Stacey family.
“All right,” she agreed at last. “But why should you imagine that Paul will take any notice of me? Let alone speak to Simon.”
“Paul used to be very fond of Sandra,” replied Madeline, inwardly exulting at Karen’s surrender. “And he knows what kind of a man Simon is.”
Karen stubbed out her cigarette and thrust a hand into the pocket of her slacks. She was committed to speaking to her ex-husband. God, weren’t memories hateful enough without reinforcing them with reality? How could you meet a man with whom you had shared the tenderest intimacies of marriage without feeling a knife turn in your inside? She supposed dully that it should have been easier, but they had been so much in love and now …
She had been eighteen when she met Paul Frazer. He was then the chairman of the board of the Frazer Textile Industries whose head office was in London, and Karen was a very junior designer working for the company. She had worked there for almost two years without ever dreaming she would come in contact with the young dynamic tycoon whose named spelled “Success” with a capital S. She had heard plenty about him from her colleagues, but he did not concern himself with the small fry like them. Still a bachelor at thirty, he was the most sought-after man in London, and the social papers and magazines splashed stories about him wherever he went.
For all this, Karen had secretly believed that the man could not seriously add up to his image. It had amused her to listen to the girls raving about him, but she had not been particularly interested. Men had always been attracted to her and she had plenty of admirers in her own sphere without looking on to a higher, much more futile, plane.
And then she produced, as much to her surprise as anybody else’s, a design for a carpet which was quite brilliant. The Frazer Combine produced various ranges of textiles and the carpet design was a completely original piece of work.
To her embarrassment, she was sent for by the man himself, and had to go to his office on the sacrosanct top floor of the Frazer building. She had been not so much nervous as embarrassed, but when the chief designer introduced her to Paul Frazer she found herself completely absorbed by his overwhelming charm and personality. Far from over-estimating the man, she found him absolutely more devastating than his reputation and was therefore astonished when later in the week he rang her office and invited her to dinner.
She accepted, of course, much to the envy of her friends, and found to her amazement that he was actually interested in her as a person, and not as a designer.
Within a few weeks their relationship had assumed such proportions that Paul, who had never been used to being denied anything from a woman, found his every waking moment a torment of wanting to possess her, and his admiration for her ideals kindled into love. Karen, who had been attracted to him from the beginning fought against the love which threatened to overwhelm her, but when Paul eventually proposed marriage she was utterly consumed with happiness.
They had flown to the Bahamas for their honeymoon and were away for three idyllic months. Karen had never known such happiness and Paul grew relaxed and lazy and sun-tanned. They adored each other, but when they returned to England to the house which Paul had bought near Richmond, they both resented the return to normality. Paul had to spend a lot of time at the office then, making up the work that had been left to slide in his absence, and Karen was left alone.
To begin with she was not lonely. The house needed a complete redecoration, and Paul had only a few of the rooms furnished so that Karen might do the whole place over to her own liking. With the help of a team of interior decorators Karen set to work, and the result pleased Paul just as much as Karen. She loved the evenings best when Paul came home to her. They rarely went out or entertained, and spent hours alone, talking and making love.
Then, as time passed, Paul, who had neglected a great deal of his normal work to be with Karen, found it necessary to visit the factories in the Midlands and the North of England where Frazer Textiles were produced. Being an active man, and interested in his work, he had always disliked delegating duty, and it was over a year since he had made a tour of inspection. With reluctance, he left Karen at home when he went to visit the factories. He knew if he took her with him he would be unable to concentrate. When she was with him nothing else could take precedence.
For a while, Karen’s duties at Trevayne absorbed her, and she spent her time swimming in the pool in the grounds, or inviting friends over for tennis or drinks.
But as the years passed, apart from having holidays with Paul, their time together was limited to the evenings. Week-ends were given over to entertaining, and Karen began to hate the rigid pattern of their lives. She was bored; not with Paul but with having too much time and too little to do.
Eventually she asked Paul whether she could go back and work for the company. Paul was astounded, and refused point-blank. Apart from wanting her at home when he needed her, he objected to her working when it was so unnecessary. Her pleas of boredom were shrugged off, and Karen found herself getting irritable and frustrated. The combination of these two emotions began the series of arguments and rows about her work and about her aimless position in the house. Paul, who had assumed her too young to start a family, now suggested that they do just that, but Karen was too stubborn and foolish to agree and thus give in to him again. She refused abruptly, and to her horror Paul moved his clothes into the spare guest-room.
She was frightened and terrified of the results of her own actions, but too full of pride to beg him to come back to her.
They had been married a little over three years when Karen went behind Paul’s back and got herself a job with a rival organization, the Martin Design Company. When Paul found out he was furious. The Martin Company obtained some of their work from the Frazer Syndicate, and he immediately withdrew his interest.
This culminated in yet another row, the result of which was that Karen packed her possessions and left. She had not gone to her mother’s home. Her mother had never agreed that Karen should need anything more than a home and a husband, and she was very angry with Karen for a long time after their separation.
But for Karen there was no going back. Lewis Martin, the head of the small company, who knew her circumstances, sympathized with her but advised her to be brave and stick it out. He did not advise her to go back to Paul, indeed quite the reverse, and Karen was grateful to him at that time. Looking back now, she felt sure that left alone she would have returned to Paul within a week; and on his terms!
Paul made several abortive attempts to see her, but Lewis guarded her like the Crown Jewels and Karen was left alone with her thoughts. Whenever she suggested that perhaps she ought to see Paul, Lewis had reminded her of her reasons for leaving, and his words had stiffened her resolve. No good could come of their reunion. Only more arguments and more rows and another separation. They were incompatible. She might as well admit it here and now. Sexually, they were well matched, but marriages were only partly based on that side of things. These were Lewis’s words, his advice to her, and she had believed him. After all, why not? He had nothing to gain in this except a rather second-rate designer who had forgotten so much during the past years. How was he to know that until the affair of the “Job” as she called it to herself, she and Paul had only rarely argued, and never in an unkind way?
Lewis found her the apartment which he obtained from a friend who was an estate agent. Lewis himself bought the flat and Karen was therefore his tenant. Karen was thrilled to have a home of her own and she furnished it as soon as she had saved the money. She did it in pieces, refusing Lewis’s offer of an advance. Paul had long stopped calling her and she was left in peace. She worked well for Lewis, who was a good designer himself, and learned a lot from him.
He was a man in his early forties, a widower with no children, and Karen felt more like a daughter to
