Singled Out (18 page)

Eddie doesn’t bother me much when he is here, apart from having long hot soaks in my bath, singing Bob Marley songs in a pseudo-Jamaican accent, and depleting my food stores.

When I finally heard the car I opened the front door and watched Max walk up the path towards me, thinking how déjà vu it felt. Strangely familiar … familiarly strange.

I haven’t actually stood back and looked objectively at him for years, but suddenly I saw him as a stranger might.

He is above medium height and slender, although he may go stringy in a year or two like Clint Eastwood, and his dark curly hair is now more grey than black. The loose, silky-looking grey suit he was wearing might have been Armani, and was certainly rather formal for the occasion, though he wore an open-necked shirt with it.

A Californian tan made his hazel eyes look a bit startled, but probably not as startled as mine when I spotted the revolting little manicured beard he had grown since I’d last seen him. It looked like it had been razor-cut out of black plastic and stuck on.

I haven’t had such a shock since I followed the advice in one of those alternative women’s health books, the ones that urged you to get familiar with your private parts using mirrors, and discovered something so sea-urchin it would have looked more appropriate attached to a coral reef.

He probably assumed I was numbed with emotion at the sight of him, for while I was still staring at his facial adornment in horrified amazement he swept me into a comprehensive and expensively scented embrace.

The feel of the beard touching my face, the unfamiliar aftershave, and the snaky slither of his suit against me all seemed very peculiar and not quite right: like one of those dreams where everything is suddenly just a bit off, and you can’t quite put your finger on what it is … but – oh my God, yes! Aunt Susie’s turned into a triple-headed Martian!

Somehow I seem to have got out of the habit of Max. It was embarrassingly like being over-enthusiastically kissed by a stranger, and an unattractive one at that, since I loathe beards.

And it wasn’t only embarrassing: it was downright disconcerting when I realised I was finding his embrace no more exciting than Jason’s.

Less, in fact.

And certainly much,
much
less exciting than being crushed against Dante Chase’s hairy, half-naked and admirably broad torso when he yanked me out of that cupboard … although that, of course was more the excitement of fear. Sort of.

Max did not seem to be sharing my feelings, or even noticing my lack of response.

‘I’d forgotten how beautiful you are!’ he muttered, kicking the front door shut behind us, and shifting his grip purposefully. ‘Let’s go to bed, Cassy – we can talk later.’

I fended him off by using both elbows (and I have sharp elbows). ‘Later, Max? I understood you could only stay a couple of hours. Didn’t you tell Jane you were flying back to America tomorrow?’

He looked surprised and hurt. ‘Yes, I’ll have to get home tonight because there’s still so much to arrange. But I thought you’d understand – and there’s still time for me to show you just how I’ve missed you.’

Unfortunately for him I seemed to be having a complete understanding breakdown, even when he smiled in the way that would once have turned me to putty in his hands. But either it had lost its magic, or guilt over Rosemary’s haunting legacy was freezing my heart.

That ridiculous beard didn’t help either: it gave him the old-goatish look of a satyr.

Still fending him off, I tried to explain how I was feeling: ‘Max, I haven’t seen you for months, so everything seems very strange, somehow, and – and wrong. Especially when you’ve come pretty well straight from Rosemary’s funeral!’

‘Wrong? Isn’t it a bit late in the day to start feeling guilty?’ He let me go abruptly, looking irritated. ‘This isn’t much of a welcome! It was very difficult for me to get away at all, you know, when there was so much to do before I fly back. Now I’m starting to wish I hadn’t bothered!’

‘You don’t understand, Max: Rosemary left me a letter saying how she’d always really felt about our affair, and the relationship between you, and it’s deeply upset me. I need you to read it, and tell me whether or not any of it is true.’

‘I don’t need to read it, she left me a copy, too,’ he said impatiently. ‘But I didn’t expect you to take any notice of her spiteful ramblings. I confess, I simply didn’t realise how bitter she felt about things: I always thought she accepted the situation,’

‘But she wasn’t just bitter, she was obsessed! And
you
told me she didn’t really mind, that you’d come to an agreement together!’

