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Lacey shook her head, unable to look at him.
‘Look,’ his voice softened a little, ‘I know this isn’t easy for either of us, but we have to put our own feelings to one side and think of Jessica. It obviously means a great deal to her that we’ve—as she thinks—reconciled our differences and come together again. What harm can it really do to allow her to go on believing that for a little while? At the very least it will give us time to gently find a way of telling her that we don’t think it’s going to work out after all. But if you insist on telling her the truth…now…’
Lacey shook her head. How could she do that after the way she had seen Jessica react to the sight of them together? If she told her daughter now that they had just been indulging in cold, loveless sex…She swallowed hard. How could she do…? No, Lewis was right. They would have to wait.
‘Shall I get dressed first and go down and keep Jess occupied? It will give you time to come to terms with—’
‘With what?’ she demanded bitterly. ‘With lying to my own daughter…with pretending that you and I…?’ She couldn’t go on. Her throat was too thick with tears.
This was all her fault…hers and no one else’s. If she hadn’t made it so plain to Lewis that she wanted him…desired him…She felt sick with self-mortification, with guilt.
Lewis started to get out of bed. She turned her head away.
‘About last night,’ she heard him say, but she shook her head in denial.
‘No, please, Lewis. I can’t talk about it now. Dear God, why on earth did Jessica have to find us like this?’
IT WAS A question Lacey was forced to ask herself over and over again in the days that followed.
Far from containing the damage already done, the fact that they were allowing Jessica to believe that they had been reconciled and were making plans for the future only seemed to exacerbate it. Jessica, it seemed, couldn’t contain her delight in what she considered to be their good news.
Her original intention had been simply to come home for a couple of days, to apologise to Lacey for upsetting her and to explain why she had contacted her father without consulting Lacey first.
‘It’s incredible to have the two of you together like this,’she told them both over and over again.
Luckily Lewis had the excuse of needing to get back to his business to keep his stay with them mercifully brief, and so Lacey did not have the trauma of facing the possibility of having to share her bed with him for a second night.
She had had the whole day to spend with him and two more after that, when he had driven over to spend, as he put it, as much time has he could with the two most important women in his life.
The past was never mentioned. Jessica’s excited chatter was all about the future, and the more she listened to her daughter the more despairingly guilty Lacey felt. Sooner or later Jessica was going to have to be told the truth.
Initially when Lewis had talked of letting Jessica come to terms with the realisation that the relationship between them wasn’t working out, it had seemed a simple, easy solution; but now that Lacey had time to consider it and to realise that it wasn’t something that could be accomplished overnight, she was beginning to panic that she would do something to betray the strain she was under, the pain she was going through, the agony she was enduring. Because it was agony having to spend so much time with Lewis, having to accept the small physical gestures of intimacy he made towards her, the brief kiss on her forehead, his arm round her shoulders, the small, intimate touches that reaffirmed Jessica’s belief that they were deeply in love.
Deeply in love. Well, it was true of one of them, at least, and the problem was that that one was falling more and more deeply into that love with every day that passed.
No matter how much she tried to remind herself of the past and all that had happened, Lacey knew she was daily becoming more dependent on Lewis…more involved with him, so that she was torn between anguish and self-hatred at her own weakness and inability to face reality.
Fortunately Jessica was only able to spend a few days at home.
To Lacey’s consternation, on their last afternoon together Jessica suggested that Lewis took them both to see his home.
‘After all, I expect that you and Ma will be living there once you’ve finally set a date for the wedding,’ she continued blithely. ‘I mean, your business is there—’
‘Jessica,’ Lacey protested. ‘I don’t think—’
‘That’s all right,’ Lewis interrupted her, ‘and besides, Jess, is right, although I warn you that the house isn’t anything like as…as home-like as this.’
He said it almost bleakly, his face suddenly shuttered, causing Lacey to worry at her bottom lip. He never spoke of her, the woman he had left her for, or of their time together. She knew now that he had never married her, but presumably they must have lived together, shared a home…plans…and she shrank from the thought of even visiting the house he had shared with another woman; a woman he had loved more than he had loved her.
‘I bought the house five years ago,’ he was telling Jessica. ‘In all honesty, it’s too large for one person. Much too large. I don’t know why I bought it really.’
‘Wishful thinking,’ Jessica suggested, smiling at him.
‘Perhaps,’ Lewis agreed. ‘Although I had no idea then that your mother…that you existed.’
‘It’s not too late, you know,’ Jessica told him softly. ‘You and Ma can still have another child…more children. After all, these days a vasectomy can be reversed, and Ma isn’t even forty yet—’
‘Jessica,’ Lacey interrupted her quickly, but Jessica refused to be quelled, telling her firmly,
