Cruel Legacy (57 page)

She was wearing a tennis dress with a brief fluted skirt and a neat fitted bodice, a discreet logo proclaiming its expensive manufacturer, and Blake knew that the club where she had been playing was exclusive and private, with very very high fees.

As he'd looked at her, Blake had suddenly seen her with new eyes.

How would she really fare in his world? How would she adapt to wearing cheap chainstore clothes, to having to economise, having to go without?

He had left that evening while Philippa was out with her parents, but he hadn't given up hope... not then... Then he was still convinced that she loved him, that somehow he would find a way of breaking the hold her parents had on her.

But then his mother's debilitating condition had worsened and he had had no option other than to finance round-the-clock care for her. Struggling to make ends meet and to keep on with his studies as well as worrying about his mother, he had recognised grimly that Robert was quite right. There was no way he could afford to have Philippa in his life.

And then she had come to see him, just when he had reached rock-bottom, when he was wondering whether he would have to abandon his training completely and find work—any work just so long as it earned him enough to pay to make his mother's life just a little more comfortable.

He had had no alternative other than to send her away, to deny them what he knew they both wanted. To have even tried explaining to her would have strained his fragile self-control well beyond his limits; he had known quite well that one soft helpless look... one single tear... one small plea from her and he would have been lost, unable to deny any longer what he felt for her...

And then she had told him that she wasn't going to go to university because 'Daddy' wouldn't let her and to his own shock he had found himself wondering if after all

Robert hadn't been right.. .if she was after all far more her father's daughter than he had ever imagined.

He had watched her driving away in the car 'Daddy' had given her and he hadn't been sure which of them he had hated the most—her father or himself.

He had seen how much he had hurt her, but he was hurting as well. A part of him still hurt.

His mother's condition had worsened over the following six months and it had been a release for her, and for him, he acknowledged sadly, when she'd died. Michael had attended the funeral. Philippa had been away on honeymoon with her new husband, Andrew Ryecart.

Angry and embittered, he had left for the States just as soon as he had completed his studies. Once there, he had continued training and working with furious energy to prove to the Ryecart family in general and Philippa in particular that when it came to earning power and status he was streets... leagues ahead of the man she had married.

It had taken Michael to bring him to his senses and show him what he was doing to himself.

It had taken Romania to show him how man's cruelty and greed for power and wealth brutally destroyed the innocent and unprotected.

It had taken meeting Philippa again to show him just how much he had lost...denied himself...out of false pride and lack of faith.

He had come back expecting to find a dull, ageing woman passively accepting her role in life, devoting herself to it, tied securely by loyalty and habit to her husband—by them and their children. But instead he had found... instead he had found Philippa...

And this time... this time... Anya cried out in her sleep, disturbing the silence of the house. When he went up to see what was wrong she was sitting up in bed awake.

'Where's Philippa?' she asked him. 'I want her...'

'She'll be here tomorrow,' he assured her. How easy to be a child and to have no inhibitions about stating one's desires... one's needs. Tiredly he got up and went back downstairs.

Sally
stiffened guiltily as she heard Joel coming upstairs. Her hand was trembling so much that she had deposited more mascara on her skin than on her lashes. She reached for a tissue to clean it off, glancing anxiously over her shoulder as Joel walked into the bedroom.

'I thought you were going out.'

Joel's mouth tightened as he heard the accusatory note in her voice. Cynically he noted the way Sally reached for her dressing-gown, quickly pulling it on over her underclothes.

She still had a good figure, slightly softer now than it had been when they had first married, rather more curved, but then she was a woman now, not a girl.

'I am,' he told her curtly in response to her comment. 'I just came up to get my jacket.'

In the early days of their marriage he had watched, entranced and fascinated, as she went through the routine of putting on her make-up, sometimes sneaking up behind her to wrap his arms around her and start nuzzling the side of her neck, teasing her with light kisses until she had abandoned her task and turned round in his arms.

Then, the last thing she would have wanted to do would have been to conceal her body from him; and now, although she didn't know it, it was the last thing she
needed
to do.

The comparison between her coldness towards him and her rejection of him and Philippa's warmth twisted into an aching pain of resentment inside him.

Sally watched him as he opened the wardrobe door and removed his jacket, holding her breath. He had made no comment when she had told him she was spending the afternoon with her sister and brother-in-law. As she watched him shrug on his jacket she tried not to glance betrayingly at the clothes she had laid out on the bed... her best ones.

She felt uncomfortable and uneasy with Joel in the bedroom with her while she was getting ready to see another man.

Even though outwardly her visit to Kenneth's home seemed perfectly respectable and even mundane, she knew how carefully and skilfully it had been contrived, and that it was her company Kenneth wanted and not her sister's and brother-in-law's.

The bathroom door was open, and as he walked past it Joel caught the faint scent of Sally's perfume.

He frowned, pausing. Anyone would think it was royalty Sally was going out with, from all the fuss she was making, not just her sister and her husband.

His mouth grew bitter, causing Sally to stop abruptly as she walked out on to the landing. She had thought that Joel had already gone downstairs and she touched her skirt nervously as she waited for him to make some comment on her appearance, to question and query, and her heart started to hammer frantically against her ribs as he looked at her and said sourly, 'It's easy to see who matters most to
you
these days. That sister of yours...'

