Starting Over (7 page)

He paused and waited.

'Yes, I can agree to that,' the doctor told him.

'...and for me to be able to stay the night here with her,' Max continued swiftly.

With a small sigh the consultant nodded his head.

'But I must warn you, any sign that your wife is being upset or distressed in any way by either the presence of her children or her husband and I shall have to ask you to leave.'

Grimly Max inclined his head.

JENNY'S MOBILE rang just as she was about to leave the supermarket and drive to Olivia's. When she answered it she heard Max's voice.

'Mum...'

'Max.' She could detect the tension in his one word.

'I'm at the hospital.'

'The hospital?' Jenny gripped the mobile. 'What's wrong... Ben?'

'No, it isn't Ben, it's Maddy,' Max told her tersely.

'She's suffering from pre-eclampsia. I don't know what's going to happen yet,' he continued, overriding Jenny's anxious questions, 'but they're keeping her in.

That's one of the reasons why I'm ringing you. Could you go over to Queensmead and check up on Ben and—Mum—we're going to need your help not just with Ben but with the kids as well.'

'Don't worry,' Jenny reassured him. 'You know I'll do whatever you need me to do.'

'I'm on my way to collect them from school now.

I'm taking them straight to the hospital to see Maddy, but if you could come and take them home, I'm going to stay overnight at the General with her but the kids need...'

'Of course,' Jenny agreed immediately. 'I'll drive over to Queensmead now and check on Ben.'

She could hear the relief in Max's voice as he thanked her. When she started the car her hands were shaking. They all took Maddy so much for granted, her sunny nature, her calm gentleness, her ability to find room in her generous heart for even someone as irascible and difficult as Ben.

Virtually singlehandedly she had turned Queensmead from a cold unwelcoming barn of a house that no one had ever liked to visit into a warm welcoming haven which increasingly had become the hub of Crighton family life. The work she did for the Mums and Babes charity was of incalculable value. She had surprised everyone, including herself, not just with her administrative talents but even more so with her flair for fund raising. No matter how busy she was she still always found time for those who asked for it.

Max adored her and if anything were to happen to her... Jenny knew how potentially serious her condition was—how dangerous.

Her hands tightened on the steering wheel of the car. The first thing she did when she reached Queensmead was ring Jon but all she could reach was his message service. Her mouth compressing, Jenny dropped the phone into her handbag without bothering to leave any message.

Ben was asleep in his arm chair when she walked into the library. Gently she woke him up.

'Where's Maddy?' he demanded irritably. 'I'm hungry. Gone off gadding somewhere with Max, I suppose. She's supposed to be here looking after me. Acting like this house is their own. Huh...we shall see about that....'

Squashing her irritation, Jenny explained what had happened. The whole family made allowances for the often irascible Ben who had never reconciled himself to the death of his twin brother. But, increasingly, he was making challenging and hurtful comments about both Maddy and Max and about their future tenure of the house.

Jenny knew that Max felt concerned enough to have bought a large piece of land on the other side of town on which he hoped he would be able to build a new house for himself, Maddy and the children if Ben ever did carry out his threat to disinherit him.

'David has promised that if Dad
should
leave Queensmead to him he will immediately hand it over to you,' Jon had tried to reassure Max.

When Jenny reached the hospital, Max and the children were in the waiting room. Max hurried towards her and she could tell from his expression just how anxious he was about Maddy.

'Can I see her?' she asked him once she had hugged and kissed the children.

Shaking his head Max told her, 'She's asleep at the moment. This is all my fault,' he added emotionally.

The bleakness in his eyes tore at Jenny's heart. Silently she hugged him, trying to offer him some comfort but inwardly she was as frightened for Maddy as she could see he was.

'They can do so much these days,' she tried to reassure him.

'I should have guessed—seen—I know she hasn't been feeling well.' His voice was torn with pain.

'Where's Dad?' he asked abruptly. 'I thought he would come with you.'

