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‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ she heard him asking her as though he had felt the tension sharply invading her body.
It had to be now. She had to do it now while she had the strength…
She pushed herself away from him, turning her head so that he could not see her face as she told him dully, ‘You were right. We shouldn’t… I shouldn’t… I’m Nick’s wife and…’
‘And you love him,’ she heard Adam saying quietly behind her. ‘I know that, Fern…’
Did he really think she loved Nick or was he simply trying to be tactful, trying not to hurt or humiliate her by letting her see that he knew how she felt about him?
She felt his hand touch her shoulder, brushing her hair off her skin. As he had made love he had whispered to her that he loved her hair; that he wanted to wrap it around his body, to…
‘You mustn’t blame yourself for what happened. It didn’t mean anything, we both know that… it was simply a… a means of expressing your pain… a reaction against the way Nick hurt you.’
No, she had wanted to deny, no, you’re wrong… This had nothing to do with Nick. Nothing at all.
‘You mustn’t worry about it. Or feel guilty,’ Adam was still saying to her.
‘How can I not feel guilty?’ Fern had protested, shivering now, her face still averted from him, shock and despair taking the place of her earlier euphoric emotions.
‘You have nothing to feel guilty for,’ Adam insisted, adding quietly but firmly, ‘Nothing happened, Fern, nothing at all…’
She did look at him then, her eyes registering her pain. What was he trying to tell her? That he wished it had not happened? That he preferred to pretend that it had not happened?
There was no need to remind herself that she had been the one to urge, to insist… to plead and beg… that he had been the one to call a halt, to try to stop.
‘You’re Nick’s wife. You love him.’
‘Yes,’ she had agreed dully, her eyes hot and dry with the pressure of the tears she could not allow herself to cry.
She had started to dress then, her fingers trembling as, like Eve pushed out of the Garden of Eden, she suddenly became aware of her nakedness and ashamed of it.
Adam stopped her, gently pushing away her clumsy fingers and then dressing her with patient care and the kind of gentleness that brought fresh tears to her eyes.
‘Don’t. Don’t cry, Fern,’ he had told her as he brushed her tears away. ‘Go back to Nick and forget this ever happened.’
Forget? How could she? And then the phone had rung and with a sob she had run as fast as she could from his house.
* * *
Tiredly she lifted her head. Beyond the window of Cressy’s house the sky was lightening. Her body felt stiff and sore, her muscles tense and aching. She felt suddenly very old and drained. Wearily she focused on the greyness beyond the window.
What was there after all to look forward to? What purpose left in life? She had tried to make a go of her marriage, to fulfil her parents’ expectations of her. She had tried to love Nick and up until last night she had believed that he had been genuine in his claim that he needed her; that he needed and wanted their marriage to succeed.
She closed her eyes briefly and was once again back in Adam’s arms, feeling herself come to life, her senses, her body, her emotions suddenly so sensitive, so heightened that she had scarcely been able to endure their intensity. If she kept her eyes tightly closed and concentrated very hard she could almost feel the sensation of his mouth moving over hers, his hands touching her face, his tongue stroking her lips, his body…
Abruptly she opened her eyes, staring down at her clenched fists as though they were alien to her. Slowly she uncurled her fingers, watching the way they trembled, feeling the slow, inexorable tide of pain sweep through her.
This was reality. This was life. This was love… And somehow she would have to learn to live with it. One thing was sure: she could no longer go on pretending, hiding behind the barrier of her marriage, diverting all her energies and emotions into propping up its empty façade.
Everything Cressy had said to her had only underlined what she had already known in her heart. She had to leave Nick. Not because she loved Adam, but because she needed to regain her self-respect, to take charge of her own life and to be in control of it.
She needed to rediscover herself and she needed to learn to live with the person she discovered.
* * *
‘So what will you do? You can’t go back to him—not now.’
Fern smiled calmly at Cressy. They were walking along the beach that marked the boundary between Cressy’s land and the sea, a long, curling ribbon of wet sand backed by marsh grass and the raised outline of the path along the dyke.
