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CHAPTER EIGHT
CLAIRE woke up with a start. She could hear the front doorbell ringing and the sun was streaming in through her uncurtained bedroom window. Groggily she lifted her head from her pillow and was appalled to discover that it was gone ten o’clock.
Throwing back the bedcovers, she reached for her robe, pulling it on over her naked body, avoiding looking at her reflection in the dressing-table mirror, her skin flushing slightly as the slow, almost voluptuous movements of her body silently betrayed the events of the previous evening.
As she hurried along the landing she saw that the door to Brad’s bedroom stood open. The bed was empty and neatly made up. No need to ask herself why Brad had not woken her before he had left, she thought grimly.
Whoever was outside the front door was obviously getting impatient; a finger pressed the bell in a long, imperious ring.
As Claire went to open the door she could see through the glass panes a woman she didn’t recognise standing outside with two small children—a young girl at her side and a baby in one arm.
When she pulled open the door to her she could see that the young woman was frowning anxiously and that she looked tired and drawn. The baby had started to cry and the girl joined in, the young mother closing her eyes in exasperation as she tried to calm them.
‘Is Brad here?’ she asked Claire anxiously, her frown returning as she appealed urgently, ‘This is where he’s staying, isn’t it? He did give me the address but I wasn’t sure I’d written it down properly.
‘Yes...it’s all right,’ she soothed the baby, her soft, transatlantic accent so very similar to Brad’s that just to hear it made Claire’s susceptible heart turn over.
‘Yes. You’ve got the right address,’ she reassured the young woman, standing back to usher her inside and at the same time automatically offering to take the baby from her.
‘Oh, yes...Thanks... He’s very damp,’ she informed Claire ruefully, ‘and pretty hungry too...’
Claire wasn’t really listening; her heart was turning over painfully inside her too tight chest as she looked into the baby’s now fully opened eyes and saw just how like Brad’s they were.
A spasm of deep, wrenching pain like nothing she had ever known seared through her, her eyes too dry for the tears she ached to cry, the small sound of protest she could feel rising in her throat luckily suppressed.
‘I’m Brad’s sister, by the way—Mary-Berth,’ the young woman introduced herself as she ushered the little girl inside and then reached for their luggage.
His sister. As Claire focused on the other woman’s back she could feel herself starting to tremble with relief. Just for a moment, looking at the baby and seeing Brad’s eyes in his small and as yet not really fully formed face, she had thought...assumed...
‘He is here, isn’t he? I had to come. I had to see him,’ she told Claire emotionally, her eyes suddenly filling with tears.
‘No, I’m afraid he isn’t,’ Claire informed her. ‘He’ll probably be back soon, though,’ she added comfortingly. ‘I can give you the office number and you can ring him there,’ she offered helpfully, but the other woman shook her head.
‘No...no, I’d better wait until he gets back... You see, he...he doesn’t...he isn’t exactly expecting us...’ She paced the hall edgily, avoiding Claire’s eyes.
Something was very obviously wrong, Claire guessed. No one, however impetuous, came rushing across the Atlantic with two small children, one of them still too young to walk, just on a mere whim.
‘You must be hungry and tired,’ she said quietly. ‘Let’s go into the kitchen and see if we can find you something to eat, shall we?’ she suggested softly to the baby, who had stopped crying but was gnawing hungrily on his fingers as he focused wonderingly on her unfamiliar face.
‘I guess we are,’ her unexpected visitor agreed, but Claire sensed that food was the last thing on her mind, and now that she had had the opportunity to study her a little more closely she could see the tell-tale signs of strain and unhappiness etched into her face and eyes. The little girl too, clinging so closely to her mother’s side, had an expression in her eyes that had been caused by something more than the confusion of a long transatlantic journey.
Mary-Beth had said that she would wait for Brad to return, but Claire suspected that whatever had brought her rushing to find him meant that she needed to see her brother more urgently than that.
Her heart started to thud a little too fast at the thought of telephoning him. What would he think when he heard her voice? That because of last night she was making unfounded assumptions about him...about them...?
His sister’s obvious need was more important than her own pride, Claire told herself firmly as she led the way to the kitchen, settling Mary-Beth in one of the comfortable Windsor chairs and then going to retrieve from the laundry room the high chair she kept for emergencies, still holding the baby, who was now quite contentedly gurgling up at her.
‘You’re obviously very good with children,’ Mary-Beth told her ruefully, watching her. ‘He’s screamed practically the whole way here.’
