Starting Over

‘Livvy was due home today,’ Maddy commented. The sickness had subsided now, thank goodness. The last thing she wanted was for Max to start worrying, fussing.

‘I know they’ve only been away for a matter of weeks but so much has happened that it feels as though it’s been much longer,’ Maddy continued.

‘Mmm …’

‘I wonder how she’s going to cope with having her father back? Honor says that David is desperate to heal the breach between them but that he feels he owes it to Livvy not to force anything on her.’

‘Give it time,’ Max counselled her. ‘David’s return has been a shock for all of us but especially so for Olivia.’

Maddy was just about to remark that her concern for Olivia, his cousin, wasn’t limited to her troubled relationship with her father. She was also uncomfortably aware of the sentiments and grievances about his marriage that Caspar had once revealed to her—but just as she was about to speak a fresh sickening wave of nausea struck her.

It was probably nothing, she assured herself. She was due to visit the antenatal clinic—an overdue visit, in fact, since she had had to miss her last appointment because Ben had not been feeling well. Her swollen ankles and the fact that she felt so nauseous and tired were nothing to worry about. Why should they be? She had not experienced any problems with her other three pregnancies.

‘You’ve done what?’ Sara’s father laughed as she held the telephone receiver closer to her ear and explained to him just what had happened.

‘… and you’ll never guess what,’ she continued. ‘Some of the Crighton clan are booked in for dinner tonight so I shall get a first-hand view of the “enemy.”’

‘I’ve told you before, you’ve only heard one side of the story,’ her father reminded her forthrightly.

‘I don’t care. If only half what Grandmamma Tania has told me is true then they treated her abominably.’

On the other end of the telephone line Richard Lanyon suppressed a rueful sigh. His daughter was very much inclined to champion lost causes and underdogs and he just hoped that life wouldn’t strip her of too many of her ideals and illusions.

Privately he considered his father’s second wife to be an almost naively childlike but totally selfish woman. His father adored her and protected her but he sometimes found her irritating and exasperating.

‘Well, I’d caution you against trying to slay too many dragons,’ he warned Sara drolly now.

‘I won’t,’ she agreed. ‘But it’s time someone took the Crightons down a peg or two. Enjoy your holiday,’ she added warmly.

Her father was an architect and he and her mother owned a villa on a luxury complex in the Caribbean which he had helped to design. Sara knew she could have gone with them and enjoyed a long holiday at their expense but she had too much pride and independence to do so. She had chosen teaching as her career because she wanted to help others and in her book the gift of education was one of the most precious that could be given; but the realities of modern day teaching were eroding her ideals and dreams.

Now, she was dauntingly aware that she was having second thoughts about her professional future. A short spell of working here in Haslewich would give her time to think through her options—as well as taking up cudgels on behalf of Grandmamma Tania?

Sara wasn’t going to deny that she felt that the Crightons had treated Tania badly despite what her father had said.

Having put away her few belongings in the pleasant accommodation Frances Sorter had shown her, Sara made her way back to the restaurant where Frances greeted her arrival with a warm smile.

‘We wouldn’t normally expect you to work in the evening,’ Frances told her, ‘but if you were prepared to make a start now …’

‘I’d be glad to,’ Sara told her and meant it, grimacing as her stomach suddenly gave an embarrassingly loud rumble.

‘Oh, good heavens, you must be starving,’ Frances exclaimed. ‘Normally staff meals are eaten when we’ve finished serving but I can arrange for something to be sent into the office for you.’

‘A sandwich would be fine,’ Sara told her.

‘A sandwich!’ Frances looked horrified. ‘This is an award-winning restaurant,’ she told Sara mock primly, an amused smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. ‘How do you feel about chargrilled vegetables and wild salmon?’

‘I’m in love with it already,’ Sara told her solemnly, her eyes full of laughter. She was going to enjoy working here. Frances had a good sense of humour even if she was slightly frazzled at the moment.

