PENNY JORDAN - Phantom Marriage

‘What was I supposed to do?’ she asked in a bitter, low voice. ‘I couldn’t put the clock back, I…’

‘So you scuttled off into a nice, safe marriage?’

Colour burned along her cheekbones, her fingernails digging into the palms of her hands. She would never, never have agreed to this weekend if she had had the slightest suspicion that James was going to be there. How on earth was she going to endure it? Especially if he was going to keep taunting her with these barbed remarks.

Simon distracted her attention excitedly, pointing out some sheep grazing in a field. They had turned on to the M4 and were travelling west.

To Tara’s surprise, just after twelve James pulled off the motorway and took a minor road which wound its way down a narrow B-road bordered by high hedges laced with early summer flowers.

‘I told Sue that I’d give you lunch,’ he explained, answering Tara’s unspoken question. ‘The house is a large one and although she does have some help she and Alec go down there primarily to relax.’

Before Tara could object he turned into an immaculate drive, marked ‘Country Club—members only.’

‘Relax,’ she was instructed. ‘I’m a member and they’ve been warned to expect us. I own a house locally myself, although at the moment it’s occupied by some American friends of mine.’

The country club had once been a farmhouse and the large barn had been converted into an attractive restaurant with high oriel windows set along the length of it and a separate bar inside which occupied a galleried landing.

The twins were entranced, as much by the novelty of eating out as by their surroundings. Mandy gravely confided to James, as she attached herself to his side, that it was just as well she had worn her best dress.

The comment invited a response, and Tara’s unwary heart lurched when James bent his head equally gravely and said, ‘You look very pretty in it. Blue suits you.’

‘Mummy chose it,’ Mandy informed him, visibly expanding. ‘I normally wear jeans ‘cos they’re more fun to play in. Have you got any children?’ she asked him forthrightly. She was at that stage when the niceties of curbing personal questions were ignored and seemed to have developed a thirst for knowledge about other people’s private lives.

‘Mandy…’ Tara warned, but James silenced her, lifting his eyebrows and saying smoothly. ‘Regrettably, no.’

Hypocrite, Tara thought resentfully as they were escorted to a table. He didn’t want any children, any responsibility for lives other than his own.

However, despite his lack of parental experience he was very adroit at ordering suitable food for the twins and keeping them occupied while they waited for their meal to arrive. Like Tara herself, their school believed strongly in the importance of good manners, and Tara felt a small thrill of pride at the way Simon and Mandy adapted to their surroundings. They were drawing admiring smiles from other diners, and one woman en route to her table stopped off to speak to James, whom she obviously knew, staring rather hard at Tara and the twins.

‘Margot, let me introduce Tara and the twins to you. Tara is an old schoolfriend of Sue’s. Margot is one of Sue’s neighbours,’ James explained. ‘Like you, she’s a widow.’

‘Only I don’t have any children, darling,’ the other woman pointed out, eyeing the twins unfavourably.

She was somewhere in her late thirties, Tara estimated, although she concealed the fact well, but in her job Tara had become adept at judging what lay beneath the most skilfully applied make-up. She was also subtly warning her that James was strictly private property, Tara acknowledged. She could have him, she thought vehemently, pushing away her sweet untouched and refusing to acknowledge the swiftly stabbing pain their relationship brought, and dismissing the nauseous feeling in her stomach as the result of too much to eat.

Watching the waiter’s deferential attitude towards James, Tara was vividly reminded of the one and only occasion they had dined out together. It had been Sue’s fifteenth birthday; and she had been dizzy with delight when he announced that he had booked a table at a locally acclaimed restaurant. Even the knowledge that Sue was to accompany them had done nothing to dissipate her mother’s disapproval, Tara remembered. She also remembered the brief kiss James had pressed on her untried lips before pushing her out of the car when he took her home. That kiss had changed everything between them.

‘Physically the twins aren’t like you at all.’ James’s cool observation cut across the disturbing memories of the past. ‘They must take after their father.’

Her fork clattered noisily on to the floor as an abrupt movement dislodged it. Her face the colour of the tablecloth, Tara bent to retrieve it, glad of the opportunity to escape James’s too seeing eyes.

‘Do they?’

Was he blind? she wondered hysterically. Could he really not see in the twins’ features the many resemblances to himself that struck her every day?

‘Strange,’ he mused, frowning a little. ‘They remind me of someone.’

Tara thought her heart would stop beating, but somehow she managed to shrug noncommittally, turning away to urge the children to finish their meal.

‘Did I know him?’ There was a terse urgency in the question that caught her off guard.

‘I…’

‘You met him when you went to stay with your aunt and uncle, or so I heard in the village. It must have been a whirlwind courtship,’ he sneered, glancing meaningfully at the twins. ‘Or did you afford him the same privileges I once thought belonged exclusively to me?’

If they hadn’t been in public there was no way she could have prevented herself from hitting him. As it was, it was only by a supreme effort of will that she was able to prevent herself from screaming the truth at him.

With that one sentence he had managed to destroy the last fragile, lingering remnants of her romantic daydreams; beliefs she had clung to without even being aware that she was doing so. His words forced her to admit that what for her had been the experience of a lifetime had for him been nothing more than the gratification of momentary lust, otherwise he could never have spoken to her as he just had.

From somewhere she mustered the dignity to say calmly, ‘The personal relationship I enjoyed with the twins’ father is something very precious to me, and I don’t discuss it with anyone.’

‘Including your children,’ James pointed out astutely. ‘I don’t think I’ve heard them mention him once. Did you love him so much that you can’t even bear to share his memory with his children? You did love him, I suppose? Unless my memory deceives me you were an extremely sensual creature; hot-blooded, shall we say,’ he added drily, his mouth twisting, ‘but with a certain prudishness curiously at odds with your real personality. I suppose in those circumstances it wouldn’t have been impossible for you to marry young; to legalise those desires of which your mother had taught you to be so ashamed.’

Tara was relieved that the twins were too engrossed in their own conversation and their surroundings to pay any attention to them. Where her face had been pale, now it was hotly flushed, words of bitter denial trembling on her lips, but all she could manage was a fierce, choked, ‘I did love him, and you have no right to say such things!’

‘No right?’ His laughter was bitterly harsh. ‘My God, you can say that, when…’ He broke off as Mandy suddenly claimed his attention, and not wanting to prolong the conversation, Tara hustled both children out of their seats, saying feverishly that it was time they were on their way.

James unlocked the car and made sure the twins were comfortable in the back, but when Tara would have joined them he forestalled her again, firmly closing the door and then reaching past her to unlock the passenger door.