Dark Summer Dawn (2 page)

Yet it was never enough. Some of Lisa's earliest memories were of hearing Aunt Enid complaining about inflation and rising prices. She'd had to learn to remember to switch off. every light—'Wasting electricity' and how many inches of water were permissible at bathtime—'Hot water has to be paid for, my girl.' And she saw her mother's face grow daily more defeated and tired.

Eventually Jennifer had to supplement her wages as a filing clerk by taking an evening job as a waitress, rarely arriving home before midnight. But basically she was a fragile woman and finally, inevitably she collapsed and had to be brought home, and Lisa could remember how angry Aunt Enid had been. There'd been much twitching of net curtains in the street of semi-detached houses where they lived as Jennifer had been carried up the path, and there'd been talk as well, because even as a child, Lisa had recognised that her aunt and uncle were not particularly liked by their neighbours.

But she had been forced to send for the doctor, and Dr Chalmers had spoken bluntly to Jennifer. 'You need a break, my dear. A complete rest, well away from all this— yes, even away from your daughter. It won't hurt her to do without you for a little while. I'm sure that would be her choice, rather than have to do without you permanently.'

There was no money for any kind of holiday. There would be even less money, now that Jennifer had to give up her evening job, so the Premium Bond seemed like a small miracle. It wasn't a fortune, but it was enough to buy Lisa and herself some new clothes, and book a cruise in the Mediterranean—this on Dr Chalmers' advice—and even have some left over for a rainy day.

Looking back, Lisa realised how grateful she and her mother should have been to the doctor who had practically frogmarched her mother round to the travel agency. He had known the Farrells for many years, and was quite well aware of the sort of pressure Jennifer would have to suffer unless she used her win for her own benefit.

As it was, there had been outraged glances and muttered remarks about 'bone selfishness and greed'. There were repairs needed to the roof of Number Thirty-Seven, and they'd thought that Jennifer might like to help—as it was her roof too.

But this time Jennifer was not going to allow herself to be bullied. She had booked her cruise and paid for it, and she was going to take it. And when it was over, and she was back with them, things were never the same again. It wasn't just the fact that she was relaxed and sun-tanned and had put on some weight. There were other, subtler differences— a depth to her smile, and a dreaming look in her eyes when she thought she was unobserved.

And then Charles Riderwood had arrived at the house, tall, powerfully built, a square bluff face lent distinction by the greying hair at his temples.

He had smiled down at Lisa. 'Hello, love.' There was a faint North-country burr underlying his voice. 'I've got a little girl, a couple of years younger than you.'

Lisa had smiled back a little uncertainly, but she had recognised the kindness in his eyes, and she also realised that he wanted her to like him, although she didn't understand why.

Enlightenment was to come after his Jaguar car had driven away.

'Brazen!' Enid Farrell had stormed. 'The very idea, allowing your—fancy man to come here. How dare you!'

Jennifer had flushed, but her voice had been calm. 'Before you say any more, Enid, perhaps you ought to know that Charles and I are going to be married.'

'Married?' Enid's voice had risen almost to a shriek. 'A man you met on a cruise? Why, you know nothing about him. He could be married already—up to no good.'

Jennifer's face had blossomed into a smile. 'I know enough,' she said. 'He's a widower. His wife died several years ago. He has a son of twenty-four and a daughter of eight. His work is something to do with electronics, and he lives in Yorkshire. Is there anything else you want to know?'

Enid Farrell looked outraged. 'Why is the son so much older?' she demanded accusingly.

'I don't know. Perhaps the little girl was an afterthought.'

Enid's face had become more grimly disapproving than ever. It was clear she considered that after sixteen years people should be thinking of other things.

She continued to disapprove right up to the day of the wedding. Apart from Lisa, she and her husband were the only guests from Jennifer's side. But there were a number of people at the register office who knew Charles Rider wood, and obviously liked him, and they all went on afterwards to the champagne reception he had arranged at the London hotel where he had a suite.

Someone was waiting for them there, a tall dark young man who rose slowly from one of the sofas and stood waiting, his hands resting lightly on his hips.

