Partners by Contract (19 page)

All the while she spoke Connor continued to shake his head from side to side in angry denial. ‘This is stupid!’
His nostrils quivered as he visibly tried to contain his feelings. ‘I’m not going along with this pathetic star-crossed lovers scenario. You love me, Phoebe!’

She didn’t try and deny this charge. If she had, his eyes just might have incinerated her where she stood.

‘Love isn’t enough,’ she said flatly.

His eyes narrowed. ‘There’s something you’re not telling me,’ he said suddenly.

Phoebe shook her head.

‘Under the circumstances, I think I deserve the truth—don’t you?’

Phoebe sighed. ‘I have told you the truth...just not all the truth,’ she admitted uncomfortably. ‘When you and Penny were together, I used to think about you being... I tried not to,’ she mumbled, unable to look at him, ‘but I couldn’t help it. Thinking about you and her together...imagining. I almost hated her sometimes...my own twin.’

‘Phoebe...’

She shook her head, closing her ears to the warm compassion in his voice. ‘Don’t say anything, Con, this is hard enough as it is. When I came here and you seemed...you acted as if you wanted me, I thought you’d touch me and think of Penny. It was even worse than you not wanting me at all. It’s impossible to explain how demeaning that felt—the idea of being a substitute yet still wanting you so much I couldn’t think straight!’

‘You were never a substitute, sweetheart!’

Phoebe lifted her tragic eyes to his face. ‘That’s the whole point. Penny was, and she knew it. Because of me,’ she gulped, ‘Penny hurt and I know how much. I can never forgive myself for that, Con,’ she insisted tearfully.
‘Never!’

Connor had no argument that would counter the self-recrimination
in her eyes. For the first time he appreciated how heavy the burden she carried was.

‘I won’t let you go.’

‘You can’t stop me.’

‘What if you’re pregnant?’ He knew this was below the belt but at that moment he didn’t much care. When the stakes were this high a man was justified in utilising any tactics, no matter how crude or sneaky they were.

‘I’ll cross that bridge if and when I come to it.’

He stared with seething frustration at her face, pale but composed. Nothing he said, it seemed, could shake her conviction that she was doing the right thing. As much as it went against the grain, he was forced to question whether it was a moment for compromise.

‘Don’t make this decision hastily.’

‘What do you mean?’ She frowned

‘Take some time to think about it—alone if you like. Get things in perspective. You at least owe us that. I won’t bother you if that’s what you’re worried about,’ he promised.

‘Nothing will change,’ she insisted dully.

His broad shoulders lifted. ‘If that’s the case, what have you lost?’

‘I suppose I could go and visit Magda.’ She didn’t hold any hope for any miracle cure but it was as good a place as any to go.

CHAPTER NINE

‘W
OULD
Phoebe like to join us?’

Magda Miller, who had just slipped a diaphanous evening stole over her bare shoulders, stared at her escort in surprise. ‘What?’ A tiny frown line puckered the area between her nicely shaped brows. ‘Oh, yes...well, you’re welcome to come, darling,’ she told her daughter, after receiving a pointed nod of encouragement from the man in her life. ‘But you’re hardly dressed, are you?’ she pointed out, barely repressing a wince as her pale blue eyes slid over the casual outfit of sweatshirt and joggers Phoebe was wearing. ‘I always think elasticated waists are the start of a slippery slope.’

Phoebe wondered where this slippery slope led—possibly some unfashionable netherworld where people wore polyester? Slowly she unfurled her long legs from her crosslegged position on the sofa and put the paperback she was trying to read to one side.

‘I’ll try and remember that,’ she promised solemnly.

The gentle irony of the response was totally wasted on her mother who would have been deeply shocked to think any child of hers could joke about such an important subject as fashion. Phoebe’s mother was one of that select band of fashion journalists who decided—or liked to think they did—what people would be wearing the following season. She took her vocation very seriously.

‘We can certainly wait if Phoebe would like to come.’ Paul bravely stood firm. Actually, he reminded Phoebe of something solid and comforting, in the rock-like rather
than comfy-cardy sense. He really was a million miles from Magda’s usual sort of man which, as far as Phoebe was concerned, was a good thing.

