Starting Over

by Penny Jordan

  You run a business that involves taking the kinds of risks that no sane man with a healthy respect for his own physical safety would ever take.'

  Nick had shrugged, knowing that there was nothing he could say. His work as a negotiator for people caught up in the legal systems of other countries often took him into situations that were physically dangerous. It hadn't been unknown for him when dealing with a particularly corrupt government to bribe his

  'client' out of gaol and then have to make a quick and sometimes dangerous getaway over the border with him or her.

  As a newly qualified solicitor he had volunteered to help the parents of a university friend to make an ap-plication to a far Eastern government for their daughter to be released from prison where she was being held on drug smuggling charges.

  After he had successfully won the case he had been besieged by other parents requesting his help with similar cases.

  It appalled Nick that even now when surely the most naive of travellers must be aware of the dangers, young people, especially young girls, fell into the trap of allowing themselves to be used—sometimes knowingly but more often than not as mules—by drug traf-fickers.

  He did other work, of course, as a locum which allowed him plenty of time to travel. Work to Nick was a means to an end, not an end in itself.

  'I've booked us a table at the Sorters' new restaurant for tonight,' Tullah had announced this morning over breakfast. 'They've got their Michelin now and I must say I'm looking forward to sampling their latest menu. You'll enjoy it, Nick.'

  Well, yes, he would enjoy it, but...but what he was hankering after right now was something a little bit more adventurous than domesticity of the type enjoyed by his brother Saul and his wife and family. It was all very well...all very cosy, but it was not for him...not yet. This mating, nesting instinct that seemed to have affected so many members of his generation of Crighton males was not one he shared. Not that he was against commitment or marriage per se...he wasn't; he just didn't want it for himself—not now—not ever!

  He valued and needed his freedom far too much.

  'Do YOU THINK he'll like it?' David asked his wife as they stood arm in arm studying the just finished small suite of rooms they had had converted from a loft over what had once been stables but which were now a garage.

  'He'll love it,' Honor assured him with a smile, her breath racing in her lungs as he turned to kiss her.

  'You two!' the elder of her daughters from her first marriage had complained the last time she had visited them. 'I've never known a couple so besotted with one another.'

  'Mmm—are you besotted with me?' David had asked her whimsically after Abigail had gone back to London.

  'Certainly not,' Honor had denied sternly, her voice softening as she added, 'Only just totally crazily head over heels in love with you—that's all!'

  'I wonder when he's going to arrive?'

  They had been married a few short weeks ago and had known one another less than a year but Honor had never for one moment doubted that she was doing the right thing. She knew the story of David's past with its shadows and secrets, its shame, and she knew too of his glorious resurrection, his rebirth from the shell of his own past. Now she was looking forward to welcoming into their home the man who had played such a large part in that rebirth—Father Ignatius—the Irish priest turned missionary who was presently in Ireland on a visit. David and Honor were pleased that they had managed to persuade him to leave Jamaica and make his home permanently with them.

  'He's due to fly to Manchester from Dublin tomorrow,' David said with concern. 'I wanted to meet him off the plane but he wouldn't let me. He said there were things he had to do.'

  'Yes, I know,' Honor agreed patiently as though she hadn't heard all of this a dozen or more times already.

  'And then he said that he wanted to make his own way here and not have me drive over to Dublin to collect him.'

  Honor smiled soothingly again.

  'I just hope he's going to be happy here with us.'

  'He will be,' Honor told him positively, adding softly as she leaned close to him, 'It's you he's coming here for, David...you he wants to be with....'

  Honor had met the priest briefly when she and David had married in Jamaica and she had discovered that he was everything David had told her he was and more. They shared an understanding, a belief in the dignity of nature and a respect for the world.

  A rueful smile lit David's eyes and he laughed. 'All right, so I'm fussing,' he agreed.

