Penny Jordan Tribute Collection

‘Well, you see, back home the girls kinda cut their milk teeth, in the cooking sense, on pot-roast and pumpkin pie, although, to be fair to my four sisters, mostly they’ve already had some experience of watching their moms cooking it before they’re let loose on the real thing. Have you ever actually eaten charred pot-roast?’ he asked her, adding feelingly, ‘Four times… and that was just for starters…’

Claire started to laugh. She could well remember her own early attempts at cooking, and Sally’s.

‘Oh, no, poor you,’ she said, her own mirth overcoming her instinctive sympathy as she started to laugh again.

‘You can laugh,’ Brad complained. ‘I sure as hell feel I’m lucky to still have my own teeth… That’s my side of the story,’ he told her, and then asked softly, ‘So, what’s yours? What is it you’ve got against pot-roast?’

He had caught her off guard with no easy excuse at hand, and after an agitated hesitation she admitted reluctantly, ‘Irene wanted me to cook it for you. She brought me this book of American recipes she had borrowed from someone. She thought it would make you feel… more at home…’

Aware of Claire’s small, tell-tale pause before completing her explanation, Brad guessed that it was her husband’s job which Irene had been concerned with rather than his stomach. But he couldn’t blame her for that. There was nothing wrong in being a loyal wife.

Brad glanced round the kitchen. In every room of the house bar this one he had been immediately and intensely aware that this was another man’s home, and if he felt conscious of that fact then how much more conscious must Claire be that this was, in reality, still another woman’s home? How had she lived with that knowledge? he wondered. How had she managed to endure knowing that her husband was still in love with his first wife?

Was that why she had become involved with someone else…? If so, he could scarcely blame her, although…

‘I… I thought we’d eat in here rather than in the dining room,’ he heard Claire saying uncertainly. ‘Sally and I always did and—’

‘Sure. It’s more homely in here,’ he agreed calmly. ‘But I’ll need to shower first; is that OK? I’ll only be about ten minutes, but if you give me a shout when you want me…’

Claire could hear him going upstairs as she started to lay the table. She and John had never really laughed together, never shared a sense of humour. John simply hadn’t been that kind of man. He had taken life seriously, probably because of Paula’s death, Claire acknowledged.

Laughter was supposed to be good for you but it had made her feel rather odd, she decided. She felt slightly dizzy, light-headed almost—’giddy’, her great-aunt would have called it disapprovingly. Her mouth curled again and again into a reminiscent smile, an unfamiliar sense of pleasure and light-heartedness filling her.

‘I wish Dad would lighten up a bit,’ Sally had often complained during her teenage years, and Claire had sympathised with her because her stepdaughter had a wonderful sense of fun.

It must be nice to share that kind of intimacy with someone, Claire decided wistfully as she removed the pie from the oven and put the vegetables into the serving dishes. And they did say, didn’t they, that laughter was the best aphrodisiac? Her heart gave a tiny little flutter, the heat from the oven making her face flush.

How much longer would Brad be…? It was over fifteen minutes since he had gone upstairs; perhaps she’d better go and give him that call.

As she walked along the landing she saw that the door to the master bedroom was open. Without thinking she stepped up to it and then paused. Brad’s shirt lay on the bed, his shoes beside it on the floor, his trousers over the back of a chair, which meant that Brad, wherever he was, must be minus those articles.

She swallowed a small gulp of panic as the bathroom door opened and Brad walked into the bedroom before she had time to escape.

‘Sorry. I’m running late, I know,’ he apologised, apparently as oblivious to her flushed face as he was to the fact that all he was wearing was a short—a very short—towelling robe, secured so loosely around his waist that Claire was terrified when he lifted his hands to towel-dry his damp hair that it was going to come unfastened.

Unlike her, he was clearly no stranger to the intimacy of sharing his bedroom with a member of the opposite sex. She and John had very early in the days of their marriage established a routine which ensured that they went to bed at separate times, after allowing one another a decent amount of time and privacy in which to prepare for bed.

Claire suspected that it had been simply for the sake of convention and Sally that John had allowed her to share his room and his bed, and she had sensed his relief when, at the onset of his serious illness, she had suggested that she move into the spare room.

She was still standing just inside the door of Brad’s room, transfixed, dizzied almost by the greedy fervour with which she was drinking in the sight of his barely clad body. A hot rush of shame flooded through her as she realised what she was doing. Quickly she turned away, stumbling back out on to the landing.

