In loving memory of
Lorna Bruce-Clarke,
who passed away 17 June 1989.
Dearest mother and my best friend,
who believed in me and always
encouraged me to strive, and
who will live on in my heart and memory
forever.
Contents
Family Tree
The Beaumont Family
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About The Author
Also by Lynne Wilding
Copyright
About the Publisher
Family Tree
The Beaumont Family
Laura Ashworth-Beaumont. Family matriarch and successful businesswoman who built her millinery business during and after WWII into a national boutique department store known as Ashworths.
Caroline Ashworth-Beaumont. Laura’s eldest daughter by her first marriage to Eddie Ashworth is an international concert pianist. Her music career is cut short by developing rheumatoid arthritis in her hands. Divorced from Nick Beaumont, Caroline and their daughter, Fern, return to Sydney where Caroline hopes to start a new career.
Nick Beaumont. Stepson of Laura (by her second marriage to Jack Beaumont), Nick is a successful businessman who jointly runs the commercial construction company B&S Constructions, started by his father. His jealousy and possessiveness led to the destruction of his marriage to Caroline. Nick has learned his lesson and wants just one thing — Caroline back in his life.
Michaela Beaumont. Laura’s youngest daughter by her marriage to Jack. Twenty-four-year-old Michaela is tempestuous, ambitious and single-minded. Her goal is to one day be Ashworths’ CEO; until lawyer Leith Danvers comes into her life and teaches her about love and passion.
Joel Beaumont. Laura’s son by her marriage to Jack, their youngest child. Joel is studying to be a doctor but having problems. Emotionally scarred by a family tragedy, he has developed a serious drinking problem. Can his affection for the straight-talking Elissa Markovitch help him sort out his problems?
Fern Beaumont. Caroline and Nick’s fourteen-year-old daughter is a typical teenager with one very strong wish — to see her parents permanently reunited.
Prologue
London, Summer, 1974
The four members of the Beaumont family waited for the crowd to thin after the concert before they left their seats in Covent Garden.
Laura and Jack, with their children Michaela and Joel, continued to comment on Caroline Ashworth’s solo debut in the renowned theatre. Her rendition of Chopin’s Fantasie Impromptu had been passionate, masterful, confident and highly individualistic.
Laura wasn’t sure whether London’s music critics would appreciate Caroline’s unique performance, but the reviews in the morning papers would tell, one way or the other. Their opinion wasn’t important, however, because to her, her eldest daughter’s performance had been magnificent.
As they walked up the carpeted aisle, she glanced at Jack. Her husband was still grinning from ear to ear, as impressed by Caroline’s performance as if she were his own daughter, instead of his stepdaughter. In his dinner suit, he looked particularly presentable and, while over the years his black hair had turned to pepper and salt, his manly features and trim physique still allowed him to strike a commanding figure.
Fleetingly Laura’s thoughts turned to Caroline’s father, Eddie. How proud he would have been to hear her play as she had tonight! Despite his faults and the difficulties of their marriage, Eddie had genuinely loved his daughter and music, so it was fitting that Caroline had inherited and surpassed his own musical talent. Yes, Eddie would have been very proud.
At thirty-three, and not before time, Caroline was on her way. Tonight’s performance, no matter how the critics pontificated about it, guaranteed that. She hadn’t done it easily, either, few talented pianists did. It had taken years of serious study, graduating from one college of music to another — Sydney, Paris, London and Vienna — learning all she could from the masters. For the last three years, since her divorce, she’d had to single-handedly juggle the raising of young Fern — who tonight was with a babysitter — and fit in what seemed the interminable hours of practice needed to reach her level of expertise.
‘Come on, kids, we’ll grab a cab to get to the restaurant in Soho for Caroline’s party,’ Jack said to the children. His New York accent was less pronounced than when Laura had met him thirty years ago. He began to shepherd Michaela and Joel through the foyer, then led the way between other theatre-goers, down the front steps to the footpath.
Laura glanced towards Joel. Blond like her and tall for his age, in his three-piece navy suit he could pass for a young English gentleman, until he spoke and his Australian accent was revealed. She watched him hide a yawn behind his hand. He had just turned eleven and wasn’t used to keeping such late hours. She checked her watch, it was almost midnight. ‘Jack, perhaps one of us should take Joel back to the hotel. He looks beat.’
‘Mum, I’m not tired,’ Joel objected strenuously. ‘I want to go to Caroline’s party.’ He looked at his sister and his small mouth firmed. ‘If Michaela can go, so can I.’
Jack looked at Laura and shook his head. For a moment he didn’t say anything. He was, as happened often, momentarily entranced by his wife’s beauty. She, a businesswoman from ‘down under’, had outshone many London socialites tonight in her sleeveless red-and-black caftan with its hand-jewelled belt. He turned to Joel and indulgently ruffled his hair. ‘It’s okay, mate, of course you can come. If you get bored or too tired, we’ll find a quiet corner where you can have forty winks, hey.’
