For Better for Worse

Abruptly he looked away from her. She was Nick’s wife and she loved him, although how she…

As she watched him, Fern wondered what he would say if she told him that she had seen the brochure he had been carrying.

Pain flooded through her. It seemed unfairly cruel of fate that it should be Adam of all people who threatened the existence of somewhere that had come to mean so much to her… a solace… a refuge… a sanctuary…

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nbsp; From what? From life? From herself? From her marriage? Tiredly she knew that she wouldn’t challenge him… just as she couldn’t challenge Nick about Venice?

‘I… I must go. Nick… Nick is… will be expecting me. He… he’s leaving for London and…’

Without finishing her sentence she ducked her head to one side and hurriedly started to skirt a wide circle around him, heading back towards the path, sensing that he was watching her but knowing that she dared not look back at him.

Adam! She could feel the heavy, dreary feeling of despair starting to settle over her as she half ran and half stumbled back down the path. Her body was trembling and she felt icy cold even though at the same time her face felt as though it was burningly hot, and her heart was beating so fast that she was finding it difficult to breathe properly.

Too late now to wish she had gone straight home… to wish she had not given in to the temptation to go to Broughton House and in doing so inadvertently and so very, very dangerously and painfully she now risked opening the Pandora’s box into which she had tried to lock away all her memories and thoughts of Adam.

CHAPTER SIX

ZOE woke up slowly and reluctantly, subconsciously aware of something unpleasant waiting for her, something she didn’t really want to recognise. It hovered threateningly, oppressing her, making her want to resort to the childhood tactic of squeezing her eyes closed and refusing to acknowledge that she was actually awake.

She rolled over in the bed, instinctively seeking the empty space which had held Ben’s body.

The bed felt cold and empty. It was gone ten o’clock. Ben would have been up at four to get to the markets early.

His original training had encompassed not only the preparation and cooking of food, but also the importance of its purchase; of knowing the difference between good fresh food and that which was sub-standard.

Her shift didn’t start until two, and after their late night the previous evening she would have been grateful to Ben for not disturbing her had it not been for the row they had had last night.

Or, rather, the row she had tried to have.

She had known that he was still awake when she got into bed—his body had been too rigid, too tense for sleep—but he had kept his back to her, refusing to turn round, refusing even to acknowledge that she was justified in her anger against him.

It wasn’t so much his attitude towards his sister’s pregnancy, although that had shocked her. What had hurt her most of all had been his emotional rejection of her, his refusal to acknowledge that she might possibly be able to understand how he was feeling; his use against her of the barrier of ‘class’, which they had always promised one another they would never allow to come between them.

It had almost been as though he had wanted to reject her, to shock and even disgust her by what he was saying.

And yet at the same time she had been aware of his pain and despair; of his love for his family, and for his sister, even though he had tried desperately hard to conceal it.

But why should she, just because she was female, a woman, be the one to make allowances… to understand… to forgive?

Why should he, just because he was male, a man, be allowed to offload the pain of what he was experiencing on her by attacking her?

His sister’s pregnancy and his reaction to it was something they should have been able to share, to talk about. Ben should have been able to accept that, even though she lacked his experience, his perception of what that pregnancy could mean, she was nevertheless capable of listening, comprehending… that she might even have a viable viewpoint to put, and one which, although different from his, was still worthy of being heard and discussed.

His final comment to her last night before he had flung away from her had been an acid, ‘You don’t really understand even now, do you? You just don’t have a clue. Outwardly you’re sympathetic, sorry; but inwardly you’re recoiling from what I’ve just told you, just like a healthy man recoiling from a leper!

‘Nothing’s really changed in two thousand or more years of civilisation, has it, Zoe? You in your nice, clean, sanitised, privileged world—and it is a privileged world no matter how much you might want to deny it—you just don’t have any conception of what life’s really like for people like my sister.’

Hurt, and close to tears, she had tried to defend herself, and it was then that she had made her worst mistake of all.

‘She could come here and stay with us,’ she had

suggested eagerly. ‘I could find her a job. The hotel is always looking for—’

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Ben had interrupted her in disgust. ‘Have her here? She’s damn near seven months pregnant, Zoe, and all she wants to do is sit watching television all day long. She doesn’t want a job. She doesn’t want anything other than this damned baby which she thinks is going to miraculously transform her life.

‘And so it bloody well will, but not in the way she imagines, the little fool.