The year Estelle turned eleven, her mother had suddenly announced that
she was to spend her summer holiday with her father.
"I don't want to," Estelle had protested.
"The farm's miles from anywhere. There's nothing to do. I hate it.
Why can't I stay here in London?"
"Ethian and I will be going away," Lorraine told her coolly.
"You can't stay here."
"Going away? Where?" Estelle challenged her sharply.
"You were away at Easter."
"That was business," her mother told her crisply.
"You went skiing," Estelle reminded her.
"It was a business trip. I simply accompanied your stepfather, which
is exactly what I shall be doing this time. He's been invited to join
a group of other businessmen on someone's yacht."
"Some business trip," Estelle sneered.
"Estelle," her mother warned, her eyes starting to harden, 'if you're
going to be difficult about this. "
"You'll do what?" Estelle demanded.
"Leave me here on my own? That's illegal."
"Estelle, I'm really getting quite out of patience with you," Lorraine
berated her.
"You're going to stay with your father and that's that."
"You shouldn't have had me if you didn't want children," Estelle threw
angrily at her.
"No, you're quite right. I shouldn't have," her mother retaliated
evenly, 'and believe me, Estelle, increasingly I rather wish that I
hadn't. "
Later that night, listening outside their bedroom door, Estelle had
heard her mother complaining to her stepfather.
"Estelle's being dreadfully difficult about going to her father's. I
think she's jealous of me, Ethian. She obviously resents the idea of
my having any fun, and after all that I've sacrificed for her. John
never wanted her."
"Perhaps you should tell her that, make her realise how lucky she is,"
Estelle had heard Ethian responding.
"I'm beginning to think you're right and that I should have sent her
away to school."
Estelle's visit to her father hadn't been a success. She had hated the
farm and her stepbrother
Ian. Sophie's presence in her father's life she treated with cool
disdain, and as for Rebecca-she loathed and detested her.
"You don't want me here," she had accused her father after he had taken
her to task for deliberately trying to upset Rebecca and Ian.
"You never wanted me...."
She hadn't known which of them she had resented more, her mother or her
father. Neither of them loved her, and her father had compounded his
lack of love for her by so obviously and generously giving his second
family the love he had never felt for her.
It had caused her to feel a mixture of anger, bitterness and sharp
resentment deep down inside to see the way he played with Rebecca, to
see the love in his face, hear it in his voice when he was with her.
Ian, her stepbrother, she felt nothing but contempt for. The way he
tried to placate her as though he actually felt sorry for her because
he lived with their father made her despise him even more. Well, Ian
could keep their father. He was the last person she wanted in her
life, the very last.
When she grew up, she was going to find herself a rich man, richer than
Ethian and much, much richer than her father and he would always,
always put her first.
Estelle despised Ian and Sophie for trying to make friends with her.
Why should either of them like her? She certainly didn't like them.
She didn't like anyone, not really. People only pre and Betray 303
tended to like you because they wanted something from you. Her mother
pretended to like her, to love her when she wanted to get her to do
something like coming here so that she could go away and enjoy herself.
Having children meant that you couldn't enjoy yourself.
Estelle was openly scornful of her father's very evident love for his
second family and openly hostile towards his attempts to include her in
their family activities.
She couldn't wait for the visit to end. At least in London she had the
freedom to do what she wanted. Her mother was far too busy with her
own life to interest herself over-much in Estelle's. Just so long as
she kept out of her way, Estelle was pretty free to do as she
pleased.
Determinedly ignoring all Sophie's warm overtures and her father's
attempts to reach out to her, Estelle grimly sat out her visit in
contemptuous loathing.
It pleased her to know that she was upsetting her stepmother by arguing
with her father, the whole household, making them unhappy. Why
shouldn't she? She hated them all, but most especially she hated her
father. Oh, yes, she hated him.
But she was determined that, unlike Blade, she was not going to allow
her father to send her away to boarding school.
He alternately fascinated and ant agonised her. Although her mother
and Ethian had been married for almost four years, in all that time
Blade had probably spent less than four months at home with them. Her
mother and stepfather had refused to have him living with them full
time.
"Having Estelle at home is bad enough," Estelle had heard her mother
complaining to Ethian.
"I'm not having Blade here, as well." And so Blade had continued to do
as he had done before his father's second marriage. He spent even some
of his holidays at school.
"The only reason he married your mother is because he wants someone to
have regular sex with," Blade had told Estelle the previous
Christmas--Christmas was the one time when her mother made an exception
and had him at home with them.
"You do know what sex is, don't you?" he had demanded when Estelle
made no response.
