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‘If you mean he’s always had a strong sex drive then yes, he has,’ Sally had agreed steadily, ‘but Joel is the last man who would ever let a woman pay him for sex, if that’s what you’re implying…’
‘No, of course not… no such thing. You misunderstand me completely,’ Daphne had back-pedalled furiously, her colour high, but Sally knew that she had not misunderstood her at all.
The thought of Joel of all men allowing some rich, bored woman to pay him for sex was indeed totally ridiculous; that pride of his would get in the way for starters…
But supposing he did meet someone else—a woman whom he was attracted to, a woman who was attracted to him…
Her heart skipped a beat and then started to thump painfully. She was uncomfortably aware of how often she had turned away from him recently, rejecting his sexual advances, but marriage, loving someone wasn’t just about sex, and surely she had just as much right to have her needs respected as he did when he had been the one going out to work, supporting them all, worrying about how they would pay the bills. She had often put his needs before her own then, but now that their positions were reversed he was making no attempt to do the same for her.
After she had returned to work on the dining-r
oom she had continued to brood over Joel’s selfishness—the fact that he still seemed to expect her to do whatever he wanted, even though she was now the one who controlled the purse strings.
Abruptly she put down her scraper.
Was that really how she thought of sex… of marriage… ?
She shivered abruptly, feeling oddly sick, and dizzy tears suddenly filling her eyes. Tears not for herself, she recognised, but for the dreams and ideals which somewhere along the road of her life she had lost, and for the disillusionment which had taken their place.
When she had married Joel she had thought that life could hold no greater pleasure than being his wife. In bed at night, held safe in his arms, she would sometimes feel as though her heart might almost burst with happiness, and she had marvelled daily that she should be singled out for such joy.
Then the thought of making love with Joel had filled her not with dread but with incoherent excitement and delight, and if the things he had whispered to her, the way he had touched her had sometimes half shocked her, it had been a pleasurable, expectant kind of shock.
Had she ever disappointed Joel in those early days with her shyness and inhibition? If she had, he had never said so, she acknowledged. Then he had been patient with her, tender, wooing her slowly into a state of ecstatic ardour.
But that kind of sexual intensity didn’t last. One only had to ask any long-married couple.
Now when Joel turned to her in the night she knew it wasn’t the intensity of his love for her that motivated him, but simply his own physical need.
It was Kenneth, with his restraint and his appreciation of her as a human being, and not just a body in his bed, who loved her, not Joel.
So why was she standing here with her heart thumping and her stomach churning with nausea at the thought of Joel touching another woman? If she didn’t want him any more… if she didn’t love him…
She frowned as she saw her brother-in-law’s car turning into the drive. The room was stripped but she still had to clear up and Daphne wouldn’t be at all pleased that she was still here.
Still, with a bit of luck she could finish off and sneak out the back door without Clifford’s ‘colleague’ knowing that she was here—or who she was.
She could hear voices in the hallway outside, her brother-in-law’s, thin and slightly petulant and another man’s—deeper and very familiar.
Her heart thumped into her ribs in shock.
‘My wife must be in the kitchen; I’ll just get her,’ she could hear Clifford saying and then the dining-room opened and Kenneth was standing there apologising,
‘Oh, I’m sorry—wrong door,’ and then as he saw her he exclaimed in surprise, ‘Sally! Good heavens… what on earth are you doing here…?’
‘You know my sister-in-law…?’
Clifford couldn’t quite keep the disbelief out of his voice or the disapproval out of his expression as he looked at her, Sally noticed.
‘Sally is your sister-in-law? You’re a very lucky man.’
Kenneth was talking to Clifford but looking at her, and Sally thought faintly that if Clifford had been anything like as intelligent and observant as he liked to pretend he must surely have noticed the intensity, the possessiveness in Kenneth’s eyes as he watched her. She could certainly see it.
‘Sally was my nurse when I was in hospital. And a very good nurse she was as well. I’ve missed her…’
Sally could feel her face starting to burn. Kenneth, please be careful, she begged silently. If Daphne came in and saw the way he was looking at her…
She ought to have trusted him, she acknowledged mentally ten minutes later as her sister, plainly flattered and overwhelmed by the attention he was paying her, allowed Kenneth to manipulate the situation so that as though by magic the four of them were sitting in her sister’s over-fussy sitting-room, drinking glasses of sherry, while Kenneth pandered to her sister’s ever-hungry ego by relating how impressed he had been by Clifford’s reputation and how he thought that Clifford was wasted as a teacher at a mere comprehensive.
