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The first thing she saw when she walked into the room was Jessica’s old teddy bear sitting on top of the chest of drawers.
She had bought the bear for Jessica before she was born. She went over to the chest and picked up the bear, absently smoothing its worn fur, her eyes dark with shadows.
It had been a cold wet day, she remembered, her mouth twisting a little bitterly at the ease with which she recalled every detail of that particular day.
It had been the day the letter had arrived from Lewis’s solicitors, setting out the formal terms of their divorce. The divorce that even then she had desperately hoped would never happen; that letter with its cold, formal prose, its heavy underlining of Lewis’s desire to cut himself completely free of her. He was giving her the house, the car, the entire contents of their savings account; Lewis, unlike her, had had a moneyed background; his maternal grandparents had left him money, and it had been with this money that he had bought their pretty house and set up a business in partnership with a colleague as independent insurance brokers.
There would be money coming to her from the business…she need not fear she would suffer financially from the divorce—that was what he had told her that shocking day when he had walked in and told her that he wanted their marriage brought to an end.
With hindsight she recognised that there had been something wrong for some time; that he had been quiet, withdrawn from her at times; but she had assumed that it was just the pressure of setting up the new business, and she had been so young, so much still a very new wife, that she had resolutely told herself that she was being over-sensitive, that marriage could not forever be one long honeymoon, that of course there were bound to be times when all might not seem perfect; and then had come the bombshell…the discovery that Lewis didn’t love her any more…didn’t want her any more…that there was someone else and that he wanted his freedom.
She could have fought the divorce, could have made him wait out the statutory period, but her pride would never have allowed her to do that…and as for his money…
She had allowed her solicitor to accept half the value of the house and no more, and then she had told him that she intended to move right away from the area and make a fresh start somewhere else.
It had been on her first trip here that she had bought the bear.
She had had to change trains at Birmingham. There had been a two-hour wait for her connection. She had walked out of the station into the busy, wet city streets, feeling as though her whole life had come to an end, as though there were no point in even thinking about going on.
Coming towards her down the wet road she had seen a bus, lumbering slowly closer as it picked up speed.
She could recall with complete clarity even now the sharp clearness of her brain and its processes—of assessing the speed of the bus, of knowing that all she had to do was to step out into the street in front of it and there would be no more pain, no more anguish, no more loneliness…no more anything.
She had walked to the edge of the kerb; she had stepped forward; she had even taken a step out into the street, when suddenly for the first time she had felt her baby kick.
She had covered her stomach with both hands, an immediate, instinctively protective, wondering gesture, shock, joy and the most bitter-sweet sharp pain she had ever known coalescing inside her.
Someone had touched her arm then, another woman, chiding her warningly, ‘Better watch the traffic duck. These bus drivers…’
And the moment of crisis was over; she was safely back on the pavement, shaking, feeling sick, tears pricking her eyes, but alive…and, more important, her baby was alive as well.
It had been then that she had bought the bear.
She realised suddenly that its worn fur was damp, coming abruptly out of the past to the angry realisation that she was crying again.
Mid-life blues, she taunted herself, ignoring the evidence of Jessica’s full-length mirror which denied that her still very youthful and slender figure showed any signs of becoming middle-aged.
She had come up here to strip the bed, not to dwell with maudlin self-pity on the past, she reminded herself as she pulled back the duvet and very firmly put the bear back where he belonged.
At one o’clock she started to get ready for her meeting with Ian, dressing carefully in a plain navy dress enlivened with a pretty white shawlcollar, and pair of plain, elegant navy blue pumps.
It was all very well for Jessica to complain that her mother’s wardrobe needed jazzing up and that she was far too young and pretty to wear such consistently dull colours: she liked classic clothes made in classic styles.
A final check of her make-up confirmed that the elegant and discreet toffees and peaches of her eyeshadow added just the right degree of emphasis to her eyes; her mouth as always caused her to pause and wince a little. Not even the most discreet and pale lipstick could disguise its fullness…its—
‘You really have the most wonderful mouth. Just made for kissing. Just made for this…’
She swallowed hard. Lewis had said those words to her the night he’d proposed, whispering the compliments in between light decorous kisses which had very quickly become less light and far from decorous. She shuddered deeply, only just managing to restrain herself from actually touching her mouth, the taste of him, the memory of him so very, very sharp and clear. She had been almost totally sexually inexperienced when she and Lewis had met.
He had been her first lover…her only lover, she reminded herself drily. The general mood of the sixties seemed to have passed her by. She had certainly never experienced the urge of those of her peers who had thrown themselves into sampling all the pleasures of the so-called sexual revolution, but then more recently in conversations with her women friends she had learned that the majority of them had also married their first lover, giving rise, in some cases, to the good-humoured complaint th
at there had been times—especially when their families were young and their husbands busy—when they had wondered if they had somehow missed out on life.
A different, more health-conscious approach to life had brought a different set of attitudes and values, and, as Jessica had already told her with the seriousness and confidence of extreme youth, when she eventually made love it would only be with someone whose sexual history allowed her to feel safe with him.
Jessica was one of a new breed of young women who considered a career and financial independence to be the main goals of their life: marriage and a family were things that could be put on hold until these goals were achieved. Certainly with the soaring divorce rate it seemed a sensible plan. But love…emotions—could these really be summoned at will when one had decided that the time was right to admit them into one’s life? Lacey was not so sure. Or was it simply that she lacked will-power…that there was something missing in her make-up that had made it impossible for her to ever really forget Lewis…to ever really forget the pain he had caused her?
It might have helped her had she been able to hate him, to direct the corrosive power of bitterness and hatred into destroying her love, but that weapon had been denied her and the terrible anguish of all her pain had been turned against herself rather than against him.