Phoebe reflected that if her mother had any sense at all she wouldn’t be as casual with Paul Martin as she normally was with her lovers. Magda would no more have chosen to step out with last season’s man than she would last season’s clothes. Not only was the tall, cultured man intelligent, good-looking and quite obviously besotted with her mother, he was nice and thoughtful. It went without saying that he was wealthy. It wouldn’t have occured to Magda to socialise with someone who wasn’t!

‘Paul thinks you spend too much time alone. I’ve told him you’re not a child who needs to be amused every second of the day.’

Phoebe smiled politely in response to this witticism. Even at a time when her life was in ruins and the future stretched ahead like a big black nothing, the idea of Magda knowing how to amuse a child was worth the odd wry grin. The way she recalled it, on their fleeting visits their mother’s idea of amusing Penny and herself had been to dress them in pretty identical outfits and then expect them to act as obediently as her other accessories.

‘He’s also got this silly idea into his head...’ Magda cast her lover an affectionate glance ‘...that you don’t eat enough!’ Her silvery laugh tinkled out. ‘He doesn’t understand that it’s not possible for a woman to be too thin.’ She glanced down complacently at her own trim, youthful figure.

Phoebe ran a hand over her collar-bone, aware as she did so that it was lot more prominent than a couple of weeks ago.

‘As a doctor, Magda, I have to disagree.’ After working in Third World countries where the problem was getting
enough food, it had been a bit of a culture shock to find herself treating young women who were depriving their bodies of food to a degree which was actually life-threatening in the most severe cases. ‘Anorexia is a very real problem, and Paul is right. I am looking a bit gaunt right now.’ When she looked in the mirror she was forced to admit that the pale, haunted look did her no favours.

‘Nonsense. Your face has always been a bit on the podgy side. It’s nice to be able to see your bones.’

‘Magda!’ her besotted lover was shocked into exclaiming reproachfully.

‘What have I said?’

Phoebe’s lips trembled. Her mother’s bewilderment was totally genuine. Magda really did give a new dimension to shallow and self-centred. It was too much for Phoebe, who began to laugh in earnest. It was the first time she’d laughed since she’d arrived at her mother’s London flat and the release of tension it afforded was welcome.

‘S-sorry,’ she hiccoughed when she finally managed to get herself under control. She discovered that Paul was looking at her with concern and her mother with impatience.

‘You two, get off. Fashion awards aren’t really my cup of tea, and I promise to make myself a good supper, Paul.’

Normally a keen cook and an even keener eater, Phoebe found there was no pleasure in eating at the moment—come to that, there was no pleasure in much at all. It was just something she had to do to keep body and soul together, and lately she’d been forgetting. Her decision might have been the right one, but she couldn’t help but wonder if she’d have the strength to make it, knowing just how wretched it would make her feel.

‘Let John make you some supper.’

‘There’s no need to disturb him now. It is rather late.’

Magda’s love of surrounding herself with beautiful things didn’t stop at her choice of modern art on the walls. Her live-in housekeeper was a twenty-something hunk who was very easy on the eye. Not only was John a whiz with a vacuum cleaner, he could also iron, cook and generally perform all the mundane tasks that Magda herself loathed. If the aspiring actor ever got an acting job that paid well enough for him to pack away his feather dusters for good, Phoebe suspected that her mother would be lost!

‘Nonsense. He loves to be useful,’ Magda confidently announced, flicking an invisible speck off her escort’s dinner jacket. ‘All you have to do is ask and he’ll whip you up something nice and low-fat.’

Phoebe gave a noncommittal nod, and reflected that if she’d seen Magda more than once a year during her formative years there was strong possibility she might have developed an eating disorder herself.

‘Oh, I almost forgot, darling. I’ve left a box of your sister’s things, which Connor thought you might like, on my bed. I got John to fetch them down from the attic last night. I’ve had them since...let me see... Yes, Connor must have sent them just after you left for Africa. And I must say I never have been able to understand why you didn’t want me to tell him where you were.’

Despite the broad hint, Phoebe had no intention of explaining. ‘I’m grateful that you didn’t,’ she responded quietly.

‘Well, it wasn’t easy.’

‘Did you look in the box?’

Magda shook her head, though not vigorously enough to spoil her carefully arranged chignon. ‘It would have made me too upset to look. You know how sensitive I am.’ With an expression of vague dissatisfaction she continued
to subject her person to a critical examination in the ornate mirror set over the Adam fireplace.