Of course she did. She had heard the sounds emanating from the room
her mother shared with Ethian. She had seen people having sex on
television, giggled about it with her school friends, and besides, her
mother had had other men friends before meeting Ethian.
Blade hated his father as she did hers.
Their mutual distrust and hatred of the parents who controlled their
world formed a strong bond between them and added to that there was
something about Blade, something about the dark, brooding, deliciously
frightening maleness of him that attracted Estelle.
He was so different from everyone else she knew--the girls at her
all-girls' school; her mother, Ethian, her father and his family.
was. Blade was. dangerous. dangerous and exciting, but even more
importantly, underneath they were the same kind of people. Estelle
didn't know how she knew that fact; she just knew that she did.
1 he noisy sound of a toddler indulging in a terrible two's tantrum
with his mother outside her car window snapped Claudia out of her
reverie, bringing her sharply from the past to the present. Her body
felt stiff and cold and she was shocked to see that it was late in the
afternoon.
How many hours had she spent sitting in the car reliving the past? Far
too many.
And what had possessed her to do such a thing in the first place, to
abandon her responsibilities and come here? Why ask herself a question
to which she already knew the answer?
Guilt and pain had motivated her. Guilt and pain and fear. Not guilt
because she had taken Tara--that was something she could never feel
guilty about doing, she told herself fiercely. Holding Tara close to
her own body as she carried her away from the squat, she had promised
her that from her, Claudia, she would have every bit as much love as
she would have received from her own mother. She had promised her,
too, that she would love her just as dearly, just as closely, just as
much as she would a child conceived within her own body. That to her,
Tara was and always would be hers. No, it wasn't guilt for taking Tara
that she felt but guilt because she had let Tara grow up in ignorance
of the truth, not just to protect her daughter but to protect herself,
as well.
"One day, you will have to tell her the truth-for her own sake," Garth
had warned her gently the first day Tara started school.
She had promised him that she would--when the time was right. Then
before she could. before the time had been right, she had found out
the truth about Tara's conception, had found out that Garth, her own
husband, was Tara's father, and after that there was no way, no way at
all, she could bring herself to tell Tara whose child she really
was--no way she could even begin to admit to herself whose child she
was.
At every point in Tara's life when the truth might have been
discovered, Claudia had held her breath in dread, but to her relief no
one had ever questioned anything and the lies she had told in order to
register Tara's birth had never been exposed.
But all it would take for her deception to be revealed would be for
someone to check at the hospital or at the surgery where Claudia had
claimed a doctor had attended after Tara's unexpected early home
birth.
When they initially moved to Ivy House, she had got away with claiming
that their medical records had been lost. No one had ever questioned
the fact that she had registered Tara's birth some weeks after it had
actually taken place and Tara had a completed birth certificate naming
Claudia and Garth Wallace as her parents.
Well, one part of that at least was true even if Claudia herself hadn't
known it when she registered Garth and herself as Tara's father and
mother.
But everyone knew how meticulous American embassies were about checking
people out, and according to Tara, Ryland's aunt was even more
particular.
Claudia could feel her heart starting to beat far too fast. Garth was
right. She couldn't allow Tara to find out the truth from someone
else, but how on earth was she going to tell her? And what would
happen when she did? Would Tara understand or would she turn away from
her, reject her, end up hating her? Tara loved her, she knew, but
Claudia also knew how terrifyingly quickly love could turn to bitter
hatred when the loved one was discovered to have lied and cheated, when
one's trust in them was destroyed, when one's belief in them was
shattered.
She would certainly never forget how she had felt the day she
discovered that Garth was actually Tara's father.
It had been an ordinary enough day to begin with, apart from the fact
that Claudia and Garth had had an appointment with the ear, nose and
throat specialist at their local hospital to discuss the forthcoming
removal of Tara's tonsils.
She had suffered very badly from throat infections ever since first
starting school and their doctor had finally persuaded Claudia, much
against her initial feelings, to seek the advice of a specialist.
Since Tara's birth, Claudia had been very wary of any contact with
members of the medical profession, but only Garth knew that this sprang
not so much from her memories of the baby she had lost, but her fear of
anyone's questioning the supposed facts surrounding Tara's birth, and
it was for this reason that Garth was taking time off work to accompany
her to the hospital to see the specialist who had examined Tara the
previous week and who now wished to discuss with them his belief that
she would benefit from an operation to remove her tonsils.
