Starting Over

For a moment Bobbie thought that Olivia was complaining that Caspar would not have sex with her but then when Olivia continued angrily, ‘I just didn’t … I just couldn’t …’ Bobbie realised her mistake.

‘Caspar seemed to think I was just being bloody minded … just withholding myself from him to score points. That’s how far apart we’ve grown,’ Olivia burst out. She had started to tremble visibly, her hands moving in quick agitation. ‘We had the most awful rows about it. It was so destructive and damaging for the girls. I tried but Caspar …’

‘Did you think of trying counselling?’ Bobbie asked her softly.

Olivia’s pain and despair were almost a visible physical presence in the room with them. She was normally such a calm, contained sort of person, so controlled that Bobbie was shocked by the change in her.

‘Counselling!’ Olivia gave a mirthless bitter laugh. ‘You mean like my mother ought to have had? I’m sorry,’ she apologised to Bobbie. ‘I know …’ She stopped speaking, pressing her hand against her mouth as though she were trying to silence herself, Bobbie recognised compassionately.

‘It’s too late for that now,’ Olivia told her. ‘Our marriage is over.’

‘What will Caspar do?’ Bobbie asked her.

‘He’s taking a sabbatical. He’s had it approved by the university that he can take time out from lecturing. He says he’s going to ride around America on a bike, a Harley-Davidson,’ Olivia told her derisively. ‘It’s something he’s wanted to do since he was a boy.’

To her own shock she suddenly discovered that she was crying without knowing why.

‘Oh, Livvy, Livvy,’ she heard Bobbie saying emotionally; but as Bobbie stepped towards her holding out her arms, Olivia backed away shaking her head.

There was so much she needed to do, so many arrangements she needed to make. She wanted to be in her office before eight when she started work on Monday. That would give her an extra hour to start going through the post that would be waiting for her and then, if she brought the rest of it home with her on Monday night, she could read it whilst the girls were in bed. At least now that she didn’t have Caspar to consider she would have more time in the evenings to work.

‘Something’s wrong,’ Bobbie told Luke that evening after she had broken the news about Olivia to him.

‘Of course something’s wrong,’ he agreed dryly. ‘She’s left Caspar.’

‘No, I mean apart from that … something’s wrong with Livvy,’ Bobbie persisted. ‘She was … different somehow….’

‘She’s upset. That’s only natural.’

Bobbie sighed under her breath. Much as she loved her husband there were times when they just weren’t on the same wavelength. Another woman would have understood immediately what she meant.

‘I wonder if Jenny knows yet?’ Bobbie said. ‘She must do, surely. She and Olivia have always been so close.’

Jenny was Jon’s wife and she had acted as surrogate mother for Olivia through all her difficult childhood. Olivia was now a partner in the family legal practice of which Jon was the head.

Quickly Bobbie reached for the phone and dialled Jenny’s number.

‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ Jon asked Jenny when she walked into the study looking worried.

‘Bobbie’s just been on the phone. She went over to see Livvy this afternoon. I would have gone myself but I had a Mums and Babes committee meeting. Livvy and Caspar have separated. Livvy’s come home without him.’

‘What!’

Jon’s reaction mirrored Jenny’s own shock. He started to shake his head.

‘I thought they were so happy.’

‘They were,’ Jenny agreed, ‘until David came home….’ Try as she might she could not keep the accusatory note out of her voice.

She could see from Jon’s face that her words had upset him and she knew, too, that they were unjustified and unfair but she couldn’t make herself call them back.

Jon had changed since his brother’s return. He seemed almost to live, breathe and think David these days. So much so that she felt that she was being shut out, excluded almost from his life, which was ridiculous, of course. They had been married for over thirty years and these last years of their marriage had brought them very close, brought a new depth to their marriage … their love…. These last years … the years without David.

But now David was back and Jon wasn’t exclusively hers any longer. It was David this and David that. Jenny could see his love for his brother in his eyes, hear it in his voice, every time he spoke his name.

‘David isn’t responsible for the breakdown of Livvy’s marriage. He can’t possibly be,’ Jon objected.

‘Maybe not,’ Jenny was forced to concede. ‘But he is responsible for what Livvy is, Jon … you’ve said so yourself often enough.’

‘Livvy didn’t have a very happy childhood,’ Jon agreed. ‘But that wasn’t just down to David….’

Jenny gave a small impatient sigh.

‘Before David came home you said yourself that you were concerned about her, that you felt she was working too hard.’

‘Yes. She was … is,’ Jon acknowledged.

It had disturbed him to discover in her absence just how much extra work Olivia had taken on and quite unnecessarily. Had she said that she needed help, Jon would have seen to it she got some. But she had insisted that she did not, becoming almost angrily defensive. With that kind of workload it was no wonder her marriage was under stress. The locum he had hired to cover the period she was away had not come anywhere near being able to cope and Jon had had to take on some of the extra workload himself and share the rest between Tullah who worked part-time and his daughter Katie who was also part of the family practice.

As Jenny walked past the back of his head without bothering to stop and kiss the top of it as she normally did he hesitated, wanting to reach for her but before he could do so she had gone.

Since David had come back Jon was so involved with him that he hardly seemed to notice she existed, Jenny reflected crossly as he let her walk out of the study without sliding his arm around her waist to give her his usual hug.

She knew how much he loved his elder brother. Did he perhaps envy him a little as well? Did he compare their own staid comfortable marriage with the excitement of David’s obviously passionate relationship with his new wife Honor? Honor who was so much more glamorous and exciting than she was herself.

Stop that, Jenny warned herself as she walked into the kitchen. She might have felt inferior to David’s first wife, nicknamed Tiggy, the glamorous model, but there was no way she was going to allow history to repeat itself.

The large kitchen seemed so empty now that their family had virtually all grown up.

Of their four children only Joss, the youngest, still lived at home, although soon he would be following Jack to university.

Of course Maddy and the children, her grandchildren, were regular visitors—there was scarcely a day when she didn’t see them, but …

Empty nest syndrome they called it, didn’t they, when a woman began to suffer the pangs of missing her grown-up children.

Firmly Jenny reminded herself of how fortunate she was—unlike her niece-in-law.

Poor Livvy. Jenny’s heart ached for her.

‘Maddy. Are you all right?’ Max queried anxiously as he caught her indrawn breath and saw the way her hand lifted to the pregnant mound of her belly.

‘It’s nothing,’ Maddy assured him. ‘I just felt a bit nauseous.’

‘Come and sit down,’ Max instructed her, shaking his head when she insisted that she was all right.

This fourth pregnancy which they had both greeted with such joy was tiring her far more than Max remembered the previous three doing and he cursed himself for allowing her to become pregnant again when she already had three children to look after plus his elderly grandfather.

He would have a quiet word with his mother and ask her to keep an eye on Maddy for him, make sure she wasn’t overdoing things.