and her very genuine and down-to-earth enjoyment of their new-found wealth. They were not in the least pretentious and their annual summer barbecue was one of the best attended and most popular local events, probably second only in popularity to Lord Stanton’s New Year’s Eve ball, ranking there with the river race which Adam organised each year to raise money for charity.
‘Venice has given us masses of stuff as well. All of it designer-label by the looks of it and hardly worn. I only wish I were a smaller size,’ Roberta added wistfully. ‘There’s a suit here that would fit you perfectly, Fern,’ she added, eyeing her own plump figure with resignation. ‘It’s just your colouring.’
Fern could feel the tension crawling down her spine; revulsion at the thought of wearing something that Venice herself might have worn when she was with Nick… In her mind’s eye, Fern could see Nick removing it from the other woman’s body… touching her… caressing her…
She felt no sexual or emotional jealousy at the scene she had mentally conjured up, only a deadening sense of futility and despair.
Was it for this that she had spent the last two years of her life desperately trying to piece together her marriage… to convince herself that in staying in it she had made the right, the only decision… that ultimately what she was enduring would prove worthwhile once she and Nick were through the turbulence of these painful years; that ultimately the need he said he had for her would… must conjure up an answering spark within her, that would allow her to cease searching hopelessly for whatever it was that had drawn her to him in the first place and make her believe that she loved him?
Without turning round to see what Roberta was showing her, she said quietly, ‘I’m afraid I’m not really the type for drop-dead glamour outfits. They’re not really my style.’
As she watched her, Roberta repressed a small sigh. Fern might not have Venice’s extrovert vibrant personality, but she had a marvellously slender and supple figure, a femininity which shone through the dullness of her clothes, a serenity and tranquillity which drew others to her in need of the gentle warmth of her personality.
She had a very pretty face as well, and as for her hair!
Roberta’s own husband, a pragmatic and very down-to-earth Scot, had once confessed to Roberta that he was never able to look at Fern’s hair without wondering if it felt as sensually warm and silkily luxurious to touch as it did to look at.
‘It’s the kind of hair that makes a man want to reach out and…’
He had stopped there looking slightly shame-faced and sheepish, while Roberta raised her eyebrows and commanded drily, ‘Go on!’
He had not done so, of course; there had been no need, and neither had Roberta been annoyed or jealous. She knew him far too well, and Fern as well. Now, if it had been Venice they had been discussing… There was a woman who would enjoy nothing more than the challenge of taking another woman’s man. Fern, on the other hand…
‘There are one or two children’s outfits here,’ Fern commented, interrupting her train of thought.
‘We’ll keep them separate from the rest,’ Roberta told her, ‘although I don’t think there will be very many. Most mothers these days seem to operate their own exchange system.’
‘Well, it does make sense,’ Fern pointed out. ‘Children’s things are very expensive and often they’re not in them long enough to wear them out.’
‘Mmm… it’s all very different from when mine were young,’ Roberta agreed. ‘These days it’s all designer trainers and the right kind of jeans virtually from the moment they can speak.’
Even with only a very short break for a sandwich and a cup of coffee, it took them until well into the afternoon to work their way through all the clothes which had been donated.
Fern’s knees ached from the draught coming in under the church hall’s ill-fitting doors when she eventually got to her feet. Outside the sun was still shining although it was chilly now inside the hall.
Nick had said that he wanted to leave at five, which meant that he would arrive at his London hotel in good time for dinner.
He hadn’t told her where he would be staying, though. Fern frowned as she remembered how tense and on edge he had been earlier… how irritable with her.
After she had left Roberta and started to walk home, she wondered tiredly why it was that she and Nick just could not seem to grow closer to one another. It was after all what they both wanted.
Was it? a small bitter voice demanded. If it was, why was Nick paying so much attention to Venice?
She was one of his clients, Fern reminded herself firmly, and Nick was after all human and a man. It was only natural that he should be aware of Venice as a woman. What man would not be?
But Adam had not looked at Venice with the same barely concealed sexual interest that she had seen in Nick’s eyes…
She tensed briefly, fighting off the wave of emotion she could feel threatening her.
As she had done on her arrival, she carefully skirted Adam’s office, keeping her head averted as she hurried past it on the opposite side of the square, increasing her walking pace as she left the town behind her.
If she didn’t linger too long, she just about had enough time to take in one of her favourite detours, to enjoy a special piece of self-indulgence. After all, if Nick was right, she wasn’t going to be able to do so for much longer, she reflected.
Broughton House lay on the outskirts of the town, close enough to her own house for her to be able to turn off into the quiet lane which led to it.
The railway which had led to the erection of their own small cul-de-sac had also heralded the end of the town’s busy prosperity, preserving it as it had been in the middle of the nineteenth century virtually so that it remained compact and neat, without the urban sprawl which had overtaken so many other towns.
Although it was less than a mile from the town, Broughton House was still surrounded by fields, with an outlook over open countryside, the builder having cleverly sited it so that the side overlooking the town had the least number of windows.
It had originally been built by a wealthy merchant, a ‘nabob’ returning from India, who, disdaining the existing properties, had commissioned himself a new one in the countryside surrounding the place which had been his original birthplace.
The grounds, which covered an area of almost four acres, had become overgrown during the last eighteen months or so of Mrs Broughton’s life, but Fern liked the soft wildness of the over-long grass with its sprinkling of spring bulbs; the moss which coated the paths and the general air of what to others might be neglect but to her gave the place more a sense of somehow sleeping mysteriously, waiting for the magical touch of an owner who would love it to restore it to its original splendour, but these were thoughts she kept to herself, knowing how derisive Nick would be were she to voice them to him.
As she walked through the formal rose garden, bare now at this time of year, she paused to watch the young heron standing on the mossy edge of the round goldfish pond.
Somewhere within its depths lurked a dozen or more fat lazy goldfish, but Fern suspected they were far too wise and knowing to risk surfacing in such cool weather, and that the young marauder for all his bravura would have a disappointing
