A Perfect Marriage (15 page)

Celine bit her tongue and counted to ten. She wondered if he'd met Kate's family. What would they think about their daughter having an affair with a man who had to wait two years to obtain a divorce before he could marry her? He might have his work cut out to bring them round to the idea. "How's the decorating business?" Max asked her. "You said you have another commission."

"Yes, Roland Jackson asked me to do a house he bought recently." Looking at him covertly, she saw the involuntary frown that he quickly dispelled.

"Oh, yes?" he said politely. "Are you enjoying that?"
"Very much.
He's given me pretty much a free hand." "Does he have a family?"

"Two children.
They live with his ex-wife, but he has them for holidays and some weekends." "What does he do?"

"He's a property developer, specialising in commercial buildings. If he likes what I do with the house, I'm hoping he might give me a chance to work on some of them."

"A new departure for you."

"A challenge.
I've had a lot of new experiences lately."

The frown reappeared between his brows, and he cast
her a
sharp glance. Celine kept her eyes serenely fixed on the view through the windscreen.

He said, "I never stopped you doing anything you wanted to."

"I'm not accusing you, Max. But I suppose,"
she
said thoughtfully, "you never really cared enough for it to be an issue."

"That's a hell of a thing to say!" His frown deepened. Celine shrugged. "It's the truth, isn't it?" "It wasn't like that at all."

Tempted to ask what it was like, for him, Celine firmly closed her mouth. It wouldn't do to start a quarrel. They couldn't walk into Nancy's party scowling at each other. She looked down at the gift-wrapped parcel in her lap, fiddling with the ribbon bow.

When they drew up outside the house he helped her out of the car, but dropped his hand from her arm to remove a large package from the back seat.

The door was unlatched, and as they entered Maxine and Susan ran to greet them, small faces alight with excitement.

"Can I give Nana the parcel?" Maxine asked, taking the wrapped box from Max's hands.

Susan, always less forward than her sister, looked wistful, and Celine offered her own present. "Would you like to give her this?"

"You brought two presents?" Maxine commented. "Look, Nana, Uncle Max and Auntie Celine brought you a present each!"

Celine felt a small pang. Always before, their gifts had been joint ones, usually bought by her. Obviously the girls didn't see the significance of the separate gifts, and Nancy, surrounded by discarded wrappings, smilingly presented
her
 
cheek
first to Max and then to Celine, but Michelle, catching Celine's eye, looked sympathetic.

Celine gave her a determined smile. Nothing must spoil Nancy's evening. Max's father, standing by his wife's chair, looked rather piercingly at his son as he gave him a nod of greeting, and his clasp on Celine's hand was firmer than usual when he kissed her cheek.

They had booked a restaurant table, but first they had a round of drinks together, toasting Nancy, once the presents had been received and admired. Max's gift was a particularly elegant coffee-maker.

The children begged to be allowed to travel to the restaurant in Max's car, and although Michelle and Tony demurred, Max acceded to the request with alacrity. Celine, too, was rather relieved to have their company.

"Who's allowed to drink tonight?" Tony asked when the wine came. "I'm limited to two glasses-it's Michelle's turn to get tiddly."

"I won't get tiddly," Michelle asserted loftily.

"Oh, no?"
Her husband grinned at her and asked Celine, "What about you?"

"Go ahead," Max said as she turned to him. Usually they would have had a discussion as to who was going to limit their drinks and drive home. "I'm driving," he told Tony.

There were times during the evening when Celine almost forgot that she and Max were estranged. He sat next to her, and as they lingered over coffee draped an arm over her chair behind her shoulders. It seemed much like many other family occasions they'd shared over the years.

Michelle, at first stiff with her brother, unwound gradually as she saw that he and Celine appeared to be at ease. Celine was glad to see her, later in the evening, laughing with him over some remembered childhood escapade. As different in personality as it was possible for siblings to be, they were nevertheless too fond of each other to be at odds for very long.

  
 
Outside the restaurant everyone said good night, and the girls climbed into the back of their parents' car.