The years since Tara's arrival and their move to Ivy House had passed
so quickly that sometimes Claudia simply didn't know where they had
gone. Garth's business had flourished and become extremely successful,
involving his being away from home and working very long hours. But
Claudia had been so involved and absorbed in motherhood and Tara's
needs that there simply wasn't time for her to miss him.
Occasionally, she was guiltily aware that Garth was being pushed to the
periphery of her life--a life that revolved almost totally around Tara
and their home, but although Garth was inclined at times to make
slightly acerbic comments about the fact that even on the rare occasion
when they did have time to themselves, inevitably the sole topic of her
conversation was Tara, deep down Claudia knew that he adored her just
as much as she did herself.
And if their sex life had dwindled to the odd hurried,
early-Sunday-morning coming together interspersed by the even less
frequent, slightly more leisurely intimacy, well, she had concluded
from what she heard from other women that she was not alone in finding
it difficult to combine the roles of lover and mother, and fortunately
Garth seemed to accept the situation.
It was a crisp autumn morning, and as they set off for the hospital,
Claudia tried to relax and enjoy the novelty of being driven instead of
being the driver.
"Remember the first time I took you out for a drive?" Garth reminisced
as though he had picked up on her thoughts.
"Mmm..." Claudia returned.
"The car heater wouldn't work and--' " I pulled off the road to check
it," Garth went on, adding wickedly, " I never got the heater working,
but I certainly enjoyed the way we eventually ended up keeping warm.
"
"Garth," Claudia reproved him, 'mind that cyclist. "
Garth gave her a wry look. Increasingly recently, Claudia had been
stonewalling him whenever he brought up the subject of sex. Because
she no longer wanted sex or because she no longer wanted him?
He understood how involved she was with Tara, how absorbed, how
besotted, a less kind man might have said. And he knew, too, it was
illogical of him to feel excluded and jealous, even resentful
sometimes, of the way that Tara's needs always seemed to take
precedence over his own, or rather the way that Claudia accorded Tara's
more importance than she did his own. It was not so much that he was
jealous of the time and attention Claudia gave to Tara but rather more
that it hurt him to feel that Claudia preferred Tara's company to his;
that he himself was somehow no longer of any real importance to her.
He understood, too, of course he did, that it just wasn't possible for
them to share the same kind of uninhibited sex life they had enjoyed as
a newly married couple living on their own, now that they had a
soon-tobethirteenyear-old daughter running around everywhere--a very
intelligent, aware, inquisitive daughter at that.
Worriedly, Claudia frowned, staring blindly out the window. She knew
logically that there was nothing to fear from seeing the specialist;
that everyone accepted that Tara was hers . their daughter. But she
still felt apprehensive, her face clouding as Garth turned into the
hospital car park.
When he saw her expression. Garth silently berated himself. Poor
Clo.
He ought to have been more sympathetic even if . even if what? Even
if he felt that Tara ought to be told the truth or at least as much of
it as she was capable of understanding.
Initially, Claudia had agreed with him, but recently he had noticed
that she was becoming increasingly defensive whenever he brought it
up.
"How can I tell her?" she had demanded the last time he tried to
broach the subject.
"She's too young to understand. And anyway, what would I say ... that
I'm not your mother?"
"She'll have to know one day, Clo/ Garth had reminded her gently.
"She might not," Claudia had denied stubbornly.
"Everyone believes that she's mine... ours," she had hastily corrected
herself.
"If anyone had been going to find out, they would have done so by
now."
Garth had sighed, not wanting to provoke an argument with her that he
knew would upset her. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps Tara might never
need to know. But what if she did . what if the truth were to come
out by accident?
"One day I'll tell her," Claudia had promised gruffly, 'when . when
the time is right. "
"The appointment with the specialist shouldn't take too long. Do you
fancy having lunch somewhere afterwards? There's that new Italian
place. You always enjoy Italian food."
"Oh, Garth, I can't," Claudia had protested fretfully.
"I've got to get some material for the fancy-dress costume Tara wants
to wear for her friend's birthday party, and anyway, it's my afternoon
at the centre."
Several times a month, Claudia gave her time and her expertise free to
a local community centre, offering counselling services to those who
needed them.
Garth knew that she enjoyed her work, but she had always stressed that
she could only do it so long as it fitted in with Tara's routine.
"I want to be there for her. Garth," she had pro 3
tested when he once made the comment that she seemed to have precious
little time for herself-and for him, he could have added but hadn't.
"It's not a sacrifice ... it's what I want to do."
The specialist had smiled warmly at them both when they were shown in
to see him.
"It's a simple enough operation," he assured them as he checked through
Tara's file, 'and I would certainly strongly advise that you go ahead.
