A Man Possessed

Kate had shaken her head, instinctively retreating from the suggestion in the way that she retreated from everything. Her life with Ricky had left painful scars, and the loneliness of her life which Sue saw as a handicap she saw as protection, but less than a week later she found herself on the London train once more with the intention of taking Harry up on his offer.

Since then, her friendship with Harry, and to some lesser extent with some other members of the workshop, had grown, and six months ago her first commission was accepted—a feature window panel for the new, prestigious office block of a three times winner of the Queen’s Award to Industry, whose go-ahead young architect wanted a modern design to include both these and some indication of the company’s business. Since this was the rapid transportation of parcels and goods, Kate had chosen a bird motif, the swift, and when Harry told her that her design had been accepted she had been almost speechless with delight.

Quite early on in their relationship she had discovered that Harry lived only twenty miles away from her. She had met his wife and two grown-up daughters and their children and now felt quite comfortable in the small family circle.

Harry’s suggestion that they set up in business together had come entirely out of the blue. It would be a challenge for both of them to move outside the protective security of the craft centre, but it was a challenge that suddenly she was eager to accept.

Harry was convinced that her design for Howard Transport would bring in further commissions, and in addition to that, Harry himself had been offered a contract with the Church authorities to make repairs and care for the windows in parish churches in a fifty-mile radius of Dorchester, which would bring in enough work to keep them both working steadily in the early months of their partnership.

Their work would not make them millionaires, Harry had told her that, but it would be stimulating and a constant challenge. Already she was a regular visitor to the Victoria and Albert Museum, avidly studying everything she saw, her busy mind drinking in all that was best of the period and working out how she could translate it into modern-day designs.

Liz, Harry’s wife, answered the phone and chatted to Kate for a few minutes before summoning her husband.

When he took over the receiver, Kate had a few seconds’ panic. Was she acting too impulsively? She would have to sell the house to raise her share of the capital they would need to set themselves up and give themselves a safe margin of working capital, and despite everything that had happened she was still deeply attached to her home … but then how long could she keep it on anyway? As she had said to Sue earlier, the roof needed attention … Taking a deep breath, she banished her panic, and calmly told Harry of her decision.

Hary was predictably delighted.

‘That’s great! I’ll make us an appointment at the bank … and how about coming round for dinner on Saturday to celebrate?’

‘I’d love to, but I can’t. I’ve already promised to have dinner with an old friend.’

The words were out before Kate realised what a first-rate excuse he had given her to pass on Sue’s dinner party, but it was too late to recall them now, Harry was chuckling and telling her that it was high time she started going out a bit. Harry knew nothing about her past life, other than that she had been widowed young. She never mentioned Ricky other than in passing, and neither Harry nor his family ever questioned her about him. It was so much easier to adopt the mantle of a young woman, widowed tragically young, who had loved and been loved by her dead husband, than to live with the truth, which was, no doubt, why she was sometimes so prickly with Sue, she thought guiltily.

After all, it was not Sue’s fault that she had confided in her, and like the true friend that she was, Sue had never raised the subject with her since. She had needed the catharsis of confiding in someone, so why now did part of her resent the fact that she had?

Shrugging aside thoughts far too deep for such a mellow summer afternoon, Kate opened the french windows and went outside.

The sunken brick patio, with its terracotta pots of plants and traditional wrought iron furniture, had been designed by Ricky’s mother, and Kate often wondered wistfully if things might have been different if she had known Ricky’s parents. They had died when he was four years old, killed in a plane crash, leaving Ricky to be brought up by his grandfather.

Beyond the patio lay the smooth greenery of the lawns with their cottage garden herbaceous borders. A brick path in the same soft earthen colours as the house and patio meandered through the lawns and through a rose-smothered brick wall to the enclosed area which had originally been a kitchen garden and which was now a brick-paved sun-trap complete with pool and fountain and some extremely large and lazy koi carp.

Kate loved the garden almost as much as she loved the house. She found working in it relaxing and therapeutic. She had spent almost the entire summer following Ricky’s death busy in it, exhausting herself physically to the point where she could drop into bed at night and fall fast asleep.

Those had been worrying days; days during which she had finally grown up, when she realised the extent of the debts her husband had left … the extent of his infidelity to her. Days when she had finally come to realise that the blame for the failure of their marriage was not hers alone … that she was no more to blame for the fact that Ricky was not attracted to her than he had been.