"I think my mother enjoyed her evening," Max commented as he drove out of the carpark.

"It seems to have been extremely successful," Celine agreed. Was this how conversation was going to be from now on between them, limited to platitudes in order to keep them away from the dangerous shoals of accusation and recrimination? "She was very taken with the coffee-maker."

"I bought one for my flat," he said. "And she'd mentioned that their percolator broke down recently. I found mine very good, so it seemed the ideal present."

His flat.
"What's it like?" she asked.
"The flat."
She didn't really want to know, but she had to make conversation somehow.

"Basic.
Two bedrooms, a large lounge.
The decor is bland, I'm afraid," he admitted. "It could do with some pizzazz. I know you'd-"

She would have dressed it up, made it interesting and comfortable.

"Well," Max said, leaving that thought unfinished, "it's a place to eat and sleep."

And a place to make love to Kate, she supposed. She wondered if the girl lived with her family, or flatmates. "Does Kate have a place of her own?" She hadn't meant to ask, torment herself like this. Clasping her hands tightly in her lap, she turned to look out the side window.

"Yes," Max said, without offering any further information. Patently he didn't intend to talk about that. "I should tell you," he said carefully, "the fact that Kate and I are seeing each other is common knowledge now at the office."

"Well, you couldn't keep it a secret forever." She moved her head, staring unseeingly at the windscreen.

"They think it's recent," he said. "We haven't told them anything."

"You mean they don't know that you left me for her." "Celine-"

"I suppose you haven't told your family that, either. Did you deliberately give them the impression that I'd thrown you out?"

"I told them what I've told everyone else, that we'd made a mutual decision to separate."

"Michelle thought it was my idea."

"Michelle is all too prone to jumping to conclusions, you know that. I certainly didn't intend to lay any blame on you. But I thought you might not relish-" He hesitated, his hands moving on the steering wheel as he took a bend in the road.

"-Being known as your discarded wife?" she finished for him. She actually saw him wince as they passed a bright orange streetlight, and felt a shameful spurt of pleasure in his discomfort. "The one you traded in for a younger model?"

"For heaven's sake, Celine!
Age has nothing to do with it."

She couldn't help a short, scornful laugh. "Be real, Max. I'm thirty-six years old. Kate is twenty-five. You've seen it happen to other people often enough. I think what I most resent is that the situation is such a commonplace one. I feel as though I'm living in a soap opera! If you weren't so damned honourable you'd probably have had an affair with the girl and hoped that I'd never find out."

His head turned sharply for a moment. "Would you have preferred it that way? Anyway, I told you it isn't like that."

Celine didn't know what she would have preferred. She shook her head and turned again to the window. The atmosphere in the car remained prickly, the very air bristling with unvoiced thoughts.

She was relieved when they reached the house and he parked the car in front of the door. The porch light was on, but otherwise the place was dark. The pool of light didn't quite reach the car.

"Got your key?" Max asked as he helped her out.

"Yes, of course." She opened the small purse she carried and found the leather tag, tugging impatiently as the key

  
 
caught
on something inside the bag. She meant to hold it up for him to see, but the stitching in the leather must have given way, for she was left with the tag in her hand while the key spun into the air, glittered briefly and then disappeared into the night without a sound.

"Famous last words," Max said. "It can't have landed on the drive or we'd have heard it. It's on the lawn or in the garden."

There were roses and alyssum planted in a narrow bed between the drive and the lawn. "I'll get a torch from the car," Max said, going back for it. "Pity I didn't hang on to my keys after all." The torch beam flicked among the rose bushes. Celine squatted, thinking she spied a gleam in the alyssum, but it turned out to be elusive. Max caught her arm. "Careful, you don't want to get your dress dirty."

Celine stood up and he dropped his hand.

"I could back up the car and use the headlights," he offered.

That didn't work, either. The headlights only cast deeper shadows.

"Don't worry," Celine said. "I'll ring the bell and wake Dad to let me in."

