she was standing under a warm shower, patting her still flat tummy and murmuring wryly, ‘You’re certainly giving Mummy a hard time, Troublebunch!’
Even as the tender smile curved her lips her eyes filled with tears again. Tears for Sam, who would never know he’d left a child behind, for herself, and for Jed, who had lost something wonderful that could never be retrieved.
Warm needles of water washed the tears away, and she dried herself, wrapped her long hair in a towel, dressed in cotton shorts and a halter-neck top and told herself they were the last tears she would shed for any of them.
Life went on.
She had her child to look forward to, and she would love it to distraction and give him or her the happiest life any child could want Now that she was marginally calmer she could see that, in a way, it was a blessing that Jed had taken off. That action alone told her that he’d never truly loved her. If he had. he’d have trusted her, believed her, asked for more details. It had also saved her from a demeaning slanging match, from allowing all her hurt to pour out and hit him right between the eyes.
When she next saw Jed she would be able to tell him of her own decisions, calmly and rationally. She was intelligent enough to know that no amount of rage could alter anything. He despised her now; all the love had gone and nothing she could do or say would bring it back. That was a fact. Hard to face, but not impossible.
She could handle the hurt; she’d managed before and would manage again. Certainly the way Liam had hurt her had been a mere pinprick compared to this. But then she’d had nothing, just a mother who’d wrung her hands and wailed, prophesied heaven alone knew what horrors if she insisted on skipping the country with little more than the clothes she stood up in.
But from having nothing and no one she’d made a good life for herself. At least this time round she had a successful career to fall back on, and was carrying the child she’d begun to need so desperately.
So, on the whole, she reasoned, wondering if she could manage a glass of water and a slice of dry toast without upsetting her unborn baby, everything balanced out and she could hack it.
She wasn’t at all sure about that one week later, when Jed arrived with his mother.
She hadn’t been able to think about starting a new book, and hadn’t responded to the faxes from her agent which had come chattering through over the last couple of days—apologising for interrupting her honeymoon, but apparently excited over some awards ceremony to be held in London. She hadn’t been interested. One day she’d have to read through them properly, absorb what her agent was trying to tell her and respond. But not now. Not yet.
She’d driven down to the village and told Pilar to take two more weeks’ leave, and then had sought the solitude she so desperately needed in the hot few acres of Spanish earth that was her garden.
She was weeding amongst the massed clumps of sweet-smelling carnations that bordered one of the twisting paved paths when she heard the car. Brushing her hands down the sides of her cotton skirt, she stood up and walked towards the house, resenting the intrusion. Resenting it to the point of internal explosion when she saw Jed handing his mother from the car.
She couldn’t imagine what either of them was doing here, or what she could possibly say to them—especially Catherine Nolan, who was one of the nicest women to draw breath.
Wearing a pale blue linen suit, the older woman looked less stressed out than the grieving mother she’d come to know during the two weeks she’d stayed in Netherhaye, the family home in rural Hertfordshire. Though she had perked up enormously for the quiet wedding, bossing the caterers and florists around, making sure the small reception back at Netherhaye was as perfect as it could possibly be.
‘Elena!’ Catherine beamed as she became aware of her daughter-in-law’s approach. ‘How good of you to agree to let me come—only for a few days, I promise. I won’t intrude longer than that!’
So Jed hadn’t told his mother of the complications that had rendered their marriage null and void. Catherine wouldn’t be looking like a plump, slightly flustered, happy mother hen if he had. But then he wouldn’t, of course, she reminded herself, doing her best to find a smile of sorts. Hadn’t duping his parent into believing everything was blissful been one of his two main priorities?
‘It’s lovely to see you.’ She bent to receive Catherine’s kiss and didn’t look at Jed. He was removing luggage from the boot, just a shadowy presence in the background, and that was the way he had to stay if she was to hold onto her sanity, swallow back the scalding renewal of the pain and rage she’d talked herself into believing was over and done with. ‘I’m sure you’re ready for a drink.’
‘Oh, I’d love one. It’s quite a drive from Jerez airport, isn’t it? But such lovely countryside—oh, what a gorgeous courtyard—all those lilies! And will you just look at those geraniums? They never get that huge at home!’
Barely hearing the spate of compliments on her home, Elena led the older woman into the cool, airy sitting room and watched her plop down into a deep comfy armchair with an audible sigh of relief.
‘Bliss! Now I can take my shoes off.’
‘And I can fetch you that drink.’
Elena escaped into the kitchen. She saw Jed toting luggage up the stairs, clenched her jaw and ignored him, closing the kitchen door behind her firmly. She could have gone after him and demanded to know what the hell he thought he was doing, bringing his mother here when their marriage, so recently begun, was well and truly over, leading the poor deluded woman to believe that she, Elena, had agreed to this visit
But she didn’t. She simply wanted to hide. During the past week she had talked herself into believing she could handle the irretrievable shocking breakdown, that when she saw him again it wouldn’t hurt because sensibly, being an intelligent adult and not a soppy child, and because she’d done it once before, she knew how to cut her losses and go on.
But it did hurt. It hurt like hell.
She reached for two wine glasses and a bottle of white Rioja from the fridge; she needed the stiffening, even if Catherine didn’t.
Catherine did. ‘How deliciously cold. It hits the spot! Isn’t Jed joining us?’
‘He’s taking your cases up.’ And taking an inordinate amount of time about it, she thought edgily, doing her best to sound relaxed—though why should she bother, when Catherine would learn, sooner rather than later, that her new daughter-in-law was shortly to become an ex?
While Catherine chattered about her flight out, Elena, wine in hand, perched on the arm of one of the chairs and wondered whether to break the news now. Catherine would have to know, because following Jed’s orders and pretending the marriage was fine when it wasn’t was something she was not prepared to do.
She was trying to decide whether she should dress it up some way, and how, or whether she should come straight out with it when Catherine stopped her thought processes stone-dead.
‘I have to tell you—your marriage to my son was one of the happiest occasions of my life, Elena. It didn’t make up for losing Sam, nothing could ever do that, but it helped enormously—helped ease the dreadful grief and gave me something good to think about. Since I lost their father, all I’ve ever wanted is happiness for my boys.’
She looked so earnest, her eyes rather too moist, tears not far away, because she was
