She moved into the cottage with a mixture of sheer pleasure at no longer being in the house which she had come to detest, and a certain apprehension which James swept aside with a wave of his hand when she mentioned it to him.
‘It’s superior here, isn’t it?’ he asked, and she nodded. ‘Convenient?’ Another nod, because she had bought herself a bicycle and was no longer relying on public transport. ‘Could you have possibly got anything as pleasant for that sum of money?’
‘Do you want more rent?’ she asked anxiously, and he threw her one of those indulgent smiles which she was coming to recognise. He didn’t bother to answer her question. Instead, he said, still smiling,
‘So what’s the problem?’
Put like that, she wondered whether she wasn’t being over-sensitive. It wasn’t as if she was unemployed and dependent on him totally for her upkeep. Anyway, she did pay him rent, scrupulously so, and she never accepted any presents from him. He had already made it clear what he thought of gold-diggers, a silent threat that she had better not be harbouring any ideas in that direction, and although he could not have been further from the truth if he’d tried, she saw no point in raising any doubts in his mind by accepting gifts from him.
That was no hardship, anyway. It was not in her nature to take what was offered for free, not unless she felt that she could repay the offering in her own way. In the past, when boys had taken her out for meals, albeit cheap and cheerful ones, she always reciprocated by returning the favour at a later date.
Her sister, already disapproving of their relationship, saw Claire’s move to the cottage as a final piece of lunacy.
‘You’re not thinking straight,’ she said bluntly. ‘All that country air’s gone to your head and turned you into a complete idiot.’
‘Reading isn’t “the country”,’ Claire responded, to which her sister snorted in disgust and accused her of trying to change the subject.
‘You need to return to London,’ she said imperiously, at which Claire smiled down the telephone because she could just imagine her sister’s expression as she uttered that commanding bit of advice. ‘You need to get a bit of civilisation back into your bones.’
Jackie adored giving orders. She had always been the more assertive of the two of them, and Claire had usually found herself giving way to her, but this time things were different. This time Jackie’s opponent was far stronger, far more persuasive than she was.
‘London isn’t civilised,’ Claire responded, to which there was another disgusted snort. As far as Jackie was concerned, to turn your back on London was something close to sheer madness. She had been born and bred in the country and she had been dying to leave it behind ever since she was a young girl. She couldn’t understand why Claire could not appreciate what it had to offer.
‘That man isn’t civilised,’ Jackie said bitingly, ‘not from what you’ve told me at any rate. And if you didn’t agree with me deep down, you would have been showing him off to everyone like mad. Move back up here,’ she pleaded. ‘I know heaps of people. I could introduce you to someone you’d like. Someone on whom you wouldn’t be throwing your life away.’
That had been the tenor of her sister’s criticisms ever since Claire had first told her about James. She needed to wake up, Jackie had decided, snap out of her pointless infatuation, find someone of her own ilk.
The thought of that made Claire shudder and she hurriedly wound up the conversation before her sister decided to fix a date for this introduction.
But the seeds of unease which had already been sown were now being watered.
She should have broken away, but wasn’t it always so easy to see what should have been done in hindsight? How could she have broken away when he was in her bloodstream, an addictive, compelling sickness that could elevate her to those soaring heights where no one else could ever take her?
CHAPTER FOUR
‘I’VE decided to come up and pay you a visit.’
Claire heard her sister’s voice boom down the line and she automatically glanced around to make sure that Tony was not within hearing distance. He was in a foul temper and on the hunt for someone on whom he could vent it, and she was in no mood to be anybody’s scapegoat. She had not slept at all the night before, her eyes were burning, her head was hurting, and every time her wayward thoughts decided to wander off in the direction of James, she had an awful feeling that she was on the verge of breaking down completely. She would happily have taken the day off work. In fact she would happily have taken the rest of her life off work, told Tony that she was just retiring to somewhere very far away to die, but that would have been a final act of cowardice and she had spent too long being a coward, hiding from reality, pretending that things could change if she was patient enough.
Finding that photograph had catapulted her into making a decision about her relationship. It hadn’t been easy. For a start, she wasn’t used to making decisions, least of all decisions about her love-life. She had never been obliged to. She had never before found herself in a situation of having to relinquish someone who had become a part of her life, and now that she had walked away from James she had to keep reminding herself that it was for the best. It helped when she managed to shove the desolation to one side and convince herself that leaving him had freed her to continue with her life. She had spent the last few months on hold, in a state of limbo, and when she looked at it from that angle, she could almost feel exhilarated. Almost, but never completely, because lurking beneath all her persuasive arguments was the vision of a dismal, empty life without him.
Not that she allowed that to prey on her mind. She couldn’t afford to. She needed strength, and she knew that she would find it because she had to, and it was in human nature to survive.
She still felt raw inside, though, but there wasn’t much chance of Jackie understanding that and leaving her in peace. Sensitivity was not one of her sister’s strong points, however caring she was. She had a tendency to steamroller her way over objections if she thought that she was in the right and there was no question that on the subject of James Jackie definitely considered herself to be on a winner.