Nearly an hour later Sara grimaced as she took her eyes off the computer screen to take a final mouthful of the delicious meal she had been served. She had become so engrossed in what she was doing her food had gone cold—not that she was still hungry! The more than generous portion she had been served would easily have satisfied two people.

She frowned as the computer refused to give her the information she needed to complete the task she was working on. She would need to have a word with Frances about this.

Getting up she opened the office door and walked down the short corridor that separated it from the restaurant, hesitantly going inside.

Frances had told her that she was ‘fronting’ the restaurant tonight but Sara couldn’t see her anywhere. The restaurant was very busy, every table taken.

‘Bobbie rang me earlier,’ Tullah told Saul as the waiter filled their wine glasses.

‘Livvy’s back but Caspar hasn’t come with her. He’s staying on in America and according to Livvy the marriage is over.’

Tullah frowned a little. At one time Saul and Livvy had been very close and Saul himself had admitted to her that he had been very attracted to his second cousin, but that was all in the past now. She was Saul’s wife.

‘It’s the girls I feel sorry for,’ she continued.

‘It’s so hard for children when their parents split up.’

Saul had three children from his first marriage and Tullah could still remember how fragile and lost they had seemed when she had first met him and them.

Saul’s first wife had abandoned not only her husband but her three children as well, claiming that there was no place for her son and daughters in her second marriage to a man who was not family oriented.

It had not been easy for any of them when she and Saul had first fallen in love and married, Tullah acknowledged, even though now the children totally accepted her. A child of their own had completed their family but Tullah knew she felt a fierce extra protective love for Saul’s eldest three children, especially his daughter Meg, and her heart went out to Amelia and Alex.

‘If you ask me, men and women should be kept strictly apart except for purposes which are purely recreational,’ Nick told them both tongue-in-cheek, his eyes dancing with wicked amusement.

Like all the Crighton men he was outstandingly good-looking, but Nick had an added air of excitement and danger, an added aura, a certain very challenging maleness about him Tullah recognised as she gave a small admonishing shake of her head and told him, ‘You’re incorrigible, Nick, you really are.’

‘Nope, I’m just determined never to fall into the trap of allowing my emotions to ruin my life,’ Nick told her firmly.

Saul said nothing. He was thoroughly familiar with his younger brother’s antipathy towards marriage and commitment.

‘One day you’ll change your mind,’ Tullah warned him. ‘You’ll see someone and fall in love with her….’

‘What is it?’ she asked anxiously as Nick suddenly yelped in pain. A girl was standing next to his chair, her face flushed and pink as she started to apologise. She had obviously bumped into him accidentally as she crossed the dimly lit room. She was extremely pretty, Tullah recognised, amused to realise that Nick was receiving her apology with something less than his normal savoir faire. He might spurn marriage and commitment but that did not mean that her brother-in-law was averse to female company—far from it. Although to be fair to him, so far as Tullah knew his ‘relationships’ were limited to women who shared his views on the advantages of their short shelf life.

Her face crimson with mortification, Sara stammered an apology to the man she had inadvertently bumped into, but her embarrassment was replaced by indignation as he gave her a look of biting scorn instead of accepting her apology in the spirit in which she had given it.

She was still trying to find Frances and having seen her on the other side of the room had been attempting to make her way through the packed restaurant, her eyes on her quarry instead of what was in front of her.

Was it really her fault anyway, she asked herself indignantly as she returned Nick’s angry glare with one of her own. He had been sitting at the table at an odd angle with the chair pulled out more than was surely necessary.

‘You look cross. Is everything all right?’ Frances asked in concern when Sara eventually caught up with her.

‘I’ve just had a bit of a run-in with one of your diners,’ Sara admitted ruefully. ‘I bumped into him but when I tried to apologise—’

‘Which one?’ Frances interrupted her.

‘That table over there,’ Sara replied, showing her.