The infections she's been having can be quite debilitating although
unlikely to cause any permanent damage--at least to her health. We do
find that children who are subject to these problems can fall behind
with their school work and it's certainly a procedure that's better
carried out now than when she's an adult. In fact, right now she's at
the optimum age for it.
"The only problems we could have would be with her extremely rare blood
grouping, but I can see from checking your records--' here he looked at
Garth '--that you and she both have the same blood group."
With what he obviously intended to be humour, he added jovially, "I
know they say it's a wise child who knows its own father, but in Tara's
case there could be no possible doubt."
Claudia had glanced towards Garth, expecting to see him looking as
astonished as she was herself, but instead and to her shock, she
realised that he was looking instead highly uncomfortable and almost.
almost guilty. She had known then immediately, instinctively, even if
illogically, as she grappled with the shock not just of what she had
seen in his face but of her own swift acceptance of it, that the
specialist was right and that Garth was Tara's father. Even worse was
the realisation that he must have always known it and kept that
knowledge from her, and most painfully of all, that Tara, her child,
was, in effect, not her child at all but Garth's.
She had managed to control herself enough to wait until they were back
in the car before she hurled her accusations at him, the words almost
choking her.
"Admit it. Garth," she demanded, 'because I won't let it rest until I
know the truth. You are Tara's father, aren't you? "
"There's a strong possibility that I could be," Garth responded after a
few seconds' silence, his mouth compressing as instead of looking at
her, he stared straight ahead through the windscreen.
"A strong possibility? You share the same rare blood group. You must
have--' " I knew that there was a chance that Tara could be mine, yes,"
he interrupted her grimly.
"But that was all. Believe me, Claudia, until today--' " Until today
you hoped that she wasn't? "
Garth said nothing. What could he say? That he had determinedly and
firmly put what Katriona had said to him to one side, telling himself
that so far as he was concerned, his love for Tara was not dependent on
whether or not he had physically fathered her. If he had, then it was
his responsibility and perhaps even his right to be her father, and if
he hadn't, well, she was still his daughter and he still loved her.
Although he suspected Claudia would find it hard to understand, part of
him simply hadn't wanted to find out. Not for a single heartbeat of
time would he want to deny Tara's existence, but there was a part of
him that desperately wanted to ignore that he might have had any part
in it. It had seemed better, wiser, safer, to simply put to one side
everything that Katriona had said to him, to remind himself whenever he
did think about it that Katriona herself had had her own reasons, had
not seemed very sure about Tara's paternity and he certainly had no
real memories of ever having been intimate enough with the girl to have
fathered her except that. except those odd, haunting memories of a
woman who didn't feel or smell quite right, a woman who had not perhaps
been Claudia.
"All these years you've known that Tara is your child. All these years
you've deceived me, lied to me...."
Claudia started to cry with a mixture of shock and anger, but as Garth
made to turn towards her and take her in his arms, she pushed him off
and shrank back in her seat, spitting at him like a small, angry cat.
"Don't touch me," she warned him.
"Don't you ever touch me again! You slept with Katriona. You had sex
with her. Garth ... why ... why...?"
Tears streamed down her face.
"How could you? How could you betray me like that... betray ms like
that? How often did you see her? How did you meet her? When...?"
"Claudia. It wasn't like you think," Garth pro n tested, adding,
"Look, let's go home where we can talk about this properly. I promise
you that until today I had no proof that Tara was my child."
"But you knew that she could be," Claudia insisted.
Gripping the steering wheel. Garth admitted curtly, "Yes. I knew
there was a ... possibility that she could be. Look, we can't talk
here," he told her.
"We need to wait until--' " Until what? " Claudia challenged him
furiously.
"Until you've had time to come up with more deceit? More lies...?"
"I have never lied to you, Claudia," Garth retorted sharply.
"Yes, you have--by omission. You've already admitted that you knew
that you could be Tara's father, but you never told me... never said
anything. You let me walk in there today knowing--' " Claudia, I did
not. I had no idea that he. Look, please, Clo.
know what you must be thinking, but it isn't like. isn't like you
think," he finished lamely.
"Isn't it? How much of a fool do you think I am, Garth? I know that
Katriona was Tara's birth mother. You've just admitted that you're her
father. So far as I know, there is only one logical way that that can
have happened, isn't there? Isn't there?" she stressed bitingly.
