Starting Over

by Penny Jordan

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  'You LOOK VERY pleased with life this morning,'

  Maddy told her mother-in-law when Jenny called to see if the younger woman needed any shopping.

  'Mmm...' Jenny agreed, soft colour tinging her face as she remembered the special sweetness of the very private and passionate way in which Jon had demon-strated to her just how much he did love her.

  'You're looking very well yourself,' she smiled back at Maddy.

  'I feel great,' she acknowledged. 'I'm worried about Max, though.' She started to frown.

  'He isn't sleeping at all well and—'

  'Well, I know he's been concerned about Ben's threats to change his will,' Jenny offered.

  'No, I don't think it's that,' Maddy denied. 'We'd both hate to leave this house, of course, but at the end of the day if we had to...'

  Jenny's frown matched Maddy's now as she caught the anxious undertone in her voice. The obstetrician might have given Maddy the all clear but Max had made it more than plain to his family that nothing and no one was to cause his wife the slightest degree of concern.

  'Have you asked Max if anything's wrong?' Jenny queried.

  Maddy gave her a rueful look.

  'I've tried but Max insists that there isn't, but I know there is, Jenny. He's been having the most dreadful nightmares night after night and they're getting worse, but he simply won't discuss them with me and...' She paused, reluctant to expose to anyone else the way in which Max seemed to be distancing himself from her.

  'He has been through a very stressful time recently,'

  Jenny reminded her. 'I've never seen him react the way he did when you were in hospital, Maddy. We were all relieved, of course, when they were able to bring your blood pressure under control, but for Max the strain must have been unbearable, especially...'

  Jenny stopped.

  'Especially what?' Maddy pressed her determinedly.

  Jenny sighed. Jenny was beginning to wish that she had kept silent, but Maddy was looking increasingly distressed and Jenny knew she would have to finish what she had started.

  'Max was afraid that he might lose you, Maddy,'

  Jenny began gently. 'The consultant had explained to him what might potentially happen to you. And—and to the baby if you didn't respond to treatment, and Max....' Jenny bit her lip.

  'Max told me that he couldn't endure the thought of losing you and that if it were his decision to make, then to save your life he would have instructed the hospital to terminate your pregnancy—'

  As she heard Maddy's shocked gasp, Jenny reminded her quietly, 'Max loves you very much, and we are talking about a situation where he feared that if you hadn't responded to treatment, both yours and the baby's lives would have been lost. However, the consultant told him that you would have had to have been part of that decision had it needed to have been made. Max had wanted to make the decision for you to spare you.'

  As Jenny saw her daughter-in-law's face, she sighed guiltily. 'I'm sorry, Maddy, I shouldn't have said anything.'

  'No. I'm glad that you did,' Maddy told her truthfully. 'I had no idea. The hospital never said...'

  And neither had Max!

  Maddy gave a cold shudder and placed her hands protectively over her body. The thought of anyone or anything harming her baby aroused all her fiercely protective maternal instincts.

  Half an hour later after Jenny had departed with the supermarket shopping list—although Maddy was fully recovered Max was insistent that she didn't do anything that might overtire her—Maddy made her way to Max's study.

  He looked up as she walked in, the immediate pleasure lightening his eyes dimming to wariness.

  'Your mother's just been,' Maddy told him quietly.

  Walking over to the window and keeping her back to him Maddy continued, 'I told her how worried I've been about you.'

  'What on earth for? I've told you I'm fine, Maddy.'

  It was strange what knowledge could do. Now, beneath the surface irritation in his voice she could hear quite plainly other and darker emotions.

  'No, you're not,' Maddy contradicted him fiercely.

  'How could you be when...' She swung round to face him, her eyes brilliant with anger and pain.

  'Jenny told me, Max. She told me about what might have happened to our baby.' There was no way that Maddy could bring herself to use the word that had filled her heart with such anguish and rejection.

  'What!'

  She knew immediately that Max understood what she was trying to say.