Charles had said on a sharp note of pleasure, 'Dane, you managed to get here after all!' He turned to Jennifer. 'Come and meet your new son. He's been in America on a postgraduate course or you'd have met him before.'

Dane Riderwood had said lightly, 'It all goes to show I should never turn my back for a minute.' He had stepped forward to shake Jennifer's hand, and there had been a general laugh, but Lisa, hanging back hesitantly, had known instinctively that this stranger who was her stepbrother wasn't amused. He was smiling, but his smile never reached his eyes. And when Charles drew Lisa forward, his hand warm and heavy on her shoulder, Dane's eyes flickered over her with an indifference bordering on hostility. He had turned away almost at once, leaving Lisa thinking, 'I don't like him—and he doesn't like us.'

She heard her mother say to her new husband, 'He's very like you,' and she wanted very badly to cry out a denial, because surely Jennifer knew—could see that they weren't a bit alike.

Oh, they were both tall and very dark, but Dane was a much leaner version of his burly father. His face was thinner too, its lines arrogant where Charles' were genial. His eyes weren't blue like his father's either, but a wintry grey, and his mouth was hard.

She had been looking forward to seeing Stoniscliffe, the big grey stone house which her stepfather had told her about. She wanted to meet Julie too.

'She's been lonely for someone to play with,' Chas had told her. 'I daresay you've been a bit lonely too.'

But all the excitement, all the anticipation she had been feeling had been dampened by the arrival of this cold hostile stranger. She wasn't sure she even wanted to go north to Stoniscliffe if he was going to be there.

She tried to forget about Dane Riderwood and enjoy the reception. People spoke kindly to her, and exclaimed admiringly about her long hair. Chas even gave her a sip of champagne, in spite of her mother's laughing expostulations.

She was just beginning to enjoy herself when Aunt Enid came towards them. Jennifer and Lisa were standing on their own for a moment and she had obviously seized her opportunity.

'Well, you've certainly done all right for yourself,' she hissed to Jennifer. 'Something to do with electronics indeed! You forgot to mention that he owned his own factory. I suppose you'll be off north with never a backward glance, never a thought for the people who fed you and housed you when you had nothing.'

Lisa saw her mother go pale, saw all the pretty, happy, excited colour fade from her face. She said in a low voice, 'Enid, please keep your voice down. I don't expect you to believe me, but I didn't know until today. Oh, I knew Chas wasn't on the breadline, but all this—' she paused and gave a little painful laugh—'all this was as big a shock to me as it has been to you.'

'Oh, of course,' Enid Farrell sneered. 'We always knew we weren't good enough for you. Even my poor brother wasn't that. You always did fancy yourself, with your airs and graces—too good to work or to want. Well, you'll never have to bother about either again!'

Lisa flinched. There was real venom in Aunt Enid's voice. It wasn't just the habitual carping that she and her mother had silently learned to accept. And she had noticed something else too. Dane Riderwood was standing not too far away and judging by the expression of distaste on his face he had heard the tail end if not all of the sordid little passage.

She thought resentfully, 'I wish he hadn't heard. He doesn't like us anyway, and now he'll just think that we're as horrible as
she
is.'

She saw her stepfather coming towards them, beaming, and Aunt Enid moved away then, and not long after that Lisa was relieved to see her and Uncle Clive leaving. All of a sudden she was glad she was going to Stoniscliffe because it meant, she hoped, that she would never see either of them again.

The reception seemed to go on for ever, and Lisa was tired of the new faces and voices going on endlessly above her head. After a while she wandered into the adjoining bedroom. There was a sofa there too, drawn across the window, and she curled up on it, lulled by the distant noise of traffic and the murmur of talk and laughter in the next room.

She didn't know what woke her, but she opened her eyes, blinking drowsily to realise she was no longer alone in the room.

Somewhere near at hand a man's voice was saying, 'Bit of a surprise to all of us, actually. He didn't tell you?'

'Not a word, until it was too damned late for me to do anything about it.' It was Dane Riderwood's voice, molten with fury. 'My God, it's sheer lunacy! He takes a holiday and comes back with some gold-digging little typist and her brat. Heaven knows no one expects him to live like a monk, but surely he didn't have to pay for his fun with marriage!'

