was it more because no man whom she had met in the years since he had left her had ever come close to arousing within her the emotions which he had so easily touched than because she was afraid of allowing herself to love another man?
There was no room in her life for such immature introspection, she told herself sharply. That kind of self-indulgence was for teenagers, for young women of her daughter’s age. Women of her maturity were far too sensible and far too busy to waste time dwelling on their emotions.
Or were they? Was it more that she had never allowed herself to dwell on hers because she was too frightened of what she might have to confront?
Jessica’s probing questions last night about the way she lived her life, plus the shock of seeing Lewis, were having a most unwelcome effect on her—one that could surely be best banished by some hard work and a much firmer control on her treacherous thoughts.
She was meeting Ian at the hospital at two o’clock. It was eleven now and she had promised herself that this morning she would attack the greenfly on her precious roses.
Her small house did not have a large garden, but it was blessed by an enclosing brick wall, against which over the years she had lovingly trained a variety of scented old-fashioned roses.
Beneath them were borders of mixed traditional cottage garden plants—peonies, hollyhocks, delphiniums, forget-me-nots, which seeded themselves and ran half-wild, aquileas, which did the same thing, producing their pretty pink and white flowers, and catmint, which was invariably flattened by next door’s fat ginger tom-cat whom she hadn’t the heart to evict from his favourite patch of the scented plant.
Treating the roses for greenfly was a laborious business, especially in these ecology-conscious days, and there wasn’t going to be time to complete the task before she had to leave for the hospital, which meant she would have to tackle the housework instead.
With a wistful glance at the sunny garden, she headed for the stairs to strip Jessica’s bed.
The first thing she saw when she walked into the room was Jessica’s old teddy bear sitting on top of the chest of drawers.
She had bought the bear for Jessica before she was born. She went over to the chest and picked up the bear, absently smoothing its worn fur, her eyes dark with shadows.
It had been a cold wet day, she remembered, her mouth twisting a little bitterly at the ease with which she recalled every detail of that particular day.
It had been the day the letter had arrived from Lewis’s solicitors, setting out the formal terms of their divorce. The divorce that even then she had desperately hoped would never happen; that letter with its cold, formal prose, its heavy underlining of Lewis’s desire to cut himself completely free of her. He was giving her the house, the car, the entire contents of their savings account; Lewis, unlike her, had had a moneyed background; his maternal grandparents had left him money, and it had been with this money that he had bought their pretty house and set up a business in partnership with a colleague as independent insurance brokers.
There would be money coming to her from the business…she need not fear she would suffer financially from the divorce—that was what he had told her that shocking day when he had walked in and told her that he wanted their marriage brought to an end.
With hindsight she recognised that there had been something wrong for some time; that he had been quiet, withdrawn from her at times; but she had assumed that it was just the pressure of setting up the new business, and she had been so young, so much still a very new wife, that she had resolutely told herself that she was being over-sensitive, that marriage could not forever be one long honeymoon, that of course there were bound to be times when all might not seem perfect; and then had come the bombshell…the discovery that Lewis didn’t love her any more…didn’t want her any more…that there was someone else and that he wanted his freedom.
She could have fought the divorce, could have made him wait out the statutory period, but her pride would never have allowed her to do that…and as for his money…
She had allowed her solicitor to accept half the value of the house and no more, and then she had told him that she intended to move right away from the area and make a fresh start somewhere else.
It had been on her first trip here that she had bought the bear.
She had had to change trains at Birmingham. There had been a two-hour wait for her connection. She had walked out of the station into the busy, wet city streets, feeling as though her whole life had come to an end, as though there were no point in even thinking about going on.
Coming towards her down the wet road she had seen a bus, lumbering slowly closer as it picked up speed.
She could recall with complete clarity even now the sharp clearness of her brain and its processes—of assessing the speed of the bus, of knowing that all she had to do was to step out into the street in front of it and there would be no more pain, no more anguish, no more loneliness…no more anything.
She had walked to the edge of the kerb; she had stepped forward; she had even taken a step out into the street, when suddenly for the first time she had felt her baby kick.
She had covered her stomach with both hands, an immediate, instinctively protective, wondering gesture, shock, joy and the most bitter-sweet sharp pain she had ever known coalescing inside her.
Someone had touched her arm then, another woman, chiding her warningly, ‘Better watch the traffic duck. These bus drivers…’
And the moment of crisis was over; she was safely back on the pavement, shaking, feeling sick, tears pricking her eyes, but alive…and, more important, her baby was alive as well.
It had been then that she had bought the bear.
She realised suddenly that its worn fur was damp, coming abruptly out of the past to the angry realisation that she was crying again.
Mid-life blues, she taunted herself, ignoring the evidence of Jessica’s full-length mirror which denied that her still very youthful and slender figure showed any signs of becoming middle-aged.
She had come up here to strip the bed, not to dwell with maudlin self-pity on the past, she reminded herself as she pulled back the duvet and very firmly put the bear back where he belonged.
At one o’clock she started to get ready for her meeting with Ian, dressing carefully in a plain navy dress enlivened with a pretty white shawlcollar, and pair of plain, elegant navy blue pumps.
It was all very well for Jessica to complain that her mother’s wardrobe needed jazzing up and that she was far too young and pretty to wear such consistently dull colours: she liked classic clothes made in classic styles.
A final check of her make-up confirmed that the elegant and discreet toffees and peaches of her eyeshadow added just the right degree of emphasis to her eyes; her mouth as always caused her to pause and wince a little. Not even the most discreet and pale lipstick could disguise its fullness…its—
‘You really have the most wonderful mouth. Just made for kissing. Just made for this…’
She swallowed hard. Lewis had said those words to her the night he’d proposed, whispering the compliments in between light decorous kisses which had very quickly become less light and far from decorous. She shuddered deeply, only just managing to restrain herself from actually touching her mouth, the taste of him, the memory
