Cruel Legacy

Sally made a soft, sympathetic sound that made him stop and smile ruefully at her.

‘Oh, I don’t envy him … in any way. His type of competitive macho sexuality has never been something I’ve wanted to emulate. There, now I really have revealed my inner self to you,’ he told her.

Sally flushed a little as she looked away from him. He was so very different from Joel—in every way. Joel would never talk to her as openly as Kenneth was doing, never discuss his innermost feelings with anyone, never reveal any aspect of himself which might show him in a bad light. Like the man Kenneth’s wife had left him for, Joel too possessed a competitive male sexuality.

Kenneth’s nature was kinder … warmer. A small shadow touched her face, and, seeing it, Kenneth told her gently, ‘You are all the things a woman should be, Sally. All the things any man could possibly want in a woman …’

Sally made a small protesting sound beneath her breath, but he heard it and shook his head.

‘No, it’s true. And so is something else.’ He turned his head and looked at her. ‘I’m going to miss you and our conversations very, very much indeed …’

‘All patients miss their nurses when they first go home,’ Sally told him huskily.

‘Ah … I suppose that’s a tactful way of telling me that all male patients fall a little in love with their nurses,’ he retaliated. ‘Very true. Although in my case I suspect it’s rather more than a little. You must be very glad that you’re happily married, and that you’ve got a wisely protective husband to stand between you and the endless stream of smitten male patients who would probably make your life a misery with their protests of undying love.’

He was smiling at her with his mouth, but his eyes were unsmiling. His eyes … She caught her breath.

It was just as well he was going home, she told herself severely half an hour later when she went for her break.

Sally grimaced disgustedly as she walked into the kitchen and caught sight of the empty, unwashed milk bottle. Joel had left three used teabags in the sink and they had made a dirty brown stain on the surface she had left clean and shining when she went to work. His mug was on the worktop, unwashed. She scooped up the teabags with one hand and turned on the hot tap with the other, her mouth compressing. She could hear Joel coming downstairs, but she didn’t turn round.

‘Do you have to leave the place in such a mess, Joel?’ she demanded as he came into the kitchen.

She could tell from the sound of his feet that he was wearing his slippers, which meant that he wasn’t dressed … which meant … She could feel her stomach muscles tightening protestingly, resentfully, her whole body tensing when he came up behind her and slid his arms round her, trying to nuzzle his face into her neck as he told her, ‘It’s Saturday morning. Leave all that and come to bed. You must be worn out.’

‘Too worn out for what you’ve got in mind,’ she told him shortly, edging away from him, relieved when he abruptly let go of her.

‘For goodness’ sake, aren’t I allowed even to touch you now? What’s the matter with you?’

‘Nothing’s the matter with me,’ she denied, turning round. ‘And as for touching me … all you ever want these days is sex, sex, sex. Why don’t you think about what I might want for a change? Like not coming home to find the place looking like a tip …’

‘It’s an empty milk bottle, Sal, that’s all,’ Joel told her wearily. ‘OK, so I should have rinsed it out, but to be honest with you I had other things on my mind——’

‘Just as you had other things on your mind when you were supposed to come home early and take Paul fishing, I suppose,’ she interrupted him angrily. ‘You’re always accusing me of spending too much time with the kids, Joel, but whose fault is that? If you spent a bit more time with them yourself …’

‘They don’t want me … they …’

He stopped when he saw the stubborn look on her face.

‘I tried to ring, but the phone was engaged. Probably that sister of yours boasting about her new extension …’

Sally stared at him. ‘How do you know about that?’

‘Cathy told me. It seems this house isn’t good enough for her any more. She wants to live somewhere with a garden all the way round it. When you’re complaining to her, perhaps you ought to try explaining to her that if you’d got yourself a husband like your sister’s she might have been in with a chance,’ he added bitterly.

‘Oh for goodness’ sake, Joel, stop feeling so sorry for yourself,’ Sally protested. ‘If you could see some of the patients from the wards …’ She stopped abruptly, tensing inwardly as she recognised what she was doing. It was unfair of her to compare Joel to Kenneth Drummond. Unfair and unwise? ‘Look, it’s been a long night and I’m tired. If you go up and get dressed now you could do the supermarket shopping while it’s still quiet and then——’

‘Yeah … and pushing the trolley will give me something else to think about instead of sex, sex, sex—is that it?’

Sally flinched as she saw the bitterness in his eyes, but she was not going to give way and be bullied into making love with him. If he wanted to sulk like a spoiled child, well, then, let him.

