Starting Over (3 page)

'Mmm...siesta time.' Honor smiled seductively.

Arm in arm they made their way across the grav-elled space that separated the house proper from the outbuildings.

Honor was looking forward to the arrival of David's old friend and mentor and as she walked past the lavender she paused to brush her free hand against its leaves and breathed in the scent she had released.

It was her plan to grow a wide variety of herbs here and to make her own herbals and potions from them.

Olivia reminded her a little of her lavender...

outwardly sturdy and tough but inwardly so sensitive that the merest touch could bruise and damage.

BOBBIE, Luke Crighton's wife, was the first member of the family to hear Olivia's news. She had called at the house knowing that Olivia, Caspar and the girls would have arrived home, eager to learn all about their trip and to see if there was any shopping she could get for Olivia whilst she did her own.

'Mummy's upstairs,' Amelia informed Bobbie as she knocked on the open kitchen door and then walked in.

'Yes, she's packing Daddy's things,' Alex added innocently.

'Dad's staying in Philly...in America....' Amelia supplied and both of them stood and looked at her with such grave-eyed sadness that Bobbie ached to sweep them up into her arms and hold them tight.

'Olivia,' she called out from the bottom of the stairs,

'It's me—Bobbie. Can I come up?'

When Olivia appeared on the landing Bobbie saw from her expression that she hadn't been able to conceal the shock the sight of Olivia had caused her. She had lost weight and her skin looked grey, lifeless, like her eyes. She looked...she looked...Bobbie swallowed painfully. Now it was
Olivia
herself she wanted to hold and comfort.

'The girls have told you, have they?' Olivia guessed tiredly.

'They said something about Caspar staying on in Philadelphia,' Bobbie agreed awkwardly.

'You'd better come up,' Olivia said. 'Caspar and I are separating,' she informed her when Bobbie got to the top of the stairs. 'It's for the best, for
all
of us.

Things haven't been good between us for a long time and...he isn't the man I married, Bobbie...and I...'

Olivia's voice thickened and Bobbie could see the tears standing out in her eyes as sharp as broken glass.

'No,' Olivia denied as Bobbie reached out towards her. 'No. Don't sympathise with me...I don't need it...I'm not sorry. I'm glad. Our marriage just wasn't working,' she told the other woman tensely. 'I think once he got over his initial shock of hearing that I wanted to end it, Caspar was actually relieved.'

As she heard the pain in her own voice Olivia started to frown. Why
should
she feel pain? She didn't love Caspar any more. It was a relief not to have him standing at her shoulder complaining that she spent far too much time at work and far too little with him and the girls. It was a relief, too, to only have her relationship with them to worry about. Now that her father had come back people would be watching her even more closely, waiting to see her fail...fall...

'I know sometimes things happen between a couple that can seem to be very aggravating, small issues really but like a stone in a shoe they can—' Bobbie was saying quietly.

'Small
issues?' Olivia interrupted her with a bitter laugh. 'This isn't about
small
issues, Bobbie. The last time Caspar and I had sex was months ago....'

For a moment Bobbie thought that Olivia was complaining that Caspar would not have sex with
her
but then when Olivia continued angrily, 'I just didn't...I just couldn't...' Bobbie realised her mistake.

'Caspar seemed to think I was just being bloody minded...just withholding myself from him to score points. That's how far apart we've grown,' Olivia burst out. She had started to tremble visibly, her hands moving in quick agitation. 'We had the most awful rows about it. It was so destructive and damaging for the girls. I tried but Caspar...'

'Did you think of trying counselling?' Bobbie asked her softly.

Olivia's pain and despair were almost a visible physical presence in the room with them. She was normally such a calm, contained sort of person, so controlled that Bobbie was shocked by the change in her.

'Counselling!' Olivia gave a mirthless bitter laugh.

'You mean like my
mother
ought to have had? I'm sorry,' she apologised to Bobbie. 'I know...' She stopped speaking, pressing her hand against her mouth as though she were trying to silence herself, Bobbie recognised compassionately.

'It's too late for that now,' Oh via told her. 'Our marriage is over.'

