if Taylor could spare a carton of milk later that evening. ‘Why didn’t you ever tell me? No, don’t answer that,’ she added quickly, palms upwards in negation of any explanation that might be forthcoming. ‘It’s none of my business and you have a right to keep it to yourself.’
With anyone else, Taylor thought, it might have been a prompt for more information, but she knew that with Charity that wasn’t the case. Just as she knew that the request for milk wasn’t a ploy to question her about Jared. Taylor had offered the information voluntarily and with little prompting. Besides, with a family and two cats to feed, Charity was always running out of milk.
‘I’m just not too proud of carrying around the stigma of a broken marriage,’ Taylor admitted, reaching into the fridge for the small, unopened carton.
‘Oh, Taylor! It’s hardly a stigma these days.’
‘Well, a failure then.’
Charity treated her to one of her caring smiles. ‘Not even that. It’s because you do everything so perfectly. Always look good. Manage a career and—’ she sent a glance around the modestly fitted but pristine kitchen ‘—somehow keep your home spick and span. Thanks.’ She took the carton Taylor handed her, giving it a shake as she said wryly, ‘Never running out of basic necessities. Sometimes you’ve got to realise that you’re human too. It’s all right not to succeed in everything.’
Was that how Charity—and possibly other people—saw her? Taylor wondered, shocked. As a kind of superwoman? The proverbial perfectionist?
Closing the fridge, she gave her a friend a half-hearted smile. She wasn’t sure she liked being viewed like that at all.
‘Are you going to at least let me in on how long you’ve known him?’ the other woman ventured.
She owed Charity that at least, Taylor decided, having deceived her over her marital status even if it were only by omission, although she had gone as far as to tell both Charity and Craig that she had had a relationship that hadn’t worked out.
‘It was four and a half years ago,’ Taylor told her, opening the dishwasher to unload it, releasing a sudden cloud of steam. ‘I was working in a small provincial theatre as assistant to the set designer. I think Jared knew the leading lady of the play we were putting on at the time. His mother had been an actress and I suppose he knew people through her. Anyway, the theatre was in extreme financial difficulty and was scheduled for closure at the end of that season.’ Carefully she stacked several small plates in the cupboard above the worktop. ‘It had been a theatre for ninety years and was going to mean a great loss to the community. I found out later that Jared financed it, prevented it from closing down.
‘One of the cast threw a party and that was the first time I saw him. All he did was look at me across the room…’ And she had been lost for ever, a helpless, willing slave to his enthralling sexuality.
She stared wistfully down at her hand as though seeing something more than the little warm glass she had used for her fruit juice that morning.
At twenty-one she had been a virgin, green and untutored in the mysteries of love and passion, wary after the unsettled nature of her parents’ marriage.
There had been a few hard years before then, unhappy years when, after losing the father she had adored, she had gone to live with her mother and step-father. Almost immediately, however, she had been made to feel like an interloper. Her mother had made a new life for herself that didn’t take account of looking after a lonely, spirited teenager. As soon as she had been old enough, Taylor had left home, working hard to put herself through art college. Before she was even nineteen, her mother emigrated to Australia and, all alone in the world, Taylor had studied single-mindedly, shrugging off all advances by the opposite sex, except the most innocent and undemanding of dates.
Jared, though, had become her lover almost from the start. By that time her career was already under way. Not that it would have mattered, she reflected poignantly, forgetting for a few moments that Charity was there, because the passions that had ravaged them had been too great for denial or restraint.
Within a month she had moved out of her bedsit into his luxury penthouse apartment. And two months after that, just after her twenty-second birthday, they were married on a Hawaiian beach, pledging their vows to the soughing breezes and the song of an azure ocean.
She had invited her mother to attend, sending two airline tickets and a hotel booking with the simple invitation, which had been politely declined. Even that, however, hadn’t detracted from the magic of her wedding day.
It had been a partnership made in heaven—or so she had thought—until the party Jared had thrown a few weeks afterwards to celebrate their marriage, to introduce his friends and business associates to his new wife.
With few friends of her own, Taylor had invited just one or two people with whom she had been working at the theatre and, still basking in the warmth of being Jared’s new bride, was enjoying herself enormously at that party. It was only when, somewhat overwhelmed by all their congratulations and good wishes, she had wandered out onto the balcony that surrounded the penthouse that she had heard the two women talking.
One voice she instantly recognised as that of the leading lady of the play that had just finished running, the other belonged to an older woman she hadn’t met until that night.
Obscured by a screen of metal lacework supporting a thick and prolific vine, Taylor had stopped, hesitant to venture further, suddenly aware of the nature of the women’s conversation.
‘It’s been so quick,’ the familiar voice was saying. ‘I’d never have labelled Jared as the impulsive type. But you could have knocked me down with a feather when he came back from Hawaii married. I mean, after… What was the name of that woman he was seeing in Philadelphia? Alicia?’ And after a murmur of uncertainty, ‘Oh, I know it was an impossible situation,’ that same voice continued, ‘but well… he was so involved.’
‘A woman with a disabled husband she’s never going to leave doesn’t exactly make for a settled future,’ the older woman responded, ‘and I suppose Jared couldn’t wait around forever. He’s a full-blooded male. He needs a wife—children—and when all is said and done, well… she’s a lovely little thing.’
‘Hardly little!’ the leading lady contradicted with emphasis. ‘She almost matches him in height—certainly in those heels!’
‘Yes, but she’s so much younger than he is, that’s what I meant,’ the other woman elaborated. ‘This… Alicia, I believe, was much nearer his age. Still, he’s certainly picked one young enough and ripe enough to have his babies. She looks as though she’ll conceive every time he sneezes! And what with being so willowy and vulnerable looking—no wonder he couldn’t resist her! She must bring out the protective instinct in him!’
They both laughed, a muted sound drifting out across the dark waters of the Thames and the fairy-lit city.
Unable to face them, numbly Taylor had retreated inside.
When she had challenged Jared later about his being involved with a married woman, his reply had been surprisingly curt.
‘Who have you been talking to?’ he had wanted to know, flinging open the door to the wardrobe.
‘It was just something I overheard,’ she said.
He had sworn under his breath when she repeated her question.