He stopped speaking as the doorbell rang, turning to go downstairs. As she followed him, Sally could feel her stomach churning sickly. She had barely been able to eat anything all week, she felt so nervous and on edge, and now she felt uncomfortably light-headed and queasy.

She knew that it couldn't possibly be Kenneth at the door—the arrangement was that she would travel to his bouse with Daphne and Clifford—but she still stood halfway down the stairs, her body as stiff and wary as a hunted animal's, as she waited for Joel to open the door.

When he did, she realised that the man standing outside was a complete stranger to her, and to Joel too apparently, she recognised distantly as her panic-induced surge of adrenalin receded, leaving her feeling weaker than ever.

She watched as the man introduced himself to Joel. His car was parked outside the house; it looked new and expensive, like the clothes the man was wearing.

'I've just come round to thank you for fixing my boy's bike the other day,' she heard him telling Joel. 'I'd have come round before but I've been away on business... I'm always telling him about looking after his things properly... Modern kids—they don't appreciate the things you give them... You're working down at the leisure centre part-time, I understand, as a swimming instructor.'

'On a voluntary basis,' Joel acknowledged.

'I hear you're very good...'

Sally saw the surprise in Joel's eyes.

'Carol Lucas is a friend of my wife's,' the man added. 'She says that her daughter, Estelle, has come on by leaps and bounds since you've been giving her private tuition. My son tells me that you've been giving the older ones a few informal lessons on simple home-maintenance jobs...'

Sally could see from the way that Joel shrugged that he was slightly embarrassed. 'One of them was complaining that the computer he'd bought second-hand didn't have a plug on it. I happened to have a spare one in my car, so it wasn't any big problem to show him how to fit it.'

As the other man thanked Joel again and turned to leave, Sally frowned. Their visitor, with his expensive car and clothes, had quite plainly been impressed with Joel; Sally had heard the admiration and respect in his voice.

He was a man who from his outward appearance would fit into the same social circle as her sister and her husband, but there had been none of their disdain and contempt for Joel in his manner—far from it.

Sally remembered how after Paul had first been born Daphne had come to the hospital to visit her and had commented tactlessly, 'Of course, he'll never have the opportunities Edward will have—not with Joel as his father.'

'Don't take any notice,' the woman in the bed next to Sally had told her firmly when Daphne had gone. 'It's as plain as the nose on your face that she's jealous of you and

envies you having a real man for a husband, instead of that poor pathetic weed she's married to.'

Sally had dismissed her comment with a polite smile. Daphne, jealous of
her..
.? How could she be?

As he closed the front door, Joel turned round and saw Sally standing on the stairs behind him. She looked pretty in her pastel-coloured suit and with her hair all newly washed and soft.

You love her, Philippa had told him.

'Sal... There's a sixties dance down at the leisure centre the Saturday after next, if you fancy going...'

'I can't...' Her panicky reaction was so swift that it even took Sally by surprise. As she saw the look in Joel's eyes she felt an unexpected sense of loss and disappointment, but how could she have said yes?

She was afraid of being alone with Joel now, she recognised, afraid of what she might accidentally betray, afraid that he might somehow guess. 'I'm working that night,' she told him lamely.

Joel was already turning away. 'Forget it; it doesn't really matter,' he told her distantly.

After Joel had gone Sally moved restlessly around the kitchen. It was still almost an hour before her sister was due.

She went into the kitchen and saw that Cathy had left some of her school-books on the table. She frowned as she saw them. Cathy had been complaining this morning that she wasn't feeling very well, and Sally had panicked, instantly worrying that if her daughter stayed at home she might have to cancel her visit to Kenneth's and knowing that she wouldn't be able to get in touch with him to let him know.

'She looks fine to me,' she had commented hardily when Joel had started to comment that perhaps Cathy ought to stay at home.

'Yeah, Mum's right—I'm fine,' Cathy had agreed. 'Stop fussing, Dad...'

She had been nervous and on edge with Joel in the house, blaming his presence for her feelings, but now that he had gone she didn't feel any better. She paced the living-room restlessly, tensing every time she heard a car going past outside, wondering why, when she wanted to be with Kenneth, when she had been looking forward to seeing him all week, she should now almost be dreading doing so.

It wasn't as though Joel had even noticed anything different about her, had even realised the significance of what she was wearing, where she was going.

She heard a car pulling up outside and knew instinctively that it was Daphne. The palms of her hands were damp and when she looked into the mirror her face looked far too pale and set and her eyes correspondingly huge and over-brilliant.

She looked like some of her patients after she had given them their drugs, she recognised, but the only drug in her system was too much adrenalin.

'It's such a shame that some parts of the city have been spoiled by new buildings,' Daphne was commenting snobbishly as Clifford drove towards the university. 'Kenneth is very wise to have moved out of the immediate environs of the university. The houses there must have been so gracious once, but most of them have been turned over to student flats now...'

Sally gritted her teeth. Her sister's inane, self-satisfied chatter felt like a drill being applied to a raw nerve.

'I'm glad to see you've taken a bit more trouble with your appearance today, Sally,' Daphne approved, adding bossily, 'Although you really ought to have your hair properly cut and styled. It's far too long and untidy for a woman of your age... Kenneth could be very important to Clifford's career. With his connections at the university...'

Kenneth doesn't give a damn about Clifford or his career, Sally wanted to tell her, but somehow she managed to hold back the words.