childish game until his son’s bedtime beckoned. But it was almost as though she had manufactured an invisible screen around herself.
‘Right. Have you got everything?’ They were about to set off for Devon for their postponed visit to her parents. There was more luggage for this two-night stay than he would have taken for a three-week long-haul vacation. Favourite toys had had to be packed, including the oversized remote controlled car which had been his first and much ignored present for Oliver, but which had risen up the popularity ladder as the weeks had gone by. Drinks had had to be packed, because four-year-olds, he’d been assured, had little concept of timing when it came to long car journeys. Several CDs of stories and sing-a-long nursery rhymes had been bought in advance, and Sarah had drily informed him that he had no choice when it came to listening to them.
She had made a checklist, and now she recited things from it with a little frown.
‘Is it always this much of a production when you go to visit your parents?’ he asked, when they were finally tucked into his Range Rover and heading away from the house.
‘This is a walk in the park,’ Sarah told him, staring out of the window and watching the outskirts of London fly past. ‘In the past I’ve had to take the train, and you can’t believe what a battle that’s been with endless luggage and a small child in tow.’ She looked round to make sure that Oliver was comfortable, and not fiddling with his car seat as he was wont to do, and then stared out of the window.
Weirdly, she always felt worse when they were trapped in the confines of a car together. Something about not having any escape route handy, she supposed. With no door through which she could conveniently exit, she was forced to confront her own weakness. Her only salvation was that she was trying very hard, and hopefully succeeding, to instil boundaries without having to lay it on with a trowel.
She was friendly with him, even though under the façade her heart felt squeezed by the distance she knew she had to create. She couldn’t afford to throw herself heart and soul into what they had, because she knew that if she did she would quickly start believing that their marriage was real in every sense of the word—and then what protection would she have when the time came and his attention began to stray? He didn’t love her, so there would be no buffer against his boredom when their antics in the bedroom ran out of steam.
Daily she told herself that it was therefore important to get a solid friendship in place, because that would be the glue to hold things together. But at the back of her mind she toyed with the thought that friendship might prove more than just glue. Maybe, just maybe, he would become reliant on a relationship forged on the bedrock of circumstance. He had proposed marriage as a solution, and how much more he would respect her if she treated it in the same calm, sensible, practical way he did.
She was determined to starve her obsession with him and get a grip on emotions that would freewheel crazily given half a chance.
The only time she really felt liberated was when they were making love. Then, when he couldn’t see the expression on her face, she was free to look at him with all the love in her heart. Once she had woken up to go to the bathroom in the early hours of the morning, and she had taken the opportunity, on returning to bed, to stare. In sleep, the harsh, proud angles of his beautiful face were softened, and what she’d seen wasn’t a person who had the power to damage, but just her husband, the father of her child. She could almost have pretended that everything was perfect …
As they edged out of London, heading towards Devon along the scenic route rather than the motorway, Oliver became increasingly excited at the sight of fields and cows and sheep, and then at his favourite game of counting cars according to their colour, in which her participation was demanded.
After an hour and a half his energy was spent, and he fell asleep with the abruptness of a child, still clutching the glossy cardboard book which she had bought earlier in the week to occupy him on the journey down.
‘I expect you’re a bit nervous about meeting my parents …’ Sarah reluctantly embarked on conversation rather than deal with the silence, even though Raoul seemed perfectly content.
Raoul gritted his teeth at the ever-bland tone of voice which she had taken to using when the two of them conversed.
‘Should I be?’
‘I would be if I were in your shoes.’ Sarah’s eyes slid over to absorb the hard, perfect lines of his profile, and then she found it was a task to drag them away.
‘And that would be because …?’
‘I’m not sure what they’ll be expecting,’ she told him honestly. ‘I haven’t exactly blown your trumpet in the past. In fact when I found out that I was pregnant … Well, put it this way: wherever in world you might have been, you ears would have been burning.’
‘I’m sure that will be history now that I’m around and taking responsibility for the situation.’
‘But they’ll still remember all the things I said about you, Raoul. I could have held everything back, but finding out that I was pregnant was the last straw. I was hormonal, emotional, and a complete mess. I got a lot off my chest, and I doubt my mother, particularly, will have forgotten all of it.’
‘Then I’ll have to take my chances. But thank you for being concerned on my behalf. I’m touched.’ His mouth curved into a sardonic smile. ‘I didn’t think you had it in you.’
‘There’s no need to be sarcastic,’ Sarah said uncomfortably.
‘No? Well, I hadn’t intended on having this conversation, but seeing that you’re up for a bit of honesty … I go to bed with a hot-blooded, giving, generous lover, and wake up every morning with a stranger. You’ll have to excuse me for my assumption that you wouldn’t be unduly bothered one way or another what your parents’ reaction to me is.’
Hot-blooded, giving, generous … If only he knew that those words applied to her in bed and out of it, by night and by day.
‘I hardly think that you can call me a stranger,’ Sarah protested on a high, shaky laugh. ‘Strangers don’t … don’t …’
‘Make love for hours? Touch each other everywhere? Experiment in ways that would make most people blush? No need to worry, Sarah. We’re not exactly shouting, and Oliver’s fast asleep. I can see him in my rearview mirror.’
Sarah could feel her cheeks burning from his deliberately evocative language.
What do you want? she wanted to yell at him. Did he want her to be the adoring, subservient wife-in-waiting, so that he could lap up her adulation safe in the knowledge that she had been well and truly trapped? When he certainly didn’t adore her?
‘Well, aren’t you pleased that you were right?’ she said gruffly. ‘I can’t deny that I find you very attractive. I always have.’
‘Call me crazy, but I can smell a but advancing on the horizon …’
‘There is no but,’ Sarah told him, thinking on her feet. ‘And I really don’t know what you mean when you accuse me of being a stranger. Don’t we share all our dinners together now that we’re living under the same roof?’
‘Yes, and your increasing confidence in the kitchen continues to astound me. What I’m less enthusiastic about is the Stepford Wife-to-be routine. You say the right things, you smile when you’re supposed to, and you dutifully