  There were still days when he had to pinch himself to make sure that he was really awake and not merely dreaming. It humbled him unbearably to reflect on how lucky he was—and how undeserving. He had said as much to Jon, but his brother had shaken his head in denial of his claim.

  David had been given so many precious gifts in this fifth decade of his life. His friendship with the priest.

  The love he shared with Honor, his acceptance back into the hearts and lives of his family. David's eyes became slightly shadowed because, of course, there was one member of his family who had not accepted him back, Olivia, his daughter. She had every reason not to do so. David understood that. He had not been a good father to her and she had been forced at a very young age to take charge not just of her own life but those of her younger brother and their mother as well.

  When you allied to that his own father's dismissive attitude towards her whilst Jon's son Max was praised, it was no wonder that she should feel so hostile towards the father who had failed to take her part.

  But the pain he felt at their continued estrangement was not just for himself, it was for her as well. He was a different David from the one who had simply walked out of his old life because he wasn't able to face up to what he had done. Now he knew and understood the power negative emotions had to hurt their owner even more than those they were directed against. And Olivia was hurting—David knew that.

  'Give her time,' Jon had counselled him.

  There was David's son as well, but Jack had had the benefit of getting the parenting from Jon and Jenny that David and his ex-wife Tania had not been there to give him. Jack, unlike Olivia, was secure in himself...happy in himself. Jack might watch him with a certain wariness...waiting, judging...but there was none of the fury or the fear in Jack's reaction to his return that there had been in Olivia's.

  Her point-blank refusal to see him or speak to him was perhaps understandable. Her father's return had come as a shock to her—he knew that and he knew, too, that he had hardly given her any reason to either love or respect him; but he had hoped that she would mellow a little towards him and at least attend the wedding party he and Honor had given at Fitzburgh Place. He was desperate to make some kind of reparation to her, to talk to her, to explain...apologise.

  He had no right to expect her love; he acknowledged that. But it was her pain that made him hurt more than his own...her pain, his blame.

  Every time he looked at Max and saw what Jon's son had become he reminded himself that Max had the very best parents any child could possibly have had, just as whenever he thought of Olivia he knew that she had not and that he and his selfishness were to blame for that.

  As Honor saw the sadness in his eyes she guessed what had put it there—Olivia... She couldn't imagine how she would feel if one of her daughters were to reject her...to feel so hurt by her and detached from her that they refused to let her into their lives; or rather she could, and it was so untenable that it made her shiver.

  Honor was a good listener and she had heard a lot about Olivia from other members of the family, not because they had gossiped about her or criticised her.

  No, the Crightons if they were nothing else, were fiercely loyal to each other. No. What she had learned was how very concerned in their different ways all her relatives were for her.

  'She was so happy when she and Caspar married,'

  Jenny had said. 'And when the girls arrived...'

  And her inference had been that the happiness
had gone.

  'She works too hard,' someone else had said and there had been other comments, all made with loving anxious concern which Honor had correctly interpreted as meaning that Olivia's life was shadowed and unhappy.

  'Sometimes she seems almost...afraid to let herself relax and have fun....' had been the most telling statement of all made by Tullah, Saul's wife, her magnificent eyes darkening as she spoke. There had been, Honor guessed, enough damage done to Olivia as a child for her to feel a need to take refuge in controlling and pushing herself to reach self-imposed targets. And to have a very fragile sense of self worth.

  Leaning over to nibble on David's ear Honor whispered enticingly, 'Let's go to bed.'

  'What!' David pretended to be shocked. 'It's still afternoon....'

  'Mmm...siesta time.' Honor smiled seductively.

  Arm in arm they made their way across the grav-elled space that separated the house proper from the outbuildings.

  Honor was looking forward to the arrival of David's old friend and mentor and as she walked past the lavender she paused to brush her free hand against its leaves and breathed in the scent she had released.

  It was her plan to grow a wide variety of herbs here and to make her own herbals and potions from them.

  Olivia reminded her a little of her lavender...

  outwardly sturdy and tough but inwardly so sensitive that the merest touch could bruise and damage.

