But soon the glittering festive baubles had entranced her: gold, silver and scarlet, glimmering and twinkling amongst the dark evergreen branches, swags of shiny red beads roping in and out of the pine-fragrant foliage. It all made her forget, for a few precious minutes, the hurting hatefulness of her situation.
She was standing back, her head tipped to one side, wondering if the effect she’d achieved looked as good as she thought it did, when Jake walked back in from the kitchen, carrying a loaded tray.
‘How does it look? OK?’ She didn’t turn after that initial over-the-shoulder glance. Still caught up in almost child-like excitement, she took Jake’s long moment of intense silence for consideration of her artistic efforts. The result had to be a bit odd or he wouldn’t be taking so long to offer an opinion. ‘Did I put too much on? Is it over the top? I’ve never dressed a tree before.’
Jake put the tray down on the table, his mouth curving cynically. For a few moments back there she’d had him entranced. Standing there, a great and glittering gold star clutched in her hands, her lovely face radiating pleasure, there’d been no sign of the sleek ‘top model’ sophistication he’d always associated with Bella. The breathy, whispery excitement in her voice had almost fooled him, too.
He clattered plates. ‘Never dressed a tree? Pull the other one! Then come and eat.’
So she wasn’t even to be allowed the fleeting distraction of doing something pleasurable for the very first time. And why did he have to believe that every time she opened her mouth a lie came out?
She swung round on her heels. It was time he got a few things straight. She didn’t lie, for one.
Tossing the glittery star on the tabletop, she told him levelly, ‘It happens to be the truth. If you can’t believe it, then that’s your tough luck. Not mine.’
Still unloading the tray, he gave her a penetrating look. Maybe he was taking distrust too far. Distrust had been stamped on his soul when his father had taken his life. Of his parents, his father had been his rock, a larger than life figure he had respected as well as loved. The loss of financial security and the huge debts his father had left behind had been as nothing compared with that final betrayal.
To begin with, he’d believed he had learned to trust again with Bella. But infidelity made a mockery of marriage vows, turned them into lies. Infidelity was a sure-fire way of killing trust.
He pulled out a chair for her and took one for himself on the opposite side of the table. ‘So tell me about it. Didn’t your parents let you help dress the tree when you were a kid?’
She took her chair, shrugged very slightly. ‘It’s not important.’
‘Probably not.’ He pushed a plate of sandwiches towards her. ‘But it would help pass the time. And, now I come to think of it, you’ve told me very little about your past.’
Pass the time. It stretched endlessly before her, arid, awkward and painful. She blinked rapidly. She would not cry. She took a sandwich of doorstep proportions, refused the soggy-looking salad garnish he’d prepared.
‘I thought, for the purposes of Christmas peace and goodwill, we had to ignore the past.’ She threw his cool stricture back in his face. The little rebellion helped to smother the feeling of hurt. She calmly eyed the thing on her plate and wondered if she could open her mouth wide enough to take a bite.
‘The distant past doesn’t count.’ He found himself approving this new spark of defiance. And, watching her, he had to fight to stop himself from grinning like a clown. If he’d been asked to describe the marital meals she’d used to go to such endearingly endless trouble to prepare for him, he would have said elegant. And beautiful to look at. Ten out of ten for presentation, and two out of ten for hunger-quelling content.
Right now she was having difficulty hiding her dismay. He hadn’t gone out of his way to produce such massive, untidy offerings. He couldn’t have been concentrating on what he was doing.
‘OK.’ She capitulated, and reached for a knife to cut the sandwich into smaller, more manageable pieces. ‘I suppose it wouldn’t help the festive spirit much if we both sat here in gloomy silence. I’ll go along with you, and try to avoid contentious subjects. But I warn you, I’m not going to pussy-foot around, double-checking everything before it trips off my tongue, like a reformed trollop at a vicar’s tea party.’
