CHAPTER THIRTEEN

‘NO … no.’

Davina sat up in bed, shivering as she tried to control the fine tremor of fear convulsing her body, the intensity of the dream that had woken her too real to be easily dismissed.

She hugged her arms around herself and glanced at the alarm clock beside the bed, groaning as she realised how early it was and how unlikely that she would be able to go back to sleep.

She got out of bed, her mood lightening briefly with wry self-mockery as she caught sight of herself in the dressing-table mirror. The nightshirt she was wearing was probably too young for her, too juvenile, and no doubt it was the fact that her eyes were still blurred with sleep that gave her that brief sense of déjà vu, of stepping back in time and momentarily seeing in the mirror a much younger reflection of herself, her hair tousled and hanging down her back, its normal smooth neatness untidily ruffled by her disturbed night’s sleep, her legs looking oddly coltish and slender beneath the brief cotton shirt.

As she pushed back the curtains and studied the clear blue sky she was briefly reminded of another morning, another bedroom, another Davina standing in front of the window wearing a man’s shirt, Matt’s shirt, her body bare beneath the faded chambray cloth, her hair tousled not from her dreams but from Matt’s lovemaking.

She remembered how Matt had come up behind her, sliding his arms around her, pulling her back against his body, kissing the nape of her neck and then her shoulder, slowly turning her round to face him as he felt her body’s response to him.

She shivered, suddenly aware of the disconcerting ache of need she could feel now, knowing that it had been caused not by her memories of that early morning lovemaking but by the darker forces of her subconscious thoughts and the dreams they had caused her. Dreams in which she had been following Matt as he walked down a narrow path ahead of her, oblivious to her presence, to her voice as she called out to him. And, no matter how fast she had walked, the distance between them only seemed to increase. She had felt panic and fear, dismay, loneliness, grief and anger all rolled into one as she fought to keep up with him, to make him turn round and see her, to make him wait for her, and then suddenly he had stopped. Only when he turned round it hadn’t been Matt’s face she had seen but that of a stranger … the stranger, she acknowledged tensely as she stepped back from the window.

As she went downstairs to make herself a coffee she told herself that it was probably not as illogical as she had first imagined for her to dream about him. After all, it had been a shock to walk round that corner and into him, and what woman these days could view that kind of experience with equanimity? Her sex was only just beginning to discover that real freedom of choice, real parity in life, real equality was as much an illusion as it had always been.

A woman might now technically be able to achieve the highest academic, political and professional echelons there were, but they were not free to walk in safety along their city streets; they were not free to drive with confidence and security from one end of the country to the other; they were not free to open the door to the male stranger who knocked on it; so was it really any wonder that that small and unimportant encounter should have had such an intense effect upon her?

These days a woman had to treat any man who was a stranger, and often many of those who weren’t, with suspicion and caution, and if she didn’t … If she didn’t, the world of men ruled that she must accept that she had voluntarily contributed to any violation of her home, her privacy and her body.

But the frisson of sensation she had felt in her dream when the man turned round and it wasn’t Matt had not been that kind of fear. There had been apprehension, yes, but it had been a sensual, sexual apprehension, a dangerous spiralling excitement that had plunged her sharply from the anxiety of wanting Matt to turn round and see her and to wait for her to one of acutely searing need combined with an equally searing resentment of that need and of the man who had caused it.

The coffee was ready. She breathed in deeply, firmly switching her mind to other and far more important matters; she was almost out of coffee and she had other shopping to do. She wanted to make an appointment with a local estate agent with a view to getting the house valued and up for sale; it was much too large for her to live in alone, and although she would miss her garden she would not miss the house itself, despite the fact that she had lived in it all her life.

At the back of her mind was the thought that perhaps she could use whatever money there might be left over, after she had bought herself something smaller, to keep the company going for a little while longer. She tried not to let herself dwell on the fact that such funds might be needed to cover the redundancy monies due to Carey’s employees if she had to cease business. The bank manager and Giles had both pointed out to her that, if the company went into liquidation, no such payments would be due.

Gregory had always been very careful about preserving his own finances, the bank manager had told her; although Carey’s had borrowed a good deal of money from the bank, Gregory had somehow or other managed to persuade his predecessor that it wasn’t necessary for Gregory to give any personal guarantees as a director to secure this borrowing, and Davina suspected that Philip Taylor had had a rather begrudging admiration for Gregory’s financial far-sightedness.

It was a view she did not share. Gregory might not have broken any actual law, but he had broken nearly every moral law there was, and she felt almost as guilty by association as though she had known about it and encouraged him to do so.

‘It’s just sensible and cautious business practice,’ Giles had told her uncomfortably when she had initially expressed her shock and disgust, and she had begun to perceive then that perhaps men, even the best of them, operated within a different framework of ethics from her own sex.

