practice agreed with her that because of the isolation of her home, and her habit of cutting herself off from other people, Kate was in real danger of becoming too solitary. ‘You’re young … only twenty-seven,’ Sue persisted doggedly. ‘You’re clever, beautiful … Kate, you can’t possibly want to spend the rest of your life alone!’
Just for a moment a faintly brooding, haunted expression touched the blue eyes, and then they hardened to mocking flippancy as Kate responded teasingly, ‘Why not?’
‘Oh, you …! Well, you’re coming to this dinner party, even if it means driving out here to drag you back myself. You’ve got to start living again some time, Kate.’
Across the room their eyes met, and then suddenly, almost wearily, Kate gave in.
‘Okay, I’ll come,’ she smiled wryly, ‘who knows, I might be able to persuade one of your guests to buy the farm.’
Sue smiled. ‘I’m glad you’re selling it, although I know you’ve always loved it.’
‘Yes, I know.’ Kate smiled evenly at her and said with chilly truthfulness, ‘I sometimes wonder if it was Ricky I married, or this place. I fell in love with it when I was six years old. I could just see the rooftops from our cottage. I can’t afford to keep it on though, Sue—it costs a fortune to run.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m sure it’s no secret locally how Ricky left me financially. What was left of the land had to go to meet his debts. Next winter the roof is going to need repairing. It’s a listed building and can only be repaired with original or expensively hand-made roof tiles, and that’s just the start of it …’
‘But what do you plan to do! Where will you go?’
‘There’s still the cottage,’ Kate reminded her. ‘It’s been let as a weekend base to a couple from London for the past few years, but their tenancy runs out this year, and I’ve decided to move back there myself. It’s plenty large enough for me after all, and it will be much cheaper to run.’
‘And the money you get from this place, carefully invested, will bring you in enough to manage on, I suppose,’ Sue mused, able to see the logic of what her friend was suggesting.
‘It might do, but that’s not what I’ve got in mind. I’m thinking of starting up my own business.’
Sue stared at her totally bemused for several seconds before exlaiming, ‘Doing what?’
‘Working in stained glass,’ Kate told her calmly, amusement gleaming in her eyes as she surveyed her friend’s stunned face. ‘It was one of the crafts I studied at art school, and it fascinated me. I was only there six months, not long enough to learn very much, but I’ve been spending a couple of days each week over the last few months at a craft workshop in London learning more about it. The whole subject’s one that intrigues me, and more and more markets are opening up for it—not just for restoration work in churches either.’
‘But … but you’ve never said a word!’
Kate shrugged and then smiled. ‘Until now there was nothing to say. Although I’ve enjoyed what I’ve been doing, until Harry suggested we went into partnership last week, it never really occurred to me that it might be a way in which I could make a living.’
‘Harry!’ The stunned, almost inarticulate way in which Sue repeated the name of her mentor and proposed partner made Kate grin mischievously.
‘Don’t get excited,’ she cautioned, chuckling. ‘He’s fifty, happily married and a grandfather.’
‘But, Kate——! I’m amazed … you’ve been making all these plans and never said a word!’
Kate could tell that her friend was hurt and hurriedly made amends.
‘To be honest with you, Sue, until Harry mentioned us going into partnership last week, I hadn’t thought of what I was doing as anything other than an enjoyable hobby, but now that he has mentioned it, I really feel that it’s something I want to do. Of course we’re only talking about it at this stage, but Harry’s very enthusiastic. He likes my designs and he’s keen for me to develop that side of my work.’
Sue sat down in a chair and stared up at her. ‘Kate, I’m so pleased. This is just what you need to take you out of yourself. I’m sorry you’ve got to sell the house, of course, but it’s time you had a fresh start.’
‘Mmm … maybe. But keep it to yourself, would you, Sue? My plans are far too tentative at the moment to become the subject of village gossip.’ Kate made a rueful moue. ‘You know what this place is like.’
‘Only too well! Don’t worry, I shan’t breathe a word.’
The grandfather clock in the hall suddenly struck the hour and Sue jumped up, grimacing. ‘God, is it that time? I’ve got to pick the kids up from school in half an hour. I’d better go … but before I do, I want your promise that you’ll come to my dinner party.’
‘You’ve got it.’
‘Good, because I meant what I said, you know. I’ll come and drag you away from this place forcibly if you try and wriggle out of it now.’
‘Oh, yeah!’ Glancing from the vantage point of her five-feet-eight to her friend’s petite five-foot-nothing, Kate grinned, reviving a taunt from their mutual schooldays as she teased, ‘You and whose army?’
Ten minutes later, bowling down the lane in her small car heading in the direction of the village, Sue reflected warmly that at long last Kate was showing some signs of rejoining the human race. She couldn’t wait to get home and share her pleasure with her family. Her husband was almost as fond of Kate as she was herself, and her widowed mother loved Kate almost as a second daughter. It was so good to see her smiling again; reverting to the lovely laughing girl she had been before her father’s death, and then again, if only briefly, in those weeks before her marriage. How long after that marriage had it been before she stopped smiling? A month … six weeks? Over and over again Kate had denied that her unhappiness was Ricky’s fault, but in the shocked aftermath of his death she had broken down completely and admitted to her what a travesty their marriage had been.
Sexually Ricky had been completely indifferent to her; had made love to her less than half a dozen times, always perfunctorily, from what Sue had been able to gather from Kate’s weepy outpourings; and then once they had been married a couple of months, never touching her, but turning instead for sexual pleasure to a succession of girl-friends. He had been with one of them when he died in a horrifying head-on crash with another car. Kate had wanted to divorce him, she had confided, but she had been too ashamed of admitting to anyone what a travesty their marriage was to do anything about it.
What her friend had experienced would be enough to put any woman off the male sex for life, Sue admitted, but although Ricky had apparently constantly jeered at her for being sexually cold, that was not how Sue saw her friend. On the contrary, she had always thought there was an aura of warm sensuality about Kate … an air of womanliness and warmth, spiced with sexuality, and she knew that her husband John agreed with her. Even so … physical rejection from one’s husband must be a terrible burden to carry …
Although she wasn’t aware of it, as she stood by the drawing-room window looking out on to the mellow countryside Kate’s thoughts were following a similar path to her friend’s, although it was not the bitterness of the burden of her husband’s rejection that was occupying her thoughts, but that of another man.
Strange
