Alison Fraser - The Strength Of Desire

She realised the inadequacy of her words even before Maxine looked at her with accusing eyes. ‘Are you? You never wanted me to go places with him.’

Hope remained silent. It was true enough. In fact, after a year of Jack letting Maxine down with a string of broken promises, Hope had deliberately put an end to the relationship.

‘That’s Katie,’ Maxine added as the doorbell downstairs rang. ‘We’re going to do our homework together. I’d better let her in.’

‘Yes, OK.’ Hope blinked a little as her daughter disappeared downstairs to greet her best friend. She heard them laughing in the hallway. From utter misery to girlish giggles in one short move.

How wonderful it would be to be twelve again. To forget so easily. To live in the present. To be free of the past.

Hope had never quite managed it. She was thirty-two next birthday, and had spent twelve years on her own, yet she was still haunted by the past, still tortured by a sense of failure…

She was six months pregnant and miserable. She had read that women bloomed in similar circumstances but she seemed to have wilted. Jack was fed up with her. She didn’t blame him. She was fed up with herself.

“There’s no choice,’ Jack said for the hundredth time as they drove down to Cornwall. ‘It would have been different if your pregnancy was straightforward, but, with your iron-levels, you’d be fainting all over the place. You can’t come on tour with me and you can’t stay at home.’

‘I could have stayed with Vicki,’ Hope lamented, still hoping that Jack might change his mind.

‘Vicki,’ Jack repeated her best friend’s name, ‘is a nice kid, but, be honest, how much use would she be in a crisis? She is the original dizzy blonde.’

Hope bristled silently, but couldn’t deny the truth of it. Vicki had been enormous fun at boarding-school and a good friend since. Catering for the needs of a pregnant woman, however, wasn’t one of her talents.

‘Anyway, Vicki’s asked if she can come on the tour,’ Jack reminded her. ‘I don’t know if she’ll be much help, but, as a favour to you, I’ve agreed.’

‘All right,’ Hope sighed, resigned to her fate.

Three months staying in the wilds of Cornwall with Jack’s mother. That she didn’t mind. It was the fact that the lady also happened to be brother Guy’s mother. Did this mean she might have regular contact with him?

She had not seen Guy Delacroix since their first meeting. He had been as good as his word and not attended their wedding, although his mother had.

In her late fifties, Caroline Delacroix had seemed younger. Her hair was silvery-blonde and her face, despite signs of aging, still had an English-rose bloom to it. She was a sharp, intelligent woman, without being an intellectual, and she spoke her mind.

‘I don’t suppose you’re going to listen to me, but I think you’re probably too young and certainly too good for my son,’ she’d finally announced, after they’d taken tea together.

Already liking the woman, Hope hadn’t been too upset by her comments. ‘Your other son’s already said the same. Well, the too young part, anyway.’

‘Yes, I understand Guy tried to warn you,’ Caroline had confirmed, ‘and that you and he didn’t exactly hit it off.’

‘Not so you’d notice.’ Hope had made a slight face. ‘What did he say?’

‘Nothing much. Just that you were “bloody impossible”,’ his mother had confided, but with an amused air that softened any offence. ‘With Guy, that could be a compliment. He doesn’t like women who fall over themselves to please him. Unfortunately, most do.’

‘Well, this one won’t,’ Hope had vowed then to Caroline Delacroix, and vowed now, as she travelled down to the Delacroix family home in Cornwall.

It was actually her first visit. Jack’s mother had come to London to meet her before the wedding, and, almost straight after it, had disappeared on a two-month tour of China. On her return, she’d stopped over briefly in London, issuing an invitation for Hope to come down to Cornwall any time she liked. But Jack’s work schedule had precluded even a weekend trip, and Hope’s only recent contact with her mother-in-law had been over the telephone. The older woman had been pleased at the prospect of being a grandmother, and had willingly agreed to her spending the final months of her pregnancy in Cornwall, but Hope still felt she was intruding when they finally drove up to the Delacroix family home.

It was called Heron’s View, and Hope could immediately see why. It sat on a clifftop overlooking the Atlantic and was the most wonderful house she had ever seen. It was a house from a fairy-story, with turrets and towers, walled gardens and secret places. It was large and imposing without being grandiose or ostentatious. It suggested a bygone era, of the years before the First World War, when large families were the norm, and Hope could imagine voices of children echoing through the twists and turns of the many stone passages.

‘It belonged to my father’s family. There were seven of them, and he inherited as the eldest,’ Caroline relayed as they stood in the hall which was at the centre of the house, with rooms leading off and a wide staircase leading up. ‘He, in turn, gave it to my eldest sister who never married. She died a couple of years ago.’

‘Is that when you moved in?’ Hope quizzed.

‘Oh, no, I’ve always lived here—’ Caroline smiled round the shabby hall with pleasure ‘—apart from the ten years I spent in France. I returned with the boys here. My father gave it to Hetty because he felt I was secure financially, but it was always a family house. Hetty helped me bring the boys up, too, although she was rather more interested in her dogs.’

‘She had six,’ Jack put in. ‘Red setters. She dedicated her life to breeding a Cruft’s champion.’

‘Did she manage?’ Hope asked, interested.

‘Not exactly,’ Caroline replied, ‘but one of her dogs was the grandfather of a supreme champion…Anyway, I hope you like dogs.’

Hope nodded. ‘We had a retriever when I was little.’ ‘Good,’ Caroline nodded, ‘because Guy seems to have inherited some of Hetty’s fanaticism. He keeps three setters, and each is as mad as the other. I insisted he lock them away until you were settled.’

‘Guy keeps his dogs here.’ Hope trusted that was all she meant.

But a deep, drawling voice answered her. ‘Guy keeps himself here, too,’ and, as Hope’s eyes were drawn, horrified, to the back of the hall, Guy Delacroix emerged from the shadows.

‘There you are,’ Caroline greeted her son with fond exasperation. ‘I called to you that they’d arrived but you seemed to have disappeared.’

‘I was locking up the hounds, as requested,’ he answered his mother, but his eyes slid to Hope, acknowledging the difference in her.

When they had first met, she had been as slim as a reed and in the best of health, her long blonde hair silky, her complexion soft and clear. In a maternity dress, with hair escaping from a hastily tied ribbon and her skin with a bluey-white tinge, she looked like the drudge she felt.

‘You’ve changed,’ he said bluntly, and Hope could have cried.

But she was tougher than that. She asked herself if she cared what he thought, and, lying to herself, decided she didn’t.

‘You haven’t,’ she answered him, and her tone said it was a pity.

Jack recognised the enmity between them, and, if anything, was amused. But a frown lined Caroline’s forehead, as it occurred to her that life at Heron’s View might be less than smooth in the coming months.

Guy was unruffled, continuing, ‘I assume no one informed you I was in residence.’

Before Hope could answer, Jack slipped in, ‘I didn’t want to scare her off, little brother.’