She had recently read a brief article in one of the Sunday papers propounding the theory that men were goal- and achievement-orientated, while women were people- and emotion-orientated.

Certainly neither the bank manager nor even Giles seemed to share her view that the most disturbing consequence of Carey’s going bankrupt would be the effect it would have on its employees.

No company these days was in a position to guarantee its workforce long-term employment, Giles had told her when she had confided to him her concern. It was their investors, their shareholders, their competitors and the City who mattered.

Davina had very little knowledge of the business world and how it worked, he had added gently, and, although she had said nothing, she had been irritated by his attitude. His area was personnel, and surely he should have expressed a more sympathetic attitude, although Davina had to concede that he was sadly right in his assessment.

She was intelligent enough to perceive that if she wished to be taken seriously, her view of what was important given respect and attention, she must learn to adapt her arguments so that she could put forward her viewpoint in such a way that it would not receive the instant dismissal, the derision almost, she had seen so clearly in the bank manager’s attitude towards her.

Because it was an issue that was so important to her, and because she did not intend to allow anyone to bully her or confuse her into doing something that went against her own moral codes, she had gritted her teeth and done what she now told herself she ought to have had the sense and the courage to do years before: she had insisted on learning everything there was to learn about Carey’s; about the way it was run; about the way it was financed; about the way its products were sold and distributed, the way they were presented to the members of the medical profession who used them; and what had initially shocked her more than anything else, after her discovery of how badly Gregory had treated their employees, had been the realisation that there had been so little spent on research and development of new drugs.

Gregory, her father even, must have known that once the renewed patent ran out on their market-leading heart drug their profits would drop sharply, but it was obvious to her that even during her father’s lifetime little or no attempt had been made to invest those profits in research to preserve the company’s future.

It was true there was a laboratory, but, as Giles had been forced to admit to her, it was hardly up to the standard of a second-rate university’s and none of the work carried out in it could ever have led to the production of a new market leader.

Her father had known that and so had Gregory. But why had that happened? Her father had been a student of medicine, surely educated by his father to take full advantage of the benefits of the drug he himself had discovered almost by accident, and to lead Carey’s into the new age of modern drugs?

Her father had, Davina was forced to admit, remained as much a stranger, an enigma to her in his death as he had been during his life. She knew that during the war, partly qualified and obviously idealistic, he had enlisted as a medical orderly with the army.

How could a man with those sort of ideals then become the same man who, it seemed, had ignored all the advantages, all the challenges his training had given him, all those opportunities to benefit mankind, and instead simply lived off the profits of the company?

Had he perhaps been afraid that no matter what he did he might never match the achievements of his own father? But her grandfather’s discovery of the heart drug had been more by accident than design; he had been an untrained explorer in a world which her father’s education should have mapped out so clearly for him that it would have been easy for him not just to follow in his father’s footsteps, but to continue that journey even further.

There was no point now in looking back into the past for answers to questions that could never be answered, she told herself as she drank her coffee. What she had to do was to concentrate on the problems of the present. And those of the future? If Carey’s had a future.

She finished her coffee and went upstairs to shower and get dressed.

Despite the warnings of the environmental lobby concerning the detrimental effect of the motor car on the quality and health safety of people’s lives, and even in spite of the fact that driving was an increasingly stressful activity, with the roads becoming more busy and more hazardous every year, people, including herself, still continued to ignore all the disadvantages of driving for its one simple heavyweight advantage, Davina reflected as she parked her car in the car park that surrounded her local food hypermarket.

And what woman, having endured the discomfort and sheer physical effort involved in lugging heavy bags of grocery shopping on and off public transport in all kinds of weather, having carried that same shopping from the bus-stop to her home, more often than not having to cope with small children at the same time, would willingly go back to such a protracted means of carrying out what at best was an unattractive and stressful chore?

No wonder the car park was full, and Davina suspected that, until someone came up with a truly viable alternative to the motor car, this and other car parks like it all over the country would continue to be full.

The years of living first with her father and then with Gregory had taught her to be an economical and thrifty shopper, but these days, with only herself to cater for, Davina found she was becoming less and less inclined to cook. She liked simple meals—fruit, crusty bread, cheeses and pasta rather than the heavy meat, potato and vegetable main courses her father had always insisted upon.

She shopped quickly and methodically, her mind on other things. The check-outs were busy, and she sighed a little to herself, knowing that whichever queue she chose it would be the wrong one. For once, though, she seemed to be in luck. The girl on her check-out was quick and efficient, pleasant too, Davina noticed as she watched the way the girl smiled and responded to the person she was serving.

Davina was just about to unload her own trolley when she noticed that the woman standing behind her was only carrying a few items, and, moreover, that she was rather obviously glancing at her watch.

Even though she suspected that she was being deliberately manipulated, Davina gave in, wryly inviting the woman to precede her in the queue. As she stepped back to allow her past she saw the man standing in the next queue.

