A Cure For Love

‘Nothing’s wrong,’ Lacey fibbed firmly. ‘I think I’m just suffering a bit of over-reaction to this evening. I was dreading giving that speech. You know what a baby I am about public events. I’m sorry I let it spoil our meal, though.’

‘Well, you certainly look a lot better now. Are you sure you don’t want me to call Ian?’

‘Stop fussing! I’m fine. A good night’s sleep and tomorrow morning I’ll be back to normal.’

She knew that it wasn’t true, but thankfully tomorrow morning Jessica was going back to Oxford. For the first time since her daughter had left home, Lacey actually wanted to see her go. Her mouth twisted bitterly.

CHAPTER TWO

TEN o’clock on a fine sunny morning. Lacey had the whole day ahead of her with a hundred and one things she could do, and yet all she felt like doing was crawling back to bed, like an animal seeking protection, oblivion almost, if not from life, then at least from her own thoughts…her tormenting memories.

Half an hour ago she had watched Jessica drive off, having assured her anxious daughter over and over again that she was fine.

She couldn’t blame Jessica for being anxious: one look in her mirror confirmed her daughter’s worried comments.

Her face looked bloodless, even with her make-up, her eyes huge and shadowed, her mouth…She shivered a little, rubbing the goose-flesh on her arms. Her mouth, always a good indicator of her feelings, looked, even to her own eyes, vulnerable, unhappy…shocked.

Dear God, if only she had been wrong. If only it hadn’t been Lewis last night. She knew that she wasn’t wrong. It was Lewis, although what he was doing here in town she had no idea—if he was still here; perhaps he had already gone. Her tension started to ease. She pictured him, driving away from the town, his wife, her successor, at his side. She pictured the back of his head, saw the speeding car, visualised its driving through the town towards the motorway network, felt her tense muscles starting to relax, told herself that she was panicking over nothing, that, horrible though the coincidence of his turning up at the restaurant had been, it meant nothing. He had obviously not recognised her. Why should he, after all? And even if he had…even if he had…

There was something wet on her face. She touched it with her hands and discovered that she was crying.

This simply would not do. She was a supposedly mature woman of thirty-eight with a daughter of nineteen to prove it; what right, what purpose did Lewis have to suddenly appear out of the blue to destroy her contentment?

Stop being so paranoid, she chided herself firmly. How could Lewis’s presence in town have anything to do with her? It was pure chance, that was all; an unfortunate chance, it was true, the sight of him stirring up, as it had done, memories; images; emotions which ought to have stopped hurting her years ago.

She had, after all, only been eighteen when she’d first met him. He had been twenty-one, almost twenty-two. They had both been invited to the same birthday party, he had looked across the room, and she had known then.

What? she asked herself tiredly; that he would break her heart…destroy her life? That he would claim to love her and then turn round and tell her that love no longer existed? That their marriage was a mistake?

It was just as well that she had arranged several days’leave from work to coincide with Jessica’s visit home: the last thing she felt capable of doing right now was dealing with the complexities of her job as Tony’s secretary-cum-PA.

She had a meeting later on in the day at the hospital with Ian; a final sorting out of some paperwork connected with the appeal. Ian had tentatively suggested taking her out for lunch but she had gently refused.

What was wrong with her? she wondered ruefully now. Why couldn’t she abandon the past, let go of her fears and inhibitions and allow herself to grow more intimately involved with another man?

She already knew the answer to that. Lewis had hurt her far too badly for her ever to want to risk suffering that kind of pain again.

Or was it more because no man whom she had met in the years since he had left her had ever come close to arousing within her the emotions which he had so easily touched than because she was afraid of allowing herself to love another man?

There was no room in her life for such immature introspection, she told herself sharply. That kind of self-indulgence was for teenagers, for young women of her daughter’s age. Women of her maturity were far too sensible and far too busy to waste time dwelling on their emotions.

Or were they? Was it more that she had never allowed herself to dwell on hers because she was too frightened of what she might have to confront?

Jessica’s probing questions last night about the way she lived her life, plus the shock of seeing Lewis, were having a most unwelcome effect on her—one that could surely be best banished by some hard work and a much firmer control on her treacherous thoughts.

She was meeting Ian at the hospital at two o’clock. It was eleven now and she had promised herself that this morning she would attack the greenfly on her precious roses.

Her small house did not have a large garden, but it was blessed by an enclosing brick wall, against which over the years she had lovingly trained a variety of scented old-fashioned roses.

