but then Irene had never been as soft-hearted as Claire. In many ways Irene was very like her brother.
‘Look, I’d better go,’ he told Claire. ‘Brad’s probably back by now and wondering where on earth I am.’
‘I’ll see you out to your car,’ Claire offered.
He looked tired and stressed, a bit like a slightly rumpled, unhappy teddy bear, Claire decided affectionately as they made their way outside.
‘Thanks for listening to me,’ he told her gruffly. ‘I suppose if I’m honest I’ve known for a while that things can’t go on the way they are, but one always hopes.’
Poor Tim.
‘Try not to worry,’ Claire advised him, reaching out to hug him affectionately.
As he drove down the road towards Claire’s house Brad saw the two of them locked in a deep embrace, oblivious to his approach.
They broke apart, Tim turning to get into his car without looking behind him, and Claire remained on the footpath watching his car disappear, only aware of Brad’s arrival when he slammed his car door. She turned to face him with a startled expression.
‘Oh, Brad… You’ve just missed Tim,’ she began. ‘He—’
‘Yes, I saw him,’ Brad said tersely.
Claire tensed, searching Brad’s averted profile anxiously as she recognised his curt withdrawal.
Was Tim right? Was Brad on the point of dismissing him? She knew that there was no way she could bring herself to ask him; all she could manage was a hesitant, ‘Did you want to speak to Tim…?’
‘Not right now,’ he told her grimly, walking away from her and heading towards the house, leaving her to follow him—an act which in itself was so out of character for him that it caught her off guard. One of the first things she had noticed about him and reluctantly liked had been his quietly considerate good manners, his way of treating a woman with the kind of old-fashioned courtesy which seemed to have gone out of fashion.
‘In fact, right now, I think it would be just as well if I didn’t speak to him,’ he threw at her over his shoulder as he reached the back door.
‘You’re… you’re angry with him…’ Claire guessed hesitantly.
‘Angry with him! That’s one way of putting it,’ Brad agreed bitingly as he waited for her to precede him into the kitchen.
‘I know… he is very anxious about his job…’ Claire revealed, stumbling slightly over the words, wondering if she was doing the wrong thing in saying them. ‘Tim may not be a particularly… ambitious or aggressive man,’ Claire told him, feeling that she ought to do something to defend her brother-in-law and draw attention to his good points, ‘but he is very conscientious, very—’
‘You obviously hold him in high esteem,’ Brad interrupted her.
The sarcasm in his voice made Claire feel uncomfortable.
‘You obviously think I’m trying to interfere in something that is none of my business,’ she felt bound to say, ‘but—’
‘But you’d like to know anyway what my plans are for the future of the British side of our distribution network and, of course, Tim’s future with it. Is that it?’ Brad asked her, and grimly continued before she could make any denial.
‘Very well, I’ll tell you. Some changes will very definitely have to be made. As you yourself have just said, Tim is not the most confident of men and his lack of assertiveness comes across to potential customers as a lack of confidence, not just in himself but in our product as well. Couple that with his apparent inability to recruit the kind of highly motivated and even more highly skilled technicians and fitters we pride ourselves on using back home and it’s no wonder we’re having the problems over here that we are having.’
‘So, you do mean to cancel your contract with him and find a new distributor?’ Claire challenged him.
To her surprise, instead of immediately conceding that she was right, Brad frowned slightly and then said slowly, ‘No, not necessarily.’
When Claire looked questioningly at him, he explained, ‘It occurs to me that Tim might benefit from an intensive course on self-assertion techniques plus some input from a more positive role model to show him—’
‘How the job should be done,’ Claire supplied wryly.
‘No,’ Brad corrected her quietly. ‘To show him what can be achieved with a more positive approach… a different outlook if you like. We have someone working for us on the distribution side back home who would be perfect for the job, although it won’t be easy persuading him to come over here. But that’s my problem and you aren’t interested in my problems, are you? Only Tim’s. But then, after all, you are lovers.’
‘Lovers?’ Claire repeated in astonishment.
But before she could continue Brad was demanding angrily, ‘When did it start? After your husband’s death…? Before it?’
An affair! Brad thought she was having an affair with Tim.
‘OK, I can understand that your… marriage may not have… satisfied you, but hell… surely a woman like you could have found a man who was free to have a relationship and not one…’
Claire stared at him in shocked disbelief. ‘You have no right to make those kinds of assumptions about me,’ she told him stiffly. ‘You know nothing about me… or about my marriage.’
Even though she would rather have died than admit it to him, his comment about her marriage had hit a painful nerve, but not for the reason that he imagined.
‘I would never have an affair,’ she told him with passionate sincerity. ‘Never… I couldn’t.’
The vehemence in her voice fuelled Brad’s fury. How could she deny it when he had seen the evidence with his own eyes, heard it with his own ears? And if she had to have an affair with someone, surely she could have found someone more… more worthy than her poor, downtrodden brother-in-law?
‘“Couldn’t”?’ he challenged her contemptuously. ‘Oh, come on. You’re an adult, mature woman; you’ve been married… Your body knows how it feels to experience sexual desire, sexual fulfilment… sexual need; you must—’
‘No,’ Claire protested frantically. ‘No, that’s impossible; I could never… I have never…’
Something in her voice, in her face made Brad pause and look searchingly at her. She looked haunted, her eyes shadowed, her voice shamed… bruised.
‘What is it?’ he asked her. ‘What is it you’re trying to say?’
‘Nothing,’ Claire denied rigidly, starting to turn away from him.
But he reached out and caught hold of her arm, preventing her, telling her, ‘No, you can’t leave it like that. You could never… have never… what?’ he pressed.
He could feel the slight tremor that she tried to suppress run down