Her heart gave a ferocious bound as against all the odds she recognised him immediately. It might have been growing dark then and bright neon-lit daylight now, but she hadn’t just recognised him with her sight, she had somehow known him with her senses as well. He wasn’t looking at her. He was talking to the young girl he had with him. His daughter? Certainly they were close, the girl leaning confidently and lovingly against him as she said something to him.

An unfamiliar emotion gripped Davina as she watched them. Once, a long time ago it seemed now, she had hoped for children, when she had been young and naïve. She had years ago come to accept that Gregory was the last man she would have wanted as a father for her child, a role model, and that, in denying her children, life, or fate, had been generous to her rather than cruel.

But suddenly, seeing him, with that child … she was overwhelmed not just by a sense of deprivation and loss, but also by a feeling of resentment, of dislike almost, so sharp that it was an actual physical pain.

She turned away abruptly, not wanting to see any more, quickly attacking the tangled mountain of shopping piling up at the other end of the conveyor.

It was only once she was back at home, feeling calmer, that she was able to ask herself just why a man who was a stranger to her should cause her to react to him with such intense antagonism. Surely not merely because he had given her a bit of a shock, thrown her off guard and made her feel vulnerable for a handful of seconds?

Was it, then, because for some inexplicable reason he had reminded her briefly of Matt, or rather because that momentary accidental physical contact with him had stirred up memories of Matt?

It wasn’t a line of self-investigation she felt it wise to pursue.

She had work to do, she reminded herself as she put away the last of the shopping. And surely enough tangible things to worry about without adding any foolishly unnecessary intangibles.

* * *

‘Where are we going now, Uncle Saul?’

Saul’s frown disappeared as he looked down into Cathy’s expectant face. She always had such a shining happiness about her, this niece of his, a warmth and the kind of innocence that belonged to those who genuinely loved their fellow humans and who saw only the good in others and never the bad.

As he stowed away their shopping in the boot of his car he couldn’t help contrasting her loving openness with the cynicism and materialism of his own children, especially Josephine.

True, she was older than Cathy, and perhaps more exposed to the kind of lifestyle that encouraged materialism. But her cynicism, the deep-rooted contempt and disdain he could see in her, not just for him but for almost everyone she came into contact with—how had she come by those? Was it his fault, not perhaps by example—he had never spent enough time with either of his children for that—but maybe by omission?

His children needed him, Christie had told him. He doubted that they would share that view. He and Karen should never have had children, he decided savagely. Neither of them had turned out to be even adequate parents, never mind good. It would have been better if he and Karen had remained childless like Davina James and her husband.

Davina James! It had startled him to see her in the supermarket this morning, dressed casually in jeans and a loose cotton top. He had watched her, unobserved, while she shopped, noting her neat, methodical movements, the quick, intent way she made her choices, her manner efficient and contained, controlled, and somehow very much at odds with the way she had to pause occasionally to push her hair back off her face when it swung forward, obscuring her view, as she bent to take something from a lower shelf. That gesture had betrayed a vulnerability that for some reason had reminded him of Cathy. He was irritated with himself, and his frown deepened.

Davina James meant nothing to him other than through her connection with Carey’s and the fact that she was its main shareholder.

He realised that Cathy was still waiting for an answer to her question. ‘I don’t know,’ he responded. ‘We could have lunch somewhere if you like.’

Vigorously Cathy nodded her head. As he drove through the town Saul had noticed a family pub-cumrestaurant which was part of a nationwide chain, and when he suggested this to Cathy as a lunch venue she beamed responsively.

The place was quite busy, mainly with family groups, and a smiling waitress quickly showed Cathy and Saul to a table.

Saul hid his amusement at the very adult air Cathy assumed when she was handed a menu. A quick glance at its contents made him suspect that his sister would not have entirely approved of what was on offer as an example of nutritious healthy eating, but he stifled his conscience by telling himself that it was only a one-off.

The table next to them was occupied by a couple with two early-teenage children, both boys, both enjoying large plates of some kind of battered fish and chips, and Saul grimaced a little to himself as he saw Cathy eyeing the contents of their plates lustfully. There was nothing on the menu that really appealed to him, but he ordered from it nevertheless, his attention suddenly caught when he heard the woman at the next table saying grimly to her husband, ‘I tell you, Bert, it makes my blood boil. Everyone at Carey’s knows that it’s the stuff the girls have to handle that gives them these rashes, but will they do anything to stop it? No. Too damn mean to care what happens to those who make their money for them.’

‘Carey’s … Carey’s … Come on, love, you’re not at work now,’ her husband retorted, clearly irritated and bored by a conversation he had obviously heard over and over again. ‘You’re the shop steward. It’s up to you to get them to do something about it. There’s no point in complaining to me. I don’t even work there.’

‘No, thank God. It looks as if the lot of us will be out of work anyway before too long.’