"If you like."
But she pushed the bell several times and nothing happened.

"Fast asleep?" he murmured.

"I guess so. He has seemed a bit hard of hearing lately. And you know that bell isn't very audible upstairs."

"Mmm.
What about the kitchen window?"

Once before they'd accidentally locked themselves out, each thinking the other had a key. Max had forced the window with a chisel from the toolshed and got inside that way.

"I've had all the windows fitted with burglar-proof locks," she told him. It had seemed a wise precaution for a woman whose husband had left her. "Dad will have checked them before he went to bed. He always does."

Max went off to inspect the windows, anyway, and Celine returned to the garden and, regardless of her dress, began hunting through the alyssum again.

 
When Max returned, he said, "All locked up tightly. No chance of getting in without smashing some glass, I'm afraid."

Celine stood uncertainly, her teeth worrying her lower lip.

Finally Max said, "You'll have to come back to the flat with me."

"I can't!" She'd rather he drove her to a hotel. But she knew without asking that he'd turn down the idea of abandoning her to one in the middle of the night. He'd think she was being stupidly coy about spending the night in his flat.

"Why not?"
Max asked. "It's the only sensible thing to do. You can phone your father in the morning and let him know what happened before he starts to worry. I certainly can't leave you stranded."

His parents would be in bed by now, and she discarded the idea of rousing any of the neighbours and begging for shelter at this hour. There were two bedrooms at the flat, he'd said.

"Come on!' Max touched her arm. "You're getting cold out here."

It was true that the night was turning cool, and once or twice she had shivered. She looked with a certain amount of exasperation at the dark window of the spare room where her father slept. Calling to him or throwing something at the window would disturb the neighbours and probably have them phoning the police, and Ted wouldn't hear, anyway. Reluctantly, she said, "I suppose you're right. Thank you:'

He'd been right about the apartment, she thought when he unlocked the door and ushered her in, switching on a light. The decor was unobtrusive to the point of dullness. A small entryway led to a pleasantly spacious lounge, furnished with a wide sofa and a couple of unmatched chairs grouped about a round coffee table. Max opened another door and led her into a room containing a double bed covered by a cheap, Indian cotton spread, and a dressing table. A kitchen chair by the bed apparently served as a bedside table. Two books lay on it, and a tie hung over its back.

"You can sleep in here," Max said.

"It's your room."

"I'm using the spare bedroom as a study. I'll be quite comfortable on the sofa."

"I can use the sofa." She began to back out of the room.

"It's okay," he said. "Do you want something to wear?"

"I suppose so." She couldn't sleep in the red silk dress, and all she had underneath was a strapless bra and a pair of satin panties over the lacy suspender belt holding up her stockings.

Max rummaged in the built-in wardrobe and handed her a paisley-patterned pyjama shirt.

"Thank you
: '

"I'll show you the bathroom. I don't think I've got a spare toothbrush, but you can use mine if you like."

He left her to it, and she washed out her panties in the basin before hanging them over the shower rail. Using the toothbrush he'd handed her, she thought what an intimate gesture that was, and wondered if Kate kept a toothbrush here. She hadn't seen another when Max had opened the mirrored door of the cupboard over the basin.

She rolled up the sleeves of the pyjama top, and removed as much makeup as she could with soap and a facecloth, resisting the urge to look in the cupboard for a jar of cleansing cream.

Even if Kate had left some here, she couldn't have brought herself to use it. In any case, inspecting the contents of Max's bathroom cupboard would be close to conducting a search for incriminating evidence.
Which she didn't need, because he'd frankly admitted his adultery.

Picking up her clothing, she returned to the lounge, to find Max putting a couple of sheets, a pillow and a blanket on the couch. "I've left you two pillows," he told her, "and a duvet. I hope you'll be comfortable." He bent to adjust the blanket.

"I'd prefer the couch, really."

"There's no need. Take the bed."

"Max! I don't want to sleep in a bed where you and-" Celine choked to a halt, her cheeks hot.