As a teenager, partially because of her upbringing and partially, she always assumed, because of her own nature, she had been rather naïve and slow to reach sexual awareness, but even when she had her daydreams had been more of the idealised, romantic variety—of meeting someone with whom she would fall in love and marry.

The actual physical details of her lover-to-be had never been something she had dwelt specially upon, and, unlike other girls she had known, she had certainly never drooled over bare male torsos or compared the rival attractions of a pair of well-muscled, strong male arms with an equally well-muscled and strong pair of male buttocks.

Nor had she ever thought about men—or even one specific man—in any sexual sense in the years since, so it was all the more of a shock now to realise that, when she had been standing there watching Brad as he moved lazily and easily around the room, in her mind’s eye he had somehow or other disposed of his towelling robe and the Brad she had been watching had been totally and magnificently—very magnificently, she blushed to recall—male.

‘That was wonderful,’ Brad said when he had finished eating. ‘Irene mentioned that you’d be able to introduce me as a temporary member at your local health club. I’m certainly going to need to go if you keep feeding me like this.’

He didn’t look as though he needed to work out to her, Claire reflected, but then she had no idea what kind of lifestyle he normally lived; perhaps he exercised regularly at home.

‘I must admit I’ve been a bit lax about developing a proper exercise programme,’ he told her, answering her unspoken question. ‘But when the kids were younger we lived a pretty outdoors lifestyle, especially in the summer. We’d be out on the lake most summer evenings and weekends, swimming or sailing…’

‘The lake?’ Claire asked him enviously. She had always had a secret dream of living close to water. As a child it had fascinated her, and a boating holiday—any kind of boating holiday—was her idea of heaven, although the only time she had persuaded John to hire a boat their holiday hadn’t been too successful. John had preferred luxury hotels but she and Sally had had a wonderful time.

‘Mmm… the town is close by the edge of a lake and most folks locally spend a lot of their recreation time either in it or on it. We had a sailing dinghy and—’

‘I’ve always longed to be able to sail,’ Claire told him impulsively, and then flushed slightly. It was unlike her to be so forthcoming with someone.

‘Well, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t learn,’ Brad told her.

Claire shook her head. ‘Not at my age,’ she told him quietly.

‘Your age?’ Brad scoffed. ‘You can’t be a day over twenty-seven, if that.’

‘Well, I’m thirty-four in actual fact,’ Claire informed him quietly, but inwardly she acknowledged that it was flattering that he had mistakenly thought her so much younger.

‘Just because we’re not under twenty-one any more, it doesn’t mean that we can’t still have dreams,’ Brad told her softly. ‘In fact sometimes the older we get, the more we need them.’

He paused, and Claire knew instinctively that he was thinking about a dream of his own. What was it? she wondered curiously.

‘I’ve got this boat out on the lake; four years I’ve been working on her, stripping down the engines, making her seaworthy. I had this plan that once all the kids were off my hands I’d have some space in my life to do the things I want to do. I had this idea that I’d get the boat ready and that I’d then take off, sail wherever the tide and mood took me…’

‘Why haven’t you?’ Claire asked him quietly.

‘I got outsmarted by two wily old men—my uncles,’ he told her drily. ‘I was just on the point of telling them that I wanted out of the company when they beat me to it by announcing that they were both planning to retire—You don’t want to hear all this,’ he told Claire abruptly.

Yes, I do. I want to hear all about you… know all about you. Claire felt herself going rigid with shock as the words formed silently in her head but thankfully remained un-uttered.

‘What about you? What are your plans for your future?’ Brad asked her, obviously wanting to change the subject.

‘I… I… don’t really have any,’ Claire admitted reluctantly. ‘I’ve got my work at the school, although…’

‘Although what?’ Brad pressed her as she paused and frowned.

‘There’s a strong chance that it may have to close. Lack of funding,’ Claire explained.

‘Then what will you do?’ Brad asked.

Claire shook her head. ‘I’m not sure, although it is always possible to find some kind of voluntary work even if…’

‘Even if it’s not exactly what you might want to choose,’ Brad supplied for her. ‘What would you prefer to do?’

‘I like working with children,’ Claire confessed. ‘There’s something about their hope and optimism, even those…’

‘You obviously love them,’ Brad told her.

‘Because they are easy to love,’ Claire responded. ‘And they have so much love to give…’