LYNNE GRAHAM - A Fiery Baptism

She phoned Angela and asked if she would babysit for her again. Since Sarah paid well, the teenager was more than willing to oblige. But naturally she was surprised. On Saturdays, Sarah always took the children to see their grandparents. It was an arrangement that was religiously observed but not one, Sarah reflected, that was of any real satisfaction to any of them. Her parents complained bitterly about the small amount of time she allowed them to spend with their grandchildren and Sarah always found the visits a strain. The twins had all the boundless exuberance and vitality of their father. Within an hour of their arrival, little looks would be exchanged by her parents, cold criticisms of her methods of child-rearing uttered, and the twins would go horribly quiet as the atmosphere became repressive and disapproving.

It was a bright beautiful morning with clear skies and sunlight. The promise of early summer was in the air. Normally she enjoyed the drive to Southcott Lodge. She rarely used her car except at weekends. It had belonged to her great-aunt and, having been well maintained, was mercifully still going strong in spite of its age. When the car did develop problems, she doubted that she would be able to replace it.

Inflation had considerably reduced the value of the income she received from a small trust fund set up by her late grandmother. Five mornings a week she worked as a receptionist in a large insurance company while the twins were at nursery school. The flat was her one asset and already it was becoming cramped.

Her family home was an elegant red-brick Georgian house set in spacious, landscaped grounds. Even the lawns looked manicured. The exterior was as picture perfect as the interior. The innate tidiness of her parents’ lives was matched by their surroundings.

The housekeeper, Mrs Purbeck, opened the front door. Her brow creased as she noted the absence of the twins. ‘Your parents are in the conservatory, Miss Southcott.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Purbeck.’ Sarah crushed back a ludicrous desire to laugh. On Saturdays, in spring and summer, her parents always breakfasted in the conservatory. Her father would be reading his morning paper at one end of the table and at the other her mother would be staring into space. Neither would find it necessary to speak to the other unless something of importance arose.

‘Sarah…you’re early.’ Folding his paper into precise folds, Charles Southcott rose to his feet, a tall, distinguished man in his late fifties, his blond hair greying, his eyes ice-blue chips of enquiry in his long, thin face.

Her mother frowned. ‘Where are the children?’

Sarah took a deep breath. ‘I haven’t brought them.’

An anxious pleat-line formed between Louise’s pencilled brows.

‘You see, I needed to talk to you privately,’ Sarah confided tensely.

Her father appraised her pale face and taut stance. ‘Is there something wrong, Sarah? Sit down and we’ll talk about it calmly.’ Although she had yet to do or say anything that was not calm, there was a cold note of warning to the command.

Sarah swallowed hard. ‘I saw Rafael last night.’

Her mother turned a ghastly shade beneath her well-applied make-up. Her father was not so easily read. He continued to watch her without visible reaction. The silence threatened to strangle Sarah, forcing her to keep on talking. ‘Gordon took me to a party and he was there.’

‘What sort of people are you mixing with these days?’ Louise’s voice betrayed the shaky undertones of stress.

‘Afterwards, he came to the apartment.’

Charles Southcott showed his first response in a chilling narrowing of his gaze. ‘At your invitation?’

Her mother looked at him with reproach. ‘Sarah wouldn’t have invited him into her home.’

‘He didn’t know about the twins,’ Sarah advanced stiffly. ‘He said that he thought I…I had had a termination. He said that that was what he was told.’

A dragging quiet lay over the room. Louise studied her clasped hands, still as a statue. Her father’s features were shuttered, a tiny nerve pulling at the edge of his flattened mouth.

‘I mean…that’s just so ridiculous.’ Sarah was wretchedly conscious of the high-pitched note that had entered her voice.

Charles Southcott expelled his breath shortly. ‘Sit down, Sarah. We don’t want a scene.’

She was feeling sick, shaky. Facing up to her father still had that effect on her. She sank down reluctantly into an elaborately cushioned wickerwork chair, her back a ramrod-straight rejection of its comfortable embrace.

‘Let me make one point clear in advance. We were solely responsible for your welfare,’ her father delivered with an air of strong censure. ‘When Alejandro went to New York and left you here with us, we were extremely concerned about you. Your marriage was destroying you.’

‘He was destroying her,’ her mother chipped in, tight-mouthed with bitterness. ‘He turned you into a stranger. We lost you and you never came back to us.’

Sarah’s throat was closing over, hurting her. ‘He was my husband and I loved him.’

Charles Southcott released a cutting laugh. ‘You didn’t love him, Sarah. You were obsessed by him. It was a sick obsession and you needed help…’

‘Help?’ Sarah repeated chokily. ‘You call locking me up helping me?’

‘Sarah,’ Louise whispered pleadingly. ‘Please…’

‘It was for your own good. I didn’t want to hurt you. I wanted to bring you to your senses,’ her father continued coldly. ‘When Alejandro had the impertinence to show up here again…’

Sarah froze. ‘Rafael came here?’ she prompted in disbelief.

Her mother murmured, ‘We had to keep him away from you, Sarah. You weren’t well. You might have had a miscarriage. We didn’t really lie to him. He jumped to conclusions and we didn’t contradict him.’

An unpleasant smile that was no smile at all had formed on her father’s narrow mouth. ‘I believe it’s relatively common for Latins to believe that sin is inevitably followed by some holy form of retribution,’ he scoffed. ‘I confirmed his suspicions.’

Sarah was leaning dizzily forward. ‘Oh, dear God, how could you do that to him?’ she gasped in horror.

‘Naturally I saw that the letter you intended to send was destroyed,’ he added icily. ‘While it was unhappily not within my power to prevent you from making a fool of yourself over him for two years, it was within my power to prevent you from doing so on paper.’

Sarah shuddered under the lash of his contempt.

‘I loved him,’ she whispered abstractedly. ‘And at the beginning I trusted you. He blames me and he’s right to blame me,’ she vented with a shaken gasp. ‘Nobody has any excuse to be that naive. You made me believe that he had just cut me out of his life as if I didn’t exist. You didn’t care what that did to me. But then you didn’t care what you did to me by putting me in that place…’

‘It was our duty to protect you from yourself.’

‘You took your chance when I was in no fit state to know what you were doing,’ Sarah condemned. ‘You hadn’t been able to buy him off. You hadn’t been able to scare him off. So you lied to him and you lied to me and nothing you can say will change those facts!’

‘Why are we arguing about something that was finished most conclusively five years ago?’ Charles Southcott surveyed her with sharp distaste. ‘I did you a favour. You were well rid of him.’

Sarah sprang upright on a wild surge of anger. ‘What did you know about our marriage? Did it ever occur to you that I wasn’t the perfect wife? Why did you assume that I was such a precious gift?’ she demanded strickenly. ‘And at least Rafael didn’t treat me the way you treat my mother!’