  'She had no right,' he began furiously. 'There was no need—'

  'No need?' Maddy's voice shook with emotion.

  'You had chosen my life above our baby's and you say there was no need for me to know.'

  'Maddy, please try to understand,' Max begged her desperately, leaving his desk to go to her, watching white-faced as she stepped back from him, ignoring the silent appeal of his outstretched hand.

  'I couldn't bear the thought of losing you, even though...' He was the one who had to turn away now, as his own feelings overwhelmed him.

  'Even though what, Max?' Maddy demanded, her voice was as sharp with pain as his.

  'Even though I knew you would hate me for choos-ing you above the baby,' Max admitted. 'The children we already have need you and I... There's no way I could bear to live without you,' he told her.

  'Do you think it's been easy for me?' he demanded when she made no response. 'Do you think I haven't suffered, cursed myself in my heart over and over again...hated myself...? In my worst moments I've even imagined that...' He stopped, unable to tell her about the true awfulness of his nightmares.

  Max closed his eyes. Having admitted so much he might as well admit the rest.

  'And if you want the truth, Maddy, if I had to live through the whole hellish thing again I'd still make the same choice. I thought I was strong but I'm not.

  I'm selfish and weak. You' re my life, Maddy.

  'Don't say any more,' Maddy begged him.

  Max waited, tensing his body against the pain of seeing her walk away from him, of knowing that he had destroyed her love for him. But to his astonishment, Maddy was actually walking towards him.

  When she reached him she lifted her hand to his face, her eyes luminous with emotion as she touched his skin.

  It shocked her that he could have borne so much pain without saying anything to her.

  She had known, of course, how much he loved her and their children, but the raw naked intensity and depth of the emotion she was now seeing came as a revelation to her.

  'I can't bear knowing that I wanted to destroy our child,' he told her emotionally. 'And I don't—can't—

  blame you if you hate me for it, Maddy.'

  'I don't hate you,' Maddy told him softly adding,

  'and Max, it wasn't our child you wanted to destroy, it was me you wanted to save!'

  As she watched him, Maddy could see from his expression that she hadn't managed to reassure him.

  His voice cracking with pain, Max told her, 'I even actually thought...wanted...' He stopped, groaning.

  Then, covering his face with his hands, he said thickly,

  'I wished that this child had never been conceived.'

  He drew a deep shaky breath. 'And now,' he stopped and then told her harshly, 'it haunts and torments me, Maddy, that somehow he or she will know and that when it is born, it will be born hating me for...for what I contemplated doing.'

  'Max!' Maddy's voice rang with shocked compassion. 'No, you mustn't think that.'

  'I should have been the one to protect you both and not... But I couldn't bear the thought of losing you, Maddy, and now I can't bear to think that this child when it is born will believe—'

  'Max, stop it!' Maddy commanded him firmly.

  Wrapping her arms around him and holding him tightly, she whispered to him, 'You're torturing yourself unnecessarily. Look at me,' she demanded.

  The unfamiliar note of command in her voice surprise
d Max into obeying her. The tears had gone from her eyes now and they were clear and calm.

  'I promise you, Max, this baby, if it knows anything, will know that it was conceived in love, created out of love...our love for one another and for it.'

  'I was so afraid that if you knew what I'd felt...what I would have done...you'd stop loving me,' Max confessed, as the loving reassurance of her words soothed his anguish like cooling healing balm applied to a raw festering wound.

  Maddy looked at him steadily, her eyes full of the feelings she wanted him to see.

  As she squeezed his hand she told him shakily,

  'There is nothing... nothing you could do that could stop me loving you now.'

  'Maddy...Maddy...'

  As she lifted her face for his kiss, Maddy felt the dampness of his tears on her face.

  'We're safe now, Max,' she whispered reassuringly to him. 'We're all safe, and this baby will love you just as much as I do!'

  'BOILED EGG and soldiers,' Olivia giggled as David solemnly put the tray down on the bed beside her.

  'Oh, Dad,' she protested whilst David's heart sang at her easy use of the word.