‘Has she told you that?’

The woman shook her head, chewing a mouthful of food before responding.

Saul’s own meal had been served, but he was too interested in listening to what was being said at the next table to do more than pretend to eat it.

‘No. She seems to think she’s going to get someone to buy her out … at least, that’s what we’ve heard, although she’s not admitting it.

‘Mind you, I’ve got to say that at least she does seem to take more of an interest in us than that husband of hers ever did. Never saw him down in the packing sheds or on the assembly line unless he’d got his eye on one of the girls working there. A right one, he was. Always at it, and never cared who with either. He was with someone else the night he was killed. It’s no wonder she’s taken up with Giles.’

Her husband put down his knife and fork. ‘Has she, now? Well, she wouldn’t be my type, and I’m surprised she’s his with a wife like he’s got. Now, she’s—’

‘Bert,’ his wife warned, glaring at him and then looking towards their two sons, who were both oblivious to their parents’ conversation.

‘Don’t worry, I’m quite happy with what I’ve got at home,’ Bert told her with a grin, and Saul suspected from the brief silence that followed and the way they were looking at one another that the hand Bert had slid under the table wasn’t entirely innocently occupied.

So Davina James was having an affair with Giles Redwood.

He pushed away his meal virtually untouched, causing Cathy to give him a brief uncertain look.

The couple at the next table had finished eating and were chivvying their two sons to finish theirs. The woman was small and vigorous-looking, with thick dark red hair, the man taller and more relaxed. Saul observed the way the man’s hand rested momentarily on his wife’s buttock as they left the restaurant. Karen would have poured scorn and contempt on their behaviour, her voice acidly derisive as she criticised them, but momentarily Saul found himself envying them.

They were just an ordinary couple, an ordinary family such as one might see anywhere, a couple without many financial or educational advantages, but they had something that he had never had: they had a closeness not just with one another, but with the two boys who had now joined them, a family closeness and a personal awareness of and for one another which he and Karen had never truly known. And which he never would now know?

He shook off the heaviness of his thoughts as he waited for Cathy to finish the chocolate-laced ice-cream dessert she was battling with. Too much introspection, too much dwelling on self-pity was an affliction peculiar to modern-day man and woman, according to a doctor friend he knew. But his chief fault over the years had not been too much delving into his own motivations, but too much sealing himself off from them.

Because he had been afraid of looking behind the shadow over his life which his father had cast in case he might not recognise the reality of the self that stood behind it?

‘I’m finished, Uncle Saul.’

* * *

Saul spent the rest of the day rereading the file he had brought with him and adding to it the snippets of information he had picked up since his arrival in Cheshire.

Christie rang to check that everything was all right. She sounded preoccupied and distant when Saul spoke to her, almost edgy, in fact, but he put this down to the fact that she was probably caught up in the self-generating tension such conferences always seemed to produce.

His own next logical step was to get in touch with the manager of the local branch of the bank that Carey’s used and to make sure that he won them over to his, or rather Alex’s, way of thinking.

It shouldn’t be too difficult. Carey’s were heavily in debt to the bank and he had no doubt that in the present financial climate the banker would be only too pleased to offload its liability on to Alex.

Gregory James had been very clever when setting up the original loans in managing not to give the bank any personal guarantees for them; and, with the value of commercial property of any sort so very low, the bank would be lucky to realise even half of its borrowing if it forced Carey’s into bankruptcy and sale.

Yes, he suspected the manager would welcome him with open arms and do everything he could to persuade Davina James to sell out.

He frowned a little to himself, drumming his fingers on the table. Davina James was no businesswoman; so little so in fact that she had had to plead with Giles Redwood to stay on and to take over running the company for her.

By sleeping with him? Or had that merely been a bonus, for both of them? Had they in fact been having an affair before Gregory James died? And how much did the fact that they were having an affair affect his own initial assessment of the situation?

If she did prove stubborn, in view of that relationship, it might not be a possibility to consider applying leverage by bribing Giles to leave. It depended which one of them needed their affair the most. It had to be her, surely? A lonely, probably insecure woman whose husband had been openly unfaithful to her for years …

He frowned briefly. It irritated him that she was proving so difficult to slot neatly into the place he had made for her; there were too many conflicting components … too many things about her that didn’t tie in together neatly, and yet what was there really about her to cause him all this unwanted consideration? She was a widowed woman of thirty-seven, forced to step into her husband’s shoes on his death; a woman who could not really have the slightest interest in the company of which she was the main shareholder, a woman who on the face of it should not have caused him even a second’s deviation from the path he had set himself. Not young, not beautiful, not brilliantly clever. So why had she lodged in his thoughts with all the irritation of a small pebble in a tight-fitting shoe?

