Penny Jordan - Tug Of Love

She knew how untidy and unappealing everything looked, including her, Win admitted to herself, but she was so tired all the time, and besides, what was the point? James was never there, and when he was…When he was, it seemed to her that he didn’t want to be with her. She saw the way he looked at her sometimes, frowning as he studied her, no doubt wondering why on earth he had married her, she thought miserably.

No doubt he would have preferred to be married to someone like Tara—someone who was far too clever to become accidentally pregnant, someone who, like him, had been to university, who had a career. Well, she could have gone to university as well if she hadn’t met him.

She had seen two of her old schoolfriends in town the other day, and they had been astonished to see that she was pregnant—astonished and pitying.

With her mother’s help, she got the house tidy and washed her hair. Her back ached so much that she was tempted to have it cut short, but James had once told her that he loved its thick length, as he wound it around her throat and kissed her through it.

Tears blurred her eyes. What had happened to them, to their love?

It had been gone four o’clock in the afternoon when James came home. Win had seen the relief, the pleasure almost in his eyes when he took in the tidy house and her cleanly washed hair. He had come towards her, putting his arms around her, nuzzling her ear, and that had been when she had smelled the strong perfume on him. She had become acutely conscious of different smells during her pregnancy, and there was no mistaking this one. It was Tara’s.

She had pushed him away from her immediately, her face red with anguish as she yelled at him, ‘Don’t touch me! Just don’t touch me!’

It had been less than a month after that that she had gone into early labour and Charlie had been born, while James was away—with Tara.

He hadn’t even seen Charlie until he was over a day old. Win remembered how he had frowned at the baby, almost reluctant to look at him, never mind pick him up, and how he had turned away when she had started to feed him.

She had ached for him to show her some affection, to reassure her that he still loved her and that he loved their child, but none had been forthcoming.

She had wanted to have Charlie’s cot in their room next to their bed, but James had insisted on banishing him to his nursery. When Charlie developed gastro-enteritis she had screamed furiously at James that it was his fault, that if she had been allowed to have Charlie next to her, as she had wanted, he wouldn’t have become ill.

She had known the moment she said it that she was being unfair, but it was too late to call back the words, and besides, what difference would it have made? James no longer loved her; she was sure of that.

Confirmation that she was right came six months later, when James did not come home at all one night.

Halfway through the morning the phone rang. Win recognised Tara’s smooth-as-cream voice immediately.

‘If you’ve been worrying about James, there’s no need,’ she told Win smoothly. ‘He spent last night with me…’ She paused delicately and then added, ‘you do understand what I’m saying, don’t you, Win?’

Win had replaced the receiver without answering. Sickness filled her body, her head pounded with pain, while her heart ached with the most acute anguish she had ever experienced. She had put Charlie in his pram and walked him for miles, the tears running down her face, and then when James came home she had told him she wanted a divorce.

He had tried to argue with her, but she refused to listen to him, or to mention his affair with Tara. She had too much pride for that—too much pride and too much pain.

She had realised when she’d listened to Tara’s revelations just how much she actually did love him. Too much, she acknowledged as she kept her back to him and repeated her demand for a divorce.

Oddly, her family counselled her against her decision, pointing out that she had Charlie to consider now, but she had been adamant, demanding that James move out of the house immediately and then refusing to see him.

The sound of a plane overhead brought her sharply out of her thoughts. She moved uncomfortably in her seat, frowning a little. It had been a long time since she had allowed herself to recall so much of the past, to think about it so deeply. Normally the moment any old memories of her brief marriage surfaced she pushed them aside, suppressing them, and now with adult hindsight she was uncomfortably aware of how very immature she had been, how very selfish and spoiled in some ways.

Her frown deepened as she dwelt on this new image of her younger self, surveying it with the maturity and knowledge she had gained in the years that had passed.

Her family had been right; she had been too young for marriage and for motherhood. Now, for instance, there was no way she would not immediately question the kind of hours James had claimed he had to work; no way she would behave with such childish petulance and such short-sightedness, no way she would allow her pride and self-respect to become so diminished that she neglected herself or her home, no way she would not leap at the opportunity to broaden her horizons.

No way, either, that she would become so totally engrossed in her child that she didn’t merely neglect its father, but virtually abandoned him as well.

Win moved uncomfortably in her seat. It was odd how plainly she could see now how her own actions must have contributed to the rifts that had developed between them.

James hadn’t been ready for the commitment of children. He hadn’t wanted Charlie. In fact, she suspected with hindsight that all he had wanted was simply a sexual relationship with her, and that because of this he had convinced himself that he loved her.

Whatever the original reasons for their marriage, it was over now, and had in fact never really existed. The kind of relationship she and James had shared was certainly not what she now considered to be the kind of relationship she wanted with a man.

She had been so subservient, so clinging, so pathetic in many ways. She would never be like that now. Motherhood had changed her, forcing her to put someone else’s needs before her own.

As the youngest of the family, she had been indulged. Her brothers had sometimes treated her more like a pet dog than a fellow human being, she reflected wryly, and that was as much her fault as theirs.

They didn’t do so now.

Win smiled to recall how surprised they had been by the way she had changed, by her new authority, her new awareness of herself and others, her calm claiming of her right to their respect as well as their love. No, she would never make the mistakes again that she had made with James the next time.

The next time…Win’s heart thumped heavily. She still hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell Charlie that Tom had proposed to her. She hadn’t even made her own mind up whether or not she intended to accept him.

She liked him; she admired his drive and what he had achieved, even if sometimes his aggression and occasional lack of sensitivity made her wince. What she had no doubts about at all was the fact that he loved her.

Did she love him?

She stared at the skyline. Three months ago, while Charlie was away on a school trip—finding time to be alone together with a sharp-eyed thirteen-year-old about was, she had discovered, virtually impossible—she and Tom had made love.

For her it had been the first time since James. Perhaps it was because she was older, wiser, less inclined to see things through rose-coloured glasses that the experience had somehow not really lived up to her expectations.