Max sighed long-sufferingly, and sat down on the sofa. ‘Must we talk about it? Yes, I did think Rosemary and I understood each other very well, but she must have been mad to have had us followed and photographed like that.’

‘Yes, so madly in love with you she was jealous. It made me feel
besmirched
when I understood that she wasn’t complaisant about our affair at all –
and
when she said you’d continued to have a physical relationship! Was that true, Max?’

His hazel eyes met mine with hurt innocence: ‘Of course not, darling! How can you even ask? These are all just lies, meant to divide us – and they seem to be succeeding.’

‘All lies?’

‘I should have told you to burn the letter unopened,’ he said, sighing. ‘Put it out of your head, and you’ll see: when I come back in the summer we can forget the past and think about our future together.’

‘And what? Get married?’ I demanded. ‘I know about the will, too.’

He shifted uncomfortably and this time didn’t meet my eyes. ‘If you really want to, of course we will: but we’re quite happy the way we are, aren’t we? You’re used to your independence, and you’d probably prefer having separate households – though of course I’d like you to move nearer, so we can see much more of each other.’

I looked at him searchingly, but he still wasn’t quite meeting my gaze. ‘Max, this is my home, and I’d never sell it even if we
were
getting married. But we’re not, are we? You’d rather have Rosemary’s money than marry me.’

‘Of course I’d marry you if we weren’t so happy with our current arrangement! But why lose the money when there’s no need? Be sensible, Cassy!’

‘Well, thanks for making your priorities plain to me, Max!’ I snapped, and the last faint urge to confess about my lapse with Dante evaporated into the air and was gone for ever. In fact, I was starting to feel more inclined to boast about it.

He patted the sofa and smiled in the way that had beguiled and brainwashed me only too often in the past, so sure that he could still manipulate me into seeing things from his own unique viewpoint.

Welcome to Planet Max: please orbit as instructed.

‘You look lovely when you’re angry,’ he said tritely. ‘It’s strange how I’d forgotten just how beautiful you are. Why don’t you come over here next to me, instead of pacing up and down?’

That certain light was in his eyes again. Seeing me after a long absence seems to rate my excitement factor higher than golf unless he’s simply been on the Viagra? You can buy it in every sweet shop over there, I expect.

I did sit down, though keeping a distance between us. ‘Max, do you still love me?’ I asked curiously.

‘Of course I do, darling.’

‘Then how could you swan off to America for a year without a second thought, with only a few measly phone calls to remind me of your existence?’

Because it was too good a chance to miss, and I’ve been very busy. But soon we will be together again for good, and then I’ll make it up to you.’

‘Or together as much as we ever were, if you’ve no intention of marrying me?’

‘Of course I’ll marry you if you really want it, Cassy! But do you? Think about it. It would be stupid to—’

‘—whistle Rosemary’s fortune down the wind for love? Like I whistled my morals and principles down the wind when I became your mistress?’

‘People live together all the time these days, it’s not unusual.’

‘No, it isn’t. But what about children? You said we should wait until we got married, but you never wanted any, did you? Or was Rosemary telling the truth about striking a bargain with you on that one, too?’

He shifted uneasily. ‘Was it wrong of me to want you all to myself?’

‘But what about me? I’d still like to try for a baby before it’s too late – if it isn’t already, because I’ve been doing a test that shows you if you’re still fertile, and I’ve had one hit and two misses, so it’s not looking good.’

He smiled like I’d said something amusing: ‘I wouldn’t worry about that too much, there’s plenty of time to think about it when I get back in the summer.’

‘Max, I’m forty-four. I’m running out of time.’

His hazel eyes widened in surprise. ‘Forty-four? Are you really? I suppose you
must
be, but you look so much younger than your age I forget. Everyone in California thinks
I’m
much younger than I am, too,’ he added complacently.

They must all be liars. He does still look head-turningly good (apart from the beard), but he doesn’t look younger than he is.

‘Look Cassy, let’s talk about all this when I get back. Can’t we just enjoy being together now? You know how much I’ve missed you, and we can sort all this out,’ he said in his very best warm-honey voice.

He moved up closer and took my hand – and I purposely let my mind go blank, and opened the door to his.

