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A WEEK went by without Claire hearing anything from Brad, and then another, and then halfway through the third she received a telephone call from Tim advising her that Brad had been in touch with him.
‘He did try to ring you but he said there was no reply. His uncle—the one who runs the business—has had a heart attack and is in Intensive Care and Brad has had to step in and take over from him, so obviously there’s no question of him returning here in the immediate future.’
‘But what about his things? They’re still here,’ Claire protested. Her body felt numb with shock; until she’d heard Tim telling her that Brad wouldn’t be coming back she hadn’t realised how much she had been depending on him returning...how strongly she had been clinging to that frail link between them.
Now Tim had severed it, leaving her feeling that she was crashing through space, tumbling helplessly from a great height, her stomach seized with fear and nausea as her whole world dissolved around her.
‘I expect he’ll want us to make arrangements to ship whatever he’s left behind out to him,’ Tim told her. ‘Just let me know what there is and we can sort all that out for you.’
After she had replaced the receiver Claire went upstairs, moving like a sleepwalker as she went into the room that Brad had occupied. Was she imagining it or did the very air in there still carry a faint scent of him— of his soap, his skin, himself? Her whole body bowed with misery and loss.
She went across to the bed, smoothing her fingertips over the pillow, hot tears filling her eyes.
It was ridiculous for her to be behaving in this fashion, she derided herself. She was a grown woman. Grown women didn’t fall intensely and passionately in love in the space of a handful of days—or at least they weren’t supposed to. Their hearts weren’t supposed to ache with all the intensity and anguish with which hers was aching right now, and nor were their bodies.
Their bodies...her body... Her body. Oh, how it had deceived her, led her into a trap of false security, letting her believe that it was impossible for it to feel, to want, to need the way it was doing right now.
Brad had said that he’d tried to ring her, Tim had told her. Her head dipped defensively as she remembered those last, frantic hours before he had left, his sister’s resentment at what she had seen as Brad’s support of her husband in his insistence that she needed to return home to talk to him and that it wasn’t fair on her children—on their children—simply to walk out, no matter what provocation she might think she personally had had to do so.
Brad had tried to talk privately to her then and foolishly she had hoped that he had wanted to reassure her, to offer her if not his love then at least the reassurance that there was something between them worth pursuing. But now she wondered if she might have been wrong, if what he had wanted to say to her was more along the lines of Thank you, it was very nice, but now it’s over.
Over... Her throat constricted on a small half-sob, a painful spasm of emotion. It had never really properly begun. What was there, in reality, to be over? All they had had, all there had been was simply a...a one-night stand... a bit of a sexual adventure, and she had been a fool to believe that it was anything more.
And, that being the case, there was precious little point in compounding her folly by thinking about what might have been, tormenting herself with implausible, unrealistic daydreams. No, she would be better off simply forgetting about the whole incident...about Brad himself—forgetting it and firmly locking the door on it and throwing away the key.
It was an easy enough resolve to make, but a much harder one to keep, Claire discovered in the weeks that followed.
Irene commented in a slightly miffed manner on her lacklustre response to life in general and to her own good news in particular that Tim had responded so positively to Brad’s suggestions, including his recommendation that Tim should consider going on a self-assertion training course.
‘Of course it will mean that someone will have to come over from America to take charge of things for a while,’ Irene had confided. ‘But Brad says he has someone in mind for that—their top distributor over there. Tim is already in contact with him and they seem to be getting on very well.’
But even her sister-in-law’s plans for the future failed to move Claire to anything more than dull indifference—a reaction which she herself felt barely registered as a meagre one out of ten on the scale of her emotionally misery, but which apparently Irene had seen fit to accord a much higher anxiety-rating, as Claire discovered when she received an unscheduled visit from her stepdaughter in the middle of what had so far been a particularly harrowing day.
She had discovered earlier in the morning that the school where she worked was to be closed, its pupils amalgamated with those at another school on the other side of town.
It wasn’t so much the fact that her voluntary services would no longer be required that upset her but the knowledge of how difficult some of their children would find it to adapt to new and, to them, potentially threatening surroundings and routines, and she was still worrying about the fate of the children when Sally arrived unexpectedly.