He shrugged it off, denying the reason for its existence. Just as he had denied for too many years that he was playing a role in life which rightly belonged to someone else. That they were not his choices, his goals he was reaching for. That the need which had driven him had never been to achieve financial success and recognition but simply to receive his father’s approval and love?

Why did he feel so demeaned by having to admit that need? Why did it make him feel so vulnerable, so afraid … so angry?

Because it was wrong for a man to admit that he needed anyone’s love, much less a parent’s.

He glanced across at Cathy, her head over the book she was reading. No need to question if Cathy felt secure in her mother’s love. It was obvious that she did. But what about his own children? Did he want his son, his daughter to repeat his mistakes, to waste their lives questing for something every child should have as a birthright? What kind of father was he anyway, that he might have denied that need, might not even have recognised it?

He moved restlessly in his chair. He was letting Christie get to him. His children had no real need of him, and they certainly did not want or need his love; they had demonstrated that to him often enough.

But what if they did? What if beneath the indifference, the cynicism, the apparent contempt and disdain, they too ached for his approval, his time, his attention, his unequivocal acceptance of them as they really were, as he had done for his father’s?

His eyes had started to blur. He lifted his hand to rub away the exhaustion clouding them and discovered with a sense of disbelief that it wasn’t tiredness or strain that had blurred his sight, but tears.

Tears. For his children or for himself?

He needed time to think things through properly, he told himself wearily. To allow himself to be pressured by his emotions into any kind of impulsive action was simply not sensible. Not possible either. Before he could give any attention to his personal affairs he needed to get this business of the purchase of Carey’s sorted out. Well, hopefully, with the bank to bring pressure on Davina James, if it was needed, it shouldn’t take too long.

Davina James.

Where was she now? With her lover? Another woman’s husband, by the sound of things. Odd—he hadn’t somehow thought of her as the type. But then, what was the type? Did there have to be a type? As far as he could see from his own cynical observation of heterosexual relationships, there were only two main reasons for those relationships breaking up, both related to control and power. And within most relationships there were only two bases for that control: one was money, and the other was sex. And in the past it had, as a generalisation, normally been the man who controlled the money and the woman the sex, and, like any kind of transaction in which mankind indulged, it very quickly became common currency for one to barter with his or her power-base for what he or she wanted from the other.

Equally, it never took long for one and often both of them to discover that anything that was not freely and generously shared with full equality soon became not worth having, or so loaded down with resentment and hidden anger that it came to be used as a means of punishment rather than a reward.

Saul remembered the distaste and contempt he had felt when he first heard an American client disclose a view he had later come to realise was shared by a large proportion of his own sex. ‘Sure, we have a good sex-life. I pay her a hundred dollars every time she sucks me off—that way we both get something we want and I get the added bonus of knowing every time she goes out and buys herself a new outfit that it’s cost her as well as me.’

Admittedly it took two people to devalue a relationship to that point, but with hindsight he could see how close he and Karen had come to getting caught in the same trap.

Was that why Davina James had stayed married to her husband? Because of the money? He frowned. What the hell was he doing, dragging her back into his thoughts? And, besides, he acknowledged irritably, Davina James was the one with the money. Her father had seen to that. That must have galled her husband. He was the one who ran the business, but she was the one who had the real control.

Control … yes, it all came back to that one word … that all-important source of power.

* * *

Lucy examined her perfectly made-up face carefully in her mirror, searching for any betraying evidence of tears. There was still a slight puffiness beneath her eyes, a slight pinkness, but not enough for Giles to notice.

Face it, she told herself bitterly, Giles wouldn’t notice … wouldn’t care if he came home and found her stripped and spread-eagled on the sitting-room floor with some other man.

She closed her eyes tightly to prevent the tears welling and ruining her make-up, tears not of misery but of anger. Last night Giles had come home late. Again. And drunk. Well, maybe not drunk, exactly, but certainly he had been drinking and, she suspected, not alone, although he had denied it when she accused him of being with Davina.

She had been in the sitting-room when he came in, pretending to be engrossed in her magazine. He had hesitated in the doorway for a moment as though surprised to see her there. As though he would have preferred not to see her there?

He had come over to her, leaning clumsily over her as he aimed a kiss at her forehead and missed, and then trying to take her in his arms. It was the first time he had touched her in weeks … in months, and immediately she had pushed him away, infuriated and bitterly hurt that he could only face the thought of doing so when he was drunk enough to forget who she actually was … when he had anaesthetised his lack of any desire for her with drink.

To her chagrin, he had refused to let her go, and today she had bruises on her arms from where he had held her. Giles had never been a violent man, not even a rough one, but last night … She shuddered as she remembered the way he had held her, the way he had kissed her, trying to force some kind of response from her.

‘Don’t touch me,’ she had spat at him when she had finally managed to push him off. ‘I am not Davina. She—’

‘No, you’re not, are you?’ he had agreed, interrupting her grimly, not allowing her to finish what she was saying. ‘She’s a real woman, not a phoney copy. She doesn’t play at loving.’

