‘Don’t think I haven’t suggested it, my dear, but Frazer won’t hear of it. He believes the children need the security of living at home.’
‘But we all went to boarding school,’ Rebecca protested.
‘Yes, but Frazer contends that you all, especially you and Robert, had a far more secure and emotionally stable home background than the twins.’
Rebecca had to acknowledge that this was true; but, while she could see Frazer’s point in wanting to keep the twins at Aysgarth, she still wished she had not allowed herself to be dragooned into coming up here to share that responsibility.
‘Don’t worry, my dear,’ Aunt Maud comforted her. ‘I know you’re finding things difficult at the moment, but I have every faith in your ability to bring those two to a proper realisation of at least a little discipline in their lives.’
Aunt Maud had more faith in her than she had in herself, Rebecca admitted ruefully. It had shaken her hearing Frazer’s voice so unexpectedly like that, reminding her of things she had thought safely tucked away in the past. She had been fifteen when she first fell in love with him, dreamy-eyed and vague, her feelings more innocent and cerebral than physical.
She had likened him to all her favourite fictional heroes, had spent her holidays dreamily following him as much as she could, content to worship from afar. At sixteen her feelings had become sharper and far more painful; the physical awareness of her maturing body had both delighted and embarrassed her.
She remembered how the Christmas she was sixteen, when Frazer had bent to kiss her in the cousinly fashion that was his habit, she had ducked out of the way, petrified of betraying not just her feelings but her total lack of sophistication and experience. She so desperately wanted to be older, more experienced, more on what then had seemed to be Frazer’s unattainably sophisticated level.
She remembered that that Christmas there had been a girl staying at Aysgarth—Frazer’s latest girlfriend, a pretty and no doubt very pleasant girl, but Rebecca had invested her with all manner of unpleasant traits.
She had been desperately jealous of her and her relationship with Frazer. She remembered that she had refused to join the others on their annual walk to watch the Boxing Day meet set off. She remembered as well that, while Rory had jeered at her for being sulky and childish, Frazer had looked at her with thoughtful, concerned eyes. On reflection she realised that it was hardly surprising that he took his responsibility towards the twins so seriously. Even though only a handful of years had removed him in age from Rory, Robert and herself, he had always somehow or other seemed so very much more mature, a halfway stage between themselves and their parents.
She remembered her utter embarrassment when later that same holiday he had come up to her when she was sitting in her room daydreaming over an impossible sequence of events which concluded with him sweeping her into his arms and proclaiming his undying love. She remembered how he had knocked on her bedroom door and walked in, a tall dark-haired, jean-clad figure, wearing an old check woollen shirt, his body carrying the tang of fresh male sweat after his labours outside clearing a fresh fall of snow from the drive.
Rebecca remembered how her sensitive, newly emerging awareness had reacted to that very maleness of him; how a fierce thrill of pleasure had run through her as he sat down beside her on the window-seat. His first words to her, though, quickly dashed her foolish hopes.
He had come, he told her gently, to find out if something was wrong; if perhaps there was a problem at school. The knowledge that he so obviously still considered her to be a schoolgirl, a child, had been so bitterly painful that she had found it impossible to respond to anything he said, retreating further and further into her own protective shell, putting between them what she now recognised had been the beginning of a distance which neither of them had ever broached.
After that, with growing maturity, and aware of how potentially embarrassing for all concerned it would be if her feelings for him were ever to become public knowledge, she had made a point of avoiding him whenever she stayed at Aysgarth, spending more time in Rory’s company than she did in Frazer’s—and apparently so effectively convincing him that he was nothing more to her than merely an older and rather boring cousin that, when Rory had claimed she was the one with whom he was breaking his marriage vows, Frazer had had no difficulty whatsoever in believing him, which of course was exactly what she and Rory had wanted. So why afterwards had she felt that savage backlash of agonising pain that he should so easily have accepted their deceit? What had she expected him to do? Deny their claims and in doing so say passionately that he knew that she, Rebecca, could not possibly be involved with anyone else, because she loved him…and moreover that that love was returned?
How foolish she had been at eighteen! How naïve and unknown the reality of human emotions and reactions; male reactions in particular. Frazer’s eruption of biting anger, followed by a tirade which had ultimately burned itself out and become an icy, unhidden contempt for both her and the relationship he believed she had had with his brother, had effectively destroyed for ever her still secretly cherished hope that one day he would turn to her and look at her with the eyes of love.
Driven beyond any reasonable caution by his reaction, she had told him fiercely that not for one moment did she regret her affair with Rory, and that she would love Rory for the rest of her life.
‘You little fool!’ he had told her with scathing contempt. ‘Do you honestly believe that he feels the same way about you—a married man with one child already on the way?’
