‘Come on into the garden.’ Justine looked beyond her husband and brother and smiled at Jessica. ‘That looks like the soufflé. I’ll take it inside, shall I?’
While Oliver led Lyle and the boys round the side of the house to the back garden Jessica followed Justine inside.
Her kitchen overlooked the brick-paved area where they were having the barbecue and Justine grimaced faintly as she watched her son belly-flop into the pool and send a cascade of water up on to the terrace.
‘Little horror! It’s just as well Oliver’s home. He was beginning to get out of hand. Too much petticoat-government, Oliver says.’ She grinned again and added cheerfully, ‘Chauvinist.’ There wasn’t the slightest trace of resentment in her voice and Jessica was frankly puzzled. The very first time she had met Justine she had been struck by her forceful, direct
manner, and yet here she was apparently quite content—no, not merely content, but almost pleased—to hand over the reins of control to Oliver. And from the little she had seen of the latter, Jessica could not see him being a man who would wish or allow his wife to dominate him.
Almost as though she had been reading her mind Justine said resignedly, ‘I know what you’re thinking, Oliver and I are far too alike to be happily married, and perhaps we wouldn’t be if he didn’t spend so much time away working. As it is, when he does come back I’m quite happy to relax into the role of little woman and let him take charge. And Oliver, of course, is so used to being in command and telling others what to do that he wouldn’t take very kindly to a subservient role, I’m afraid. Even so one thing I will say for him is that he’s always willing to sit down and discuss any points of dispute. Unlike Lyle, he doesn’t have a temper.’ She pulled a face and admitted wryly, ‘Sometimes I wish he did have, I have to admit it gives me great pleasure to pull the tiger’s tail sometimes, especially where Lyle’s concerned. He gives such a magnificent lashing reaction, very male and affronted.’ Her eyes danced and Jessica couldn’t help grinning in response.
‘Oh ho, I think I hear a car,’ Justine announced. ‘Maybe it’s your sister. I won’t be a sec.’
It was Andrea, looking glowingly pregnant, and David, scowling slightly as he followed her and William into the kitchen.
‘I think I’m about finished in here. Let’s go out into the garden and get a drink,’ Justine suggested, shepherding them all towards the door.
She was magnificently organised, Jessica acknowledged, observing the crisp salads set out on the long trestle table.
‘Everyone’s here now,’ Justine announced. ‘I think you’d better start barbecuing, Oliver, before the kids get too tired and hungry.’ She stopped to smile at William and then took him over to introduce him to her own son, leaving Oliver to make sure that everyone had drinks.
As far as everyone else was concerned, lunch seemed to be an unmarred success. Even Andrea looked unusually relaxed; only she seemed unable to settle, Jessica thought morosely, watching as all four boys stripped off jeans and T-shirts and headed for the pool.
‘God, where do they get their energy?’ Oliver commented watching them.
‘Do you really want to know?’ Justine riposted. ‘At the last count Peter had consumed at least four beefburgers, plus ice cream, plus raspberry soufflé.’
‘Don’t tell me any more,’ Oliver begged, eyeing his son’s wiry body as he added plaintively, ‘if he eats as much as that, how come he’s so thin?’ He eyed his own sturdy waistline wryly and added, ‘I only have to look at ice cream…’
‘Peter is thin because he works it off. Exercise is the thing,’ Justine told him reprovingly.
Only half listening to their bantering, Jessica watched the pool. Lyle was with the boys and they were perfectly safe, but in any case it was not they that drew her eye but Lyle himself. White swimming-shorts moulded his body, his skin sleek and tautly muscled as he hauled himself up out of the pool.
Her breath seemed to catch in her throat, her whole body reverberating with a kind of pain that ripped apart the flimsy delusion she had been hiding behind.
From a distance she heard Andrea speaking to her and turned her head towards her sister in mute enquiry.
‘I was just apologising for being such a fool about David,’ she laughed softly and then added, ‘even if I hadn’t already realised how silly I’d been, just seeing you look at Lyle the way you were doing then would have told me. I never thought I’d see the day when you were so deeply in love that you couldn’t tear your eyes away from a man, Jess.’
Somewhere deep inside her the pain grew and spread, crying out a silent denial, her body shuddering with reaction and shock.
‘Jess?’ Concern quickened Andrea’s voice, her hand reaching out to touch her. ‘Are you all right?’
‘It’s the heat, it made me feel dizzy, that’s all.’
Instantly Andrea gave her a speculative look. ‘You’re not…’
Sensing what was coming, Jessica quickly shook her head. Andrea thought she was pregnant! My God, if only her sister knew the irony of what she was suggesting. It was as impossible for her to be pregnant as it was for her to love Lyle. Slowly her mind faltered to a standstill, her stomach churning restlessly. She got up, filled with a sudden need to escape from the others; to be alone somewhere quiet where she could sort out her confused thoughts.
While Andrea’s attention was distracted by William she got up and walked quickly away, heading for the lower end of the garden.
A trellis smothered in old-fashioned perfumed roses separated the lawns from a small orchard area. As she leaned against the trunk of one of the trees the sounds of muted laughter and splashing from the pool seemed to belong to another world. She was, she recognised shakily, suffering from acute shock, her skin clammy to her own touch, her body icy cold inside despite the smotheringly oppressive heat of the afternoon. All at once her nerve-endings felt raw and exposed, her skin too thin and sensitive to bear the atmospheric pressure crushing down on it. She felt hot and cold at the same time, crampingly sick and totally unable to come to terms with the truth that hammered remorselessly inside her head, demanding acknowledgement.
She was no longer an island, complete within herself, able to exist and function wholly without the necessity of having another person with whom to share her life. Without her knowing how it had happened Lyle had pierced the defensive bubble inside which she had thought herself so safely encapsulated. To describe the onset of anguish and anger that possessed her when she tried to contemplate her life without him as ‘love’ came nowhere near encompassing the intensity of her feelings.
Fool, fool, she cursed herself inwardly, knowing now that the signs had been there for her to read almost from the first time she set eyes on him, but she had blindly, even wilfully, deliberately ignored them.
That immediate, and yes, half-intoxicating antipathy she had experienced and ignored; that alone should have warned her. Amused indifference was her normal reaction to angry males, and she had known enough of them. Men often became angry when they discovered how impervious she was to them.