‘Sally …’

Gritting her teeth, she ignored him, keeping her back turned until she heard him leave the kitchen. Upstairs in the bathroom, Joel showered angrily, turning the water to its fullest force, welcoming the savage pounding on his skin as a release of his tension. He hadn’t wanted to have sex with Sally, he had simply wanted to touch her … to hold her, to make her focus her attention on him and listen to him while he tried to explain. To explain what? That he was afraid … Oh, she would love that. The last thing she had time to do these days was to listen to his problems.

She ought not to have been so uptight with Joel, Sally admitted tiredly as she pulled the duvet over herself. She’d make it up to him later … cook him a special supper, bribe the kids to stay out of the way, try to get him to listen while she tried to explain what she wanted from him, needed from him now that she was working.

Yes, they could talk later.

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_29398e54-f81f-5721-8a16-1c6c1eb69db3)

‘GOODNESS, I’d forgotten how bad London traffic is, hadn’t you?’ Deborah exclaimed. ‘Emma said it was eight for dinner at eight-thirty. Will we make it in time, do you think?’

Without waiting for Mark to reply, she added, ‘I can’t believe it’s over eighteen months since we last saw them. Their moving down to London has made the distance too great between us for frequent visits.’

She gave Mark a quick, amused look as he stamped hard on the brakes and cursed as someone cut in front of him.

‘I told you you should have let me drive the London stretch of the journey,’ she reminded him cheerfully. ‘You know I’m a much better driver than you.’

‘You mean a much more aggressive one,’ he retorted.

‘My driving is not aggressive, it’s simply self-assured,’ Deborah corrected him. ‘I think we have to take a left here, Mark … Oh, no, you missed it. Now we’ll have to go all the way round again. You really should …’ She saw the muscle starting to twitch in his jaw and bit back the comment she had been about to make, saying instead, ‘Ryan told us on Friday that we’re going to be appointed as liquidators for Kilcoyne’s. No official announcement has been made as yet. They’re going to wait until after the funeral for that. Apart from the bank there are quite a lot of trade creditors outstanding. Not that they’re likely to recover very much. The bank seems to have all the security pretty well tied up——’

‘Where did you say we had to turn?’ he interrupted her tersely. Mark had never enjoyed city driving or heavy traffic. Unlike her. She positively revelled in the cut and thrust of it, the tussle of wills with other drivers, the challenge of outwitting them.

‘Wow … do you think we’ve got the right place?’ Deborah asked when they finally reached the address Emma had given her. It was a quiet, elegant square, and, while it might not compare in size or grandeur with some of London’s more famous squares, it was nevertheless very obviously an exclusive and expensive address.

‘Toby must be doing well if they can afford somewhere like this,’ she added as they left the car. ‘Emma said he’d recently bought into an accountancy practice. Quite an upmarket one too, apparently.’

‘Well, that should please her,’ Mark commented sourly. ‘She always was a bit of a social climber.’

Deborah eyed him in surprise. ‘She’s ambitious, that’s all—she wants Toby to succeed.’

‘Of course she does, she wants him to succeed so that she can boast about how well he’s done to her friends. What happened to her career, by the way? As I remember it, she’d got it all planned that she was going to make a big name for herself in the media.’

‘Well, she was doing very well until the TV station she was with lost its franchise. It was a case of last in first out. Since then she’s been doing some part-time PR work for a friend.’

‘Part-time PR work—well, they certainly haven’t bought this place with what she’s earning from that,’ Mark announced as he eyed the elegant façade of the building in front of them.

Deborah watched him thoughtfully as she pressed the intercom buzzer. He had been so scratchy and grouchy lately, so unlike his normal placid, calm self.

Emma came down herself to let them in. Small and vivacious, her tiny frame and delicate features hid a personality that was extremely strong-willed and tenacious. She was not a woman’s woman, and unlike Deborah she had made few friends at university. Deborah had found her competitiveness more amusing than threatening and had often teased her about the streak of conventionality which had made her insist almost as soon as they had left university that she and Toby marry instead of opting to live together as Deborah and Mark had chosen to do.

She and Mark had been invited to the wedding. A lavish affair held at a small, carefully chosen village where Emma just happened to have an ancient relative living. It had been a fairy-tale occasion, and a tribute to Emma’s talents as a master tactician and planner.

‘Mmm … this is really something,’ Deborah enthused generously as Emma ushered them into the apartment. ‘You could virtually fit the whole of our place into your living-room and have space to spare, couldn’t you, Mark?’ she commented as she admired the expensive silk curtains and the specially woven off-white carpet that covered the floor. ‘You must be doing very well, Toby,’ she added when Emma’s husband brought her her drink.

‘Oh, it’s nothing to do with me,’ he told her without smiling. ‘Emma bought this place herself—with her own money.’