'He's up at Fitzburgh Place. Apparently David rang him whilst he was playing golf to tell him that Lord Astlegh wanted to see him.'

She gave Max a forced smile. With all that he had to worry about the last thing she wanted to do was to have him guess how she was feeling.

'I'll take the children home with me now and don't worry about having to get home tonight, Max. I'll stay at Queensmead with them and make sure they get to school in the morning.'

FROM THE SMALL ROOM at home she used as an office Olivia could see Amelia and Alex playing in the garden. At the moment they seemed happy to accept that Caspar had stayed behind in America whilst they had come home but soon she knew they would start to miss their father and ask questions. They would be upset she knew. They both adored Caspar. But surely they were better off living with her in a loving happy atmosphere than enduring the kind of misery
she
had known as a child knowing that her parents were not happy together. Her agitation increased, her heart starting to pound with a now familiar sickening speed and intensity. She hated the fear she felt threatening to flood over her, hated the sense of loss of self-control it brought.

Pushing her hands into her hair she tried to massage the tight band of pain out of her skull. She had just spent the last hour reading through the work notes she had made before leaving for America but instead of calming her, easing her anxiety, they had only served to
increase
it.

She thought of Jenny and looked anxiously towards her silent telephone. Her aunt hadn't even rung to welcome her home. But then why should she? Olivia was only a niece to her. Jenny had sons and daughters of her own who were far more important to her than Olivia ever could be and Jenny had grandchildren, too.... Far more loved by her than Olivia's children could be. Fiercely Olivia swallowed against the tight ball of angry pain stuck in her throat.

Tania, her own mother, had never even seen her grandchildren.

'Darling, I'd love to see the new baby,' she had announced over the telephone after Amelia had been born, 'But there's just no way I could ever come back to Haslewich....' Olivia had been able to visualise the shudder which would have run through her mother's fragile body as she listened to her. 'And even if I could, I know that my darling Tom would never allow me to do so. He can't believe how cruel your father was to me. And I'm afraid we couldn't invite you to come down here. We just don't have the room....'

And of course her mother didn't want to make room. Olivia had known that, but to offset that pain there had been Jenny. Jenny ready to open her arms to Olivia and her new baby and to become the loving wise surrogate grandmother Olivia had ached for them to have.

But then, one after the other, Jenny's own children had married and produced grandchildren for her, and Olivia had started to distance herself from Jenny a little, out of a fierce maternal desire to protect her own daughters from being hurt as she had been.

Everywhere she turned it seemed to Olivia that she was not as valued as other people were. Neither of her own parents had
truly
loved her—she knew
that
—and as for Ben, her grandfather, he had made his prefer-ence for
Max
as plain as his contempt for her.

At work she had tried to prove that she could work as hard, do as much, as any man. Even Caspar, who she had thought loved her, had chosen his family over her.

Outside the sun was shining brightly but all Olivia could see was the bleak future that stretched ahead of her.

JON FROWNED as he let himself into the unlit empty house. Where was Jenny? He knew she had planned to visit Olivia but he had expected her to be back at home. No familiar Sunday dinner smells were wafting appetisingly from the large family kitchen, empty now like the rest of the house of the busy noisiness of their growing children and their friends. Ruefully he remembered how often once they were teenagers, he had looked forward to quieter times. Times when he and Jenny would be able to have moments to themselves.

Now that they had... He frowned. If the early years of their marriage had been difficult, these latter few years had more than compensated for that with the happiness and love they had brought him. The discovery that Jenny, who he had married believing she could never love him, had in fact done so right from the start, had brought a sensual late blooming to their relationship which he had quite frankly relished.

Now, though, Jenny seemed not to want him sexually any more. He appreciated that life had become increasingly busy for her. She might have sold her half share in her antique shop to her partner Guy Cooke, but she now played an increasingly demanding role in the Mums and Babes charity his aunt Ruth had established as well as being very involved with their local community and the lives of their children and grandchildren.

Still frowning he dialled the number of her mobile phone. It was out of character for her to go out without leaving any indication of where she was or when she would be back.

