Cruel Legacy

‘Hard and dirty,’ Joel told her. ‘I used to have to scrub my hands with bleach to get them clean, otherwise…’

He shook his head. He had already said more than he wanted to. Not even Sally knew about all of the humiliation he had suffered in his early years at school when one of the teachers had objected to his touching the school books with his dirt-grimed hands. It had, after all, been before he knew her, a painful memory which he had fiercely suppressed because of the shame it had caused him—and yet for a second he almost revealed it to this woman who was not just a stranger to him but who had, he suspected, no idea what it meant to live in the kind of semi-poverty, the uncertainty which he had known as a child.

‘The garage is this way,’ Philippa told him.

The garage was large enough to house three cars, and hers looked small and forlorn alone in it. The dealer had repossessed Andrew’s within days of his death. It had not, apparently, been paid for. Fortunately, hers had.

As Joel went to switch on the light, Philippa flushed guiltily, remembering that the bulb had gone and that she hadn’t replaced it.

‘It’s OK, I’ll do it,’ Joel told her.

‘I can change a light bulb,’ Philippa told him, adding wryly, ‘Just about! I think I’m going to have to find a night-school course of basic house maintenance. It’s ridiculous in this day and age not to be able to change a fuse or wire a plug…’

Joel could hear the frustration in her voice.

‘It’s not that difficult,’ he told her quietly. ‘I could teach you easily enough.’

For no reason that she could account for, Philippa could feel her skin starting to heat.

‘I’d… I’d better go and let you get on…’ she told him huskily. ‘I—er—would you like a cup of coffee?’

Philippa deliberately didn’t linger when she took Joel his coffee. His head was bent over the open bonnet of her car. He had removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. His forearms were much broader than Andrew’s had been, much more muscular, his skin faintly tanned beneath its covering of dark hair.

A tiny frisson of sensation went through her. Guiltily she looked away.

What was wrong with her? She was behaving like some textbook sex-starved widow. Which, given the true state of her married sex life, was absolutely ridiculous.

She was in the kitchen half an hour later when Joel knocked on the door and walked in.

‘I think it will be OK now,’ he told her. ‘The plugs needed a bit of a clean. It probably needs a good run as well…’

Philippa grimaced slightly. Giving it a good run meant filling the tank with petrol… something she couldn’t afford. The electricity bill had come this morning. She saw Joel glancing at it.

‘Ours came too,’ he told her. ‘According to Sally it’s higher than usual—my fault, of course. I’m sorry,’ he apologised. ‘It’s just…’ He stopped.

‘It must be a worrying time for both of you,’ Philippa sympathised. ‘But at least you’ve got each other to share it with.’

Joel laughed harshly. ‘You think so? Sharing isn’t something we do much of these days…’

She had obviously touched a raw nerve, Philippa recognised.

‘For a man to lose his job is very stressful in a relationship,’ she said quietly. ‘Sally… your wife is probably very worried about you; she…’

‘Is she?’ Joel demanded harshly. ‘Well, you’d certainly never know it. All I get from her these days is, “Joel, do this, Joel, have you done that? Joel, don’t touch me——"’

He broke off, tensing as he looked at her. He had said more than he’d intended to say, Philippa recognised, and the old Philippa—the Philippa who preferred to turn aside rather than face up to things—would have pretended the comment had never been made; but she wasn’t that Philippa any more, and so she looked back at him and said quietly, ‘Lots of women do go off sex when they’re under stress… and men as well.’

‘What I want from Sally isn’t just sex; what I want to share with her is called making love, and it involves a lot more than a handful of seconds of clinical physical thrusting inside her body. A hell of a lot more.’

Philippa couldn’t help it—she could feel the hot colour running up under her skin, knew that her face was on fire with it.

‘I’m sorry,’ Joel apologised, raking his fingers through his hair. ‘I shouldn’t have said it. I didn’t mean to embarrass you, it’s just… Why do women always call it sex when they want to make you feel bad about it… when they want to make you feel guilty, as if we’re some kind of emotionless animals? To listen to her now you’d never think there was a time when Sally…’ He shook his head.

‘But you’ve got enough problems of your own without having to listen to mine. He was your husband, after all.

‘Look, is it OK if I wash my hands?’ They were covered in oil, Philippa saw, and there was also a smear of it across his cheekbone.

‘Yes, I’m sorry… You can use Andrew’s bathroom,’ she told him as she opened the kitchen door and led the way across the hall. ‘There’s a shower in it, although I’m not sure how hot the water will be.’