by Penny Jordan
‘You could take us with you …’ she had told him.
‘To a city environment where I would spend almost as many hours travelling as I do working? No, that isn’t what I want …’
Their time together had deepened her love for Blake and his love for her had given her a fertile soil to flourish and grow in; to mature and become far more at ease with herself.
Love, she had discovered, the right kind of love, did not constrain and impoverish, but instead conferred freedom and independence, enriching every aspect of her life.
Smiling to herself, she walked over to where Blake was standing talking to someone, slipping her hand through his arm as he turned towards her and drew her slightly closer while he introduced her to his companion. She listened to their conversation with half an ear while she studied the other guests, her attention suddenly caught by a familiar face.
Quietly she watched as she saw Joel turn towards his wife. His arm rested easily on his son’s shoulders, and his wife’s mouth was curled into a smile as she spoke to him. Their daughter, taller than her mother, laughed at whatever it was her mother had said.
As though he was suddenly aware of her scrutiny, Joel turned his head and looked at her.
Briefly their eyes met and then disengaged. She had no regrets about what they had shared, at least not for herself. From the desolation and despair which had been, in its different ways, Andrew’s cruel legacy to them both, she knew she had come through a stronger, more emotionally balanced woman.
It had after all been a major turning point in her life, a recognition of her right to express herself sexually as a woman. What she had shared with Joel had unlocked the door which had allowed her to step confidently into her new life with Blake.
Without the knowledge of her sexual response to Joel, she might have hesitated, unsure if what she was experiencing wasn’t merely a throwback to her teenage crush.
No. She had no regrets. Had Joel?
* * *
As Joel turned away from watching Philippa he saw that Sally was watching him, a faint shadow smudging her eyes.
He reached out to touch her, but before he could say anything Neil Saunders came up to him.
‘Have you got a minute, Joel?’ he asked him.
Excusing himself to Sally, Joel turned to listen to what he wanted to say.
‘I wouldn’t mind specialising in paediatric nursing … once I’ve qualified,’ Cathy commented to Sally enthusiastically. Her decision to train as a nurse had surprised and pleased Sally, and she had encouraged and helped her as much as she could.
She was working part-time again now, a decision she and Joel had made together when he had discovered how uncomfortable she felt with the transposition of their traditional roles.
It hadn’t been easy, talking about how she felt … for either of them.
There had been times when she had wondered if they or their marriage could survive such painful honesty, but Joel had refused to give up or to let her do so and in his determination she had recognised the same strength which had originally drawn her to him.
It had been Joel too who had suggested that they go for counselling and that it might be easier for them to be open and honest about the sexual problems within their marriage in front of someone else. ‘It isn’t a matter of blaming or accusing,’ he had told her when she had cried and said that she knew he thought it was all her fault. ‘I still love you, Sal, and you still love me … but we both know that that isn’t enough.’
And he had been right; it had been easier to say how she felt through an intermediary. It had made the whole issue somehow less emotive.
‘When we’ve had a row or a disagreement about something … when you’ve ignored me all evening, I can’t suddenly switch off from that when we go to bed and become sexually turned on,’ she had told Joel.
‘I need to feel that you want me … not just for sex … that you’re prepared to take the trouble to … to arouse me before we go to bed,’ she had told him uncomfortably when the counsellor had invited her to explain her feelings …
‘How can I do that when whenever I come near you you push me away?’ Joel had countered. ‘You complain if I touch you in front of the kids, and the bedroom’s the only place where we have any privacy … where we’re on our own …’
Both of them had almost been equally surprised when she had told the counsellor how ambivalent she had felt about Joel’s vasectomy, how although on one level she had known he had made the right decision, on another she had felt almost cheated.
Joel had been openly distressed by her admission. He too would have liked another child, other children, he had admitted, and he had felt guilty at not being in a position to support a larger family. The spectre of his own childhood poverty had haunted him, though, along with his embarrassment over their hand-to-mouth existence and his father’s lack of status.
It was only now that he was actually coming to terms with those feelings and becoming able to value his father’s good points, rather than to focus on the others which as a child had caused him so much embarrassment.
Listening to him falteringly and uncomfortably revealing how he had felt about his childhood had moved Sally unbearably, rekindling all the tenderness and emotion she had felt for him when they first met.
It had been his offer to undergo a reversal of his vasectomy operation if that was what she wanted that had touched her the most, though.
‘No. You were right,’ she had told him softly. ‘We couldn’t have afforded another baby, and now I’m content with the children we have.’
It had taken some months of counselling before she felt able to respond properly to Joel in bed, and it had been a little while after that before, totally unexpectedly and out of the blue one morning, when he was making love to her, she had realised that she was going to climax.
That had been a memorable milestone, but nowhere near as memorable as the afternoon she had paused in her housework, frowning over the unfamiliar feeling flickering through her body, not even recognising it properly for what it was until she heard Joel’s voice in the kitchen and felt her stomach twist in reactive anticipation.
She hadn’t said anything, almost more alarmed than pleased by what she was experiencing.
