The boys’ mother must have hurt him very badly, she realised, and then tensed slightly, a warning impulse seizing her muscles, alerting her to some as yet hidden danger. Shaking off the feeling, she went back to work smiling slightly. She was being too defensive and protective, what was wrong with feeling compassion and concern for Lyle? He was after all her husband, the person with whom she had elected to share her life, and it made good sense for her to encourage anything within herself that made it easier for them to get along together. Children were very sensitive to bad atmospheres between adults. It would not help the boys if she and Lyle were constantly at loggerheads with one another.
She was still in the garden when Lyle came home. She stood up, feeling slightly self-conscious in her brief shorts and top as he came striding towards her, instead of making straight for the house. He looked tired and tense, his skin drawn tight over the bones of his face, and it struck her suddenly that he seemed to have lost weight. Too many rushed and skipped meals—he was so busy he never seemed to have time to sit down and eat properly with them. She couldn’t remember a single meal since they had married that hadn’t been interrupted by a telephone call or a caller.
Heat prickled disturbingly along her skin, the heavy, moist air pressing down on her body. She was aware of tiny beads of perspiration gathering between her breasts and on her forehead, and she pulled off one of her gardening gloves to push her hair back off her face.
‘You’ve been busy.’
‘I enjoy it. You look tired.’
She saw the surprise in his eyes and coloured hotly without knowing why.
Surely it was not breaking the rules of their marriage for her to comment on his drawn appearance?
‘Migraine,’ he told her briefly, ‘that’s why I came back. I’m going upstairs to lie down. Any emergency calls will have to be referred to the cottage hospital. If I’m lucky I might just be in time to stave off an attack, if not…’ He looked grim, his voice faintly harsh, and Jessica knew why.
Her mother had suffered from excruciating migraine attacks, some so severe that they had actually physically paralysed her. She would never forget the trauma of getting home from school one afternoon and finding her mother’s car parked in the drive, with her mother inside it, totally unable to move a single muscle. The doctor had told her mother that she had been lucky to get home before the attack became severe, and even now Jessica shuddered to think of the potential danger had her mother been paralysed while actually behind the wheel of the car, although their doctor assured her that most sufferers normally had sufficient warning signs to be able to anticipate when a bad attack was likely to hit them.
Already she could see that the pupils of Lyle’s eyes were tensely dilated, his bones showing almost white against his skin, and she made no attempt to detain him, waiting until he was inside before following him into the house. The boys were watching television, and she went into the sitting-room to warn them not to disturb their father.
Going back to the kitchen she hesitated before starting to make a pot of tea. Her mother had always found the drink relaxing and helpful when taking her medication. She had also found relief in having her neck and shoulder muscles massaged, Jessica remembered, and it had normally fallen to her to perform this task.
Instinct warned her that Lyle would not welcome her interference for a variety of reasons. He was after all an intensely private man, and one who would not welcome anyone seeing him at his most vulnerable. In that at least they were alike. She too loathed being fussed over, preferring to crawl off and be alone if ever she was feeling under the weather, and yet despite the warnings instinct flashed to her brain she still poured him a cup of tea and set off upstairs with it.
As she paused outside his door, half of her hoped that he had taken his medication and succumbed to the drugging effect of it already, and yet even though caution warned her against it, she still pushed open his door and went in.
The curtains were closed to block out the afternoon light, but although the room was dim, it was still light enough for her to see. The air inside the bedroom was thick and cloying; a legacy of the oppressive heat outside, and Jessica made a mental note to get her own lightweight fan.
She knew that differing atmospheric pressures could be one of the things that could trigger off a migraine attack, and she paused for a moment to weigh up the advantages of the coolness provided by the fan against the disturbance the sound of it would make, before going over to the bed.
As she approached it and looked down at Lyle’s sprawled body her stomach lurched uncomfortably, thoroughly unnerving her. He was lying on his front, breathing heavily, his eyes closed, his eyelids vulnerably waxy in contrast to the thick darkness of his lashes. She had never observed a man asleep so closely before and it had the strangest effect on her, a welling up inside her of sensations she was at a loss to understand, other than that they were a combination of a strange yearning, tenderness, mingled with the same compassion she felt for Stuart when he was being his most stubbornly proud and difficult.
Lyle had discarded his shirt. It lay on the floor at her feet, the waist of his jeans low on his hips, revealing that she had been right to think that he had lost weight.
His skin was faintly olive, and he was, she saw, sweating heavily. Not sure whether she felt glad or sorry that he was asleep, she started to turn round.
‘What is it?’
His voice, slurred and painfully exhausted, halted her. She turned round and looked at him. His eyes were still closed, the pallor of his face now replaced by a heavy, feverish flush along his cheekbones.
‘I brought you a cup of tea. My mother used to suffer from migraine and she found it helped her system to absorb her medication.’
The grunt he gave could have meant anything, but it did not seem indicative of any desire to retain her company, and she turned back to the door again.
‘What else did she find helpful?’
The question surprised her. She looked at him and found that this time his eyes were open, although so dark and hazed with pain that she actually felt something twist uncomfortably inside her in sympathy.
‘She liked me to massage her neck and shoulders,’ she told him absently, overwhelmed with guilt for having disturbed him. She should have listened to that first warning voice and left him in peace.
Again he grunted what she thought was a noncommittal response, a strange, electrifying shock rippling through her as he demanded, ‘Do you think it might work for me?’
Slowly picking her words, she looked at him. ‘I suppose it depends whether your migraine is tension-induced or springs from some food or atmospheric intolerance.’
‘The weather doesn’t help, but primarily it’s tension.’ He moved restlessly, and closed his eyes. ‘God, I feel as if my damn head’s about to explode.’
His voice was a tiny thread of sound, and instinctively, without having to analyse what she was doing, Jessica reached out and placed her hand against the back of his neck.
The corded, tight muscles gave back their own story, and automatically she began to knead the taut constrictions, her fingers instinctively remembering the expertise she had learned with her mother.