His accusation, all the more hurtful because she had sensed that it was what he actually felt, had driven her into a frenzy of temper, hurling insult after insult at him, telling him that he was useless as a lover, a husband, a provider, telling him that as far as she was concerned he was free to go to Davina and that she wished he would.

‘You’re two of a kind, both of you,’ she had screamed at him. ‘Both of you useless in bed … sexless.’

It had been then that he had grabbed hold of her, taking her off guard by the speed of his attack. What had followed had been squalid and destructive, the complete opposite of the tenderness and intimacy they had once shared, but there had been a point where her body, aching for him, needing him, had overturned her rage and hurt to respond helplessly and eagerly to the driving force of his, matching the intensity of his angry possession of her.

This morning she had still ached a little from that possession, her flesh slightly bruised, slightly tender, so that somehow that small physical ache seemed to echo the greater and far more damaging ache inside her heart.

Afterwards, trembling as much with sexual release as actual shock and pain, she had accused him of raping her, had reminded him that a man no longer had the right to sexually abuse his wife.

Just for a moment the stricken, sickened expression in his eyes made her hesitate, made her want to open her arms to him and tell him that she was sorry; sorry for having goaded him, sorry for having lost him, and most of all sorry for having lost their child; but his eyes had hardened and the impulse was lost, buried beneath the burden of her grievances and betrayal.

‘Go to Davina, if she’s the one you want,’ she had screamed at him. ‘Go to her, because I damn well don’t want you. Go and rape her and see how much she likes it.’

She had heard him storming out of the house, and then the sound of his car engine firing, and was left to spend the rest of the night wide awake; she had watched the hours tick by, forcing herself to resist the impulse to pick up the phone and dial Davina’s number. Of course he had gone to her. Where else would he go? And Davina, of course, would succour and sympathise with him, Davina, whom no man would ever be driven to abuse and rape, Davina, the perfect wife … the perfect woman, at least as far as Giles was concerned.

* * *

Davina was in the shower when she heard the telephone ring. She had been outside, working in the garden for most of the afternoon, a means of clearing her head and organising her thoughts as well as completing a necessary chore. Now her body ached from kneeling and weeding, and she hesitated, frowning as she waited for the caller to get bored and hang up, but instead the ringing persisted, so that finally in exasperation she put down the sponge and reached for a towel.

‘Davina … at last. Davina, I need to see you … now.’

Her muscles tensed as she recognised the desperation in Giles’s voice. He sounded as though he had been drinking, although surely that was hardly likely at this time in the day, especially since he was normally a rather abstemious man? Now, however, his voice was slightly slurred, and her tension increased as she heard the background noise of voices and music.

‘Giles, where are you?’ she demanded.

‘I’m at the motel, the one by the motorway. I stayed there last night. It’s over, Davina. My marriage is over. I can’t—’

‘Look, Giles, stay where you are. I’ll come and collect you. No, don’t drive,’ she cautioned him as he started to protest. She wasn’t one hundred per cent sure but she suspected he was in no fit state to be behind the wheel of a car.

It took her ten minutes to dry herself off and dress. She didn’t bother with any make-up, simply running a comb through her half-damp hair before hurrying out to her car.

The motel was only fifteen minutes’ drive away. She found Giles in the reception area, his eyes bloodshot, his whole appearance dishevelled and so unlike his normal clean neatness that she felt an almost maternal pang of sadness for him.

He hadn’t seen her come in, and when she went up to him and touched him lightly on the arm he swung round, his whole face briefly alight with pleasure as he saw her.

‘Davina.’ He made a move to take her in his arms, but instinctively she stepped back from him, and then wished she hadn’t as she saw the look in his eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered awkwardly. ‘I …’

‘It’s all right, Giles,’ she told him. ‘Come on. Have you checked out?’

He hadn’t, of course, and while she did so for him he stood behind her. He was like a man suffering from some kind of shock or trauma, she recognised as she ushered him out to her car.

She kept the windows open as she drove, and by the time she had reached home he seemed rather more sober, his face white and strained.

‘What’s happened?’ she asked him gently once they were inside and she had made him some coffee. They were in the sitting-room, Giles’s dishevelment even more noticeable against the backdrop of the immaculate, elegant room.

She waited as he leaned back, closing his eyes. She saw the way as he swallowed that his Adam’s apple moved in his throat. He needed a shave, and when she moved close to him he smelled faintly of stale sweat. Normally these things would have, if not actually disgusted her, certainly not have sexually attracted her. With Matt she had discovered the sensual pleasures of every kind of intimacy, especially those very special ones that came from recognising and appreciating the scent of a lover’s arousal, but Giles was not her lover and now, as her senses observed these signs of self-neglect, she was moved to pity and an odd sort of almost maternal compassion.