‘There’s no need,’ Claire said, eyeing the glass partition of Tony’s office.
‘There’s every need. This thing, affair, call it what you will, has gone on for far too long…’
‘You sound like Mum on one of her soap-boxes…’
‘Don’t interrupt. Where was I? Oh, yes—for far too long. You’re such a ditherer, Claire. I shall zoom up there and sort everything out for you. It’ll only take me forty minutes on the motorway. I can be with you by seven tonight.’
‘I told you, there’s no need. I’ve packed him in.’ Not bad, she thought, the voice was light and at first glance could even pass for sounding nonchalant, as though packing men in was a hobby that she practised with regularity. She propped her head in her hands, and blinked rapidly.
‘You’ve done what?’
‘Packed him in, Jackie,’ she responded. ‘Told him it’s over, given him the big elbow…’
‘I get the message,’ Jackie said, sounding subdued. ‘I still can’t believe my ears, but I get the message.’
‘Aren’t you going to congratulate me?’ Claire asked with a touch of bitterness. ‘After all, it’s what you’ve been advocating for months, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, but…’
‘You’ve informed me often enough that the whole thing was destined to failure, that I was mad, stupid, naive, childish, what were the other adjectives?’
‘Was I wrong?’ Jackie asked quietly, with concern in her voice. ‘I only did it because I love you.’
‘I know.’ Claire sighed, a desperate little sound which she camouflaged under a dry laugh. ‘You were right all along, of course. Though, to be fair, he never tried to kid me into believing that there was anything in our relationship. Ships that pass in the night, that’s what we were.’ This time the laugh was a little on the hysterical side and she had to fight down the urge
to be sick. ‘What he omitted to tell me was that he was married.’
There was a shocked gasp down the line and Claire began explaining about Olivia, not that she knew much, she realised in the telling. He had been married to a woman called Olivia. That was about it because he had thrown her only the barest of bones, and even those had been thrown under duress. What had she been like? How did she die? The questions had drummed on and on in her head for hours the night before. It was tempting to speculate on their relationship but every time she found herself doing that, she became even more depressed because he had obviously loved her madly and his love had been severed prematurely. That sort of situation, she realised, was insurmountable, because as far as he was concerned no one would ever be able to match up against a woman who had never had the time to expose her faults. She had died in full bloom and, next to her, how could any living, breathing woman measure up?
She didn’t tell any of this to Jackie, though, but she knew that her sister was making exactly the same deductions. How could she fail to? You didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to work out why James Forrester was not going to become involved in another relationship with a woman. He might sleep with them, share the more superficial aspects of his life with them, but that was about it. No doubt, if he ever married, it would be along the lines of a business arrangement, something that was beneficial to him and took no toll emotionally.
Jackie, now that the shock had dissipated, was musing aloud about this unexpected revelation. What more did he say? she kept pressing. Did he break down? That one was so amusing that for the first time that day Claire smiled. James Forrester, break down? What a laugh. He had probably possessed his reserves of self-control from the cradle.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Tony sauntering out of the office and she hurriedly cut short her sister’s questions, but not before he had seen her surreptitiously replace the receiver. He strolled over and Claire looked at him cautiously. The girls on either side of her were pretending to work, but she knew that they were all ears, waiting for an explosion.
‘Personal call?’ he asked sarcastically. ‘I don’t suppose you’ll have completed the design work on that aftershave advert, but you’ve got time for personal calls. Amazing.’ He gave her a reptilian smile and a few days ago that would have been enough to have ensured a mumbled apology and a red face, but Claire was at the end of her emotional tether. She returned his smile with a cool expression and informed him that that particular job had been completed.
Tony was pleasant most of the time, but when he wasn’t he could be impossibly dictatorial, and right now she felt as though she had had enough of being dictated to.
‘Has it really?’ he said, looking taken aback, and she pulled out the sheets of board from her drawer, handing them to him.
‘It has, really.’ Claire smiled politely and he looked as though he would have liked to have said more, but he walked away, muttering and flicking through the boards, while Karen and Anne on either side of her stifled their giggles.
‘What’s got into you?’ Karen asked, still grinning, though her eyes betrayed a certain amount of curiosity. ‘You’ve never answered Tony back before. He looked as though you’d socked him in the jaw just then.’
‘Don’t tell me the worm has turned,’ Anne murmured, smiling affectionately at Claire. Ever since she had first joined the company, Karen and Anne had taken it upon themselves to shelter Claire under their wing. They had come to the mutual decision that she lacked any kind of hard edge and would most probably break like a piece of china if she wasn’t treated gently.
‘That’s one way of putting it,’ Claire said grimly, and Karen frowned.
‘You can’t change!’ she whispered. ‘You’re the eternal optimist. Especially compared to this little lot here.’ She glanced theatrically around and Claire grinned.
