Lucy Gordon - The Diamond Dad

'You!' Garth Clayton said in a stunned voice. 'What are you doing here?'

Faye, his estranged wife, faced him with her head up. Inwardly she was thinking, Two years, and he still hasn't forgiven me! Will that make it easier, or harder, to do what I have to?

'Aren't you going to invite me in?' she asked.

He didn't move. 'When you left this house you swore that you'd never come back.'

'We both said a lot of angry things on that night, but we didn't mean them.'

'I meant every word,' he said, unyielding.

He seemed older than his thirty-five years, she thought. There was a new darkness in his brown eyes and fine lines at the corners that hadn't been there before. He looked as though he lived on his nerves, neither eating nor sleeping enough. But he would always be a tall, handsome man, whose sensual, mobile mouth had once thrilled her, even though that mouth now had a look of strain and bitterness.

Faye knew that she, too, had altered. The gauche teenager of their wedding day had become a mother of two children with a mind of her own and enough strength to stand up to her husband's forceful personality. These days she had a poise and confidence that was reflected in the strong colours she wore, replacing the delicate hues of a few years ago.

'I've come to talk,' she said.

He stood back to let her pass. She could feel his eyes on her, taking in the new short crop of her light brown hair. She wasn't expensively dressed, but she had a tall, slender figure that made everything look good. Her russet suit with its gilt buttons looked stylish, suggesting a woman who was at ease with herself.

He indicated the living room and Faye was a little surprised to find it just as she remembered. Garth had been so angry when she left that she'd pictured him wiping out all traces of her, but everything was the same. This was where they'd had their final quarrel, when she'd tried vainly to make him understand why she had to escape him.

'A drink?' he asked.

'No thank you. I'm driving.'

His eyebrows raised a little. 'You've learned to drive?'

'Yes, I found it quite easy.'

'When you had an instructor who could keep calm,' he finished wryly.

'That helped,' she admitted.

Their very first vehicle had been a shabby third-hand truck to get Garth started as a builder. Later, when the money had flowed freely, he'd bought her an expensive car and had tried to teach her to drive, but it had been a disaster. She'd lacked the confidence to try again, and when she fled she'd left the car behind.

Disturbing feelings began to play back. Perhaps she shouldn't have come to this luxurious house, which he'd built 'for her' but which reflected his own tastes. Here, she'd shared a bed with Garth but nothing else, and she'd always disliked the place. Yet she'd smothered her true feelings, as so often in her marriage, and pretended delight to please her husband.

That, however, was in the past. Their marriage was over in all but name. She was her own woman now.

Once her heart had beat with eager anticipation at the thought of seeing Garth Clayton. With his dark hair, vivid looks and lithe grace, he'd seemed almost godlike to the eighteen-year-old Faye. He'd worked on a building site that she'd passed every day on her way to work in a dress shop. Sometimes she would stop and regard him from a distance, admiring the way he leaped over the scaffolding, never afraid of the drop, or lifted heavy weights as though they were nothing.

She was so innocent that she hardly recognized her admiration for his splendid body as the flickering of desire. She only knew that she had to make him notice her. When at last he winked at her, she blushed deeply and scurried away to the shop. For the rest of the day she was nearly useless, having to be recalled from a trance when someone spoke to her, and giving customers the wrong change. Her boss spoke sharply, but Faye barely heard. She was in seventh heaven.

He was waiting for her at the wire next morning. 'Didn't mean to upset you yesterday,' he said gruffly.

'You didn't. I was just-surprised.'

'Surprised? A pretty girl like you?'

Bliss! He'd called her pretty.

They went to the cinema but to her disappointment he didn't kiss her, only brushed her hand against his cheek. She was wretched, sure that he found her boring. But he asked her out again, and on the third date he kissed her. She thought there couldn't be more happiness than that in the world.

But there was. The memory of their first lovemaking could still bring tears to her eyes. The young Garth had vigour rather than subtlety but he was kind and gentle, treating her as something precious.

'Don't go yet,' he begged as she got dressed.

'I have to. I'll miss my last bus.'

'I'll come home with you. I don't want to say goodbye.'

'But there's no bus back,' she said, loving him for not wanting to say goodbye.

In the end he came to the stop with her and held her close until the bus appeared. She sat at the back so that she could watch him standing in the road with his hands stretched up to the glass. And when the bus moved off he stayed there, his eyes fixed on her until she turned the corner.

When they weren't making love, they talked. He told her how he dreamed of being his own boss, a builder with a little business that would grow. For him, the sky was the limit. Faye couldn't remember discussing what she wanted from life. But then, all she wanted was him.

When she told him she was pregnant he said, 'I've got a week free between jobs next month. We'll use that for our honeymoon.'

'Honeymoon?' she echoed joyfully. 'You mean-get married?'

'Of course we're going to get married!'

She was too happy to care that he told her, not asked her. She wanted to be his wife more than anything in the world. They were married in a register office and spent a week by the sea in a borrowed caravan that had seen better days. With almost no money, there was little to do except walk hand in hand on the beach, eat whatever was cheap, and love, and love, and love. It was a time of unspoiled bliss and she was sure that their marriage would be a success.

But that was when she was an innocent who believed love was for ever, before the discovery of Garth's true character and the gradual destruction of all that gave her happiness. Now they'd reached the end of the road, and she'd come driving through the darkness to Elm Ridge to confront him.

He followed her into the living room and stood waiting for her to begin. The air was alive with tension and she knew this was going to be harder than she'd thought. To give herself a moment she slipped off her jacket, revealing a sleeveless olive-green shirt, adorned by a chain.

Garth studied that chain. Solid gold if he was any judge. Simple, yet very costly. Not something she would have bought for herself, nor one of his own gifts, most of which she'd left behind.

Her perfume was elusive, like woodsmoke drifting on the breeze. It had a subtlety that told him more clearly than anything else that he no longer knew this woman.

'You sure picked your moment to come calling,' he said. 'I was about to go to bed.'

'I left it late to give you time to get home from work. I hope I haven't interrupted you when you have company.'

'A woman? No, that was one accusation even you were never able to throw at me, although apparently I was every other kind of villain.'

'I never said that, Garth. It was just that I couldn't live with you any more.'

'So you claimed. I never quite understood why.'