Having told her once that he thought she had had enough to drink Lyle had almost totally ignored her, allowing himself to be almost completely monopolised by Janet Holmes.
What was it the other woman had that she did not? Jessica wondered bitterly; and she certainly must have something, because Lyle had barely taken his eyes off her. Even Andrea noticed it because she paused once to bend down and murmur apologetically to her, ‘Sorry about Janet flirting with Lyle, but she’s that sort of woman, I’m afraid.’
For once Jessica did not repudiate David when he came and sat next to her. He wanted to talk to her about her book but Jessica fobbed him off, conscious that she was going to have to do some major re-writes on it. She could not now in all honesty dismiss the power of ‘love’ as radically as she had done before.
‘How’s the experiment working, then?’ David asked her, looking at Lyle. His words penetrated her tipsy fog, reminding Jessica of the claim she had made when she told him she was marrying Lyle. God, how David would laugh if he knew the truth! That she had fallen in love with a man who totally repudiated her.
Her face felt stiff as she forced a smile, and said lightly, ‘So far, very well. It’s given me a new insight into the whole question of marriage. I’ve certainly managed to get quite a lot of information for my book from it.’
It was pride and pride alone that motivated her words, and Lyle was too far away to have heard them. She saw David smile and alarm feathered warningly down her spine. She had drunk far too much, and unless she was careful she could easily be very indiscreet.
‘I take it he still doesn’t know exactly why you married him?’ David asked her.
Jessica shook her head, and then wished she hadn’t as it spun uncomfortably.
She could see Lyle coming towards her, and apprehension cramped her stomach. Andrea was with him, and it gave Jessica a disconcerting sensation in her midriff to have him standing over her looking down at her, as though somehow she was an errant child rather than an adult.
‘I think we’d better leave.’
He was talking to Andrea and not herself, but Jessica felt the words were intended for her.
‘Oh, surely not yet. Let me get you both a nightcap.’ That was David, smiling gleefully at some apparently private joke.
‘I think not.’ Lyle sounded both curt and remote. ‘I’m driving,’ he pointed out to David, ‘and I’ve seen far too many accidents caused by drivers under the influence of alcohol to want to drive over the limit myself.’
‘But what about Jess? She isn’t driving.’
‘No, I think Jessica’s already had enough.’
She wanted to protest that he had no right to treat her like a child, to make such decisions for her, but somehow his hand was under her elbow and forcing her to her feet, and she was walking into the hall with Andrea clucking anxiously at her side.
‘Oh dear,’ she heard her sister say through the fog threatening to engulf her, ‘I don’t know what’s come over Jess tonight. She hardly ever drinks.’
Of the drive back to Sutton Parva Jessica only retained fleeting and very brief memories. She fell asleep almost the moment she got into the car, waking occasionally, and having to be shaken awake by Lyle once they were actually home.
She tried to get out of the car and suddenly found her legs as awkward and unstable as those of a newborn colt.
Above her she heard Lyle swear and then suddenly she was in his arms and being carried into the hall and upstairs.
In her room, he dropped her unceremoniously on the bed and then stood back to look grimly at her.
‘I’ll talk to you once Susan’s gone,’ he told her abruptly. ‘Somehow I don’t think her father would retain any good impression of us if he could see you in this state.’
There had been more irony in his voice than disgust, but even so Jessica was vividly conscious of how unappealing she must appear. There was nothing more off-putting, surely, than a drunken woman, and if she was not drunk then she was certainly very, very tipsy.
She got off the bed, alarmed by the way the room swung round her, and slowly made her way to the bathroom. Downstairs she could hear voices, and guessed that Susan’s father had arrived to collect his daughter.
In the bathroom she shed her clothes and stood under the shower, shivering under the cold water, telling herself that she deserved this self-inflicted icy torture.
It helped to clear her head a little, but her body still felt as boneless as cotton wool, her balance unstable and her legs unresponsive. She managed to get out of the shower and suddenly shocked herself by the way she started to tremble, her teeth chattering together, as she tried feverishly to make her way to the other side of the bathroom and the protective warmth of a towel.
She heard Lyle come upstairs and then call her name, presumably having discovered that she was not in her room.
The next moment the bathroom door burst open and he stormed in, coming to an abrupt halt as he surveyed her damp, shivering frame.
‘What the…?’
‘I thought a cold shower might sober me up,’ Jessica explained, her teeth chattering so much she could barely speak.