She had told Joel she wanted an early night and had then spent over an hour in the bathroom, showering, smoothing scented body lotion on to her skin, looking at herself uncertainly in the mirror, wondering if he still found the sight of her naked body arousing. She never normally initiated any lovemaking between them, and her humiliation by Kenneth had left a small, painful scar which had never quite healed.
She went to bed and lay there tensely waiting for Joel, listening to the quiet hum of the television downstairs.
An hour later, still lying there waiting, she gave in to the anger and, pulling on her dressing-gown, went downstairs.
‘Sally, what is it—what’s wrong?’ Joel had asked her anxiously when he saw her.
What was wrong? Did he honestly not know?
Furiously she had opened her mouth to tell him and then the humour of the situation had struck her and instead she had started to laugh.
‘Sal …’
Joel had got up and come towards her. Still laughing, she had held out her arms to him, the dressing-gown falling open to reveal her naked body.
They had ended up making love downstairs on the floor in front of the fire as quickly and as urgently as a couple of teenagers. And for once Joel was the one doing the protesting that the kids might come in and see them.
‘Let them; I don’t care,’ Sally had lied recklessly.
‘Oh, you don’t, do you?’ Joel had challenged her softly. ‘Well, in that case …’
When he had started to lick his way slowly all over her body she had squirmed helplessly against him, torn between anxiety and delight.
Joel had laughed at her as she’d tried to wriggle away from him, but later, when she had given in, he had gathered up their scattered clothes a
nd agreed that they would be far more comfortable in bed, and once there he had taken hold of her hands and asked her huskily, ‘Make love to me, Sal—show me that I’m not the one doing all the wanting … all the needing … all the loving …’
Briefly she had hesitated, unsure if she really wanted what taking such a step would bring, half of her still wanting to cling to the passive safety of the familiar role she had created for herself; but then Joel had breathed out, his body pressing lightly against hers, and her skin had tingled where it touched his, and she’d given in to the lure of the deliciously wanton thoughts which had been tormenting her all evening.
Later she wasn’t sure if it was shock or excitement that had brought that awed note of husky pleasure to Joel’s voice as she’d touched him. Neither of them had ever been particularly vocal lovers, but suddenly, listening to him telling her how much she was arousing him, she’d discovered that she wanted to share with him her own excitement and need.
The extraordinary realisation that she was going to climax before he did, and that once she had she still wanted him, had been reflected in her eyes for Joel to see, and his pleasure in what she was feeling, the tears that had blurred his eyes as he’d kissed her and held her, had filled her with such a heady mixture of yielding sweetness and unfamiliar power that its strength had seemed physically to dissolve something inside her, some cold, hard, frightened barrier she had never known existed until she felt it melt away.
They had had other problems to adjust to. Joel still only worked part-time at the leisure centre and they had less money coming in now that she worked part-time as well, but somehow they managed and there were other compensations … like the time they spent together, like the fact that they could talk to one another … share their problems … air grievances.
Thoughtfully she looked towards Philippa, and then she saw the way she was smiling at the man with her and the small cloud lifted from her eyes.
‘No, don’t tell me,’ she had said quietly to Joel. ‘I don’t want to know any more than I already know … except … do you love her?’ she had asked him painfully.
‘No,’ he had told her, and she had known it was the truth.
She couldn’t pretend that it didn’t hurt, or that she would ever totally forget, but then neither could she deny that their marriage was stronger for what they had experienced, and Joel in his turn had never cross-questioned her about Kenneth.
But when Joel had explained through their counsellor what he felt was missing in their relationship she had not been able to stop herself wondering how much of the intimacy and sexual pleasure that was plainly so important to him, and which he said he did not get from her, he had found with that other woman. As he, perhaps, had wondered how much of the non-sexual attention and affection she had said she needed she had got from Kenneth.
What had happened in the past no longer held any threat or worry for her—she knew Joel loved her—but it still touched her heart with a cold finger of fear to know how close she had come to losing him.
She saw that he had finished his conversation and was walking back towards her.
‘What did Neil want?’ she asked him curiously.
There was an odd expression in his eyes, a mixture of elation and uncertainty. ‘Colin has decided to retire early and Neil wanted to know how I felt about taking his job.’
‘As assistant manager of the whole leisure centre complex?’ Sally asked in surprise. Ten months ago, when Joel had passed his professional exams, the leisure centre had appointed him formally as a coach, but it hadn’t been the small increase in his salary that had pleased Sally so much as their official recognition of all Joel’s hard work.
They had had a small party to celebrate, and even though Joel had protested that there was no need for her to make such a fuss she had been able to tell that he was pleased.
Daphne, of course, had sniffed disdainfully, and Sally had refrained from reminding her how scathing she had been about Joel’s ability to get any professional qualifications. Besides, Daphne had her own problems: Edward had apparently got in with a bad crowd at school and was not studying as hard as he should have been doing.
‘Mmm …’ Joel confirmed.
‘What did you tell him?’ Sally asked him.
