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‘Oh, dear, have I called at a bad time?’ Venice cooed, flashing Fern an openly insincere smile. ‘Goodness, how wonderfully clean everywhere looks. Almost antiseptic. You must give me the name of your cleaner. My woman is good enough in her way, but…’ She wrinkled her nose, her sharp glance everywhere, assessing, judging… analysing…
‘I don’t have a cleaner,’ Fern told her flatly. She could feel her colour rising as Venice looked at her. She was pretty sure that the older woman knew that quite well, and she had not missed the acid abrasiveness of the word ‘antiseptic’.
‘I shan’t stay. I only called to bring this back,’ Venice told her, opening the shoulder-bag she was carrying and handing Fern a carelessly folded and very creased tie. ‘Nick left it at my place the other day. He came round to discuss my investments. My central heating has been causing problems recently and the house was so hot he asked if I wouldn’t mind if he took off his tie. My woman found it this morning, and as I was driving past I thought I ought to return it…’
Fern said nothing. Bleakly she wondered if Venice thought she was actually deceiving her. How much pleasure had the other woman derived from making up that outrageous tissue of lies?
Fern knew quite well that the tie Venice had just handed her was one of the ones Nick had taken to London with him. She knew it, because it was a new one. Pure silk; it had cost more than her ‘monthly allowance’.
There was only one possible explanation as to how it had come into Venice’s possession and it certainly wasn’t the one Venice had given her.
After Venice had gone, Fern stood in the kitchen, her hands icy cold whilst her face burned with humiliation and anguish.
There was no doubt whatsoever in her mind now. Nick was having an affair with Venice.
As she reached for the telephone, Fern realised that she was physically shaking. Not with pain but with anger; anger because Nick had so obviously and so callously deceived her, lied to her when he had told her that he valued their marriage and that he valued her.
And somewhere, as she punched in the numbers and waited to hear the phone ring, not quite smothered beneath her anger was a small still pool of coldness, of inevitability, as though she had always known that this would and must happen.
No matter how much he might protest otherwise, Nick did not want her. How could he? And, unlike her, Venice would not passively allow him to control their relationship. As she had shown today.
Venice was no fool—she had known what she was doing when she returned that tie.
At the other end of the line someone picked up the receiver and it was only when she heard her friend’s voice announcing the number that Fern realised with a small start of shock that instead of dialling Nick’s number as she had intended she had in fact dialled Cressy’s.
A deliberate subconscious error on her part, or a random act of fate? Whichever way one chose to look at it, there was a definite message somewhere in what had happened.
Fern took a deep breath.
‘Cressy, I’ve changed my mind,’ she announced shakily. ‘When do you want me to come?’
‘As soon as possible,’ Cressy responded.
* * *
It didn’t take her long to pack; there wasn’t after all much for her to take, and the unwanted visual memory of Venice standing in the sunlight in her pretty, casual clothes sharpened the revulsion she felt for her own shabby, old-fashioned things.
She left Nick a note explaining where she had gone and after signing her name to it added a footnote to the effect that Venice had returned his tie.
Let him make of that what he wanted, she decided grimly. It hadn’t escaped her notice that the writing in the footnote was slightly bolder and larger than her normal neat, controlled script.
Would Nick notice? She smiled mirthlessly.
She wasn’t running away, she told herself as she packed her small case into her car. She was simply giving herself space to come to terms with things and to decide upon her future.
A future which would no longer include Nick?
She took a deep shaky breath as she started her car and released the handbrake.
* * *
She stopped for lunch in a small country town. It was market day, the streets busy with people. As she walked back outside Fern noticed a young mother walking past with her baby. She was about Fern’s own age, but, unlike her, she was dressed in a brightly coloured Lycra-based outfit in a similar style to, although nothing like as expensive as, the top and leggings Venice had been wearing earlier.
They were totally unsuitable for her, of course. Nick would have a fit if… She stopped abruptly, and then, without allowing herself to analyse what she was doing, she turned round and made her way back along the busy street to the branch of an inexpensive nationwide fashion chain she had passed a few minutes earlier.
Fifteen minutes later, when she emerged from its open doorway, her face flushed and her hands trembling slightly, she was no longer wearing the dowdy skirt and sweater.
Instead she had on a pair of pretty multi-coloured leggings and a matching ‘body’, as the girl had call
