Starting Over (31 page)

'But...it was difficult....'

'I can appreciate that,' Frances had comforted her.

'Conflicting loyalties always are. We shall be very sorry to lose you, Sara.'

'I have to go,' was all Sara had been able to say.

Tania was complaining that Sara's arrival was delaying them from going out to dinner and as she listened to her and witnessed her grandfather's attempts to placate her, for the first time Sara could see why her father was not a big fan of his father-in-law's second wife.

'It's okay, I'm not staying.' She managed to smile at Tania. 'It's just a brief visit.' She took a deep breath.

'I'm going to fly out to join Mum and Dad.'

'Oh, you really are the most lucky girl,' Tania told her enviously. 'I wish I had had your opportunities at your age, Sara dear. Your father is so lucky to have an apartment in such a prestigious place. All those wealthy men... If you play your cards right I'm sure you could end up with a millionaire for a husband.'

Sara closed her eyes swallowing down the nausea Tania's comments were evoking. The mere thought of any man, any man at all in her life and her bed who wasn't Nick made her skin crawl with horror and her heart ache with a pain so unbearable it made her want to scream that there would
never
be a husband for her now... nor a lover, either...

She knew that both her parents, but especially her father, were against her desire to work for one of the overseas aid agencies.

'It will break your body and your spirit,' her father had already told her brutally. 'Take it from me, Sara, you're far too soft-hearted. Even if you manage to escape going down with some debilitating and potentially life-threatening disease, you've still got to overcome the emotional trauma you're bound to suffer.'

But she had to do something and the only thing she could think of was to lose herself and her pain in the hardest and most gruelling kind of work she could possibly find.

But the reason she was flying out to the Caribbean wasn't simply to persuade her parents to accept her plans for her future. If she stayed at home she wasn't sure she could trust herself not to weaken and get in touch with Nick. Crawl to him...beg him...plead with him to take her back in his arms and back to his bed....

'JENNY
, is that you?'

'Caspar.' Jenny's voice betrayed her surprise as she recognised Olivia's husband's voice. Why on earth was he telephoning
her?

'I just thought I'd ring to see how Livvy and the girls are,' Caspar told her answering Jenny's unvoiced question.

'They're fine—so far as I know,' Jenny responded cautiously, unable to resist adding, 'why don't you ring Olivia yourself, Caspar. I'm sure—'

'No. No,' Caspar cut her off abruptly, adding, 'and, Jenny, please don't tell Livvy that I rang. I don't want her to think that I'm—'

'...worrying about her?' Jenny supplied gently for him.

'Interfering in her life,' Caspar corrected her firmly.

'Look, I've got to go,' he told her and then, before Jenny could say anything else, he had ended the call.

'Who was that?' Jon asked Jenny, walking into the kitchen just as she was replacing the receiver.

'Caspar,' Jenny told him. 'He rang to ask if Livvy and the girls were all right.'

'Really... You know I can't help thinking how sad it is that those two....' Jon stopped and shook his head, coming over to where Jenny was standing.

'We've been so lucky in our marriage, Jenny. Or rather, I've been so lucky to have you. I hate to think what my life would have been like without you in it.'

He protested as he saw her tears, 'What is it?

What's wrong?'

'I don't know,' Jenny admitted weepily. 'It's just that so much seems to have gone wrong recently and I'd begun to think...to fear...' She stopped.

'You'd begun to fear what?' Jon encouraged her.

'Well, since David came back sometimes I've felt as though you'd rather be with him than with me....'

There, it was out at last, the fear that had been tormenting her.

'How
could
you think that?' Jon asked her in disbelief.

'David
is
your twin brother,' Jenny reminded him.

'And you are my
wife,
my
love,
my best friend, my
soul mate,'
Jon told her emotionally.

'Yes, I love David. Yes, I'm glad that he's come back, and yes, I'm glad that he and I are rediscovering our twinship, but there's no way what I feel for David could ever come anywhere
near
what I feel for you... what you mean to me...what our love and our lives together mean to me, Jenny. You are my life and without you...' He stopped and shook his head. 'I knew
something
was wrong but I thought it was because you were concerned about Maddy...because you...'