'What will Caspar do?' Bobbie asked her.

'He's taking a sabbatical. He's had it approved by the university that he can take time out from lecturing.

He says he's going to ride around America on a bike, a Harley-Davidson,' Olivia told her derisively. 'It's something he's wanted to do since he was a boy.'

To her own shock she suddenly discovered that she was crying without knowing why.

'Oh, Livvy, Livvy,' she heard Bobbie saying emotionally; but as Bobbie stepped towards her holding out her arms, Olivia backed away shaking her head.

There was so much she needed to do, so many arrangements she needed to make. She wanted to be in her office before eight when she started work on Monday. That would give her an extra hour to start going through the post that would be waiting for her and then, if she brought the rest of it home with her on Monday night, she could read it whilst the girls were in bed. At least now that she didn't have Caspar to consider she would have more time in the evenings to work.

'SOMETHING'S WRONG,' Bobbie told Luke that evening after she had broken the news about Olivia to him.

'Of course something's wrong,' he agreed dryly.

'She's left Caspar.'

'No, I mean apart from that...something's wrong
with
Livvy,' Bobbie persisted. 'She was...different somehow....'

'She's upset. That's only natural.'

Bobbie sighed under her breath. Much as she loved her husband there were times when they just weren't on the same wavelength. Another woman would have understood immediately what she meant.

'I wonder if Jenny knows yet?' Bobbie said. 'She must do, surely. She and Olivia have always been so close.'

Jenny was Jon's wife and she had acted as surrogate mother for Olivia through all her difficult childhood.

Olivia was now a partner in the family legal practice of which Jon was the head.

Quickly Bobbie reached for the phone and dialled Jenny's number.

'What is it? What's wrong?' Jon asked Jenny when she walked into the study looking worried.

'Bobbie's just been on the phone. She went over to see Livvy this afternoon. I would have gone myself but I had a Mums and Babes committee meeting.

Livvy and Caspar have separated. Livvy's come home without him.'

'What!'

Jon's reaction mirrored Jenny's own shock. He started to shake his head.

'I thought they were so happy.'

'They were,' Jenny agreed, 'until David came home....' Try as she might she could not keep the accusatory note out of her voice.

She could see from Jon's face that her words had upset him and she knew, too, that they were unjustified and unfair but she couldn't make herself call them back.

Jon had changed since his brother's return. He seemed almost to live, breathe and think
David
these days. So much so that
she
felt that she was being shut out, excluded almost from his life, which was ridiculous, of course. They had been married for over thirty years and these last years of their marriage had brought them very close, brought a new depth to their marriage...their love.... These last years...the years without David.

But now David was back and Jon wasn't exclusively hers any longer. It was David this and David that. Jenny could see his love for his brother in his eyes, hear it in his voice, every time he spoke his name.

'David isn't responsible for the breakdown of Livvy's marriage. He can't possibly be,' Jon objected.

'Maybe not,' Jenny was forced to concede. 'But he
is
responsible for what Livvy is, Jon...you've said so yourself often enough.'

'Livvy didn't have a very happy childhood,' Jon agreed. 'But that wasn't just down to David....'

Jenny gave a small impatient sigh.

'Before David came home you said yourself that you were concerned about her, that you felt she was working too hard.'

'Yes. She was...is,' Jon acknowledged.

It had disturbed him to discover in her absence just how much extra work Olivia had taken on and quite unnecessarily. Had she said that she needed help, Jon would have seen to it she got some. But she had insisted that she did not, becoming almost angrily defensive. With that kind of workload it was no wonder her marriage was under stress. The locum he had hired to cover the period she was away had not come anywhere near being able to cope and Jon had had to take on some of the extra workload himself and share the rest between Tullah who worked part-time and his daughter Katie who was also part of the family practice.

As Jenny walked past the back of his head without bothering to stop and kiss the top of it as she normally did he hesitated, wanting to reach for her but before he could do so she had gone.

Since David had come back Jon was so involved with him that he hardly seemed to notice she existed, Jenny reflected crossly as he let her walk out of the study without sliding his arm around her waist to give her his usual hug.

