end.
The rear of the property they were facing was the older portion built in the traditional Cheshire farmhouse style of huge oak beams infilled with wattle-and-daub panels. The front was a more modern seventeenth century instead of fifteenth in softly tinted locally quarried stone.
There had been those who had raised their eyebrows a little when Ben’s father had moved into the large farmhouse, wondering how on earth he had come to inherit such a valuable property. Valuable not so much because of the house, but rather because of the fertile Cheshire farmlands that went with it. And it had belonged to a lonely widow, as well.
One day, following the rules of primogeniture to which they all knew Ben intended to rigidly adhere, David, simply by virtue of the fact he had arrived into the world ten minutes ahead of Jon, would inherit Queensmead, but Jenny didn’t envy the inheritance. She was perfectly happy with their own much smaller house on the other side of town. Georgian in origin, it had once belonged to the church and Jenny particularly loved its walled garden and its proximity to the river that flowed through the paddock at the bottom of the garden.
She might not envy David and Tiggy their ultimate ownership of Queensmead but there was no doubt that it was the perfect setting for a large family gathering, she acknowledged.
In all, over two hundred and fifty people would be attending and over a hundred of them were in one way or another, however loosely, connected ‘family’. The rest were either friends, colleagues, clients or, in some cases, all three. Working out the table plans alone had taken Jenny the best part of a fortnight of winter evenings at her desk.
Fortunately Guy Cooke, her business partner, had been wonderfully understanding and accommodating.
Her work was still a source of acrimony between Jenny and her father-in-law. It had infuriated her that instead of taking the matter up with her, Ben had manipulatively attempted to dictate what she should do by objecting to Jonathon that he didn’t think it was a good thing for the family that she should be involved in a local business.
It was true that financially she didn’t need to earn her own living, but the business had brought her something she believed was equally vital to her: her own feelings of self-worth and self-justification. Her need to be something other than Jonathon’s wife, the plain one …
The plain one … How those words had once hurt. And still did?
No, not any more. In fact, if anything, she was grateful for the truth of them because they had forced her to fight against them, to look within herself, to find something there that she could hold on to and value.
She glanced at her watch. Jon wouldn’t be home yet and Joss was going straight from school to have tea with a friend. Katie and Louise had after-school tennis practice. She had a couple of hours in hand and her conscience had been pricking her for days about Guy and their business.
Being a partner in an antique shop and repairers might not have Ben’s approval but she enjoyed it. Even more she enjoyed the actual renovation and restoration side of the business, something that Guy freely admitted she had a definite talent for. Her career plans had been shelved when her mother had fallen ill within weeks of her sitting her A levels.
Her illness had mercifully been as swift as it was relentless. Within a few short weeks she was dead, but by then it was too late for Jenny to pick up the threads she had dropped and reapply for a course she had hoped to take—in more ways than one.
She and Jonathon had been married very quietly a matter of months after her mother’s death.
As she reached the main road, she paused and then turned right instead of left, heading for Haslewich instead of home. Guy had said he had picked up some silver he wanted her to see.
Tiggy exhaled in relief as she saw that the forecourt in front of the Dower House was empty. Good. David wasn’t home yet. She had stayed longer in Chester than she had planned. Guiltily she opened the boot of her car and removed the glossy carrier bags, grimacing as she stepped onto the gravel and felt it grate against her delicately pale high heels.
She would have preferred to have the forecourt paved, but since they merely leased the Dower House from Sir Richard Furness and since he was fiercely opposed to any kind of change, she knew that she had scant chance of doing away with the annoyance of the gravel.
Initially when, after their marriage, David had announced that they would be living in the Dower House, she had thought that he was joking. ‘But what’s the point when we’ll be going back to London?’ she had protested.
David had looked uncomfortable and then defensive as he told her that there was no way he could afford to live in London now, that they would have to live in Cheshire where he, at least, had the security of a partnership in the family business, which included a generous additional allowance to cover the cost of the lease on the Dower House.
She hadn’t minded too much at the time. She was a new bride, pretty and young, and everyone made a huge fuss over her. It was only sometime afterwards that she began to feel stifled, bored with life as a country solicitor’s wife and then later again that boredom had turned to …
Quickly she unlocked the front door and hurried into the house, going directly upstairs and into the privacy of her bathroom. She shuddered, her fingers trembling slightly as she unfastened the buttons of her silk shirt, then hastily bundled it into the linen basket along with the brief and very expensive silk bra she had been wearing underneath it.
Her skirt could only be dry-cleaned and she grimaced slightly in distaste as she saw the small mark on the creased cream fabric.
Cream was one of her favourite colours. She wore it a lot. It suited her, drew attention to her fragile bone structure and pale, carefully highlighted hair.
She stepped into the shower. She much preferred the pampering luxury of a bath but today she just didn’t have time. She and David were due to go out to dinner and she would have to wash her hair and do her nails. She had noticed as she parked the car that one of them was chipped. She had no idea how on earth Jenny could bear to leave hers unmanicured the way she did.
As she stepped out of the shower and reached for a towel, Tiggy studied her reflection in the bathroom’s full-length mirrors. Her breasts were still as high and firm as they had always been, her stomach as flat, her skin as silken, but for how much longer?
She was forty-five now and already she was beginning to discern a certain betraying slackness in the flesh of her face and those tell-tale lines around her eyes. She had had a discreet eye tuck the year she was forty, but that wouldn’t last for ever.
Tiggy dreaded the thought of growing old or not being beautiful and desirable any more. David laughed at her, but then he didn’t understand. How could he? Wrapped in her towel, she walked into their bedroom. A copy of the new edition of Vogue lay on the bed. She picked it up, studying the model on the cover.
She had been a fool to give up her own career when she had, but at the time … David had seemed so glamorous, so exciting … so sexy … so different from all those paunchy, middle-aged men she kept being introduced to by the agency. Men who looked at her with hot, avaricious eyes and wanted to touch her with even hotter and more avaricious hands.
Knowing how much David had wanted her, how much he’d desired and loved her, had thrilled her, but that thrill hadn’t lasted. It never did.
She wondered what time Olivia would arrive and what this boyfriend she was bringing with her would be like. Not too American, she
