The House on Sunset Lake - Page 61

Connor shrugged. ‘He took his eye off the ball. He never really managed to leave the eighties, didn’t understand the global economy, wanted to keep doing business in Charleston in the clubs and on the golf course. Got too comfortable. Started enjoying moments like this a bit too much.’

‘Isn’t that what it’s all about?’ said Jim.

‘He lost his business, his marriage when my mother decided to divorce him. I’m not sure that was worth the daily pina coladas, are you?’

‘Connor, sometimes you have to remind yourself how lucky you are. You’re got your health, a property empire, a beautiful wife . . .’ He tried not to linger on the last words of that sentence.

‘A wife with a chronic drink problem,’ Connor said quietly. ‘Maybe you can help solve that next. She seems to listen to what you say.’ That familiar challenge was back in his eyes.

‘Drink problem?’

Jim frowned. From his observations, Jennifer seemed to have the perfect life now. The Hamptons estate, the New York town house, the society profile and the sideline in philanthropy. At the Memorial Day party, people had waxed lyrical about what a wonderful woman she was. The millions she quietly raised for charity – smaller and more unfashionable causes than say the ballet or the opera, Jim had noted with some degree of pride. They had been bittersweet observations, of course, that she lived such a seemingly happy existence without him in it. But ultimately all he cared about, had ever cared about, was Jennifer’s safety and happiness.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Have you not noticed the exuberance with which she drinks martinis?’ replied Connor, lifting a brow. ‘Although that’s only the half of it. It’s the vodka bottles hidden in her boot collection you have to worry about. I’ve tried doctors, shrinks, even suggested getting her out of the country, maybe Europe somewhere.’

‘You think it’s that bad?’ asked Jim with panic.

Connor laughed mirthlessly. ‘She wouldn’t say so. It’s more common than you’d think, especially in our perfect world. And of course Jennifer has certain things she is drinking to forget.’

Jim stayed silent.

‘You know we never had children,’ said Connor, so quietly that he almost didn’t hear him. ‘We tried. There were two miscarriages, and an ectopic pregnancy, but no baby.’

‘I’m sorry.’

He thought about his old friend’s warm way with people. She would have been a wonderful mother.

‘Jen nearly died with that ectopic pregnancy. There was blood . . . so much blood. It was a long night, but she got through it, and the next morning she cried so much I thought she would never stop. I held her and told her it didn’t matter, that the two of us was enough, and that was when she told me how guilty she felt.’

‘Guilty?’

‘She told me that she’d had an abortion when she was twenty-one and that the miscarriages, the ectopic pregnancy, were a punishment for what she had done.’

Jim took a second to process it.

‘She had an abortion when she was twenty-one?’ he said slowly, unable to hide the quaver in his voice.

Connor sat back in his chair and looked at him.

‘I had to work that one out too, Jim,’ he said evenly. ‘Couldn’t understand. I mean, I loved her. She loved me. We were living in New York together by that point. Why would she abort our baby when she knew how serious we were about each other? She admitted it in the end. It was because she didn’t know if it was my baby. Or yours.’

He knocked back the rest of his beer and tossed the bottle on the sand.

‘So, if you’ve wondered why I’ve hated you for twenty years, that’s why. If you wonder why Jen drinks so much, why she doesn’t like to see you too often . . . It all makes sense now, doesn’t it? And while I’m grateful, really grateful, that you’re throwing me a lifeline here, buying RedReef, helping me get my finances in order . . . well, it’s really the very least that you owe me.’

Chapter Eighteen

1994

Casa D’Or had been transformed into a fairy-tale palace, a Gatsby dream, for Jennifer’s twenty-first birthday party. Three days earlier, a team of four carpenters had arrived, and under Sylvia Wyatt’s strict instructions had built a stage by the shores of the lake where tonight one of Savannah’s best jazz bands was playing a medley of soft, soulful songs. Four hundred guests milled around the gardens, lit up by thousands of fairy lights: her parents’ smart Savannah circle, a considerable number of her father’s business contacts. ‘Everyone will want to keep on doing business with you, just to come back to Casa D’Or,’ she’d overheard her mother reason when they were compiling the guest list.

At least fifty of the partygoers were her own friends. Some had even made the journey down from New York, although Jennifer had been disappointed by how few of her college friends had shown up. She’d sent over thirty invitations to her favourite people from Wellesley, but the excuses had trickled in and some hadn’t even bothered to reply at all. It was almost as if the past three years at university hadn’t existed, as if the people she had once cared about had forgotten about her already.

Jennifer accepted a glass of champagne from the waiter as she glanced around the party wondering where to go next. She had been inundated by well-wishers all evening and was looking forward to a few moments of time out when Jeanne approached her, smiling.

‘This is a seriously smart party,’ grinned her friend, linking her arm through Jennifer’s. ‘I feel as if I’m on the set of a Hepburn movie.’

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