  CHAPTER THREE

  BOBBIE, Luke Crighton's wife, was the first member of the family to hear Olivia's news. She had called at the house knowing that Olivia, Caspar and the girls would have arrived home, eager to learn all about their trip and to see if there was any shopping she could get for Olivia whilst she did her own.

  'Mummy's upstairs,' Amelia informed Bobbie as she knocked on the open kitchen door and then walked in.

  'Yes, she's packing Daddy's things,' Alex added innocently.

  'Dad's staying in Philly...in America....' Amelia supplied and both of them stood and looked at her with such grave-eyed sadness that Bobbie ached to sweep them up into her arms and hold them tight.

  'Olivia,' she called out from the bottom of the stairs,

  'It's me—Bobbie. Can I come up?'

  When Olivia appeared on the landing Bobbie saw from her expression that she hadn't been able to conceal the shock the sight of Olivia had caused her. She had lost weight and her skin looked grey, lifeless, like her eyes. She looked...she looked...Bobbie swallowed painfully. Now it was Olivia herself she wanted to hold and comfort.

  'The girls have told you, have they?' Olivia guessed tiredly.

  'They said something about Caspar staying on in Philadelphia,' Bobbie agreed awkwardly.

  'You'd better come up,' Olivia said. 'Caspar and I are separating,' she informed her when Bobbie got to the top of the stairs. 'It's for the best, for all of us.

  Things haven't been good between us for a long time and...he isn't the man I married, Bobbie...and I...'

  Olivia's voice thickened and Bobbie could see the tears standing out in her eyes as sharp as broken glass.

  'No,' Olivia denied as Bobbie reached out towards her. 'No. Don't sympathise with me...I don't need it...I'm not sorry. I'm glad. Our marriage just wasn't working,' she told the other woman tensely. 'I think once he got over his initial shock of hearing that I wanted to end it, Caspar was actually relieved.'

  As she heard the pain in her own voice Olivia started to frown. Why should she feel pain? She didn't love Caspar any more. It was a relief not to have him standing at her shoulder complaining that she spent far too much time at work and far too little with him and the girls. It was a relief, too, to only have her relationship with them to worry about. Now that her father had come back people would be watching her even more closely, waiting to see her fail...fall...

  'I know sometimes things happen between a couple that can seem to be very aggravating, small issues really but like a stone in a shoe they can—' Bobbie was saying quietly.

  'Small issues?' Olivia interrupted her with a bitter laugh. 'This isn't about small issues, Bobbie. The last time Caspar and I had sex was months ago....'

  For a moment Bobbie thought that Olivia was complaining that Caspar would not have sex with her but then when Olivia continued angrily, 'I just didn't...I just couldn't...' Bobbie realised her mistake.

  'Caspar seemed to think I was just being bloody minded...just withholding myself from him to score points. That's how far apart we've grown,' Olivia burst out. She had started to tremble visibly, her hands moving in quick agitation. 'We had the most awful rows about it. It was so destructive and damaging for the girls. I tried but Caspar...'

  'Did you think of trying counselling?' Bobbie asked her softly.

  Olivia's pain and despair were almost a visible physical presence in the room with them. She was normally such a calm, contained sort of person, so controlled that Bobbie was shocked by the change in her.

  'Counselling!' Olivia gave a mirthless bitter laugh.

  'You mean like my mother ought to have had? I'm sorry,' she apologised to Bobbie. 'I know...' She stopped speaking, pressing her hand against her mouth as though she were trying to silence herself, Bobbie recognised compassionately.

  'It's too late for that now,' Oh via told her. 'Our marriage is over.'

  'What will Caspar do?' Bobbie asked her.

  'He's taking a sabbatical. He's had it approved by the university that he can take time out from lecturing.

  He says he's going to ride around America on a bike, a Harley-Davidson,' Olivia told her derisively. 'It's something he's wanted to do since he was a boy.'

