PENNY JORDAN - For Better For Worse

They had met on holiday. Bill, a widower of just over sixty, had gone away on his doctor’s advice to recuperate after a heart attack. He had met Venice and married her within weeks of knowing her. They had been married just over two years when he had suffered his second and fatal heart attack, leaving Venice an extremely wealthy widow.

It had only been since his death that Nick had become involved with her. She had consulted him in his capacity as an insurance broker.

Prior to her husband’s death, she had not been seen very much locally, apparently preferring to spend most of her time in London, but she was now becoming much more active in local affairs.

It had been she who had persuaded Nick to join the exclusive and very expensive new leisure complex which had recently opened.

‘You ought to try exercising a bit more yourself,’ he had commented critically to Fern only the other evening, eyeing her too slender body with obvious disapproval. ‘Venice goes to classes almost every day, and she plays tennis as well.’

Fern had refrained from pointing out that, unlike Venice, she was not in a position to afford the kind of fees demanded by the leisure club, and that, even if she had been able to do so, her mother’s illness and Nick’s own insistence that in view of the fact that he supported her financially it was her duty to ensure that she put his wishes first meant that she wasn’t free to enjoy the luxury of so many hours of personal freedom and self-indulgence.

Nick talked a lot about Venice. Too much? She frowned, her stomach muscles tensing. Was she guilty of being overly suspicious… too untrusting, imagining things which didn’t exist… like another woman’s scent on his skin?

Physically Nick was a very attractive man; a man, moreover, who knew how to make himself appealing to women, as she well knew.

The soft thickness of his blond hair, the boyish charm of his smile, the deep blue of his eyes, all added to his air of masculine appeal. Of just slightly above average height rather than tall, his body lean and slim, unlike Adam who was both tall and broad, and who looked what he was—a maturely male man—Nick looked slightly younger than his age. A fact of which he was secretly proud and tended to subtly emphasise.

Her husband could be described as a vain man, Fern acknowledged, who at thirty still cultivated the same aura of boyish appeal he had had when she first met him.

Nick could be very persuasive when he chose, as she well knew.

She had lost count of the number of times she had given way beneath the weight of his coaxing, dreading the sullen accusations which would follow if she did not.

When had she first realised that she didn’t love him any longer; that she had in fact probably never really loved him, but had simply allowed him to persuade her that she did, flattered by his attention, aware of how anxious her parents were to see her happily and safely married, convinced by both Nick and them that marriage to him was the right thing for her?

She had genuinely believed she did love him then, she told herself miserably. Had genuinely believed that he needed and loved her. Why should she not have done? He had told her often enough how much he wanted her in his life…

And if, after their hurried courtship, she had bewilderedly discovered that his interpretation of loving and needing did not match hers, well, she had kept her thoughts to herself, reminding herself of the vows she had made, telling herself that she was expecting too much, hampered by the restrictions imposed on her by her upbringing from confiding in anyone else, much less seeking their help or advice.

The fact that she was not very sexually responsive to Nick she knew must be her fault, and she had struggled guiltily to overcome her lack of enthusiasm, miserably conscious of how much she must be disappointing Nick, of how he, as much as she, must dread the silent sexual intimacy they shared, which invariably resulted in her being left feeling tense and on edge, glad that it was over and yet guiltily unhappy at the same time as she lay there sleepless and dry-eyed, staring at the rejecting silence of Nick’s back.

No wonder he turned away from her the moment it was over, no wonder he complained that she didn’t know how to behave like a real woman. No wonder that eighteen months into their marriage he had had an affair with someone else.

What was a wonder was that she had been so shocked, so disbelieving when she had first found out. Nick was her husband… they were married… had exchanged vows! Other people’s marriages might involve a breaking of those vows, but not hers… And on top of her shock, underlining and heightening it, had been her awareness of how upset her parents would be if her marriage broke up… or how she had somehow let them down, broken faith with the standards they had set her.

It was over two years ago now and yet she could remember the events of that day as clearly as though it had only just happened. The arrival of the woman after Nick had gone to work, her own unsuspecting surprise at seeing her… the woman’s tension slowly communicating itself to her as she refused the cup of coffee Fern had offered, wheeling round to confront her, nervously smoking the cigarette she had just lit.

Fern remembered how afterwards she had been surprised at Nick’s choice, knowing how much he loathed people smoking—an odd, disconnected, sharply clear thought which had somehow lodged itself in her brain while other, far more important ones had been held tensely at bay.

She and Nick were lovers, the woman had told her, angrily claiming that she knew that Fern must be aware of the situation; that she, Fern, was deliberately holding on to Nick when she knew he no longer wanted her.

Shock and pride had prevented Fern from telling her the truth: that she had had no idea of what was going on.

Eventually the woman had left. Fern had watched her drive away, her body, her emotions, her mind almost completely numbed. She remembered walking upstairs and opening her wardrobe doors, removing a suitcase and starting to pack her things.

Then the phone had started to ring. She had gone downstairs intending to answer it, but instead she had walked right past it, through the back door which she had left unlocked and open, and out into the street.

She had no recollection of doing any of this… nor of how she had walked right into town… nor of what her purpose might have been in doing so.

It had been Adam who had found her, who had saved her from public humiliation, only to cause her to suffer later the most profound and intense personal humiliation—but that was something she could still not bear to think about, not now… not ever… He had taken her home—his home, not hers. She had started to cry, bewildered and shocked by the trauma which had overwhelmed her. She had started to tell him about Nick’s affair… her shock… things she would never normally have dreamed of confiding to him.

Her days of confiding in Adam had ended with her marriage to his stepbrother, no matter that once it had been Adam who she had thought was her friend. Adam… Adam she had known first, not Nick.

But, as she had discovered when she met Nick, the Adam she had thought she knew must have been a figment of her own imagination.

‘You didn’t really think Adam was interested in you sexually, did you?’ Nick had asked her incredulously. ‘Oh, Fern.’ He had laughed gently as he gave her a little shake. ‘Did you really think…? Adam already has a girlfriend… or rather a woman friend. It’s a very discreet relationship. Adam prefers it that way… it leaves his options open, if you know what I mean. I suppose I shouldn’t criticise. After all, a man in his position, reasonably well off and with the kind of reputation Adam’s built up for himself as a local do-gooder… he has to be seen to toe the moral line, even if what he does in private… He’s something of a secret stud, my stepbrother. But you’re quite safe from him, Fern. He likes his sexual partners to be women, not little girls… Little virgins…’