulk of their capital which had died with them.

But it wasn’t any lack of money that was keeping her within the marriage, Fern knew. If necessary she was quite prepared to take on the most menial kind of work there was in order to support herself. After all, she had no children to worry about… no one dependent upon her.

Nor would she want to make any kind of financial claim on Nick. So why didn’t she just go? Why didn’t she simply go upstairs now, pack her things and leave before he came back?

Because she couldn’t, she admitted… because she simply could not walk out on him without at least trying to understand why their marriage had gone wrong… without at least trying to explain to him how hurt and confused she was by his infidelity.

But you know what will happen, a small inner voice taunted her. Nick will simply say that it’s your fault because of Adam.

But loving Adam had made no difference to her marriage… no difference to her determination to work as hard as she could to preserve it…

Loving Adam was an aberration, a mistake… a secret agony she could never, would never admit to anyone else. It was her private torment and punishment, the burden she must carry in silence and alone.

Just thinking about him caused the familiar pain to start unravelling slowly inside her.

Adam… Why had she not known… realised… recognised… but, even if she had done all of those things, what good would it have done her? Adam did not love her, had never loved her.

Oh, he had been kind to her, concerned for her, anxious to help her—but then, that was Adam. Kind, compassionate, caring for everyone. Look at the work he did for local charities, and not just officially… All over the town there were people who could attest to his small acts of personal kindness and generosity.

It had been Adam she had met first, known him in fact before she had known Nick. Actually, had it not been for her friendship with Adam, she would never have met Nick at all.

She gave a small shudder. She didn’t want to think back, to remember the innocence of those early days.

It had been a chance remark of a fellow student on the same university course about the town of Avondale which had brought her here in the first place. History had always fascinated her; her father was a keen amateur archaeologist and as a child she had spent many contented and happy hours exploring a variety of historical sites.

The town, with its examples of so many different types of urban architecture, gathered together within such a small area and so fortuitously unaltered from their original state, had naturally interested her. It was near enough to Bristol for her to visit, driving herself there in the small car her parents had bought her as an eighteenth birthday present.