Unfaithful (12 page)

“You look very well,” Penelope complimented her sister, “serene, I think is how I would describe you.”

“Thank you,” Laura graciously accepted her sister's words. “I must admit this is the happiest I've ever been in my life. I know I'm so blessed to have such a loving husband and my wonderful girls. Life is good.”

“Well domestic life certainly suits you,” Penelope agreed.

“I think back sometimes to my days in the Four Courts and as much as I enjoyed them, I'm relieved I don't have that sort of stress anymore. I never in my wildest dreams thought I'd be content to be a full-time stay at home mother and housewife, but honestly, it's so rewarding. It can be hard work at times, but it's worth it. I'd rather work hard and have a happy family than sacrifice my family to have a brilliant career. I'm so grateful that Luca's job pays well enough to allow me to stay at home. I realise some mothers don't have that luxury.”

“Would you ever think about working part-time when the girls are a little older?” Penelope asked curiously.

“Perhaps,” Laura replied thoughtfully, “but I don't want to go back to law. It's too much of a rat race and that lifestyle and mentality is not for me anymore. I tried it once and I know I don't want to experience it again. It was soul-destroying for me.”

“What are you thinking of doing instead?” Penelope asked.

“Well, I've actually been considering writing children's books and illustrating them,” Laura paused momentarily, waiting nervously for her sister's reaction.

“Wow!” Penelope exclaimed. “That's a fantastic idea! Remember those prizes you won in school for your essays and you were always very artistic?”

Laura smiled at her sister's enthusiasm. “I remember you used to steal my drawings,” Laura grinned.

“Oh, yeah,” Penelope laughed. “I'd wait until you'd get distracted and then I'd snatch a few and hide them in my doll's house.”

“Mum found a load of them years later, hidden in the bottom of one of your trunks,” Laura reminisced.

“She used to kill me for stealing your pictures cos you used to get so upset.”

“Brat,” Laura punched her sister lightly on the shoulder.

“Enough about me, Pen, how's your modelling career going?” Laura asked as she made her way towards the oven where the overwhelming smell of chocolate cake was making Penelope's mouth water.

“What career?” her sister sighed. “I'm still trying to get my portfolio together. I've done some catalogue work, but that's about it.”

“It sounds promising.” Laura cut the chocolate cake into thick wedges and spooned whipped cream on top, "any developments on the acting front?" She placed a huge bowl in front of her sister. “This will cheer you up.”

“I'd love to but I can't,” Penelope tried to resist, her eyes and mouth watering at the heady chocolaty concoction.

“Of course you can,” Laura insisted, “you could do with putting on a few pounds.”

“I could not!” Penelope pinched a tiny bit of fat on her perfectly flat stomach. “I'm chubby by comparison to some models.”

“I don't understand the fashion industry's size zero mentality,” Laura groaned disparagingly. “Imagine going into a shop and the sales assistant asks for your size and you say its size nothing. It doesn't even make sense.”

“Well, size zero is the American size which is actually an Irish size four.”

“Size four! Even that's ridiculous. I was probably a size four when I was aged four. What fully developed, grown woman is a size four? Nobody should be less than a size eight, and that's only if you're very petite. I feel sorry for these women prancing up and down the catwalk with their bag of bones for bodies. I see their emaciated faces and bodies in magazines and I am in no way encouraged to buy the clothes or products that they are trying to sell. I just feel sorry for them. I don't notice the clothes, I only notice how painfully thin a lot of the models look.”

“I know,” Penelope sighed, “it's so difficult to keep the weight down, especially with age. My metabolism has slowed down quite noticeably over the past few years. I find that I have to eat less and work out more, just to maintain my weight.”

“It's not a healthy lifestyle, Pen,” Laura shot her sister a worried look. “Would you consider leaving the fashion industry to pursue acting again? I don't know how you stand being poked and prodded by makeup artists and hairstylists and have creepy photographers taking your pictures.” “Well, that's the downside sometimes,” Penelope conceded, “but it's very well paid.”

“I think you should try to pursue acting.” “Maybe, in a few years, I just want to give modelling one last chance and if it doesn't work out then I'll move on to something else.”

Chapter 15

Shona watched the almost hypnotic rise and fall of the waves as they crashed on the shore. Their rhythm helped to soothe her addled mind. It was an unseasonably bright and sunny November morning. She snuggled deeper into her favourite full-length woolly coat and wrapped her cold fingers tightly around her mug of black coffee for warmth.

She always felt cold when she was nervous or stressed. She could have sat inside the little sea-front cafe, where it was warm and cosy, but she desperately needed the distraction of being outside. Her thoughts and worries had consumed her over the last week. She hadn't been able to eat much or sleep either.

Nothing like heart break to kick-start a weight loss programme
, she'd thought ruefully earlier that morning as she'd slipped easily into her skinny jeans. She'd been trying unsuccessfully to lose half a stone for several months and the weight had fallen off her over the last few weeks without her even realising.

Now, it didn’t matter to her that she'd lost a few pounds. She'd have preferred to have been chubby and happy than skinny and as miserable as she felt. She kept telling herself that she was doing the right thing in breaking up with Mark, but doing the right thing didn't necessarily make you happy, at least not in the short term anyway.

She'd practically lived in her local bookshop during the past few weeks, reading endless books about relationships and breakups and how to recover from the heartbreak of breaking up with someone who you still loved dearly, but who wasn't the right person for you.

Shona and Mark had taken "breaks" from each other before, but she had categorically decided that this was it, the absolute end and she felt terrified. She felt lost and alone in the world, which the sensible and logical part of her brain told her was ludicrous because she was blessed to have many people in her life who truly loved her and who she loved in return.

