She deliberately kept herself busy for the rest of the day, filling boxes and cases with her belongings, exhausting herself to the point where by nine o’clock all she wanted to do was have a bath and crawl into bed. W
hen the doorbell went her heart leaped like a stranded fish, her pulse-rate increasing threateningly, until she opened the door and discovered Justine standing there.
Why on earth had she thought her caller might be Lyle? And why was she so disappointed that it was not?
‘Sorry to barge in on you like this,’ Justine apologised, following her inside, ‘but I thought I’d come and have a chat with you without Lyle around.’
‘Umm, this is lovely.’ She made a face as she glanced round Jessica’s small sitting-room. ‘Lyle doesn’t seem to have the faintest idea about décor. You’ll have to take him in hand there. Despite the shabby furnishings and that awful car, he isn’t a poor man by any means.’
‘I’m not marrying him for financial reasons,’ Jessica told her calmly.
‘No, I know. He’s told me all about your sister and her husband.’ She smiled rather uncertainly at Jessica. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I wouldn’t give him any peace until he told me.’
‘Just like you didn’t until he agreed to see me,’ Jessica suggested calmly.
Justine had the grace to blush. ‘I know it seems very high-handed of me, but you have to understand that I’ve been at my wits’ end, especially where the boys are concerned. They don’t like me, and I must confess after what they tried to do to Peter, I’m not too keen on them, but I do feel sorry for them, poor little scraps.’
‘Yes, it can’t be very pleasant, knowing that your father doesn’t want you,’ Jessica agreed drily.
‘What?’ Justine had been staring out of the window and now she spun round, her eyes widening. She really was ridiculously like her brother as far as looks went, Jessica thought absently, but fortunately she lacked his hard, cutting edge. ‘Where on earth did you get that idea?’ she demanded indignantly, causing Jessica to revise her opinion slightly. ‘Lyle adores them both. It’s just that they can’t or won’t respond to him. It tore him apart when he and Heather divorced and she demanded that he give up all his rights to them. Heather was the one who didn’t want children, she didn’t even want to marry Lyle in the first place. When she found she was pregnant she was furious; she wanted to get an abortion, but Lyle refused to help her and insisted instead that they got married.’ She sighed and added, ‘I know he must seem a terrible grouch, but like all intelligent men who can’t bear to admit that their intelligence wasn’t enough to prevent them from the folly of falling in love with the wrong person, he’s now determined to treat our sex with the utmost suspicion. It would break my heart if I let it. Sometimes I can hardly believe how much he’s changed.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘And of course he still blames himself for Heather’s death.’ She saw Jessica’s expression and explained quickly what had happened to her sister-in-law.
‘The plain truth is that Heather was a spoilt, temperamental little bitch who never put anyone ahead of herself. It’s no wonder those poor kids are so screwed up. They must be so scared inside.’
‘Yes, that’s what I thought.’
The two women exchanged a long look.
‘You do mean to marry him, then?’ Justine said at length.
‘I’ve said that I will.’
‘He’s told you I take it that the marriage will…’
‘Exclude sex?’ Jessica said for her. ‘Oh, yes, we’ve been into all that. Quite frankly, if that hadn’t been the case I wouldn’t have agreed to marry him. I seem to be one of those women who have an extremely low sex drive,’ she added in answer to Justine’s unspoken question.
‘Well, I wish you luck with what you’re taking on,’ Justine told her frankly. ‘And if I can do anything to help—’
She liked her prospective sister-in-law, Jessica reflected, when Justine had left. There were the makings of what could be a rapport between them already. Justine had explained to her that her husband worked abroad for one of the oil companies, but that she was expecting him home in the near future.
‘You’ll have your hands full with Stuart and James,’ she had warned just before she drove way, and Jessica had smiled rather grimly, privately reflecting that it was not the two boys that were going to cause her the most trouble, but their irritatingly masculine father. It struck her later as she prepared for bed that it would have made life much easier for her if Lyle were less physically attractive. Days later she was still vividly aware of the maleness of him—aware of it and faintly disturbed by it, without really being able to analyse why.
* * *
THEY WERE GETTING MARRIED at two o’clock in the afternoon and the arrangements were that they would meet at the register office and then after the ceremony drive separately to Sutton Parva where Jessica would unload the first of her possessions from her car, transporting the remainder of them to her new home over the next week.
By twelve o’clock she was more nervous than she had ever been in her life before and totally convinced that she must have been mad even to think of entering into such a commitment.
At twelve-fifteen the phone rang and she cravenly hoped it might be Lyle saying that the wedding was off. But it wasn’t, it was Andrea, ringing primarily to wish her ‘good luck’, and to check that she had not had second thoughts about not wanting her to attend the wedding.
Once she had confirmed this Andrea said guiltily, ‘Jess, I feel awful about those things I said to you, but I was so frightened I was going to lose David to you. You’re everything I’m not. Clever, successful… David’s got a real thing about you. He never stops comparing us. I’m so relieved that you’re getting married! I’m sure that once he accepts that you’re out of his reach, he’ll turn back to me again.’
And Jessica knew that there was no escape left for her. She would have to marry Lyle.
At one-thirty, just as she was about to go out to her car, a taxi drew up outside and as she watched, Lyle got out. He looked unfamiliar in his dark formal suit and crisp white shirt, and for some reason as he turned to look up at her window, her heart lurched drunkenly. What was he doing here? Her palms were sweating slightly as she opened the door to him. He looked at her in silence for a moment, slowly taking in her cream linen suit and high-heeled shoes.
‘I thought I’d come and collect you,’ he told her by way of explanation. ‘I didn’t want you getting cold feet.’
For a moment their eyes met, and Jessica knew that he shared every one of her doubts, but that like her he was determined to go through with the marriage.