And then he had looked deliberately at her flat stomach and added, unforgivably, ‘Or is it still only one?’
That night Rebecca had cried herself to sleep, wondering how it was that a man could be so blind that he couldn’t instantly recognise her real feelings. That he couldn’t instantly know that the only child she ever wanted to bear was his.
That morning he had come up to her room as he had done once before, but this time not to ask her gently what it was that troubled her, but to tell her coldly and emotionlessly that he felt it best that she pack her bags and immediately leave Aysgarth.
She had done so, numbed, frozen to the heart by this total rejection of her, and as the taxi he had ordered for her drove her away from Aysgarth she had not turned round once to look behind her, knowing that if she did her view would only be distorted by the tears already blurring her vision. Since then she had not been back.
Oh, they had met at the twins’ christening and at Robert’s wedding, but on neither of these occasions had they done more than exchange coolly hostile smiles of acknowledgement, and then only with the safe distance of the width of a room and several intermediate relatives between them.
Robert had tried awkwardly to bring them back together, sensing perhaps more than anyone else what Frazer’s rejection of her was doing to her. No one, apart from Rory, knew the real truth about the reason for their mutual hostility.
Just as he had announced that she was no longer welcome at Aysgarth, and his word was absolute law, so he had also stated that in no circumstances whatsoever was the fact that she and Rory had been indulging in an illicit and contemptible affair to become public knowledge. It was enough, he had told her, that he knew, and he had already undertaken to make sure that Rory’s wife was kept in the dark about her husband’s perfidious behaviour.
Another stern lecture had followed, this time on the vulnerability of women carrying their first child, and Rebecca had wept inwardly while standing straight and apparently uncaring beneath the biting lash of his words.
As far as the rest of the family were concerned, a mutual disagreement had led to their estrangement; a quarrel which neither of them cared to talk about but which both of them made it clear to other members of the family had been important enough to keep them apart.
Sometimes Rebecca suspected that Robert guessed that there was far more to it than that. They had been close as children, probably closer than most brothers and sisters, because of th
e fact that their parents were living abroad. Robert was five years her senior, just a year older than Rory, and Rebecca suspected that he had a good idea exactly how she really felt about Frazer. If so, he had the tact at least not to say so, but on the occasion of his marriage to Ailsa she had been bitterly conscious of the fact that Robert was doing his best to push her and Frazer together.
He had asked Frazer to act as his best man and she, Rebecca, had been Ailsa’s chief bridesmaid. It had been only natural that the two of them should be paired together during the wedding, festivities. There had been one moment when, hand under her elbow, to guide her towards their places at the top table, Frazer had bent his head just sufficiently to say threateningly against her ear, ‘Remember, this is supposed to be a happy occasion, Rebecca. For Robert and Ailsa’s sake at least, try to look as though you’re enjoying yourself. You and I both know quite well that you would much prefer Rory to be here at your side, but that,’ he had told her silkily, and with obvious pleasure, ‘is impossible. Unfortunately for you, you chose to love the wrong man.’
Rebecca had thought bitterly then how right he was, and, watching the happiness emanating from her brother and new sister-in-law, she had made herself a vow there and then that from now on she would cut herself free of the past, and more especially from her idiotic and totally foolish feelings for Frazer.
Until now she had thought she had succeeded, if not totally, then at least with a very creditable measure of success. All it had taken to show her just how much she had been deceiving herself was the mere sound of Frazer’s voice.
If the sound of his voice could affect her so compellingly, what would happen if she was ever forced to confront him, to come face to face with the physical presence of him? Assuring herself that this was hardly likely to happen, she told herself that she would be far better employed directing her mental energy towards finding a way of dealing with the twins.
So far, despite all her overtures, she was no closer to establishing any kind of rapport with them; but now it wasn’t merely her professional pride that was being affected by their resistance to her; she was also seriously concerned for the twins themselves, and more especially for Helen, because she was beginning to see how emotionally and dangerously isolated the two of them were becoming.
Such intense emotional dependence on one another was not a good thing. Both of them needed to form friendships with other children of their own age, but as far as she could see there was no chance of that being achieved, although she had suggested on numerous occasions during the time that she had been at Aysgarth that she was quite happy to take one or both of them to visit their school friends. Her offer had not been taken up, and it had been Peter who had innocently and unawarely confirmed her own impression of the truth by saying one morning that neither he nor Helen had any friends.
‘We don’t need any,’ Helen added, fiercely clutching at her brother’s arm. ‘We’ve got each other.’
Further conversation with Aunt Maud had elicited the fact that their headmaster at their local school had also indicated concern about the twins’intense emotional bonding to one another.
‘Frazer’s tried to encourage them to make other friends,’ Maud told her, ‘but we’re so isolated here.’