It was a maelstrom of mixed emotions, hard to read, but the surface one seemed to consist of lust. There were black edges of guilt, desire, worry, and a sort of shamefaced shiftiness too.

I couldn’t feel any love, or even the exasperated affection I read on the only previous occasion I’d done this, and while the guilt wasn’t as strong as Dante’s, it was still more than enough to raise a question mark or two in my mind …

Maybe I really should take that random reading of several men to see if they all feel guilty?

Max wrenched his hand away and I came back down to earth. ‘Bloody hell, Cassy, you promised never to do that to me!’ he yelled furiously.

‘You promised
me
a lot of things, Max, most of them, I now see, out of your power to deliver. Besides, I needed to know what you were feeling.’ I stared at him with knitted brows. ‘What part
did
you play in Rosemary’s death?’

‘How can you ask me that?’ he exclaimed angrily.

‘I read your guilt.’

‘Guilt over the situation, of course, since it was because of me that she was out there in California at all. I swear to you that I had no hand in harming her! It was a tragic accident.’

‘I suppose it
could
be just that…’ I mused.

‘I was miles away, and I have witnesses to prove it!’

‘So you keep saying. You’re guilty about something, though, I saw that clearly enough. But what I couldn’t see in your mind was any love for me.’

‘If I didn’t love you I wouldn’t be here having this stupid and pointless conversation, would I? And I’d have
shown
you how much I love you if you hadn’t been in this awkward mood! What on earth’s the matter with you?’

‘Max, sex can be an act of love, but it can also be just sex. I don’t feel loved by you, I feel rejected, used – anything but loved!’

‘I don’t know what’s got into you, but I can see I’ve wasted my time coming over here today,’ he snapped. ‘Are you trying to tell me you don’t want to see me any more? You want to end it all, now, when the way is clear for us to spend the rest of our lives together?’

‘I—’ I faltered on the edge of the big step, searching for the words that would admit that I’d damned my soul to hell, cut myself off from my parents, and condemned another woman to suffer the torments of jealousy, all for the love of a vain, self-centred, lying, cheating man, who wasn’t, and never had been, worth the steep price ticket.

What a Sleeping Beauty, dreaming of marrying him for years, only to wake up and find I don’t really want to after all! But the habit of loving him – or the man I thought he was – made it hard to say the words that would end it all.

Max couldn’t believe it either. ‘We’ve been together a hell of a long time.’

‘Yes, and I always meant it to be for ever,’ I said sadly. ‘But you’ve been away so long, and now Rosemary’s death has changed everything and made me see things differently, and I don’t know
what
I want.’

‘Is there someone else?’ he said with predictable suspicion.

Dante’s face flashed across my mind like a meteorite. ‘No, there isn’t,’ I said firmly, and looked at him, feeling all at once sad and lonely: ‘I just think we’ve grown apart.’

‘Are you telling me you don’t love me?’ He looked incredulous, as though such a thing were impossible.

‘I don’t know any more,’ I said, because part of me did still love the man he once was – or the one I thought he was, anyway. ‘And all you’re offering me now is that we carry on as before when you come back, really, isn’t it?’

‘But we can spend time together freely, and I did say we’d discuss having a baby then, too,’ he reminded me.

‘Yes, when it might be too late. The clock’s ticking and I feel it’s probably now or never.’

‘Why not now, then?’ he said coolly, and to my complete astonishment tried to take me in his arms again.

He can’t have been listening to a word I was saying, but that Viagra-fired light was in his eyes again, which might account for it: it had to be that, he hadn’t been this frisky for years.

‘Not with that revolting beard,’ I said, fending him off with revulsion, because suddenly I found the thought of sex with Max quite repugnant, like Rosemary would be in there with us.

‘What’s the matter with my beard?’ he demanded.

‘Everything. You know I’ve always hated beards, and that’s such a silly clipped one. Why don’t you shave it off?’

‘Certainly not!’ he said huffily. ‘It’s plain to me you’re just using it as an excuse. I don’t know what’s the matter with you, but if I’d known you were in this sort of mood I wouldn’t have bothered coming.’

‘Well, I certainly don’t intend sleeping with you just to make it worth your while.’