He did grin then, but hid it behind the rim of his wineglass. An excellent vintage claret, he’d noted back in the kitchen, twisting the corkscrew with cynical ferocity. She’d spared no expense to get the party moving, to find the right mood!
He caught the thought, examined it. Was he being unfair? Was she in some kind of trouble? Had she engineered this time together because she needed his help? It was something to think about. Maybe if she relaxed enough she would tell him the truth. ‘So?’ he prompted gently, watching her long, narrow hands as she cut into the thick, crusty bread and the filling of hacked meat. He wondered why she didn’t push it fastidiously aside and float out to prepare a medallion of tenderloin on a bed of unidentifiable leaves. She was obviously trying hard to please.
‘So Dad thought Christmas was a waste of money, right? But Mum always did her best to make sure Evie and I had a package to open on Christmas morning. Granted, money was in short supply—but he didn’t even make an effort, and wouldn’t let us try, either.’
She chewed reflectively on a piece of her sandwich; the meat was wonderfully tender, spiced up with just the right amount of mustard. His sandwiches were no way as inedible as they looked.
‘I like to think he wasn’t a Scrooge by nature, but acted like one because it upset him to think he couldn’t give his family everything they wanted.’
She looked so earnest, Jake thought, watching her closely. Somehow he couldn’t bring himself to say what was on his mind—that any father who didn’t make the effort to find some way of making Christmas special for his kids didn’t deserve to have any. Let her keep her manufactured delusions if they helped her.
‘Dad was mostly out of work, and we were always on the move,’ she was telling him, long fingers idly stroking the stern of her wineglass now. ‘He always thought the grass would be greener in the next county or town. It never was, though. Things just seemed to go from bad to worse. Smaller flats in seedier areas. And moving meant Mum had to keep finding new jobs to make ends meet. Sometimes she couldn’t. Things got really tough then.’
Her mother had never complained. Bella wondered if she’d inherited those doormat genes, making her willing to let Jake call all the shots during the time they’d lived together.
Unconsciously she shook her head. Now wasn’t the time to delve into cause and effect.
Jake said, his voice surprisingly gentle, ‘I remember you telling me your parents were separated, and your mother settled in New Zealand with her widowed sister.’
‘Yes, but Mum going out to live with Auntie May came much later. She wouldn’t have dreamed of leaving us until Evie and I were both on our feet. But Dad walked out on the lot of us when I was fourteen. We stayed put, then, and for a couple of years the three of us had our first settled home. A two-bedroom flat above a greengrocer’s in a backstreet in Newcastle. Downmarket, but home.’
She was twisting the glass now. Jake expected the contents to spill out at any moment. There was a lot of tension there, waiting to be released.
‘It must have been about that time I knew what I wanted out of life.’
She wasn’t looking at him; her expression told him she was in another world. But at least she was trying to share it with him. Funny how they’d never really talked, either of them, never delved deeply enough to find out what made each other tick.
Too busy making love, discovering each other physically to begin with. And then, after the initial honeymoon stage, he’d been too busy. Full-stop.
Not sure that he should want to, but feeling driven to know, Jake asked, ‘And what was that?’
Christmas every day of the year? Everything her deprived childhood had seemingly put out
of reach? Designer clothes, jewels, fast cars and slow, sybaritic holidays in far-flung places?
Heaven knew, she’d earned enough in her own right to indulge every whim, and the Docklands home he’d provided on their marriage had been glamorous enough to negate the memories of any number of back-street flats.
Yet it hadn’t been enough. His love hadn’t been enough. Being his wife, in spite of all the financial advantages—like not having to work for her extremely comfortable living—had become a bore. So much so that she had sought forbidden excitement with her former lover.
Bella, glancing across at him between dark and tangled lashes, saw the ferocity darkening his face and made up her mind. Conscious, suddenly, that she was in danger of snapping the stern of her glass, she made herself loosen up, unknotting her fingers and lifting the brimming glass to her mouth.
