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Vic shook her head. ‘I’ve got nothing. You don’t understand.’
He hadn’t protected her back then, but he could protect her now.
‘I told you—’
‘I’m not taking any of Father’s money!’
Vic had always seen the inheritance as tainted. A poisoned chalice she would not touch. He had trouble understanding why, when what he had could help her.
‘I’m not asking you to. I have my own. I can help.’
‘And now I have to rely on the charity of my own brother? What would everyone say? Look at poor Victoria Carlisle. Barren... Divorced...’
‘Vic, what hold does he have over you?’
She shook her head, her glass of water quivering in her fingers. ‘Nothing you could ever understand.’
‘I could try if you expl—’
‘No. Leave this be. It’s not your concern.’
Yet again, she wouldn’t accept his help. Another failure to add to the litany of shortcomings in his past. Not only his sister, but Sara too. He’d meant to protect her, look after her, and what had he done? Taken her to bed. Touched her with fingers soiled by his genes, by generations of reprobates. Sara might look at him as if he were all things perfect, as if he were a god, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that she would be tainted for ever by their association.
‘I hope Victoria wasn’t...difficult.’ The car was warm in the autumn sunshine. They hadn’t spent much longer at the post match celebrations. Seeing Vic had coloured the rest of the afternoon, relief and concern all tangled into one congealed mess of emotions.
‘Is she often?’ No denial then. Sara stared out of the window at the passing countryside.
‘She’s changed since she was a child.’ It was as if he had to defend her against the cruelties the world had meted out. Ones he hadn’t prevented. ‘She was happy once.’
‘And then she grew up.’ The distant wistful sound of her voice said a great deal about Sara’s current thinking. There was more in the loaded tone than a mere comment about his sister. ‘What happened?’
‘Her marriage isn’t a good one.’ That wasn’t breaching any real confidence, but it so far underplayed what was going on there, he couldn’t help the stab of guilt.
‘Lots of people have unhappy marriages.’
‘It was arranged, by my parents. To further my father’s career. Mine too, if I’d wanted.’
His parents certainly had. His father had grand plans for Lance. The House of Lords, politics, Prime Minister. Victoria had been the sacrificial lamb. He gripped the steering wheel even tighter.
Sara whipped round then, eyes slightly wide.‘Oh.’
The way she stared at him said too much. As if she’d peered deep inside him and in some way found him wanting. She reached out her hand and placed it on his thigh, the touch warm and comforting. He wanted to shrug it off. He didn’t deserve any respite. His sister had none.
‘You can’t save someone until they want to be saved.’
‘I don’t know what she wants,’ he said. The pain of that recognition was unrelenting. At five years younger than him, Vic was too young for this life where she seemed to numb her sorrows in a bottle of painkillers. He knew she wanted children desperately. For whatever reason, no pregnancy had come, and each year he watched her fold into herself as if trying to disappear. With a cruel husband blaming her, rather than accepting some things might never be.
‘She seems to care about you a great deal. She was only being protective.’
‘That’s no excuse.’
Another gentle touch of her hand. ‘You don’t need to apologise for something that’s not within your ability to control.’
She was so wise, each word assuaging some of the pain that plagued him. It wouldn’t last, it never did. The taint of guilt always crept over him. Like a slick of oil he could never wash free.
‘The charity you were playing for...’
‘Helping domestic violence victims.’