'Jenny?'

Answering her mobile, Jenny quickly scanned Queensmead's kitchen table, making sure that her grandchildren were eating the meal she had prepared for them.

'Where are you?' she heard Jon demanding.

'I'm at Queensmead,' she told him.

'Oh... When will you be back?'

Quickly she explained to him what had happened, adding, 'I shall have to stay here until Maddy is well enough to come home, and even then...'

She could tell from the sound of his voice how shocked he was by the news she had given him.

'I'll come over,' he was telling her, adding, 'Why on earth didn't you ring me straight away?'

'I tried to,' Jenny informed him crisply, 'but you didn't pick up. I dare say the business David had arranged for you to discuss with Lord Astlegh was too important to be interrupted.'

As he heard the sharp note in her voice Jon sighed.

He hated there being any kind of disharmony between them and it hurt him that Jenny, whom he loved so very much, could not be as pleased by David's return as he was himself.

'Yes, I'm sorry, I did switch it off,' he acknowledged. 'Freddy loathes them according to David.'

Jenny tensed. Here it was, even now, with Maddy so poorly, Jon was
still
thinking about putting David first...

'I've got to go,' she fibbed, quickly ending the call before Jon could object.

'MUMMY,
this
isn't the way to school,' Amelia protested.

'No darling, I know it isn't,' Olivia agreed as she checked the traffic. 'I want to call and see Auntie Jenny before I take you to school.' She wanted to see Jenny to ask if she would pick up the girls from school for her and to see if it was possible for her to have them until she, Olivia, got home from work. Ultimately she was going to have to make proper child-care arrangements but that would take time and until then she would desperately need Jenny's help.

Frantically she tried to run through everything she had to do. The school would have to be told that Jenny would be picking the girls up, of course. It ran an after-school creche which she could book them into if necessary and until she had sorted out a reliable nanny perhaps Jon would agree to her doing her paper work from home.

It would mean rearranging her appointments. Some of her clients weren't always free to see her until after they themselves had finished work which was one of the reasons she was home so late so many evenings.

Jon would have to be told about her and Caspar's separation, if he didn't already know about it, which Olivia suspected he must. She could well imagine how it would be received by certain members of the family.

No doubt Ben would once again compare her with Max—to
her
detriment! Max, of course, had the perfect marriage, just as he had the perfect everything else.

'Mummy,' Amelia cried out in alarm and just in time Olivia saw the cyclist she had previously been oblivious to, swerving out to avoid him.

'Wait in the car for me,' she instructed the girls when she pulled up on the forecourt to Jon and Jenny's home.

Running as quickly as she could over the gravel, which wasn't an easy feat in her office court shoes and straight-skirted business suit, she pushed open the kitchen door calling out, 'Jenny, it's me, Olivia.'

'Livvy!'

Olivia frowned as she saw not Jenny come hurrying into the kitchen but Jon.

'I—I'm just on my way to work,' Olivia told him defensively, 'I wanted to see Jenny to ask if she could pick the girls up for me this afternoon.'

'Oh dear, I'm afraid she's at Queensmead,' Jon told her.

Queensmead. Olivia's heart sank. It would take her a good ten minutes to drive to the other house. But she
had
to see Jenny. Without giving Jon time to say any more she hurried back to her car.

Jon grimaced as Olivia left. He'd had no chance to explain to her what had happened. He was already late for a very early client meeting. He had missed Jenny's familiar presence in their bed last night and hadn't slept well.

ANGRILY Olivia stabbed her foot on the car's accel-erator. She was going to be late for the office, a fact which Jon would have already noted. That was a great start to her new life as a single parent she reflected bitterly.

Her awareness of her own exposure, her vulnerability, increased her defensive anger. By the time she had negotiated the fast-building traffic and was turning into Queensmead's drive she had worked herself up into a state of furious anxiety.

Stopping her car she got out and hurried towards Queensmead's back door and opened it.