Sins (56 page)

That had been in the early years of his drinking. For the last six of them there had been no need for her to worry about using contraception, and no opportunity either for her to reconsider her decision not to have children, because Pete had lost both the interest in and the ability to have sex with her–another consequence of his alcoholism. Drink was his lover, his beloved, his friend, his tormentor–drink was his world and his everything
–and as Rose had learned once she had taken their doctor’s advice and attended local Al Anon classes, there was nothing she could do to alter Pete’s behaviour. Only Pete himself could do that. The only person whose behaviour she had any control over was herself. That had been dreadfully hard for her to accept. In the early days she had still believed that she had the power to stop him drinking and make him ‘well’ again.

Mixed up with her despair over Pete’s drinking there was also guilt: did he drink because he regretted marrying her? Did he wish he had married someone else? Was she the cause of his drinking? She had even questioned whether her marriage to Pete was in some complex way an attempt on her part to rewrite her own past and her father’s problems with alcohol. Had she, at some deep-rooted level, believed that if she could help ‘cure’ Pete then she would somehow have paid back her ‘sin’ of being born and being hated so much by her father that he himself had turned to drink to drown out his bitterness? Who knew what motivated anyone to do the things they did?

The truth was that she knew that she should be guilty–guilty of marrying him out of numb despair because she thought she had lost Josh. Guilty of wishing she had not married him when Josh had told her that he loved her. The weight of that guilt had made her feel like a thief, stealing from someone. She had married Pete because she had been afraid of being alone with what she was and what she had lost. She had used him to give her what she’d thought was a new identity that would protect her–not consciously, of course, but nevertheless
that was what she had done. Never ever during their marriage had she let Pete know that she still loved Josh, never once had he indicated that he had guessed that she did, but always at the back of her mind was the guilt of knowing that she could not give him what marriage to her entitled him to, because she had already given it to Josh. She had tried to compensate for that, devoting herself to him, making him her whole life, but it was a life that had an emptiness at its heart. For that reason she couldn’t blame Pete for his drinking. He had tried to give up in the early years of their marriage. Twice he had voluntarily gone into a private hospital to be dried out. The second time he had suffered such violent seizures that the staff had thought he was going to die.

But he hadn’t.

He was, though, according to his doctors, killing himself. Destroying himself was a truer description in Rose’s opinion, a slow painful relentless destruction of his own body and mind that left her feeling helpless and anguished.

After his first ‘drying out’ attempt they had gone to Hong Kong for a holiday that was supposed to mark the beginning of a fresh start. It had been Pete’s suggestion. He had wanted to give her the chance to ‘find’ the Cantonese side of herself but the trip had left her feeling far more of an outsider in Hong Kong than she now did in England. In Hong Kong she had discovered that the unwritten rules separating not just the Caucasian from Oriental, but marking the many divisions that lay within each of those categories, were complex and fiercely adhered to and protected. There was no defined ‘place’
for someone like her, with her wealthy Western background and upbringing, and the blood in her veins from a mother who had been amongst the lowest of the low. She had been treated with a mixture of suspicion and disdain, and had found nothing of the mother she had lost as a baby.

Unlike her father, Pete was not a violent alcoholic. He simply withdrew into himself and into a place where, in his rare moments of sobriety, he swore he was comfortable, even though the process of getting there was destroying him.

The nerve endings in his hands and feet had become so damaged that he could barely walk or hold anything, his liver now all but destroyed. He lay upstairs in the room Rose had tried to make as comfortable as she could for him. It could be weeks or months; no one could say.

She couldn’t leave him unattended, not even for a few hours, because when she did, despite his fragile state of health, he would try to go out–to drink and find the comfort and the company he craved. Sometimes Rose wondered if it wouldn’t simply be kinder to let him go, but the fear of him dying alone and uncared for wouldn’t let her.

The phone rang, startling her.

It wouldn’t be Josh, of course. He wouldn’t ring this early in the morning. He wouldn’t ring at all any more now, she reminded herself, because she had told him not to.

It had been a shock when Josh had come back into her life last year, simply arriving at the door to announce
that he had decided to give up his salons in New York and come home.

She hadn’t intended to get involved with him. But somehow she had let her guard slip, and before too long she had been admitting to him what she had refused to admit to anyone else, which was that she should never have married Pete. From there it had been an easy if treacherous step to admitting that she loved him, had always loved him and would always love him.

‘Leave Pete,’ Josh had urged her.

‘I can’t. He needs me,’ she had answered. ‘He hasn’t got anyone else.’

‘What about your needs, Rose? And what about mine?’ had been Josh’s response. ‘Don’t we matter? It’s not too late for us…’

Surreptitiously Ella eased her toes out of her shoes as soon as the elevator door had closed, concealing her in its shiny polished womb.

She had been attending a book launch that had gone on longer than expected and her feet were aching from standing all evening exchanging small talk. Her role as the editor-in-chief of
NY
magazine took her to many such events.
NY
was considered by those in the know to be the city’s most prestigious and successful magazine, and Ella had been thrilled when she had been invited to head it up as its chief editor when it had first started up four years ago.

Its unique blend of a tough editorial stance on political issues combined with what was lauded as the best gossip column in town had brought in an audience that
took their politics seriously, but was still fashionable enough to need their insider gossip fix.

Add in seriously good fashion pages, a section devoted to the arts, and a diary that knew all about who had been where, wearing what and with whom, and how much they had donated to their favourite charity, and it was easy to see why
NY
had become such an iconic read.

Long before the elevator had stopped on the lower floor of their two-floor Park Avenue apartment, Ella had her shoes back on and her back straight. Not that there would be anyone to see her: Maria, their housekeeper, would have gone to bed; Olivia too would be fast asleep in the bedroom that had only recently been redecorated, the walls of which she had immediately, to Ella’s irritation, insisted on covering with the blown-up photographs she and Oliver had taken together: street scenes from New York, beach scenes from summers in the Hamptons, portraits of the city’s extraordinary cavalcade of raw humanity.