She knew how much he loved his elder brother. Did he perhaps envy him a little as well? Did he compare their own staid comfortable marriage with the excitement of David's obviously passionate relationship with his new wife Honor? Honor who was so much more glamorous and exciting than she was herself.

Stop that, Jenny warned herself as she walked into the kitchen. She might have felt inferior to David's first wife, nicknamed Tiggy, the glamorous model, but there was no way she was going to allow history to repeat itself.

The large kitchen seemed so empty now that their family had virtually all grown up.

Of their four children only Joss, the youngest, still lived at home, although soon he would be following Jack to university.

Of course Maddy and the children, her grandchildren, were regular visitors—there was scarcely a day when she didn't see them, but...

Empty nest syndrome they called it, didn't they, when a woman began to suffer the pangs of missing her grown-up children.

Firmly Jenny reminded herself of how fortunate she was—unlike her niece-in-law.

Poor Livvy. Jenny's heart ached for her.

'MADDY. Are you all right?' Max queried anxiously as he caught her indrawn breath and saw the way her hand lifted to the pregnant mound of her belly.

'It's nothing,' Maddy assured him. 'I just felt a bit nauseous.'

'Come and sit down,' Max instructed her, shaking his head when she insisted that she was all right.

This fourth pregnancy which they had both greeted with such joy was tiring her far more than Max remembered the previous three doing and he cursed himself for allowing her to become pregnant again when she already had three children to look after plus his elderly grandfather.

He would have a quiet word with his mother and ask her to keep an eye on Maddy for him, make sure she wasn't overdoing things.

'Livvy was due home today,' Maddy commented.

The sickness had subsided now, thank goodness. The last thing she wanted was for Max to start worrying, fussing.

'I know they've only been away for a matter of weeks but so much has happened that it feels as though it's been much longer,' Maddy continued.

'Mmm...'

'I wonder how she's going to cope with having her father back? Honor says that David is desperate to heal the breach between them but that he feels he owes it to Livvy not to force anything on her.'

'Give it time,' Max counselled her. 'David's return has been a shock for all of us but especially so for Olivia.'

Maddy was just about to remark that her concern for Olivia, his cousin, wasn't limited to her troubled relationship with her father. She was also uncomfortably aware of the sentiments and grievances about his marriage that Caspar had once revealed to her—but just as she was about to speak a fresh sickening wave of nausea struck her.

It was probably nothing, she assured herself. She was due to visit the antenatal clinic—an overdue visit, in fact, since she had had to miss her last appointment because Ben had not been feeling well. Her swollen ankles and the fact that she felt so nauseous and tired were nothing to worry about. Why should they be?

She had not experienced any problems with her other three pregnancies.

'YOU'VE DONE
WHAT?'
Sara's father laughed as she held the telephone receiver closer to her ear and explained to him just what had happened.

'...and you'll never guess what,' she continued.

'Some of the Crighton clan are booked in for dinner tonight so I shall get a first-hand view of the "enemy.

'I've told you before, you've only heard one side of the story,' her father reminded her forthrightly.

'I don't care. If only half what Grandmamma Tania has told me is true then they treated her abominably.'

On the other end of the telephone line Richard Lanyon suppressed a rueful sigh. His daughter was very much inclined to champion lost causes and underdogs and he just hoped that life wouldn't strip her of too many of her ideals and illusions.

Privately he considered his father's second wife to be an almost naively childlike but totally selfish woman. His father adored her and protected her but he sometimes found her irritating and exasperating.

'Well, I'd caution you against trying to slay too many dragons,' he warned Sara drolly now.

'I won't,' she agreed. 'But it's time someone took the Crightons down a peg or two. Enjoy your holiday,'

she added warmly.

Her father was an architect and he and her mother owned a villa on a luxury complex in the Caribbean which he had helped to design. Sara knew she could have gone with them and enjoyed a long holiday at their expense but she had too much pride and independence to do so. She had chosen teaching as her career because she wanted to help others and in her book the gift of education was one of the most precious that could be given; but the realities of modern day teaching were eroding her ideals and dreams.