The Marriage Surrender

It was dark in there, too; her hand lifted, fumbling along the wall beside the door in search of a light switch. The room came alive with a clever burst of subdued lighting from several strategically placed table lamps,

Still shaking, she moved across to a lemon sofa and curled herself into one corner while she waited for her skin to stop crawling and her heart to stop hammering.

Yet the dream had not been as bad as it could have been. In the beginning—after she’d finally left Sandro and was living with Molly, which was when the dreams had first begun—she’d used to wake up screaming so hysterically that it used to frighten poor Molly out of her wits!

Much as she had just done to Sandro, she realised, frowning because it was just beginning to sink in that he had been in bed with her.

He came into the drawing room then, dressed in a hastily knotted short black cotton robe that did nothing to dampen his masculinity. ‘What happened back there?’ he demanded, the coils of sleep still showing around the lazy fringes of his eyes.

‘I told you. Bad dream. What were you doing in my bed?’ she countered.

Yawning, he threw himself into a chair opposite her. ‘Where you sleep, I sleep,’ he answered simply. ‘It is what husbands and wives do.’

Well, not this husband and wife, Joanna thought. ‘You said you would use another room,’ she reminded him.

‘To shower,’ he clarified, yawned again, then had the gall to begin to fall back to sleep as he lounged in the chair!

‘Go away, Sandro,’ she snapped, more to wake him up than to give him his marching orders. ‘I’ll be OK here on my own.’

Then she frowned again, because she’d suddenly remembered that she used to say the very same thing to Molly. Go away, I’ll be OK. But she never was OK, was she? She used to shiver and shake, much as she was doing now, and poor Molly would hover anxiously, not knowing how to react.

Oh, Molly, she thought, and tipped back her head to sigh heavily as she closed her weary eyes. Why did all of this have to happen? Why did you have to die, and why did I have to end up being like this?’

‘Joanna...’

‘Shh,’ she said. ‘I’m busy missing Molly.’

Strange thing to say, yet he seemed to understand because he got up, ran a tired hand through his tumbled hair, then said quietly, ‘What about a warm drink?’

‘Mmm,’ she accepted, ‘that sounds nice.’ Mainly because it was easier than saying no.

He left the room and she went back to thinking about her sister. Poor Molly had worried so much about her, she remembered. The way she’d lived, like a

lifeless zombie, the way she’d snapped if Molly tried to ask questions. And the way the dreams had used to come and scare the living daylights out of both of them. So much so that in the end, she’d felt compelled to give Molly some explanation, because her sister had been ready to put all of the blame onto Sandro.

By then Molly had her own little flat, not far from the London college she’d been studying at. It had been a kind of compromise in the end, that Molly would continue her studies so long as Joanna—with Sandro’s financial help—would let her live near the campus.

Her marriage had fallen into such dire straits by then that she had actually been glad to get her sister out of Sandro’s home, because then they could at least be open about all the stress between them, instead of having to pretend nothing was the matter for Molly’s sake.

Or maybe Molly had felt the tension anyway and had been relieved to get away from it, Joanna grimly suggested to herself. She wouldn’t have blamed Molly if that was the truth of it; those first few months of her marriage had been absolutely dreadful, with Sandro insisting that they share a bed even though she spent the whole night clinging to the edge of the mattress so she wouldn’t turn over and cling to him instead.

But once Molly moved out, so Joanna moved out—of his bedroom.

Now it seemed that that situation had gone into a complete reversal. She was back living with Sandro, and he was back sharing her bed.

He returned with two steaming cappuccinos liberally sprinkled with cocoa. He put them down on the coffee table but instead of going back to his own chair sat himself down right in next to her, so the firmness of his hips pressed against the curve of her stomach. Smiling down at her, he lifted a hand to gently remove a red-gold skein of hair from her cheek, then kissed her.

She didn’t flinch, wasn’t even close to flinching because the kiss was so openly passive.

‘Feeling better?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘Sorry if I frightened you,’ she added.

‘Don’t mention it,’ he murmured. ‘Would you like to talk about it?’

‘If I say no will you start bullying me?’ she countered wryly.

‘No.’ His reply was deep and sincere, and it did things to her insides she found very confusingly nice. ‘I find that even I am not quite that ruthless,’ he admitted with a small wry grimace.