She walked through the garden and sat down by the pool, watching with a slight smile as the greedy carp surfaced, waiting to be fed. As she watched them, in her mind’s eye, she pictured the scene done in stained glass. The goldfish forgotten, she got up and hurried back to the house, making for the study.

Time passed without her being aware of it as she worked, stopping only when the light started to fade, astonished to discover how long she had been sitting at her desk. She even felt hungry. She grimaced faintly. Sue was always telling her that she was too thin. It was true she was a little on the slender side, but food rarely interested her.

Once things had been different. In the early days of her marriage she had eaten for comfort, thoroughly confused by Ricky’s attitude towards her. She had never been fat, but it was probably fair to say that she had been a little chunky. She frowned, dismissing the too intrusive memories waiting to surface, and got up flexing her lithe body, encompassed by a sense of wellbeing as she looked down and studied the work she had done.

CHAPTER TWO (#udc1b75c9-db78-5096-a202-2468a28842be)

‘AND if you want a lift tonight …’

Kate interrupted Sue’s busy flood of words to say calmly, ‘No, I’ll drive myself over.’

‘In that death-trap you call a car?’ Sue was plainly horrified. ‘Honestly, Kate, it’s barely roadworthy!’

‘It passed its M.O.T.,’ Kate responded mildly. It was true that her ancient Mini was on its last legs, but she couldn’t afford to change it and, living as remotely as she did, some form of personal transport was essential. She was easily ten miles away from the nearest village—ten miles down narrow, empty country lanes at that.

‘I can easily arrange for you to be picked up,’ Sue persisted, but Kate remained adamant. She knew her friend of old. Although Sue insisted that she had no intention of matchmaking, Kate suspected that whoever got the chore of picking her up would be male and unattached, and as embarrassed and disgruntled as she would be herself by Sue’s so obvious machinations.

She knew that her friend meant well, but every time she tried to pair her off, Kate was reminded of the failure that her marriage had been and it left her feeling as though she were incapable of attracting anyone by herself … that she was somehow intrinsically lacking as a woman. It was a fear that rose up to haunt her with monotonous regularity. She had told herself that it didn’t matter that sexually she was undesirable. She was perfectly happy with her life as it was, but deep down the knowledge still nagged at her … taunting her, and that was something she had never confided to anyone. And it wasn’t as though it were only Ricky who had rejected her. Shivering slightly, she walked into the kitchen and made herself a cup of coffee. After the lazy summer warmth of the last few days, this morning’s rain was disheartening, even if the garden did need it. She had no idea what to wear for Sue’s dinner party. Although her friend had not changed over the years, her circle of friends had, and included several very sophisticated London-based couples who found the village so conveniently just off the M4 an ideal spot in which to have a weekend cottage.

The contents of her wardrobe could hardly rival the clothes worn by women accustomed to shopping in Knightsbridge, she told herself ruefully, and then almost immediately was struck by the strangeness of her thought. Normally her appearance was the last thing to worry her when she was invited out. Shrugging the thought aside, she went upstairs to see what she could find.

Her clothes were serviceable rather than attractive. After Ricky’s death there had been no money to spare for such fripperies even if she had wanted them, and her normal garb consisted of jeans, shirts and jumpers.

She frowned slightly as her fingers touched her few summer dresses, most of them relics from the early days of her marriage when she had naïvely hoped to impress Ricky with the cheap chain-store clothes she had bought locally in Dorchester. She hadn’t known then that he was accustomed to far more attractively and sophisticatedly dressed women than she could ever hope to be. Her frown deepened as she touched a dress as yet never worn. It had arrived the Christmas before last, a large brown parcel with American stamps, a Christmas present from her mother. The first one she could ever remember receiving since her parents’ divorce, she thought wryly now, fingering the rich deep pink silk fabric. Why her mother had sent her such an obviously expensive and unsuitable gift was a complete mystery to her, and after one look at it she had consigned it to the back of her wardrobe, knowing she would never have either the self-confidence or the occasion to wear such an outfit. But now things had changed, she thought, fingering the fabric absently. If the secondhand Vogues Sue passed on to her were anything to go by, even the most simple dinner party now demanded sophisticated dressing, and the prospect of her new career had given her a self-confidence she had never expected to have.