On the footpath, the throng of theatre-goers pressed close to the kerb as couples, groups and individuals vied to attract passing cabs. A light drizzle, soft, mist-like — so typically English — began to fall. The rain dampened the road, the old imposing buildings on the other side of the street, and the traffic, making everything look shiny and, in the glow from the street lights, fresher than it would be in the unforgiving light of day.
‘With this crowd it’ll take forever to get a cab,’ Jack grumbled. He wasn’t known for his patience, especially with regard to catching cabs in foreign cities. ‘Let’s walk around the corner, away from everyone. We might be luckier there,’ he suggested. Threading Laura’s arm through his, he tugged her with him.
Michaela and Joel raced ahead of them down the street.
As they walked Jack turned to Laura. He gave her a beaming smile. ‘Guess you’re feeling mighty pleased with your eldest daughter. Caroline was superb.’ He chuckled briefly and leant close to kiss her cheek. ‘You know that I’m kind of a true-blue rock’n’roll guy myself, but I appreciated how she played, how well she did it.’
‘She’s your stepdaughter, too, remember. Without our encouragement and financial support, Caroline might not have lasted the distance needed to reach this point.’
Jack took that on board with a nod of his head. ‘She’s a lot like you, you know. Very determined. Caroline knew what she wanted and wasn’t going to let anyone stop her from getting it. One has to
admire such single-mindedness.’
Though Jack hadn’t mentioned his son’s name, Laura knew he was alluding to Nick. The break-up of Nick and Caroline’s four-year marriage had been hard on both parties, and on Fern, too. And sad as their divorce was to the family, three-year-old Fern was, according to the experts, too young to be emotionally scarred by it. She hoped so …
Earlier this evening she had glimpsed Nick’s darkly handsome presence at the back of the theatre, and had waved a hello to him. He hadn’t come over at interval to talk to them though. Still, she thought it particularly nice that he’d been there to savour Caroline’s success. She wondered if Caroline knew he’d come. Probably not.
Michaela and Joel stood close to the kerb, but no cabs were passing by, just a steady stream of everyday traffic that now moved cautiously along the wet road. Dark-haired Michaela moved to shelter under her mother’s umbrella, the only one they’d brought with them, while Jack and Joel scoured passing vehicles for a cab.
‘Hey, there’s one, Dad! On the other side of the road,’ Joel yelled excitedly, dancing from one foot to the other. Spontaneously, he jumped off the kerb onto the road, trying to catch the driver’s attention. In his enthusiasm he didn’t see the lorry lumbering towards him or hear the squeal of wet brake pads as the driver tried to avoid hitting him.
Jack fairly leapt off the footpath and grabbed Joel’s arm. He threw his son backwards, off the road, towards Laura. He thought he had enough time to step back out of trouble, but the combination of the heavily laden vehicle and the wet road set the lorry’s tyres sliding. As if in a dream — more like a nightmare — Jack watched the broad bumper bar and the squared-off chrome front of the lorry come towards him at an alarming pace. He didn’t have time for an evasive move, but fear-filled eyes glanced towards Laura and saw the horror in hers as the truck hit. He shielded his face from the oncoming metal seconds before it struck.
The lorry hit Jack squarely in the chest and, even though it was slowing, the impact, the sound of the thud of metal against bone and muscles, was horrific.
‘Jack!’ Laura screamed his name.
As quickly as she dragged Joel to safety and thrust him into Michaela’s arms, she was running towards Jack, though it seemed her actions and everything about her moved in slow motion. Her scream, the screech of the brakes, of car horns bipping and Jack being hit, then thrown clear of the truck, was imprinted in her mind forever. By the time she reached him, Jack had rolled into the gutter. He lay there, crumpled, unconscious and bleeding.
‘Lady!’ The driver got out of the truck, his expression showing devastation as he raced towards her. ‘Shit, I’m sorry. I couldn’t help it. Damned brakes.’ He held his hand out, as the rain fell more consistently; dropping heavily into the palm of his hand. ‘Damned rain.’
Traffic banked up. Irritated drivers who didn’t know there’d been an accident began to sound their horns. Cars on the other side of the road slowed to see if the accident was serious. A policeman who’d been walking the beat hurried towards the scene.
Laura was on her knees in the gutter, staring at her injured husband lying on his side. A trickle of blood leaked from his ear and another from his nostrils — she knew that wasn’t good. He moaned, just once, but didn’t regain consciousness. In her panic she glared at the constable and yelled, ‘For God’s sake, call an ambulance!’ Her gaze flashed towards the children. Michaela, her face white, had her arms protectively around Joel, whose right arm — the one Jack had grabbed so roughly — hung limply at his side. His new trousers had rents at the knees where he’d fallen. Otherwise, except for shock, Joel was okay. She looked at Jack again, her brown eyes wide, fear beginning to build deep inside. Jack wasn’t okay. Not by a long shot.
The truck driver, a practical man, got a blanket from the back of his cabin to drape over Jack’s length. ‘Don’t move him, lady. We’d best let the ambos do that. Might make things worse.’
The ambulance took Jack to Royal London Hospital because it was the closest. Laura and the children had to get there by cab, and not until the police constable had taken down the relevant details for his report.