  'Now I know that I'm an invalid. Do you remember the time I brought breakfast in bed for you and mother?' Her smile shook slightly and she looked away from him. This new relationship they were exploring together reminded her of being a teenager all over again, with all its wobbly uncertainties and self-doubts contrasted with moments of joy and euphoria so intense that they were almost magical.

  'How could I forget it?' David mourned with a grin.

  'The eggs would have done sterling service as cannon shot and as for the tea...'

  Olivia laughed.

  "The salt in the timer was wet and it had set, so I was waiting for ages for the salt to run through not realising, and I didn't know you weren't supposed to open the tea bags. Mother was furious with me,' she remembered ruefully.

  David watched her but said nothing. Although Olivia wasn't to know it, Tiggy had been on one of her binges the previous night and she had spent most of the night purging herself of the food she had eaten.

  'I'd better go and check on the girls,' David told her. 'Otherwise they're going to be late for school.

  You're out of fresh food so I'll do some shopping on the way back—and no getting out of bed whilst I'm not here,' he warned her mock severely. 'There's no way you're strong enough for that yet.'

  Olivia smiled but didn't disagree. She was still feeling ludicrously weak, which must be the reason she was allowing him to take charge and boss her about without objecting. She had to be feeling weak otherwise she would never, as she was doing right now, actually be mentally acknowledging how good it felt to be cosseted and looked after.

  Just knowing that he was there somehow made her feel as though a huge weight had been lifted off her shoulders.

  'I'll have to ring the office,' she told him. 'I've got a couple of appointments that will have to be cancelled and—'

  'When I get back,' David told her and smiled with loving firmness. He was halfway across the bedroom when Olivia suddenly remembered something, calling out urgently, 'Dad...'

  'What is it?' David was at her side immediately.

  'Aren't you feeling well. What...?'

  'No. No, I'm fine, but I've just remembered. Isn't it today you and Honor are supposed to be going to the hospital for her tests?' Olivia asked him.

  She saw immediately from his expression that she was right.

  'Honor tried to postpone the appointment but unfortunately she couldn't.... She says it's no problem for her to go on her own and she understands that there was no way I could leave you, not the way you were.'

  For a moment Olivia was too moved to speak as she absorbed the wonder of what he had said. She had been more important to him than either Honor or their baby.... She had been the one he had chosen to be with...her needs had come first. She had come first, but as fast as such thoughts formed, little-girl thoughts that echoed all the pent-up feelings of her past, newer, stronger more mature ones, took their place. She, too, was a mother. She too knew that anxiety every woman feels for the health and safety of her unborn child and she knew, too, how much Honor must surely really want David to be with her...even more so than a younger mother. Very firmly she shook her head and smiled at her father.

  'Dad, I'm fine now,' she told him. She continued insisting wisely, 'And there's no way I could ever forgive myself if you weren't with Honor. She needs you to be there—whatever she might have said.' She could see the hesitation and uncertainty in his eyes.

  'You must go,' she repeated. 'Please. I want you to.'

  As she spoke, Olivia suddenly felt as though she had stepped over an unseen threshold, as though she had overcome an unknown antagonist, as though she had reached out and taken hold of the strong supportive hand she had never even known previously was there waiting to grasp her own. Suddenly she acknowledged she felt secure, loved... shiningly sure of herself and her place in the world and in her father's love.

  'Very well, but remember, no getting out of bed,'

  David told her, coming back to her bedside and bending to give her a fierce hug and kiss the top of her head. His eyes were full of tears. They still had a long way to go and a lot of problems to solve, David knew that, but now, for the first time he felt optimistic about the final outcome.

  As BEN PICKED UP the mail he glowered bad-temperedly at the front door. He shouldn't have to do this. Maddy should be here to do it... or Jenny.... They had no right to leave him on his own. Well, he was going to make sure that he taught them a lesson. He was going to change his will and then... He frowned as he saw a letter addressed to himself. It was thick and bulky. A little awkwardly and uncertainly he opened it, leaning against his chair for support as he did so.