Impatiently she tugged the dress off its hanger and held it in front of her. She had never even tried it on, but one glance at the label had made her decide that her mother had indulged herself in malicious amusement in sending her a size ten dress when, on the last occasion they had met, Kate would have had difficulty in getting into a size twelve.

Now, however, things were different, and the draped, wrapover style of the dress meant that the bodice would easily accommodate what she personally considered to be her rather over-full breasts.

Against the rich intensity of the silk her skin took on a matt creamy tone that emphasised the sultry darkness of her hair; the image she could see in the mahogany pier-glass at once familiar and yet unfamiliar, tantalisingly hinting at another Kate, and one moreover who looked as though she could be as turbulent and passionate as Shakespeare’s vividly drawn Shrew. Impatiently she dismissed her thoughts as ridiculous. Cool control, that was what she aimed to portray, it was safer … made her less vulnerable. Annoyed with herself, she threw the dress down on to the bed. She would have to wear it, she had nothing else suitable, and after all, who was going to notice her? Certainly not whatever poor male Sue had picked out for her, for despite her friend’s promise, Kate knew enough about her to suspect that Sue had picked someone out.

Fifteen miles away in the comfortable Edwardian house that had once been a vicarage Sue was frowningly concentrating on what her husband was saying. John Edwards was a large, placid man who was a good doctor and a compassionate one. He could tell by his wife’s face that she didn’t like what he was saying, but he still continued mildly, ‘It isn’t on, Sue, and Kate will be furious … you know that.’

‘But it isn’t my fault, it was the Bensons who asked if they could bring him. He’s a close friend of theirs, apparently, more or less completely on his own in London … what could I say?’

‘Mmm … well, Kate won’t see it that way. It would have been much better if you’d explained the situation to her. She’ll take one look at him and immediately she’s going to think the obvious—that he’s someone you’ve invited specifically to partner her, and you know how sensitive she is about that sort of thing.’

‘Mmm. Honestly, John, it almost breaks my heart. It’s such a waste … She’s so beautiful, but she behaves as though she’s the original Ugly Sister.’

‘I know. Ricky Hammond has one hell of a lot to answer for.’ John got up and put an arm round his wife’s shoulders. ‘I know you only want to help her, Sue, but you can’t. God alone knows what kind of psychological damage Hammond and her mother between them did to her, but it certainly can’t be put right by arranging dinner party partners for her.’

‘Then what will put it right?’

‘I don’t really know. It sounds trite, but all I can think of is good old-fashioned love, and Kate’s so withdrawn I doubt she could ever allow herself to believe any man could love her.’

‘How could he do that to her, John?’ Sue asked her husband miserably. ‘How could Ricky marry her and then treat her like that?’

‘Men like Hammond who are driven by an obsession, whether it’s drink, drugs or gambling, don’t function in the same way as the rest of us.’

‘Mmm … If I ring Kate now and tell her that the Bensons are bringing a spare man, ten to one she’ll refuse to come.’

‘Okay, but be prepared for fireworks,’ her husband warned her with a grin. ‘Kate won’t like it. Who is this man anyway?’

‘I don’t know his name. Vera Benson simply rang up last night and asked if they could bring him along. Apparently he’s in the same line of business as her husband—merchant banking, although at the moment he’s based in New York. Vera said he was thinking of transferring his main business to London, something about world time differences working more efficiently for him in London than they do in New York.’

‘Mmm … a lot of the big money men are transferring their business to London. Because of the new sophisticated communications systems it means that they can take advantage of the fact that, during the British working day, they can get in touch with both New York and Hong Kong during their working days, which gives them an immediate advantage.’

John grinned at his wife’s astounded expression and admitted wryly, ‘I read it in the Sunday Times magazine. If the Bensons’ friend is one of these money men, chances are he’ll be a real high-flier. Most of them are burned-out by the time they’re thirty.’

‘Oh, yeah? Did you read that in the Sunday Times as well?’

‘Yep.’ His smile was unrepentant, as he added comfortingly, ‘It sounds as though he isn’t going to be Kate’s type at all. If I know anything about these big business men he’ll spend most of the evening talking with Benson, so with any luck Kate won’t realise you’re trying to palm him off on her.’ He broke off as he saw the frown pleating his wife’s forehead and enquired, ‘Now what’s the matter?’