'I was,' Jenny admitted. 'But I feel so silly admitting to jealousy at my age, Jon, and of your
brother,
but...I've even begun to wonder if perhaps you envy David. There he is, with a new relationship and a new baby on the way....'

At any other time the astonishment on Jon's face would have made her smile.

'Me
envy
David?'
he protested. 'Oh, Jenny, how could you possibly think
that?
If anything, I've been feeling sorry for him. I know he loves Honor—I can see how happy they are together—and of course I'm pleased for them about the baby, but we've
done
those things,
shared
those experiences.

'I thank God that you and I will never know the guilt that the alienation between himself and Olivia is causing David. That I will
never
suffer the regrets I
know
he suffers.
You
are the most wonderful thing that
ever
happened to me, Jenny, the most precious gift life could ever give me...you and our children.'

Such emotional words from a man who was normally so reticent about voicing his feelings told Jenny how genuine and heartfelt they were.

'I've been such an idiot,' she told him ruefully.

'No. I'm the one who's been that,' Jon corrected her. 'For not realising what you were feeling. But now that I do, I intend to ensure that you don't have any more doubts.'

'Jon,' Jenny protested a little breathlessly as he took her in his arms and proceeded to kiss her with very obvious enjoyment. But it was only a token protest and one it seemed her newly masterful husband found relatively easy to ignore.

DAVID WOKE UP
with a start, automatically reaching out for Honor, only she wasn't there.... And then he remembered. He was at Olivia's house sleeping in her spare room. Groggily he looked at the luminous dial of his watch. It was four o'clock in the morning. He frowned as he heard something, a noise of some sort...someone crying.

Throwing back the bedclothes he got up and went to the door. The noise was coming from Olivia's room.

Quickly he hurried across the landing and pushed open her bedroom door.

Olivia was moving restlessly in her sleep, muttering as she tossed and turned. Anxiously David went over to her. Even before he touched her he could see that the fever was burning through her. She started to cough, a harsh racking sound that made his own chest feel painfully tight. His eyes burned with dry unshed tears for all the times when she was growing up when he had either not been there for her or oblivious to her need.

One of Livvy's hands lay on top of the bedclothes.

Very gently David clasped it between his own. Despite her fever it felt cold. Tenderly he started to massage it. How had he managed to be such a blind failure of a father? How had he managed not to see and feel the uniqueness of his children, not to be awed and humbled by their specialness, not to realise the magnitude, the munificence that a child's love for its parent was?

That a child
was,
quite literally, a gift of love.

And Olivia
was
his child, just as Jack was...just as this new baby would be. Each of them unique and uniquely loved by Mm. He had caused Olivia so much pain, done so much harm. Irreparably so? He prayed not.

OLIVIA STARTED
to relax as her troubled unhappy dream started to fade and be replaced by something much happier. She was with Caspar. They were walking hand in hand and just being with him filled her with so much love and happiness.

'Caspar...'

David frowned as he heard Olivia saying her husband's name. She was smiling and the restless movement of her body had ceased. He even thought that her temperature might have dropped a little.

'Caspar.'

He felt her hand curl in his own as she repeated her husband's name in a tender little voice, a soft breath of sound that revealed to his paternal ear just what she felt; and then she was opening her eyes, looking at him, her realisation and her disappointment that he wasn't Caspar clouding them before she could conceal her expression.

'Oh, it's you,' she said bleakly, trying to remove her hand from his grip and turning her head away.

Olivia could feel the heat of the salt tears she was furiously trying to suppress. The stark contrast between her dream and her reality was almost too painful for her to bear. What was her dream trying to tell her—that Caspar was far more important to her than she had allowed herself to admit?

Fretfully she moved her head on the pillow.

But their marriage had broken down—irretrievably.

They both knew that.

At the side of the bed David was saying ruefully,

'The last time I did this you were six years old and covered in spots.'