Right from the moment of her birth, despite the fact that she had been a girl and not the boy he had been so confidently expecting, Oliver had adored his daughter. Where Ella had thought that Olivia’s blue eyes and dark hair had come from her own father, Oliver had announced that they came from him; where Ella had felt that her strong nature had come from her great grandfather, Oliver had claimed it came from his own strong-willed mother, and they had fought over the rights to own family input into Olivia just as they had fought over everything else.

What they had not fought over was how much they
both loved her. Far from suffering from post-natal depression, Ella had fallen immediately and passionately in love with her daughter.

She unlocked and then opened the door to the apartment, knowing already that Oliver wouldn’t be there–but not knowing exactly where he would be working.

She could take a guess, though, she acknowledged cynically. Oliver was an acclaimed and much-in-demand fashion photographer, and Ella did not forget that it was as a fashion photographer before their marriage that he had regularly slept with his models. Theirs had never been a love match; she had no emotional claim on him, nor he on her. They had never discussed it, but she knew that Oliver had been aware of how assiduously Brad had courted her after Olivia’s birth. It was true that she had been tempted–Brad was, after all, the kind of man who was far more to her taste than Oliver–but she had not been able to forget that it was because of Oliver, and thanks to Oliver, that her life now held the most precious thing it ever would hold–Olivia. It was Oliver who had, with her, created Olivia, and Oliver who had prevented her from aborting her. And it was Oliver too who had married her for the sake of Olivia.

Because of all those things, because she believed that a child needed the love of both parents and the security that those parents being together brought, she had stepped back from the opportunity to have the affair with Brad that might ultimately have led to the breakup of her marriage.

Oliver had never challenged her about Brad but then why should he have done so? He didn’t love her, after all.
Somehow that hadn’t mattered before. They weren’t the only successful Manhattan couple whose marriage was based more on practicality than romance. But then Oliver had not loved someone else.

Ella could remember quite clearly the moment she had realised that Oliver wasn’t just shagging the stunningly attractive young model he had been photographing for
Vogue
, but that he had actually fallen in love with her. It had been on Christmas morning when she had inadvertently interrupted his snatched telephone call to her. Oliver must love her to have rung her on Christmas Day, a day that since her birth had been sacred to Olivia. Not that Ella had challenged him about it. There wouldn’t be any point. Their marriage was a civilised arrangement in which accusations about infidelity had no part. Now she was simply waiting for him to tell her that he wanted a divorce. She could, of course, beat him to it and tell him first that she wanted to divorce him, but she knew that Olivia would never forgive her and would blame her for the break-up of their family, and she didn’t want that.

She went into the kitchen to make the cup of tea she always made for herself when she came in late. There was a note propped up against the kettle, written in Maria’s hand. The first time she read it, Ella’s brain refused to accept its message.

She reached for it, her hand trembling as she read it again. Her father had had a heart attack and was in hospital. No, it couldn’t be possible. She had seen him in January when she had flown over to England for a meeting to discuss the possibility of launching a sister
magazine to her own in the UK, taking Olivia with her, and he had been his normal fit, healthy self.

It had been Drogo who had rung, but when Ella rang back there was no reply, so she rang Fitton Hall instead, her heart jerking into her ribs when John confirmed that her father was seriously ill and in intensive care.

She ran a successful magazine so there was no reason why she should dissolve into panic just because she had to book herself a transatlantic flight, but her hands were trembling and so was her voice as she made the telephone arrangements that would get her home and to her father’s bedside.

There was no point in waking Olivia, although Maria had to be told her plans, and given a message for Oliver, who was away on a magazine shoot and not due back for several days.

Her father sick, perhaps even dying. It seemed impossible, and ridiculous when she had lived her own life here in New York for going on for twenty years, that she should suddenly feel so vulnerable and bereft, so much a child in fear of being deserted. So very much alone.

Janey started up from her chair in the waiting room as the door opened, relief flushing her face when she saw Emerald. They had never been close but she had been on her own here for what felt like hours since John had left to return to Fitton Hall, promising to come back as soon as he could, and the weight of her fears for both her father and for her and John’s futures had grown heavier with every minute. She hesitated but then her emotions overwhelmed her. She and Emerald had grown up together, they had a shared family history, and right now that meant far more to Janey than any differences between them.

‘Emerald.’ Her feelings choked her voice as she hurried over to her stepsister, and then burst into tears.

Emerald didn’t know which of them was the more astonished when she herself closed the distance between them and put her arms around Janey in an almost protective way, before insisting efficiently, ‘Tell me what’s happening.’

‘Nothing,’ Janey managed to sniff through her tears. Who would have thought that having Emerald of all
people here would be so immediately reassuring? ‘Nothing’s happened. It’s just that it’s such a relief to see you,’ she admitted. ‘I’ve felt so alone.’

‘Have you seen your father?’ Emerald asked her, covering her own unexpected emotional reaction to Janey’s admission with a practical response.

‘No. Mama, your mother, is with him, and according to the nurses she simply won’t leave him. She’s been told I’m here and that you all know, but she still won’t leave him. You know how devoted to one another they’ve always been.’

‘Have the Hospital said anything?’ Emerald asked her.

‘There’s nothing new they can tell us yet. These next few hours are critical. It must be so awful, mustn’t it? I’ve tried to imagine how I would feel if it was John. I can’t bear to think like that, though; it’s too dreadful to contemplate.’ The words were tumbling out now in her relief at no longer being alone, but whilst they might sound muddled to anyone else, Emerald knew exactly what Janey meant.