She reached out and touched his hand, frowning as he stiffened and flinched back from her, his eyes opening, shocking her with their stark anguish.

‘Oh, God, Davina. I’ve done the most dreadful thing. I couldn’t stop myself. She made me feel so humiliated … and so … so angry …’

Davina’s stomach lurched with shock and dread. She wanted to stop him from saying any more, from making her a party to whatever it was that had happened, from making her shoulder any part of his guilt.

But why shouldn’t she? Wasn’t she just as guilty? By association if nothing else.

Subduing her own instinctive desire to escape, she said huskily, ‘Giles … what is it? Please tell me what’s happened.’

His eyes were wide open, but he didn’t seem to be looking at her even though his attention was focused on her. He seemed to be looking past her … through her.

‘It happened last night. I … I wanted to come and see you but … I couldn’t go home. Not at first. So I’d gone to this pub … just to have a few drinks … to try and sort myself out … but then when I got home Lucy was waiting for me. We had a row.’ His mouth twisted. ‘Nothing unusual in that. That’s all we do have these days.

‘All I wanted to do was to stop her from saying those things … I never meant …’ He groaned, covering his face with his hands. ‘I don’t know what came over me. It’s just that it’s been so long, and she … she … I raped her, Davina,’ he told her rawly. ‘I raped my own wife. I wanted to kill myself afterwards. I’ve never been that kind of man. I’ve never … Oh, God. No wonder she told me she wants a divorce. Say something, even if it’s only that you think I ought to be shot …’

Davina forced a small, twisted smile. ‘No. No, I don’t think that.’

‘But you are shocked … disgusted.’

She took a deep breath. Yes, she was shocked, and yes, it was not the behaviour she would have expected from a man like Giles, and she certainly did not subscribe to the theory that certain women deliberately invited and even incited male violence, but, looking at him as he sat slumped in her armchair, his guilt and despair so plainly obvious, she also felt not so much disgust as intense compassion, for him and most of all for Lucy. She reached out hesitantly and then stopped as he drew back from her.

‘For God’s sake, don’t touch me,’ he cautioned her. ‘I shouldn’t even be here like this, inflicting myself on you.’

‘You could always go home,’ she told him quietly. ‘Talk to Lucy. Try to …’

‘Go home … She’s probably got half the local police force waiting there for me. It’s a crime now for a man to rape his wife, you know. Dear God, I never thought it would come to anything like this. All I wanted to do was … I never thought I could lose my control like that. I used to love her so much, Davina. She meant everything to me, but since we lost Nicholas she’s turned completely against me. She blames me for what happened … For her pregnancy … for everything.

‘I’ve tried to be patient … to understand … to wait. I never meant what happened last night to happen.’

He made an abrupt uncoordinated movement, standing up and turning his back to her, but not before Davina had seen the tears in his eyes. Instinctively she got up too and walked over to him, taking hold of him, motivated by an automatic feminine urge to offer comfort and compassion.

At first he resisted her, his body tight with tension and withdrawal, but then abruptly he held on to her, wrapping his arms around her, his body shaking with emotion as she held and rocked him. She could feel the dampness of his tears against her skin, his head a heavy weight on her neck.

‘Oh, God, Davina, how can you bear to be near me, after what I’ve done?’

‘Shush … shush … it will be all right,’ she comforted him.

‘Davina.’

She felt his mouth touch her skin, the caress light and sweet, conjuring lingering memories of another man and another time.

‘Davina.’ He said her name more huskily this time and the pressure of his mouth was stronger, more sensual. She felt his hand against her breast and was sharply reminded of how much larger the male hand was than the female and how very easily, how very naturally it could cup a woman’s breast.

It was not his fault, not even hers, she tried to comfort herself later. Her body’s physical response to his touch was simply that of flesh whose need had been denied a natural outlet for too long. He was, after all, a man she liked, a man with whom she felt comfortable and at home; and, whatever had happened between him and Lucy the previous night, she had no fear that there was any real violence in him. In fact, his touch was almost faintly hesitant, questioning and uncertain rather than demanding. Perhaps it was that which caused her own body to yield and in doing so incited the subtle alchemy that led to mutual physical arousal.

Certainly making love with Giles or anyone else had been the last thing on her mind when she had brought him home with her, but now, with his hand hesitantly caressing her breast, his body hard and aroused against her, his mouth slowly exploring the warm curve of her throat, and that tiny, betraying and so erotic faint trembling within her own flesh, instead of moving away from him she found she was actually moving closer to him, her muscles, her flesh subtly accommodating itself to him, as though it had been merely days and not years since she had last been touched like this … held like this.

He kissed her slowly, lingering over the caress so that she could taste the whisky he had drunk and somehow become ever so slightly intoxicated by it herself.

She ran her hand along his arm and up to the nape of his neck, sliding her fingers into his hair, splaying them against his scalp, holding him against her mouth as she felt him shudder, his tongue thrusting eagerly against hers.

