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‘Something like that.’ She didn’t want to say any more on the subject but Michael wouldn’t let it go.
He inched towards her, his forearms on the table, his fingers touching hers, just briefly, as he told her, ‘He’ll get over it—whatever you fought about. Caroline, he isn’t a fool. And—’ he cleared his throat and added uncomfortably, his face going pink ‘—I don’t know, but I might have put my foot in it. Well, we were talking while we waited for you. He was asking questions, about your position at the gallery, whether you were wedded to your career—that sort of stuff.’ He fell silent as their waiter approached to clear the main course and Caroline gave an inner groan of despair.
Had Ben, even at that stage, still wanted to marry her? Why else should he have tried to find out how much her work meant to her? He’d given her a free choice earlier, when he’d made that stunning proposal of marriage: continue with her career, live in London and use the cottage for weekends, or make it their permanent home.
Her throat clogged with tears. She made a determined effort to swallow them. Of course he hadn’t still been thinking of marriage. He’d been disgusted by her, by her total lack of trust.
Michael was saying something. Caroline hauled herself out of her pit of misery and said thickly, ‘Sorry?’
‘I asked if you would like the dessert menu.’
She shook her head, unable at the moment to trust her voice. She couldn’t eat, she simply couldn’t. She just wanted to get out of here, get back to London and lick her wounds in private.
But Michael had ordered coffee. Caroline smothered a sigh of sheer impatience and Michael mumbled, ‘I feel a fool. I had no idea you and he—well, why would I? I’m afraid I gave him the impression you and I were an item. That when Dad retires next year and I take over you’d be a full partner.’ His face turned bright red. ‘And my wife. Well,’ he said brusquely, on the defensive now, ‘I did have hopes in that direction, and I guess I was jumping the gun. Over-confidence is my one big failing, or so the old man keeps telling me. Look,’ he offered grimly, ‘if it’ll help heal the rift I’ll swallow my pride and call Dexter first thing tomorrow to put him straight.’
‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ Caroline returned stiffly. It was over. Ben had already let her know in no uncertain terms how disgusted he was with her before that conversation had taken place.
The wrong impression Michael had given Ben made her stomach churn queasily but it wasn’t anything to make a song and dance about. It would have been nothing more than the final nail in the coffin of their already doomed relationship.
‘It wouldn’t make a scrap of difference,’ she said dismissively with a fatalistic sigh. She looked pointedly at her watch. ‘If you’re ready, could we make a move? I need a good night’s sleep if I’m going to be fit for anything in the morning.’
A good night’s sleep was difficult to come by, Caroline decided edgily four weeks later, as she ran a duster over the uncluttered surfaces in her minimally furnished small sitting room.
By armouring herself in designer suits and the mask of her make-up, absorbing herself in her work, she got through the days. And weekends she spent with whichever of her friends happened to be free. But the nights…
The nights were unadulterated torment. Ben took the starring role in dreams that grew ever more sexually explicit and she would come partially awake and reach for him, but he wasn’t there, and never would be.
And she’d spend the remaining hours until daylight telling herself that it was over, making herself accept it, facing the fact that Ben would have put their ill-fated relationship firmly behind him, finally ridding himsel
f of her, of his memories of her. Because what man in his right mind could want a woman who openly stated that she didn’t trust him?
She was coming dangerously close to hating herself, unravelling round the edges, unable to eat or sleep, tormented by the thoughts of her lost love.
She tossed the duster aside, angry with herself. If her life was a mess she had only herself to blame. So something had to be done about it. And no one else would do it for her.
When Edward Weinberg had said, ‘You look dreadful. You’re either terminally ill and not telling anyone, or I’m working you too hard. I’m inclined to believe the latter, so take two weeks off. Go to the continent and lie on a beach’, she’d wanted to dig her heels in and refuse to do any such thing.
But perhaps the enforced break was just what she really needed to straighten herself out, to do something positive. But what?
Lying on a beach held no appeal. Too much time to think, to brood. She needed hard, physical work.
Casting a look around her sterile living quarters, she made up her mind, grabbed a jacket and walked out.
And two hours later she was back, weighed down with tins of paint, brushes, fabric swatches, cheap denim jeans and T-shirts from the local street-market.
The apartment she’d previously viewed simply as a place to sleep was going to be turned into a proper home.
‘Talk about a sea change!’ Danielle Booth, Caroline’s neighbour from across the hall, poked her sleek brown head around the open door. ‘You’ve worked your socks off all week so how about a girls’ night out—you’re not going to work all weekend, I forbid it! You’ll give yourself painter’s elbow!’
Warm apricot emulsion had transformed the vestibule—formerly an uninspiring pale grey—and the partly open door through to the sitting room revealed the same colour but in a slightly deeper tone.
‘Do you like it?’ Caroline, on her knees, putting the finishing touches to the skirting board, wanted to know because this was her first attempt at home-decorating and she wasn’t sure she’d got it right.
She scrambled to her feet and Danielle said, ‘I love it. But I would never have put you down as a hands-on sort of person. Have the decorators in and stay at an hotel until they’d finished would be more your style. And I’ve never seen you look anything but perfectly groomed before—’
‘There’s always a first time.’ With difficulty Caroline returned her friend’s grin. Danielle wasn’t to know that she was having to keep herself occupied every minute of her time to stop herself brooding. Over what might have been, over what she had so briefly had and had stupidly thrown away. ‘And it’s nice not to have to bother about the way I look. Coffee?’
‘I’d love some, but I can’t. Hair appointment,’ Danielle stated. ‘Now, what about tonight? We could take in a film, have supper.’