Olivia stiffened.

'I had chicken pox,' she told him. 'But you weren't there....'

'Yes, I was, Olivia,' David corrected her quietly.

'You'd gone away somewhere with grandfather,'

she insisted.

'I came back,' David checked her. 'Jon rang me and told me—' He stopped.

'Uncle Jon told you what?' Olivia demanded.

David paused before saying reluctantly, 'He told me that you were...crying for me.'

'Me...crying for you?' Olivia's face burned with angry colour. 'Even at six I knew better than to do that. So far as you were concerned I was just a nui-sance and I wasn't even the right sex.... You never loved me...never wanted me....'

David closed his eyes. So much of what she was saying was true but... If only he could find a way of getting through to her.

On her bedside table he saw a photograph of Caspar holding Alex—a very tiny baby—with Amelia tucked under his spare arm.

'I can still remember the night you were born,' he told Olivia quietly. 'Your mother...' His eyes clouded a little. Tiggy, furiously resentful about their move to Cheshire and illogically blaming it on the baby she was carrying had flatly refused to acknowledge that the pain she was having meant that Olivia was about to arrive. They had been due to spend the evening with another couple, a rich financier and his wife who were very much a part of the Cheshire set and Tiggy had been determined not to miss their dinner party.

In the end, though, they had had to. Her waters had broken and she had been forced to admit that they could not possibly atttend.

'Damn this wretched baby,' she had screamed at him in temper David remembered sadly. 'And damn you to hell, too, David Crighton.'

She had refused to allow him to stay in the delivery room with her and David could remember the long agonising wait he had had until he had finally been told that Olivia had been born.

'She's a little bit bruised,' the doctor had told David. 'Mum seemed reluctant to part with her.' He had laughed as though it were a joke, but David knew how shocked he had been when he had seen Olivia's bruised face.

He had wanted to pick her up and hold her, but the nurse had clucked almost disapprovingly making him feel that his presence was an unwelcome intrusion.

'Tiggy what?' Olivia's voice cut sharply and accusingly across his thoughts. 'Tiggy didn't want me any more than you did? I already know that I was an accident.... I'm surprised you didn't suggest that Tiggy had a termination.' She tensed when she saw the anger in his eyes.

'What is it?' she challenged him. 'Did you... Did you?' Olivia was repeating.

'No, I didn't,' he told her sternly, both shocked and saddened at what she was saying, what she must be feeling—must have felt all her life!

'Neither of us
ever
considered that even for a minute, Olivia.'

'But once I was born, you didn't want me—you didn't love me!'

It was a statement and not a question.

David shook his head, unable to explain fully to her just how he had felt.

'I haven't been a good father to you, Livvy, and for that...' David drew in a harsh breath. 'For that I shall never cease to feel guilty. But you are my child...my daughter...and you are very precious to me.'

As she searched his face David held her gaze and his own breath. Olivia didn't know what to think.

Somehow just talking to him like this had shifted the whole focus of her own feelings. She couldn't say that she forgave him for her childhood or even that she understood, but somehow her bitterness and sense of pain had softened, loosening its stranglehold of her emotions.... Somehow she felt she could look at the past in a gentler and less harsh light.

'Love doesn't always manifest itself in the way we expect,' David was telling her slowly. 'The girls miss their father,' he informed her almost abruptly, taking a deep breath before he asked her, 'Do you still love him, Livvy?'

Livvy. For the first time since she had grown up, Olivia actually found that she didn't get that familiar rush of resentment and bitterness when he used the shortened form of her name.

'No...I don't know.... Yes,' she acknowledged helplessly when he continued to look at her. Tears filled her eyes.

'But it just wasn't working. Caspar didn't understand how I felt. He was always accusing me of being more concerned about the past and you and Gramps than I was about him and the girls. But that just wasn't true.

'I needed him to understand, to help me, not criticise me.' Her eyes filled with tears and she turned her head away from him, but slowly she found she was telling him about her feelings, her marriage, her fears and her pain and that it seemed the most natural thing in the world to do so.