‘Davina … Davina.’

He was touching her more impatiently now, one hand moving down her spine to rest flat and hard at its base, urging her closer to him, while the other caressed the curve of her hip and then tugged at the cloth of her skirt.

He wasn’t as skilled a lover as Matt had been, but there was still a sharp surge of excitement and awareness within her. Perhaps because she was older, more knowing, his slight clumsiness and lack of expertise caused her to feel tenderness and compassion rather than discomfort and unease.

She took hold of his hand, guiding it back to her breast, holding it there as she murmured softly against his mouth. He trembled violently against her, his thumb rubbing fiercely against her nipple.

She had a momentary, sharp aching memory of Matt undressing her, caressing her breasts, his mouth tender and controlled against her untutored flesh. Her spine started to arch, her body moving to invite and support the heavy weight of his head against her. She could feel him tugging impatiently at the buttons on her shirt and was just about to help him when she heard the doorbell ring.

‘Lucy!’ Giles breathed as they automatically froze and then stepped guiltily back from one another. ‘For God’s sake, don’t answer it, Davina.’

‘I have to,’ Davina told him. ‘We can’t just leave her outside.’

Lucy was her friend, and guilt warred with female solidarity, with the knowledge of how she would have felt in Lucy’s shoes. She could not humiliate her by refusing to acknowledge her presence, her right to demand her own part in what was happening.

Hurriedly buttoning her shirt, she went to answer the door, knowing as she did so that her guilt was plainly written not just in her eyes but on her body as well, her nipples tight and hard, thrusting against the fabric of her shirt. The last thing she had ever wanted to do was to break up anyone’s marriage, especially a friend’s, and it increased her guilt to be forced to acknowledge that what had motivated her actions had not been love for Giles but simply physical desire.

As she swung open the door she was already mentally rehearsing her excuses and explanations, but they were not necessary, because it wasn’t Lucy who had rung the bell.

As she stared blankly at him Saul realised immediately what he had interrupted. Her flushed face, her eyes, her tension and guilt would have betrayed it to even the most obtuse visitor even if her body had not. He felt his own body tense in recognition of the meaning of the aroused thrust of her nipples. He even wondered savagely at what point he had interrupted their lovemaking. Certainly she had barely had time to fasten her shirt—two of the buttons were mismatched in their buttonholes.

‘Davina … Lucy …’

Saul switched his attention from Davina to Giles as the other man came into the hall, his mouth curling in disdain as he took in his unshaven face. They had obviously made rather a night of it, although to judge from their contrasting appearances Davina had recovered from their lovemaking rather faster than her lover; certainly fast enough to have been at the supermarket earlier.

‘I’ve obviously called at an inconvenient time,’ he said sardonically, and as he looked at her Davina suddenly became conscious of the fact that her blouse was incorrectly buttoned and half hanging out of her skirt. She felt the hot embarrassment scorching her face, and wondered why on earth she should actually be wishing that her visitor had been Lucy.

Who was this man, and what on earth was he doing here outside her front door, looking at her with those ice-blue eyes of cold disdain? With one look he told her that he knew exactly what he had interrupted. Indeed, for one appalling second it was almost as though he had actually seen Giles fumbling with her buttons, had actually seen into her own mind and witnessed her own visual image of a man’s head at her breast, his mouth on her nipple.

A cold shudder of self-disgust galvanised her body. She stepped forward to ask what he wanted, but he had already turned his back on her and was walking over to his car. Caution warned her to let him go.

‘Who the hell was that?’ Giles demanded, watching him drive off.

Davina shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’ She was frowning. What was it that had brought him, a stranger, to her door? Coincidence? Or … or what?

The desire she had felt earlier had gone. In its place she felt cold with self-disgust and shock. What if it had been Lucy at the door? Lucy was her friend and had every right to expect her loyalty.

Giles was eyeing her uncertainly, his own expression faintly sheepish.

‘I … I think I should make us both another cup of coffee and then I’ll drive you back to the motel to pick up your car,’ she suggested.

‘Can I come back here with you?’ Giles asked her.

Davina shook her head. ‘Oh, Giles. I … Lucy is my friend.’

‘She doesn’t want me,’ he told her stubbornly. ‘She said so herself. She wants a divorce. For God’s sake, Davina, I love you.’

She shook her head again, trying to clear her thoughts. ‘Everything’s happening too quickly, Giles,’ she told him. ‘I can’t—’

‘You want me to go home to Lucy … to my wife, is that it?’ he demanded bitterly. ‘To share her bed, when what I really want is to be in yours?’

Davina winced at the passion in his voice, her guilt increasing. ‘I … I need time to think, Giles,’ she told him.

‘All right. I’ll book back into the motel. I’m not going back to Lucy, Davina. I can’t,’ he told her flatly.