PENNY JORDAN - For Better For Worse

As she escorted him to the door, she tried not to dwell on how much they needed the extra income his work would have given them. She had known when he first contacted them that it was extremely unlikely they would get the business. It made her feel a little bit better knowing that she had subtly challenged his initial attitude towards her, drawing respect from him in place of his original hostility.

After she had seen him off the premises, she went back to her office and picked up his file. She needed to put Louise in the picture vis-à-vis her meeting with him.

She got up and walked into the foyer. ‘Is Louise in her office?’ she asked Claire.

‘Yes, she’s just come in,’ the receptionist told her.

Smiling her thanks at her, Eleanor walked across to her partner’s office.

Claire watched her enviously. Eleanor was everything she herself longed to be. Attractive, successful, married to a man who exuded an almost magical charisma of sex and power; a man who, although he might be well into his forties, still had such an aura of compelling masculinity about him that he made her go weak at the knees. Not that he ever gave her so much as a second look. And even if he had…

Eleanor was so… so nice that she couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt her.

Yes, they were an ideal couple, with an ideal relationship; an ideal lifestyle.

Marriage, career, motherhood—Eleanor had them all.

Although she had knocked on Louise’s door before going in, her partner obviously hadn’t heard her, Eleanor realised as she saw Louise’s dark head bent in absorbed concentration over some papers on her desk.

When Eleanor said her name she looked up, startled, quickly shuffling the papers out of sight, an embarrassed, almost furtive look crossing her face.

‘Nell, I didn’t hear you come in…’

‘So I see.’ Eleanor grinned at her. ‘Planning your summer holidays?’

She had noticed, as Louise shuffled the papers out of sight, the photograph on one of them of a pretty and obviously French château-style farmhouse.

To her surprise a faintly haunted, almost guilty expression flickered through Louise’s eyes before she turned her head and confirmed quickly, ‘Yes…’

‘I just wanted to bring you up to date on my interview with Pierre Colbert. Are you free for lunch?’

Once again Louise looked slightly uncomfortable.

‘Er—no, I’m sorry, I’m not. I’m having lunch with Paul…’

Eleanor smiled at her. ‘Lucky you,’ she told her ruefully. ‘I wish my husband could make time to have lunch with me. We’re lucky if we manage to share a sandwich together these days.’

She broke off as she realised that Louise wasn’t really listening to her.

‘Louise, is something wrong?’ she asked her quietly.

‘No,’ Louise assured her quickly.

Too quickly? Eleanor wondered, her intuition suddenly working overtime.

She knew that Louise and Paul had a very turbulent relationship, a relationship which had started while her then new business partner was still nursing wounds from her previous affair, and she was also uneasily aware of how much Paul tended to dominate her partner. He was that kind of man, needing to assert himself or perhaps to assure himself of the superiority of his masculinity by forcing the women in his life to assume an inferior position.

She had become increasingly aware of how often the words ‘Paul says’ or ‘Paul thinks’ had begun to preface Louise’s comments since the two of them had married, but she had firmly dismissed her own dislike of the man by reminding herself that he was Louise’s choice and not hers, and that it was after all just as well that different types of men appealed to different types of women. And besides, if she was honest with herself, didn’t her dislike of Paul stem partly from the fact that his manner towards Louise was a little too reminiscent of her own first husband’s domineering manner towards her?

Still, if there were problems with the relationship, she would hate to think that Louise did not feel she could confide in her.

She tried again. ‘Louise—–’

‘Look, I must go. I promised to call and see a client before I meet Paul. I really must go, Nell.’

Louise was an adult woman and there was no way she could force her into giving her her confidence if she did not want to, Eleanor reminded herself wryly as she went back to her own office.

The trouble with her was that she had a strong maternal instinct, or so Jade said.

‘What you need is to surround yourself with a large brood of children,’ Jade had informed her once.

A large brood of children. To compensate for the loneliness of her own solitary childhood. She grimaced. Thirty-eight was no age to start suffering those sort of urges, she told herself.

There were women of course who did have babies at thirty-eight and older. Second families to go with their second husbands.

She and Marcus had discussed having children of their own. She had heard that a new baby was often a successful way of linking together all the tenuous branches of an extended family relationship.

But they had agreed that they did not need to cement their love in that way. It was out of the question in any case. The house wasn’t big enough for them all as it was; and with the commitment she had made to the company, plus the extra demands made on her time as Marcus’s wife… There were a surprisingly large number of events he was obliged to attend, and of course as his wife she wanted to go with him… to be with him.

The trouble was, their lives were so busy, so fast-paced, that despite the fact that they were married, sometimes they had less time to spend together now than they had done in the days when they had first met.

She was discovering within herself an increasing need for more time, more space; for a slower, less frenetic pace of life, one that gave her a chance to appreciate things more. There never seemed to be enough time to enjoy anything any more, to savour life’s pleasures.

Even their lovemaking had increasingly become rushed and hurried; something they had to make a conscious effort to make time for.

Gone were the days when they could spend the whole afternoon, the whole evening, and even, luxuriously, the whole morning in bed, as they had done in the days before they had married. How much she had enjoyed them, those special intimate hours spent in the privacy of Marcus’s house or her flat, hours when they had been completely and blissfully alone.

Now it seemed as though they were never alone.

Did Marcus feel as uncomfortable making love to her with her children under the same roof as she sometimes did with his, or was that something that only women suffered? Or perhaps only women with almost adult teenage stepdaughters.

She hoped that there was nothing wrong in Louise and Paul’s relationship. She might not like him, but Louise loved him. He was a wonderful father, she had told Eleanor, almost doting on their two boys and fully involved in every aspect of their lives.

Yes, almost to the point where he was almost deliberately excluding Louise herself from the macho male world he was building around his sons, Eleanor reflected.

Marcus got on well enough with Tom and even better with Gavin, but he simply wasn’t the kind of man who enjoyed exclusively male pursuits, and of course he was not after all their father. As Louise herself had rather unnecessarily remarked the other day when she had been contrasting Paul’s almost excessive involvement in his sons’ lives to Marcus’s attitude towards Tom and Gavin.

Unnecessarily and tactlessly… Eleanor frowned, nibbling the nail of her index finger. As a child she had bitten her nails, and as a young adult… a young wife and mother. After her divorce she had told herself that she was going to stop biting her nails, and once she had done so she had told herself that if she could do that she could do anything; and yet here she was, happier and more fulfilled than she had ever been at any other time in her life, reverting to this destructive childhood habit.