‘I’ve grown up,’ she said seriously, realising that she meant it. She felt years older and centuries wiser, and with the realisation came a feeling of power that she would be able to carry on.
‘In the space of twenty-four hours?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Enough chat!’ Tony shouted from across the room, and Claire turned to him and said with a cool self-confidence which she never knew she possessed,
‘We’re still managing to work. Five minutes of conversation while we do our layouts isn’t going to harm anyone.’
This time the silence in the room was complete. For a moment, Claire thought, Oh, help, I’ve gone too far, but then Tony smiled and shrugged his shoulders elegantly.
‘What can I say to that piece of logic?’ He was as volatile as summer weather, quick to thunder but then sunny again once the mood had passed. He disappeared back into his office and Karen gave her an enthusiastic thumbs-up sign.
One little triumph in the great tapestry of life, she thought, carrying on with her work, her hands on autodrive as she sketched a series of layouts, while her mind was busy gnawing away at the issue of James.
She would have to leave the cottage, of course. It had always been a perk of the relationship, and the thought of continuing to live beneath his shadow, even if he did allow her to stay on, was out of the question.
By the time five-thirty rolled around, Claire knew exactly what her plan of action would be. She would go to the cottage and collect all her things, which should take all of five minutes since she had relatively little there and nothing bulky at all, then she would cycle up to the manor and give the keys to the housekeeper. James would not be around. He rarely made it back to the manor before eight at night and quite often not at all, preferring to stay at his London flat if he had meetings that ran on into the evening.
She practically flew back to the cottage, feeling like an intruder as she quickly began throwing her things into cases, starting with the bedroom and then gradually working her way downwards to the kitchen, where she scrupulously cleared away every single bottle of spice on the racks. Every single one brought back memories of meals she had cooked for him, even though to start with he had tried to discourage her from that little show of domesticity.
God, she thought, hurling them into her suitcase, how irritated he must have been at the thought of my cooking for him. Maybe he had suspected it as some kind of nestbuilding ploy.
It was ten-thirty by the time she had finished clearing out the cottage and had stacked the boxes neatly by the front door. She would have to return for them at a later date, when she had found somewhere permanent to live. In the meantime, she would be moving in with Karen, her friend from work, who lived a matter of minutes away from the office. It had been a spur-of-the-moment thought and Karen, bursting with curiosity but too kind to ask any outright questions, had agreed readily.
‘It won’t be anything like where you’re accustomed to,’ she had apologised, and Claire had smiled wryly, commenting that no, it would be much better, to which Karen had looked puzzled. She knew precious little about Claire, even though they saw each other socially at least once a week, usually for a quick bite in the town centre. She had been back to the cottage a couple of times, though, and had been open-mouthed with awe.
With good reason, Claire thought, looking around her and fighting back the sadness. Every corner, every nook and cranny, held a memory and it amazed her to think just how much a part of her life he had become. It was as if she had never existed before she met him.
She cycled up to the manor, making sure that she kept to the side of the tree-lined avenue, certain that his car would be parked outside, in which case she would cycle off, but it wasn’t and she breathed a sigh of relief as she raced up to the front door and rang the doorbell.
She could easily have waited until the following day to return the keys, but she wanted them out of her hands now, immediately. She felt as though she had done what she had to do and the sooner she rid herself of the things that reminded her of him, the sooner she could embark upon her recuperation.
She gave three more impatient little p
resses on the doorbell, tapping her foot and looking down at her watch. She didn’t like cycling at this hour of the night, especially since it would take her at least half an hour of hectic pedalling to get back to Karen’s place. Where the hell was Mrs Evans? She was about to give one final, very long, extremely irritated buzz when the door was pulled open and she found herself staring up at James. She closed her mouth but she couldn’t wipe the look of shock from her face.
He was casually dressed, in a pair of black cords and a thick off-white jumper, the sleeves of which were shoved up to the elbows. He had stuck his hands in his pockets and he was staring down at her.
‘What are you doing here?’ she finally said when she had found her voice.
‘I live here,’ he said, giving her a long, amused smile, and she had a wild urge to knock his front teeth out. He must have a very short memory, she thought, to have forgotten what had happened between them the day before. He was certainly acting as though nothing between them had changed.
‘That’s not what I mean!’ she began angrily, and he cut in, turning around and walking off,
‘You’ll freeze to death out there.’ He glanced over his shoulder, his hands still in his pockets. ‘Shut the door behind you. And they call this spring?’
He was heading off in the direction of the downstairs lounge and she dumped her bicycle down and stormed into the house, slamming the door behind her and hoping that she had broken a few window-panes in the process.
He had vanished into the lounge and she entered hard on his heels, panting a bit and red with anger, to find him pouring himself a drink.
‘Care for something to drink?’ he asked, facing her, and she glared back at him.
‘No, I would not,’ she bit out, enunciating her words very carefully, ‘care for something to drink.’
Shadows of Yesterday Page 6