It wasn't the same as having that one special person in your life, that one person who knew everything about you, that special person who you hoped one day would share your life completely.

Shona was an intelligent woman; she realised slowly and reluctantly that she and Mark would never have the future that she dreamed of having with a man. She wanted someone of her own. She was tired of sharing him. She wanted marriage and babies and a family.

She knew that Mark would never give her what she truly wanted. Why would he? He'd already had the baby and the marriage. She had sensed his reluctance for quite a while, but she'd tried to block it out and convince herself otherwise. She'd tried discussing marriage with him occasionally, but he'd protested that he wasn't too keen on getting married again, having already done it once. He'd tried to convince her that marriage was simply a piece of paper or a certificate and that they didn't need to have that piece of paper to prove their love to each other.

However, Shona wanted to get married, she knew in her heart of hearts that that was what she wanted and she didn't want to compromise. Ever since she'd been a little girl, she'd dreamed of her wedding day. Her friends talked about wanting to be nurses and teachers or singers, but all she'd ever wanted was to get married.

Her mother had bought her a princess outfit with a huge dress and long white veil and she wore it continuously. Sometimes, even now, she'd buy wedding magazines and dream about the dress and wedding that she hoped to have one day. She didn't want to reach eighty years of age wondering what might have been.

She loved Mark but she wasn't willing to give up on her dreams of a marriage and babies for him. She wanted a man of her own, without any of Mark's baggage, who wanted the same things from life that she wanted.

What sort of a foundation did she and Mark have for their relationship anyway? It was based on cheating, lies and deceit, which was no basis for a successful relationship. She knew that eventually she'd start wondering if he was cheating on her like he'd cheated on Rebecca.

Even if Mark did leave Rebecca, part of her felt guilty at taking that dream away from another woman. She believed in Karma and she was afraid of what Karma would have in store for her if she ruined another woman's dream.

Shona shuddered slightly as her thoughts began to overcome her. She'd made her decision, her final decision, to end her affair with Mark, for once and for all. It was the most difficult decision that she'd ever made, but she knew that she owed it to herself to break up with him.

The time they spent together was wonderful and she was madly in love with him, there was no doubt about that in her mind, but she knew that their relationship was all on his terms and none of it was on her terms.

She was beginning to realise that it was very unlikely that he would ever leave his wife, and in her heart she didn't know if she actually wanted him to leave Rebecca. She often pondered what sort of a future their relationship could possibly have when it had begun as an affair.

Of course, it wasn't impossible for them to have a successful relationship if he did leave Rebecca, she would try to reason with herself, but she realised that she would always wonder where he was or who he was with when he might be working late or have a business meeting out of town.

Her self-preservation instinct knew that she couldn't live in that sort of a relationship long-term, as much as she loved Mark, she didn't think that it was enough to make their relationship work. She'd hoped and prayed and dreamed for months that he would leave Rebecca.

She'd scoured the internet and magazines and books for stories of love that had endured even as a result of an affair. Prince Charles and Camilla was her classic example. She'd bought every magazine that had featured a story of the royal couple and savoured every photograph of them together. She'd tried to make herself believe that Mark was staying with Rebecca out of a sense of duty, not love, just like Charles had stayed with Diana. She saw herself as Camilla, waiting for her lover to be with her. After all, how long had Camilla waited for Charles? Eventually, they'd been together.

Shona had excused Mark’s behaviour too many times to be able to convince herself anymore that he truly loved her. She finally realised that Mark didn't love her and probably never had loved her. He liked her very much, he enjoyed being with her, but he definitely did not love her. She had a creeping suspicion that she was a pleasant distraction from his marriage and that simply wasn't good enough for her anymore.

She'd read in one of her self-help books that she needed to set higher expectations for herself. The book had opened her eyes to the fact that she'd been searching for love and that she had wrongly convinced herself that she’d found that love in Mark.

Unfortunately, he couldn't offer her what she truly wanted and she needed to stop lowering her expectations to adjust to what he could offer her; that was her “light bulb” moment. When she'd read that sentence she saw everything about herself and her relationship with Mark for what it truly was and she knew that she couldn't live with their situation any longer.

She wanted to be with someone who loved her and her alone. She wanted a man who wanted to be with her as much as she wanted to be with him. She wanted a man who didn't have the baggage of an ex-wife and children. All these things had slowly become clear to her over the past year.

She'd always been so happy go lucky about everything in her life. She'd been happy to leave her life to chance and circumstance, having been a firm believer in serendipity. However, she had been rather sharply awoken from her easy-going attitude during the course of her relationship with Mark.

She couldn't believe how naive she'd been. She'd thought that loving Mark would be enough for everything to work out well in the end. She'd figured that Mark wasn't in love with his wife anymore and that Rebecca would be glad to know the truth so she could move on with her life. Mark and Shona were destined to be together, in Shona's mind, and there was nothing that either of them could do about it. She cringed when she thought about how insensitive and thoughtless she had been.

She still loved Mark, in spite of everything that she now realised, but she knew that she had to end their relationship. She was done with fooling herself. She was tired of all the heartache and mind games. She'd come down to earth with a bang and had learned some important life lessons. She knew it wouldn't be easy to get over Mark but it simply had to end so that she could move on with the rest of her life.

Shona pulled up her hood and dug around in her pockets for her gloves. The wind was rising and the temperature had dropped a few degrees in the past while. She glanced at her watch, still no sign of Mark.
Oh well
, she sighed,
this is the last time he'll keep me waiting
. Punctuality was not one of Mark's strong points.