‘I said that I’d like some time to think about it and discuss it with you,’ Joel told her.
‘I’d have thought you’d jump at it … don’t you want it?’
‘Yes … It would be a bit of a challenge for me, but it would mean going back to full-time working … sometimes in the evening and at weekends.’
He reached for her hand and turned round slightly so that no one else could hear them as he told her softly, ‘I don’t want to lose what you and I have built up together, Sal … I don’t want to go back to the way we were … I want the job, yes, but I want what I have with you more …’
Fiercely Sally blinked away her emotional tears, laughter dancing in her eyes in their place as she teased him, ‘What you mean is you don’t want to miss out on our afternoons in bed …’
‘Who said I was going to miss out on them?’ Joel teased back. ‘There’s always my lunch-hour … I like it when we have the house to ourselves and we don’t have to worry about the kids overhearing us … I like it when you make those soft little noises when I touch you and I love it when …’
‘You love it, full stop,’ Sally told him forthrightly, giving him a little push, but she was still laughing and she didn’t move away when he pulled her closer to him.
‘I’ll tell you what,’ she murmured, teasing him provocatively. ‘Get them to write a two-hour lunch-break into your contract and …’
‘Two hours … Mmm … what a wonderful idea …’
‘The second hour is so that you can catch up on the chores you won’t have time to do if you’re working full-time,’ Sally told him severely.
Sharing their domestic responsibilities as well as then-leisure time had become part of the new way they lived their lives, the new intimacy they had carefully and sometimes very painfully built for themselves.
‘What will you do about coming here, though?’ she asked him thoughtfully. Joel had become involved in the fund-raising for the new children’s ward and had agreed that he would help with the children’s water therapy.
‘Colin isn’t retiring until the end of the year, which would give me time to sort something out.’ She heard him groan as he told her, ‘Here come Daphne and Clifford.’
As she glanced over his shoulder Sally could see her sister, resplendent in a far too fussy and frilly silk floral dress. Daphne had started to put on weight recently and the dress strained slightly at the seams.
Sally’s own linen-mix chocolate-brown chainstore jacket, worn with a white T-shirt and a pair of tailored shorts, had been bought under Cathy’s sternly critical eye. Sally had balked a little at first at the shorts, until she had seen the look in Joel’s eyes when she’d modelled the outfit for him. ‘You’ve got the figure for it, Mum,’ Cathy had told her. ‘Hasn’t she, Dad?’ The look in Joel’s eyes had made Sally laugh and flush a little.
‘She hasn’t seen us yet … We’ve still got time to escape …’ Joel whispered, grinning.
Sally looked over at Daphne, her face flushed with irritation and heat, and then she looked back at Joel. Daphne was her sister … but Joel was her husband.
‘You’re on,’ she told him softly. ‘Let’s go …’
* * *
‘Thanks.’
The photographer from the local paper grinned his appreciation as Stephanie and Deborah broke their pose. It would make a good front-cover print for their headline story: the local female businesswoman who had donated to the hospital the new children’s water-therapy pool, standing side by side with her assistant, both of them attractive women … very attractive women. He turned his head to watch as they walked away from him, deep in conversation.
‘That should get us some good free publicity,’ Stephanie commented.
&
nbsp; Deborah laughed. ‘Which of course was why you decided to give Mark a fit and donate the money in the first place …’
Her boss grinned back at her. ‘Well …’
‘You could have bought full-page space in all the glossies for less,’ Deborah pointed out to her, still smiling.
‘Mmm …’
Both of them looked towards the pool.
‘André says I’m getting soft in my old age,’ Stephanie said.
She and her French supplier, much to everyone’s surprise, but most especially to Stephanie’s, had married the previous year.
‘I don’t want to get married,’ she had wailed to Deborah on the morning of her wedding. ‘Why am I doing this … why are you letting me do this …?’
‘Because you love André and he’s told you that unless you make an honest man out of him he’s going to leave,’ Deborah had told her forthrightly.
‘You realise that Mark was threatening to get you to sack me for letting you do this, don’t you?’ Deborah pointed out severely to her now.
‘Sack you? No way. Taking you on was the best decision I ever made … correction—the best decision Mark ever made … Where is he, by the way …?’
‘The last time I saw him he was making eyes at another woman,’ Deborah told her mock mournfully. ‘And André was helping him,’ she added mischievously. ‘Babies,’ she explained when Stephanie raised her eyebrows questioningly. ‘A pair of them … twins …’
‘Ah, yes, Blake Hamilton’s children. Mark’s still eager to become a father, then?’ she asked Deborah.
‘Very,’ Deborah admitted, her smile dying away.
‘But you don’t want children?’
‘Yes … yes, I do,’ Deborah admitted, surprising herself a little by her admission. Seeing Mark enthusiastically if rather amateurishly clutching one or other of their friends’ present crop of babies had given her a funny little feeling inside, a mixture of pain and pleasure, an odd, bittersweet twisting sensation which, although she had not told him so, had lent a new depth and intensity to her sexual responsiveness to him.