  To her own shock she suddenly discovered that she was crying without knowing why.

  'Oh, Livvy, Livvy,' she heard Bobbie saying emotionally; but as Bobbie stepped towards her holding out her arms, Olivia backed away shaking her head.

  There was so much she needed to do, so many arrangements she needed to make. She wanted to be in her office before eight when she started work on Monday. That would give her an extra hour to start going through the post that would be waiting for her and then, if she brought the rest of it home with her on Monday night, she could read it whilst the girls were in bed. At least now that she didn't have Caspar to consider she would have more time in the evenings to work.

  'SOMETHING'S WRONG,' Bobbie told Luke that evening after she had broken the news about Olivia to him.

  'Of course something's wrong,' he agreed dryly.

  'She's left Caspar.'

  'No, I mean apart from that...something's wrong with Livvy,' Bobbie persisted. 'She was...different somehow....'

  'She's upset. That's only natural.'

  Bobbie sighed under her breath. Much as she loved her husband there were times when they just weren't on the same wavelength. Another woman would have understood immediately what she meant.

  'I wonder if Jenny knows yet?' Bobbie said. 'She must do, surely. She and Olivia have always been so close.'

  Jenny was Jon's wife and she had acted as surrogate mother for Olivia through all her difficult childhood.

  Olivia was now a partner in the family legal practice of which Jon was the head.

  Quickly Bobbie reached for the phone and dialled Jenny's number.

  'What is it? What's wrong?' Jon asked Jenny when she walked into the study looking worried.

  'Bobbie's just been on the phone. She went over to see Livvy this afternoon. I would have gone myself but I had a Mums and Babes committee meeting.

  Livvy and Caspar have separated. Livvy's come home without him.'

  'What!'

  Jon's reaction mirrored Jenny's own shock. He started to shake his head.

  'I thought they were so happy.'

  'They were,' Jenny agreed, 'until David came home....' Try as she might she could not keep the accusatory note out of her voice.

  She could see from Jon's face that her words had upset him and she knew, too, that they were unjustified and unfair but she couldn't make herself call th
em back.

  Jon had changed since his brother's return. He seemed almost to live, breathe and think David these days. So much so that she felt that she was being shut out, excluded almost from his life, which was ridiculous, of course. They had been married for over thirty years and these last years of their marriage had brought them very close, brought a new depth to their marriage...their love.... These last years...the years without David.

  But now David was back and Jon wasn't exclusively hers any longer. It was David this and David that. Jenny could see his love for his brother in his eyes, hear it in his voice, every time he spoke his name.

  'David isn't responsible for the breakdown of Livvy's marriage. He can't possibly be,' Jon objected.

  'Maybe not,' Jenny was forced to concede. 'But he is responsible for what Livvy is, Jon...you've said so yourself often enough.'

  'Livvy didn't have a very happy childhood,' Jon agreed. 'But that wasn't just down to David....'

  Jenny gave a small impatient sigh.

  'Before David came home you said yourself that you were concerned about her, that you felt she was working too hard.'

  'Yes. She was...is,' Jon acknowledged.

  It had disturbed him to discover in her absence just how much extra work Olivia had taken on and quite unnecessarily. Had she said that she needed help, Jon would have seen to it she got some. But she had insisted that she did not, becoming almost angrily defensive. With that kind of workload it was no wonder her marriage was under stress. The locum he had hired to cover the period she was away had not come anywhere near being able to cope and Jon had had to take on some of the extra workload himself and share the rest between Tullah who worked part-time and his daughter Katie who was also part of the family practice.

  As Jenny walked past the back of his head without bothering to stop and kiss the top of it as she normally did he hesitated, wanting to reach for her but before he could do so she had gone.

  Since David had come back Jon was so involved with him that he hardly seemed to notice she existed, Jenny reflected crossly as he let her walk out of the study without sliding his arm around her waist to give her his usual hug.