‘Is something wrong?’ Claire asked her stepdaughter anxiously, knowing that she should have been at work.
‘According to Aunt Irene I’m the one who should be asking you that question,’ Sally told her forthrightly, adding more gently, ‘I haven’t wanted to pry, but it’s been obvious ever since we got back from honeymoon that something is wrong. Every time I’ve spoken to you it’s been almost as though you’re not really... You’ve been so...so distant almost that I had begun...’ Sally paused and bit her lip, her face flushing slightly.
‘It isn’t anything to do with the wedding, is it...and with that trick Chris and I played on the three of you with the wedding bouquet? Only when I rang Star the other day she was very curt with me and said she was too busy to speak to me, and as for Poppy—well, I know how she’s always felt about Chris, but she was so young when she first developed her crush on him.
‘I never meant to hurt any of you,’ Sally told her urgently, coming over to kneel down beside Claire and to lay her head on her lap as she had done when she was a little girl in need either of a confessional for some minor crime or some extra cosseting and reassurance.
Automatically Claire reached out to stroke the shining head of hair just as she had done so many times when Sally had been growing up.
‘If you’re cross with me about the bouquet, please believe me, we...I only did it because—well, because Chris and I...Well, I’m so happy myself, I just wanted all of you—but most especially you...’
Sally bit her lip, her voice slightly strained as she continued emotionally, ‘You’ve been...you are such a wonderful mother to me, much better than...a much better parent to me than Dad ever was. I’ve always known that and, well...I’ve always loved you...more...best...but it wasn’t until Chris pointed it. out to me that I realised that your marriage, that my father...’
She raised her head and looked at Claire. ‘It must have been very difficult for you. After all, he never made any secret of the fact that Paula...that...’
‘He still loved your mother,’ Claire supplied for her. ‘She was your mother, Sally,’ she reminded her stepdaughter gently, ‘and I honestly don’t mind you referring to her as that... You see, I know I have my own place in your love and in your life, and if anything it isn’t jealousy or envy I feel for her, but sadness and pity because she was deprived of so much pleasure in not being here to watch you growing up.
‘When you have children of your own they’re going to want to know about her and you’re going to want to tell them, but I shall be the one who cuddles them and tells them stories and gives them forbidden treats...’
‘You’ll always be Mum to me,’ Sally told her tearfully. ‘Always... I know there’s been a bit of gossip about the bouquet and the pact the three of you made not to get married because of it—Hannah told me and I’ve heard it from someone else as well—but I honestly never me
ant to cause any of you any embarrassment or to hurt you...
‘I know that, Sally,’ Claire reassured her.
‘Well, if that’s not what’s wrong, then what is it?’ Sally persisted. ‘And don’t tell me “nothing”, because it’s obvious that something is wrong.’
‘I heard this morning that they’re going to close the school,’ Claire told her.
‘Oh, no. I am sorry... I know how much you’ve enjoyed working there.’ She stood up, her face and voice lightening with relief as she added, ‘Irene was convinced that the reason you’ve been so withdrawn has something to do with that American you had staying with you. Bart—’
‘Brad,’ Claire corrected her quietly, getting up to go and fill the kettle to make them both a hot drink and keeping her face carefully averted just in case something in her expression should betray her.
Just saying Brad’s name had made her heart somersault violently and it was now thudding so heavily against her chest wall that it was practically making her dizzy and slightly faint.
For the first time ever Claire actually felt glad when her stepdaughter had gone. Right now Sally was still living in a cloud of post-honeymoon euphoric bliss, but once that started to fade and she was back to being her normal sharp-eyed self Claire doubted that she would be able to keep the truth from her for very long. If Irene had already guessed that something was wrong—and, even worse, why—what chance did she have of concealing the truth from Sally?
The answer lay in her own hands, Claire told herself firmly. If she didn’t want the pain and humiliation of her nearest and dearest discovering how stupid she had been, then she was going to have to make much more of an effort to force herself to forget Brad and her love for him.
More of an effort. She gave a small, twisted smile. Right now simply getting through the day without him was just about as much effort as she was capable of making, which was pathetic and ridiculous given the fact that she had only known him a matter of days.
