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Upstairs Vanessa was packing. She hadn’t spoken to Eleanor since her return from the shop; Eleanor herself was supposed to be working but it was impossible for her to concentrate.
When the doorbell rang she got up tiredly to answer it.
‘Jade!’ she exclaimed in surprised pleasure as she saw her friend standing outside.
‘The very same,’ Jade agreed as she came in. ‘I’d got a couple of hours to spare, so I thought I’d come round. I’m leaving for the States at the end of next week…’
‘With Sam?’ Eleanor asked her.
Jade shrugged. ‘That’s up to him. I’m getting too old and too tired to play games any more, Nell,’ she confessed. ‘Trust me to go and fall in love with a guy right at the very time when… What’s wrong?’ she demanded quietly.
Eleanor grimaced. Were her feelings really so obvious?
‘It would be easier to tell you what’s not,’ she said feelingly.
‘Tell me,’ Jade invited…
‘So, Marcus doesn’t want the house,’ she interrupted Eleanor several minutes later. ‘So find another…’
‘You don’t understand… he didn’t say anything to me, Jade. He just let me go on making plans, believing that it was something we shared when all the time… It’s almost as though I don’t really know him any more. He made me feel so… so self-centred. So unaware. He accused me of wanting the house to fulfil my own childhood fantasies… of using it as some kind of magic formula, when…’
‘Weren’t you?’ Jade asked her with unusual gentleness. ‘I’m not trying to criticise, Nell, I know how much you love Marcus… and I understand what you’re trying to do, but Marcus is right, you know. A house can’t miraculously bond you all together in some kind of perfect blissful family unit. To be perfectly truthful, I don’t think that kind of unity actually does exist, outside the imaginations of advertising executives.’
‘But Jade, all I wanted was for all of us to be happy, and now Marcus is making me feel as though… as though I’m deliberately ignoring everyone else’s feelings and needs and concentrating purely on my own.
‘When he talked about the house I could hear the resentment in his voice and I began to wonder if it was the house he actually resented or me.’
‘Nell! Marcus loves you!’
‘The worst thing about it all,’ Eleanor told her quietly, ‘is that all along everything that’s happened has underlined the fact that the house isn’t really for us and yet I’ve ignored it all, gone ahead… just as I’ve ignored what Marcus says he’s been trying to tell me. What kind of woman am I, Jade? I can’t tell when my own sons are unhappy… I don’t know what my husband is really thinking or feeling… I don’t recognise it when my partner wants to end our relationship… I apparently can’t see that my stepdaughter thinks I’ve stolen her father from her… Women are supposed to know all these things… we’re supposed to understand and empathise. We’re supposed to be emotionally aware and sympathetic and yet here I am…’
‘You’re a human being, Nell, not God,’ Jade told her drily. ‘You can’t know how everybody else will react or read their minds.’
‘No, but I could be more receptive to what they’re trying to tell me instead of apparently ignoring them. I wanted to make it all so good for us, Jade, and all I’ve done is make things worse.’
‘It isn’t just down to you to make things good,’ Jade told her. ‘That takes input and willingness from everyone. Stop worrying so much about other people’s happiness and concentrate a little instead on your own.’
‘According to Marcus I’m doing too much of that already,’ Eleanor told her bitterly. ‘And that isn’t the worst of it,’ she added, tiredly telling her about Vanessa and the dress.
‘Let Marcus deal with it,’ Jade advised her. ‘That’s probably half the reason she did it anyway.’
Eleanor looked at her.
‘You mean a bid for his attention? But, Jade, Marcus does love her. He…’
‘Does he?’ Jade asked her quietly. ‘How much did he actually see of her until you came on the scene, Nell? And now ask yourself how you’d feel in Vanessa’s shoes, suspecting that your father tolerated you simply because your stepmother thought it was her duty to make sure he saw you. Look, I’ve got to go… I’ve got an appointment with my trainer in half an hour.’ She gave a small shudder. ‘He’s brutal… but very effective… My thighs…’
Eleanor laughed. ‘Your thighs are perfect,’ she told her drily. ‘Just like the rest of your body.’
‘Talk to Marcus,’ Jade urged her as Eleanor escorted her to the front door. ‘And if you really want Vanessa to have a taste of what adult repression can be like, how about sending her over to me in New York for a few days?’
She had gone before Eleanor could say anything, or thank her.
For a while after Jade had gone Eleanor simply sat, assessing what she had said, and then she went and got the file containing all the papers relating to Broughton House.
Slowly she removed the sale brochure and studied it, tears filming her eyes.