‘You know what’s missing?’ she mused without pause. ‘Those diamond drops you gave me, darling. These look all wrong with the dress,’ she decided, touching the sybaritic gold hoops clipped in her ears. ‘I won’t be a moment, Paulie.’ She picked up her long skirts and swept majestically from the room.

Paulie cleared his throat. It was obvious that his discomfort was not just attributable to this form of address. ‘She doesn’t mean to be—’

‘I know,’ Phoebe cut in quickly. ‘I realised a long time ago not to expect the normal maternal responses from Magda.’

‘Have you always called your mother Magda?’ Paul asked curiously.

‘If we called her Mum, she always shuddered a lot and mentioned the loss of her identity,’ Phoebe recalled dryly. ‘Besides, she’s not really a mum sort of person, is she?’ Phoebe had learnt a long time ago that you accepted Magda on her terms or not at all because there was no changing her.

Magda’s suitor looked uncomfortable. ‘She does love you in her own way,’ he responded, a shade of defensiveness, which Phoebe thought was sweet, creeping into his voice.

‘Oh, I know that,’ Phoebe replied cheerily. ‘Don’t get me wrong. If someone gave me the option, I wouldn’t want to swop her for a more conventional mum.’ She tactfully didn’t mention that this hadn’t always been the case. ‘Pen and I got all the stability and nurturing we needed from Dad until he died. Mum was this exotic person we saw on special occasions—exciting but unreliable.’ Paul tried not to appear shocked at this blunt assessment—he didn’t succeed.
‘We were in our late teens when we came to live with her after Dad’s death. To be quite honest, we had each other and that was enough.’

‘You must miss your sister very much.’

Phoebe refocused her far-away gaze on Paul’s kindly, good-looking face. ‘I do,’ she admitted simply. The words hadn’t been invented that explained how much. Shying away from the compassion in his eyes, she pinned a bright smile on her face. ‘There are definite plus points to having Magda for your mother.’ She chuckled.

Paul looked amused. ‘And they’d be...?’

‘Where else would you find a mother who wouldn’t ask a single question when her daughter turns up with no warning on her doorstep? Not a single piece of maternal advice was forthcoming, and I can think of several females with over-anxious mothers who would envy me. The only advice I get from Magda is on my wardrobe.’

Her mother had provided a safe bolthole, with no pressure to explain her actions, when Phoebe had needed it. In her own way Magda could be extremely generous so long as that generosity didn’t require any sacrifices on her part!

She was dismayed to note that her attempt at humour hadn’t just failed to extinguish the compassionate gleam in Paul’s eyes—it had intensified it.

‘The best thing Magda ever did for Pen and I was admitting early on that she didn’t possess the...nurturing skills...maternal instincts...whatever you like to call it. She only went along with the idea of starting a family to please Dad.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘I know she took a lot of stick from family and friends when she walked away from a husband and baby daughters, but in the long run it was for the best for us all.’ Phoebe tried hard to be objective, even though every fibre
of her being revolted at the idea of giving up a child of her own body. Society wasn’t sympathetic to women who had done what Magda had.

Seeing Paul’s thoughtful expression, she was satisfied she’d made her point and given him food for thought. She didn’t want anything she’d said to cause friction between the couple.

* * *

The last time Phoebe had visited, Magda’s bedroom had been a miracle of minimalism. Now it was oppressively opulent, a dazzling combination of gilded furniture, velvet, satins, rich brocades and colourful Indian silk prints. For some reason everything seemed to be trimmed with large tassels and there was a lot of gold—gold lamps, gold tables. It wouldn’t have surprised Phoebe to discover her mother had a gold toothbrush. This room might well represent the very latest word in interior design but Phoebe was sure that sleeping here would have given her nightmares.

She approached the cardboard carton on the bed with a mixture of emotions. She wanted to look inside but she was half-afraid that ripping off the taped lid would trigger a kind of regression. She was frightened witless at the prospect of revisiting that black time just after Penny’s death.

She took a deep resolute breath before drawing aside the drapes around the half-tester bed. Despite her stern mental pep-talk, her fingers trembled slightly as she opened the lid.