Laura and Michaela sat in the waiting room for hours. Joel had been seen to in casualty. He had a broken arm and was admitted so that the bone could be re-set in the morning under anaesthetic. An emergency surgical team were working on Jack, who had sustained head and chest injuries, with internal bleeding. Caroline arrived to keep her sister and mother company, still wearing the glamorous oyster-coloured gossamer-fine gown she had worn on stage, now with a matching cape over it.
‘Can you contact Nick?’
‘Nick?’ Caroline looked at her mother, curiously. ‘Yes, but he’s in Sydney.’
Laura shook her head. ‘He’s here, Caroline. Nick was at Covent Garden tonight.’
Caroline’s eyes widened with surprise. Nick, in London? He’d come to her performance? How strange that he’d wanted to, and equally strange that he hadn’t bothered to let her know he was in town. All at once she wasn’t sure whether she was flattered or discomforted by the knowledge that he was so close. Their divorce had become final almost three years ago, but her thoughts and emotions remained unsettled where he was concerned, more than she cared to admit or to think about. They hadn’t parted as enemies, not in the strict sense of the word, but she doubted whether they could be friends again. There was too much buried hurt over the break-up for that.
‘I didn’t know. He usually sends a cable when he’s coming to see Fern. He always stays at the Dorchester.’ Caroline stood up. She looked down the corridor for a pay phone. ‘I’ll call the hotel. He might be in his room.’
Nick, still in his evening clothes, arrived an hour later, as Jack was being moved to recovery.
‘What have they said?’ he asked Laura. His features, perpetually tanned and betraying his Italian heritage (he was more like his mother than Jack), were pinched with tension. His mouth, inclined to smile easily, for he had his father’s good nature, was tight. Jesus … it was hard to believe he was here, in a London hospital, waiting to hear if his father was going to recover.
Tonight, all of it — Caro’s brilliant performance, his father’s accident — assumed the quality of a very bad dream, one he hoped he’d soon wake from and learn it was a figment of subconscious ramblings rather than reality. Unfortunately, though, deep down he knew he wasn’t going to be that lucky. This was real, too bloody real for his liking. And being close to Caro — he could smell the delicate perfume she used — disturbed him as only she could.
Damn. For the umpteenth time he wished he could relive the years since they’d moved to Vienna so she could complete her musical studies … He’d have handled everything differently. But, glancing at her, seeing the wariness in her eyes, he knew it was too late. He had hurt her too much to hope for a reconciliation.
‘They’re not saying much,’ Laura answered as gently as she could, ‘and that’s a worry. The attending doctor said he was bleeding internally, but they’ve managed to stop it. I can tell they’re concerned.’ God, she hated hospitals! Over the years she’d been in too many of them. First as a child, when she had almost died from septicaemia; then with Alex, her sweet first love, who’d fallen from a racehorse and had his skull crushed. And, later, Eddie, when he’d been dumped in the surf at Bondi and become a paraplegic. Now dear, wonderful Jack, the man she loved with all her heart and soul, was in trouble. Deep, deep trouble.
She had … this awful … feeling, too. No! She wasn’t going to let a single negative thought creep in. He would be, he had to get well.
Jack Beaumont regained consciousness the next morning, which relieved both medical staff and his family. He seemed to be improving, until the third day after the accident. Close to midday, when the family had gone for lunch, he suffered a seizure, lapsed into a coma and passed away peacefully that evening.
The day the family buried Jack at Botany Cemetery in Sydney, Laura Ashworth-Beaumont acknowledged that from this day her l
ife would not be the same. The man who’d given her so much, whom she had loved so dearly and with whom she had expected to grow old and grey, was gone, this time forever.
Chapter One
Sydney, 1985
Eyeing the smartly dressed older woman in the powder-blue business suit with something close to awe, the receptionist shepherded her into the doctor’s office and offered her a seat. ‘Dr MacIntosh will be with you shortly, Mrs Beaumont.’ She then left the patient to her own devices.
Laura Ashworth-Beaumont used all the tricks she had learned over her sixty-four years to allay the nervous tightening of her stomach while she waited for Rupert MacIntosh to materialise. She studied the room in detail. His office reflected the level of his professional status as one of Sydney’s leading cardiologists. Plush moss-green carpet lay underfoot; the walnut furniture and leather chairs had masculine overtones. Glassed-in bookcases housed gold-embossed volumes of medical tomes and, from the window of the building’s sixteenth floor, she could see a panoramic view across Macquarie Street to the Botanical Gardens and a tantalising glimpse of the cobalt-blue harbour beyond.
Laura knew Rupert’s wife, Celeste, much better than she knew him. She, Celeste and several other women whose names appeared in the social columns of the Sunday papers with boring frequency played golf at Royal Sydney every second Monday morning. Playing on a weekday was a treat Laura had accorded herself about seven years ago, because she knew that Daniel Blumner, Ashworths’ MD, was more than capable of handling business matters when she wasn’t in the office.
A smile of remembrance tugged at the corners of her mouth. Jack had introduced her to the joys and frustrations of golf, many years ago.
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