Lying, hidden by the high back of the sofa, Lisa felt sick. She didn't understand all that was being said, but she could recognise the cold contempt in 'typist and her brat'. She wanted to jump up and run to Dane Riderwood, to punch him and kick him, and make him sorry, but even as the thought crossed her mind, caution followed. If she did so then other people would come, and they would ask her why she was behaving like that, and she would have to tell them, and her mother's happy, shining day would be spoiled, some instinct told her. Aunt Enid had been bad enough, but this was a hundred times worse.

This was her new family of which Dane was to be an important part, and he didn't like them. He didn't want them. She buried her face in the cushion and put her hands over her ears. She didn't want to hear any more.

She was quiet some time later when Chas and Jennifer came to fetch her, to take her up north to Stoniscliffe. They were having a delayed honeymoon, because Chas wanted to show Jennifer his home, and wanted Lisa to settle in there too.

They looked at her pale cheeks and the wariness in her eyes and decided privately that it was over-excitement and nervousness, and didn't press her for any explanations. It had been a relief to know from chance remarks they had let fall that Dane wouldn't be joining them at Stoniscliffe. He was going back to America.

Perhaps he'll stay there, the child Lisa had thought passionately. Perhaps he'll never come back.

The woman she had become could smile wryly at such naivete, looking back across the years. Of course he had come back, and gradually the situation had begun to ease although Lisa told herself she could never like him or even wholly trust him, and she was slightly on her guard all the time when he was around.

Grudgingly, she had to give Dane his due. He had never, she was sure, given her mother any distress by even hinting at his true feelings about his father's second marriage. But then he had no reason to do so, she reminded herself. Chas and Jennifer had been very happy—even someone as prejudiced as Dane would have been forced to admit that. He was always civil, if rather aloof, to Jennifer, and he took hardly any notice of Lisa at all. But then, she thought, he had never bothered with Julie either, who had always shown a strong tendency to hero-worship him.

Sisterly devotion had never been Dane's style. Lisa thought with a curl of her lips. He had girl-friends, of course—a lot of them. Some of them even came to stay at Stoniscliffe to run the gauntlet of Chas's indulgently critical appraisal. But it was clear they were for amusement only. Dane showed no signs of becoming serious about any of them, although they were all beautiful and glossy and self-assured—good wife material for a man who stood to inherit a thriving family firm and would need a smooth and practised hostess in his private life.

Julie and Lisa discussed the girls between themselves, tearing their appearances, their manners, their clothes apart mercilessly. Later, they wondered about their sexual potential as well, with avid adolescent curiosity. At least Julie had done most of the wondering. Lis wasn't that interested in the partners Dane chose for his sexual athletics, although she had little doubt he was an expert in that as he was at everything else.

Locally, he was the golden boy, already managing director of Riderwoods which was expanding rapidly and surely. Chas was proud of him, calling him a chip off the old block, but Lisa thought there was more to it than that, unless the original block had been granite, because there was a ruth about Dane that chilled her.

That was why, quite apart from the original dislike and distrust, she had never been able to accord him the admiration which Julie lavished on him. He wasn't Lisa's idea of a hero. She saw no warmth in him, no tenderness.

Even when she was sixteen, and Jennifer who hadn't been well for some time had died very suddenly in her sleep, there had been no softening in him. He had been away on a business trip, but he came home for the funeral, but even while he had uttered his condolences to her, she had the feeling that his thoughts were elsewhere. She had wanted to scream at him, You're not sorry! You never wanted her here, or me either.' All the old hostility and hurt had welled up inside her, and she had said something in a cold, quiet little voice and turned away.

She had thought then that she couldn't possibly dislike him more than she did at that moment. But she knew better now.

She leaned back against the sofa cushions, trembling a little inside as she always did when she let herself think of the events of two years before. Not that she often thought of them—the mental censorship she exercised saw to that.

She wouldn't have been thinking of him now—God knows she never wanted to think of him again—if it hadn't been for Julie's letter. '
Dane, of course, is going to give me away
.'