They’d agreed not to raise any contentious spectres from the past—but it might dent his huge ego, and certainly wouldn’t hurt him, to know that one of the things she had most wanted—not the most important, but important nevertheless—was something else he’d resolutely refused to give her. She had nothing to lose because she’d already lost everything that mattered to her.
‘I did tell you once, but I guess you didn’t listen. You never listened to what I said if it wasn’t what you wanted to hear. Eventually I stopped saying anything important.’ She looked him straight in the eye and knew a moment’s vindication when she watched his dark brows pull down as her shot hit home.
She gave a small shrug, slender shoulders lifting elegantly beneath the beautifully styled white jacket. ‘I wanted a proper home and a loving family to share it with,’ she said with a touch of cool defiance.
She looked at her empty glass with a glimmer of surprise and put it down. Swallowing wine as if it were water wouldn’t help. She sat rigidly upright in her chair, her hands knotted in her lap, and added, ‘Nothing grand, just a homey place with a garden, and fields and woods around for the children to play in.’ And a husband who was home, sharing the ups and downs of family life, the two of them growing closer as the years went by, not further and further apart until they were like strangers.
She frowned unconsciously, and tacked on tartly, ‘No grimy backstreets, litter and graffiti everywhere—some place where it was safe to walk, with fresh air to breathe. A modest enough dream, but one I valued.’
She’d said enough. Perhaps too much. The silence from him was like a shock. But, oddly, she felt unburdened, lighter. She wasn’t so self-centred that his refusal to even think about the occasional suggestions she’d made regarding a future move out of the City would have made her decide their marriage wasn’t worth keeping.
But she wouldn’t think about that; she couldn’t afford to. Dwelling on what had gone so badly wrong wouldn’t help her to get through the next few days, or keep up the pretence that they were mere acquaintances.
She swept to her feet and began to gather the lunch things together, and told him politely, very politely, ‘I’ll clear away. Would you mind fixing the star to the top of the tree? I couldn’t reach.’
With the kitchen door closed firmly behind her, Bella released a long, shuddery sigh. She wanted to kill Evie for putting her in this situation! Kitty, too, for her part in it! The only thing that gave her any consolation whatsoever was knowing that this place, fully and lavishly provisioned, would have cost them at least an arm and a couple of legs apiece!
Their intentions had been good, though; she had to give them that. But they were living in cloud-cuckooland if they thought that this enforced and probably prolonged contact would have the desired results.
Jake didn’t even like her any more. He didn’t trust her. He would sooner handcuff himself to a baboon for the rest of his life than take her back!
Tears rushed to her eyes. She blinked them away and sniffed ferociously, took the tray to the sink and did the dishes, then collected the clothes they’d worn earlier in the blizzard and pushed them into the washer-drier. Anything to keep busy, keep out of the way of the man she had loved and lost.
From behind the closed door Jake could hear the clink of china. At odds with his chaotic emotions, Bella was prosaically washing the dishes. The sheer unexpectedness of what she’d said had robbed him of speech.
Of course he’d listened when she’d dreamily told him of what she envisaged for their future. Late-night lover-talk, he’d thought it, with her hair splayed against the pillows like a black silk shawl.
He could remember it now, too vividly for comfort—cocooned together in the secret love-cave of the four-poster bed in that quaint old Cotswolds inn where they’d spent the first Christmas of their honeymoon. Her eyes dreamy, romantic, her voice soft and sweet with talk of country cottages, roses round the door, children—their children—fantasy children she’d created for him.
His fingers stroking her hair, her face, the trembling starting up inside him again, his hand sliding down to the sensual swell of her breasts, his mouth covering hers, silencing her. His love for her, his need to drown himself yet again in the perfection of her overwhelming him...
The groan that was torn from him was driven. Oh, God, if only he could wipe his mind clean of all memories! He gritted his teeth, making himself backtrack to what she had actually said, recalling the defiance, the tension in the way she’d said it.
