Sinful Nights: The Six-Month Marriage/Injured Innocent/Loving

What was he saying to her? Her confused mind tried to sort out the meaning of the words, and failed.

‘I … I think I ought to go to bed.’

She got up, still trembling wildly, retreating from him when he reached out to help her.

Jay watched her as she fled from the room, and then walked over to the fireplace, to stare moodily out of the darkened window. In front of it the tree glimmered softly in all its finery, but he didn’t see it.

A frustrated bitterness glittered in his eyes as he turned to face his own reflection in the giltwood mirror above the fireplace.

‘Damn!’ he swore savagely, bringing his fist down on to the marble with a force that threatened to crack the bones. ‘Damn … and damn again …’

ON CHRISTMAS MORNING they were up early, despite the fact that Claire and Jay had attended Midnight Mass the night before.

Both girls had had small stockings filled with little presents left at the bottom of their beds the night before, but Claire had already stipulated that the rest of the presents, which were piled beneath the tree, were not to be opened until after breakfast. She suspected that was the only way of making sure that Heather and Lucy got something inside them.

There had been another fall of snow, and there had been a magical quality to their walk through the village to the pretty Norman church the night before. Jay, in a fit of impulsive extravagance, had insisted on buying a huge red wooden sledge for the girls on Christmas Eve, and that too was now wrapped up beneath the tree alongside the dolls’ pram Heather had asked for, and Lucy’s bike.

Claire had spent almost every evening in December knitting small woolly garments for the golden-haired doll who was to occupy the pram, and against her better judgment both girls were to receive the much desired, and to Claire’s mind, quite revolting pastel-haired plastic ponies they had both ecstatically requested.

Tastes change, she reminded herself, as she heard the squeals of pleasure coming from their room, and no doubt she had pleaded for things that her parents had found equally incomprehensible.

She was still smiling about this when her bedroom door opened, but it wasn’t the girls who came in, it was Jay, a towelling robe belted over his pyjama bottoms, a cup of tea and some digestive biscuits on the tray he was carrying.

The awkwardness she had anticipated having to cope with after the evening of his return had never materialised. In the morning Jay had been as casually relaxed as he had always been, and she had been too busy to give more than a passing thought to her own reaction to him. In fact she had begun to think she had imagined it, but the way her heart jerked like a stranded fish just because he walked into her room told her better.

‘You’re looking very flushed,’ he commented, completely misreading her vivid blush. ‘Not sickening for a cold, are you? Those boots you were wearing last night …’

The boots in question were old ones, but they were good enough for the snow.

‘I’

m fine,’ she told him, watching him put the tray down on her bedside table, before he perched himself on the edge of the bed.

‘Mmm. You were looking very perky when I came in. You were grinning like a Cheshire Cat!’

‘I was thinking about those awful ponies we bought for the girls and wondering if I ever wanted something that appalled my parents.’

‘Well, I know I did,’ confessed Jay. ‘My parents were both members of CND, and one year I asked Father Christmas for a tank and sub-machine gun. It says a lot for their understanding that I got both—I also got twelve months’ worth of lectures from my mother, pointing out the savagery of war.’

He didn’t often talk about his family, possibly because the subject had never come up, and Claire had not liked to question him.

‘What happened to them?’ she asked now.

‘My mother was killed in a rail accident in France and my father died of a heart attack not long afterwards. I was the only one, and away at university at the time. I missed them, of course, but I think it’s only when one becomes a parent oneself that one realises the true depth of parental love.’

‘Yes. They say, don’t they, that it’s the mark of a successful parent to be able to send out one’s young to enjoy the world without them having to give you a backward glance. The security of a loving background—’

‘Helps to create a child who is healthily selfish in its attitude to its parents. Yes, I know. You’ve done wonders with Heather,’ Jay added quietly. ‘She’s a different child.’

‘She just needed more self-confidence. Heather knows I love her, and because of that …

‘She can love herself …’ He broke off and grimaced as two small bodies came hurtling into the room.

‘Downstairs, the pair of you,’ he told them. ‘We’re going to make breakfast for Mummy this morning.’

They were wearing their new tartan dresses, and Claire felt her throat lock with emotional tears as she saw the matching tartan bows tied in their hair. Both of them wanted to grow their hair, and for school she made them wear it plaited. This morning both of them sported rather drunken bows.

‘Heather put my ribbon in my hair for me,’ announced Lucy cheerfully, darting past Jay to climb on to the bed.