  Before she had taken the children to school Maddy had relit the log fire in his study. She had tried to persuade him to have one of those newfangled gas log things but he preferred the real thing. Gas logs! He snorted as he started to read the letter and then froze, the gas logs forgotten as a huge wave of icy shock and fury engulfed his whole body. By the time he had read and read the letter again he was shaking so much that he could barely hold it.

  Savagely he ripped it up and threw it on the fire.

  His heart was pounding painfully with a mixture of anger and panic. It was all lies of course, it had to be.

  He had never... He gasped as out of nowhere a wall of pain suddenly hit him, sweeping him up into a death grip so intense that he couldn't even cry out against it.

  It sliced into and through him, tearing at him, claw-ing and mangling, like a living red-hot fury. He tried to fight it but it wouldn't loosen its grip of him. The familiarity of his study started to darken and fade, he could see a bright light almost too painful for his eyes to endure and then suddenly there he was, standing in front of him, laughing as he walked towards him, his hair shining with the light that surrounded him, his eyes unlined and a deep dense blue, his teeth white, his bearing upright. Ben could see tenderness and compassion in his eyes as well as something else he didn't want to see.

  'No,' he protested, trying to draw back from his touch.

  'Ben, it's me....' the other told him gently.

  'Max,' Ben cried out in confusion. 'I don't—'

  'No, not Max,' the other corrected him patiently.

  'You know who I am, Ben. There's nothing to be afraid of. I've come to take you home.'

  'I am home,' Ben started to say but the words froze on the heavy cumbersome weight of the body he could see lying on the floor below him.

  'Matthew,' he whispered shakily as his twin waited and watched.

  'Yes,' he confirmed...waiting whilst Ben reached for his outstretched hand before saying gently, 'Come.

  It's time for us to go.'

  'Matthew,' Ben repeated, the word sighing through him. 'My brother...'

  'WANT TO talk about it?'

  Sara tensed as her father walked along the e
dge of the jetty to where she was sitting hunched, staring out at the blueness of the sea.

  "There isn't anything to talk about,' she denied.

  Richard Lanyon looked thoughtfully over her down-bent head. She had arrived several days earlier, white-faced and with haunted eyes.

  'It's a man,' her mother had pronounced when Sara had flatly refused to say anything to them other than that she had decided to fly out and spend Christmas with them.

  'What man?' Richard had demanded, his mouth an ominous line.

  'A Crighton man,' Sara's mother had hazarded.

  Richard had shaken his head over his wife's female intuition, but now...

  'Anything or anyone,' he challenged her directly now, watching the way her eyes widened and darkened as though she were in physical pain.

  'Sara,' he begged her.

  But she refused to be drawn, saying only, 'It's no use, Dad. Talking won't do anything. He doesn't...'

  Getting up and dusting the sand off her bare tanned legs she told him, 'I love him but he doesn't love me.

  I'm not a little girl any more,' she reminded him soberly, 'and you can't make the pain go away for me....

  I wish you could.'

  Sombrely he watched as she walked away—not his little girl any more but a woman.

  THEY WERE OVER the worst of the immediacy of the shock of it now, rallying around one another as close families do. David had wanted the funeral to be a quiet family affair but firmly and with authority Jon had overruled him.

  "That might be what we want, but it's not what Dad would have wanted,' he had told him.

  'He liked things to be done with pomp and cere-mony. He would think we had done very poorly by him.'

  'Mmm.. .nothing less than a state funeral if it could have been arranged,' Max had agreed and David had conceded that they were right.

  It had made his heart ache with love and pride to witness the quiet calm way Jon had automatically taken charge after Jenny had returned to find Ben dead on the floor beside his chair, and he had been more than glad to concede that right to him.

  All the family were invited, including the Chester branch.

  'You know how competitive Dad always was with them,' Jon had reminded David when David had looked askance at the formal black-edged cards Jon had ordered for the service. "This is what he would have wanted and we owe him that,' Jon had told his twin gently.