Beneath them were borders of mixed traditional cottage garden plants—peonies, hollyhocks, delphiniums, forget-me-nots, which seeded themselves and ran half-wild, aquileas, which did the same thing, producing their pretty pink and white flowers, and catmint, which was invariably flattened by next door’s fat ginger tom-cat whom she hadn’t the heart to evict from his favourite patch of the scented plant.

Treating the roses for greenfly was a laborious business, especially in these ecology-conscious days, and there wasn’t going to be time to complete the task before she had to leave for the hospital, which meant she would have to tackle the housework instead.

With a wistful glance at the sunny garden, she headed for the stairs to strip Jessica’s bed.

The first thing she saw when she walked into the room was Jessica’s old teddy bear sitting on top of the chest of drawers.

She had bought the bear for Jessica before she was born. She went over to the chest and picked up the bear, absently smoothing its worn fur, her eyes dark with shadows.

It had been a cold wet day, she remembered, her mouth twisting a little bitterly at the ease with which she recalled every detail of that particular day.

It had been the day the letter had arrived from Lewis’s solicitors, setting out the formal terms of their divorce. The divorce that even then she had desperately hoped would never happen; that letter with its cold, formal prose, its heavy underlining of Lewis’s desire to cut himself completely free of her. He was giving her the house, the car, the entire contents of their savings account; Lewis, unlike her, had had a moneyed background; his maternal grandparents had left him money, and it had been with this money that he had bought their pretty house and set up a business in partnership with a colleague as independent insurance brokers.

There would be money coming to her from the business…she need not fear she would suffer financially from the divorce—that was what he had told her that shocking day when he had walked in and told her that he wanted their marriage brought to an end.

With hindsight she recognised that there had been something wrong for some time; that he had been quiet, withdrawn from her at times; but she had assumed that it was just the pressure of setting up the new business, and she had been so young, so much still a very new wife, that she had resolutely told herself that she was being over-sensitive, that marriage could not forever be one long honeymoon, that of course there were bound to be times when all might not seem perfect; and then had come the bombshell…the discovery that Lewis didn’t love her any more…didn’t want her any more…that there was someone else and that he wanted his freedom.

She could have fought the divorce, could have made him wait out the statutory period, but her pride would never have allowed her to do that…and as for his money…

She had allowed her solicitor to accept half the value of the house and no more, and then she had told him that she intended to move right away from the area and make a fresh start somewhere else.

It had been on her first trip here that she had bought the bear.

She had had to change trains at Birmingham. There had been a two-hour wait for her connection. She had walked out of the station into the busy, wet city streets, feeling as though her whole life had come to an end, as though there were no point in even thinking about going on.

Coming towards her down the wet road she had seen a bus, lumbering slowly closer as it picked up speed.

She could recall with complete clarity even now the sharp clearness of her brain and its processes—of assessing the speed of the bus, of knowing that all she had to do was to step out into the street in front of it and there would be no more pain, no more anguish, no more loneliness…no more anything.

She had walked to the edge of the kerb; she had stepped forward; she had even taken a step out into the street, when suddenly for the first time she had felt her baby kick.

She had covered her stomach with both hands, an immediate, instinctively protective, wondering gesture, shock, joy and the most bitter-sweet sharp pain she had ever known coalescing inside her.

Someone had touched her arm then, another woman, chiding her warningly, ‘Better watch the traffic duck. These bus drivers…’

And the moment of crisis was over; she was safely back on the pavement, shaking, feeling sick, tears pricking her eyes, but alive…and, more important, her baby was alive as well.

It had been then that she had bought the bear.

She realised suddenly that its worn fur was damp, coming abruptly out of the past to the angry realisation that she was crying again.

Mid-life blues, she taunted herself, ignoring the evidence of Jessica’s full-length mirror which denied that her still very youthful and slender figure showed any signs of becoming middle-aged.

She had come up here to strip the bed, not to dwell with maudlin self-pity on the past, she reminded herself as she pulled back the duvet and very firmly put the bear back where he belonged.

At one o’clock she started to get ready for her meeting with Ian, dressing carefully in a plain navy dress enlivened with a pretty white shawlcollar, and pair of plain, elegant navy blue pumps.

It was all very well for Jessica to complain that her mother’s wardrobe needed jazzing up and that she was far too young and pretty to wear such consistently dull colours: she liked classic clothes made in classic styles.