True, in the first couple of years of their marriage she had sometimes mentioned the possibility of moving to the country and starting a family. But she hadn’t made a song and dance about it, and had quietly accepted it when he had decided they should stay where they were.
He’d assumed she meant some place tamed and tidy, chocolate-box rural. And he’d had damn good reasons for not wanting to alter his modus operandi at that time. He’d explained that a move, putting down roots and starting a family, was out of the question. For the time being anyway. He hadn’t known how much—and why—she’d wanted what she called a proper home.
Why hadn’t she told him? In view of her deprived childhood—and that was something else she hadn’t told him about—he would have understood. And, understanding, he would have set about doing something about it.
He had loved her more than life, and would have done anything to make her happy.
Were there other things he didn’t know about her? Things she’d kept back, kept bidden? His jaw tightened. Damn it, he’d been her husband; he’d had a right to know!
And yet he hadn’t made his motives clear, had he? At least, not the underlying motives. The sudden thought washed his mind with icy clarity. Had he been too arrogant, too driven by his own needs, too intent on doing things his way to share the essence of himself with her?
He didn’t feel comfortable with himself about that. His face darkened, tightened, and self-disgust turned into a hard, sharp lump inside him. He had watched her become more withdrawn, more closed in on herself, and had done nothing about it, preferring to assume that it was nothing important. After all, so he had told himself, he’d given her every material advantage any woman could possibly want, and their lovemaking had still been as explosively rapturous as ever.
But that hadn’t been enough. She’d been seeing Maclaine when he was away and had agreed to work with him again. She had been sleeping with him again. All the signs had pointed to it.
He could hear her moving about in the next room. He’d go in there and fetch her. Tell her he’d been wrong about forgetting the past while they were trapped here together. It wouldn’t let itself be forgot ten!
So they’d talk, go into this thing, thrash it all out until there was nothing left to know. And maybe along the way, he’d discover whether he’d been responsible for driving her back into Maclaine’s arms.
He was on his way to do just that when he heard the sound of a tractor. He turned quickly on the balls of his feet and strode to the window.
The machine had already crested the brow of the hill, the snow-plough attachment steadily but surely clearing the track towards the cotta
ge.
This was his way out. Out of here, back to civilisation, where he could arrange for transport out for Bella. And then he could get on with his life, let her get on with hers. They would go their separate ways again.
His way out. If he wanted to take it.
He grabbed his sheepskin from the hook on the back of the kitchen door and walked out into the cold winter afternoon.
CHAPTER EIGHT
BELLA remembered noticing storage heaters upstairs, and went up and switched them on. At least the bedrooms would be less arctic tonight.
Tonight. Her heart filled with a painful mixture of learning and bleak despair. Another endless, restless night, knowing Jake was in the next room, a few yards away, yet so distant from her he might as well be on the far side of the moon.
There had been moments when she’d really thought he still cared, but that had been nothing more than self-delusion, wishful thinking. She put it down to his determination to get through the next few days with as little friction as possible. He wouldn’t want a rerun of this morning’s crazy escape attempt, or hysterics or sulks.
Steeling herself, she started down the stairs to join him again, deeply envying his ability to cut his losses, write the three years of their marriage off as an unfortunate mistake and get on with his life. She wished she cared so little about him that she could do the same.
Part of the way down she heard the laboured sound of a tractor. She froze, unable to believe it at first, then ran back up to the tiny window at the head of the staircase and peered out.
Jake, still shrugging into his coat, was pushing through the snow towards the tractor. It had already cleared most of the track. Numb, clutching onto the window-sill, Bella watched as Jake reached the vehicle.
She could imagine the conversation going on between him and the driver. He would be asking for a lift out of here, explaining that his car wasn’t functioning. And as Jake reached into an inside pocket she turned away, trudging down the stairs on leaden legs.
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