‘And he was sick three times,’ a small voice piped up from Mary-Beth’s side, the little girl’s face stern with big-sisterly disapproval.
‘This is Tara.’ Mary-Beth introduced her daughter. ‘And that smelly, damp bundle you’re carrying is Abe junior...’
‘Abe senior is my daddy,’ Tara piped up. ‘But he hasn’t come with us. He’s—’
‘Hush now, Tara,’ Mary-Beth interrupted quickly. ‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised to Claire. ‘We’re putting you to an awful lot of trouble. I should have rung Brad before we left but...’
Tears suddenly filled her eyes, and as she looked away Claire felt her own throat closing up in sympathy for her.
Half an hour later, when the children had both been fed and were soundly asleep upstairs in one of the bedrooms, Claire poured her unexpected visitor a fresh cup of coffee and tried again to persuade her to let her telephone Brad.
‘No, no... Oh, where is he? I need to see him to talk to him. He’s the only one...’
Fresh tears filled her eyes.
‘When everything you thought you could rely on—everyone you thought you could rely on—lets you down and it seems that there’s only one person left for you to turn to, you don’t always think things through properly... Brad’s always been more than just a brother to us. He’s the one we always automatically turn to when things go wrong for us...and I guess that’s why...’
She bit her lip and looked directly at Claire as she went on huskily, ‘You’ve probably already worked out why I’m here... I found out three days ago that Abe, my husband, has been having an affair with a girl at work.
‘He tried to deny it, of course, but they were seen downtown in a bar by a close friend of mine. He told me that he had to work late...and I believed him, even though I knew she’d been making a play for him. I thought he loved me, you see,’ she said sadly.
‘Look, you’ve had a long flight. Why don’t you go upstairs and lie down?’ Claire suggested gently. She could see from the deep unhappiness in the other woman’s eyes just how much her husband’s infidelity had hurt her.
‘Abe kept insisting that it wasn’t true—that he was simply trying to help the girl sort out her personal problems. He said he hadn’t told me because he knew the way I’d react...He said that I never had time to listen to him any more anyway, because the children were more important to me than he was. He even said that Brad mattered more to me than him...that I paid more attention to what Brad had to say...that it was Brad I always turned to for help...’
As her emotions caught up with her she swallowed painfully and then said huskily, ‘I think I will go up and have a rest, if you don’t mind. I’m beginning to feel that so much has happened that I can’t even think straight any more...Abe doesn’t even know I’m here,’ she added tiredly. ‘I just wanted to see Brad so much... I needed him so much... I just kinda grabbed the kids and
some stuff and phoned the airline and the next thing I knew we were all on our way...’
As she stood up she stifled a yawn, her eyes dark with exhaustion.
Claire waited until she was sure that Mary-Beth was asleep before telephoning the office.
Brad, she discovered, wasn’t there and so she spoke to Tim instead, who informed her that Brad was expected back within the hour.
‘Could you ask him to give me a ring as soon as he comes back?’ Claire asked her brother-in-law, without explaining why she needed to speak to him. Brad’s family was his private affair and she didn’t think it right to discuss what had happened with anyone else.
A quick check upstairs confirmed that her visitors were all still asleep.
As she put fresh towels in the bathroom she wondered how long they were likely to stay, and also wondered, half-enviously, what it must be like to have someone like Brad to turn to—someone you could rely on so completely that you could simply walk out of your home with two children and a couple of suitcases, knowing that if you could get to him he would solve your problems for you.
She was being a little unfair, Claire reproved herself. No amount of brotherly concern could surely compensate for an unfaithful husband and a broken marriage. And she had seen the apprehension and confusion in little Tara’s eyes. An uncle, no matter how loving and concerned, could not replace a father.
Not that she blamed Mary-Beth for feeling as she did. To discover that your husband—the man you love and to whom you had committed yourself and who you believed had committed himself to you, the father of your children—had been seeing another woman...had been making love with her...must be one of the most painful experiences that life could hold.
As she went back downstairs Claire checked her fridge. From the way Mary-Beth had toyed with the food she had had earlier Claire doubted that she would have much appetite, but the children were a different matter, especially the baby.
She had plenty of fresh vegetables and fruit that she could cook for him and put through the blender, Claire decided, and as for Tara—well, with a bit of luck the little girl might be enticed into helping her, which would give her mother the chance to have some private conversation with Brad.
Claire suspected from the anxious looks that Tara had given her mother when her father had been mentioned that the little girl was already aware that something was wrong between her parents.