"Clo, please, if you'd just calm down for a moment," Garth begged her
urgently, "I could--' " You could what? " As he stopped the car at
some traffic-lights, Claudia saw her moment and seized it. She opened
the door and sprang out, telling him, " The only words I want to hear
from you. Garth, are the ones we both know you aren't in a position to
say. " And without giving him the chance to say anything more, she
angrily slammed the car door shut, turned on her heel and walked
sharply away.
Her pride kept her going as far as the first corner. Once round it,
she could feel further hot tears starting to burn her eyes. Tears of
shock, chagrin, rage and, most of all, anguished, agonizing pain.
All these years and she had never known, never guessed.
Take her," Katriona had urged Claudia as she lay dying, and now Claudia
knew why. God, how Katriona must have laughed at her. How they both
must have laughed at her, lying in bed together as they-" Are you all
right, love? "
The kind, motherly voice of the woman who stopped and put her hand on
her arm brought Claudia to her senses. Swallowing hard, she nodded her
head and lied, "Yes... just something in my eye, that's all."
Something in her eye! That gritty, saw-tooth, sharply destructive dart
of betrayal and jealousy had lodged deep within her heart and was
already beginning to poison her emotions.
It wasn't just Garth's sexual betrayal that hurt. Agonizing though
that was, it was his other betrayal that was hurting her the most--the
knowledge that he had known and kept secret from her all these years
the fact that Tara was his daughter. his child. that she was, in
truth, far more his than she was hers. that between them was a blood
bond there never would be between her and her beloved daughter. that
Garth legally had far more claim on her than she could ever have
herself. She hated him for that and hated herself even more for having
such a feeling.
Automatically, she started to make her way home, hoping that she
wouldn't bump into anyone who knew her, her actions instinctive, her
one goal to get home. to seek refuge where she knew she would be safe.
Until she got there, until she was properly alone, she couldn't, dared
not, examine her feelings too closely, and yet certain thoughts kept
surfacing to torment her.
How often had Garth seen Katriona? Where had he seen her? Not that
wretched squat, surely. The thought of Garth with Katriona in that
filthy place. the thought of Garth with Katriona anywhere made her
want to retch, to scream, to tear at her skin, her hair, to cry out
aloud her anguish and sense of betrayal. But she knew that she could
not do so, must not do so; for Tara's sake, she must try to behave as
normally as possible.
Why had Garth gone to Katriona? What had been lacking in their own
relationship, their marriage, for him to do so?
"Soldiers, army men. They're the worst," Katriona had purred
triumphantly. Had she known him even then? Had he. Garth, even then.
Tears burned her eyes like acid. Hastily,
she blinked them away but it was impossible for her to stop torturing
herself, to stop imagining the two of them together.
She already knew that Garth would not be home that evening. He had a
business thing he was attending, a conference where he was due to make
a speech, and as she let herself into Ivy House, she told herself
fiercely that she was glad she wouldn't have to see him; that she
didn't want to see him, not now, not ever. Not after what he had
done.
How many times had it happened? How often had he made love. had sex
with Katriona? Had he enjoyed it more than he had done with her? He
must have done, mustn't he? He must have wanted her more than he had
done her, his wife, otherwise he would never have. And Katriona must
have told him that Tara was his child. that she was carrying his baby
while she, his wife, had been unable. Claudia could feel the hysteria
bubbling up inside her, the pain that could only be voided by screaming
it into the silence of the empty house.
Suddenly, she was re-experiencing just as sharply and agonizingly as
though it had only happened hours ago all the feelings she had
experienced when she first realised that she would never be able to
have her own child.
But Tara was her child. Tara was hers, her daughter. She had been the
one to love her, to teach her, to mother her.
Tara. Soon it would be time to collect her from school, a ritual they
both enjoyed even though Tara sometimes complained that she was old
enough now to be allowed to walk home on her own. It was one of their
special times together, that walk home from school, when Tara would
tell her all about her day, chattering happily at her side, her hand
tucked in Claudia's.
Tara. Her daughter. Katriona's child. Garth's child, but her
daughter.
She was, she discovered, slowly rocking her hunched body backwards and
forwards as she sat on her bed, their bed, hers and Garth's. Suddenly,
overwhelmingly, she knew she was going to be sick. Had Garth taken her
to their bed? Had he.
She retched violently into the lavatory bowl and then leaned against
the wall, shaking from head to foot.
Had Garth told Katriona that she could not have any children? Had he
perhaps complained about her, bemoaned her inability to give him any
children? Was that why.
Stop it. Stop it, she urged herself as she flushed the lavatory and
then started to run the cold water tap. She had to pull herself
together for Tara's sake. Tara was the one who mattered, the only one
who mattered to her now, she told herself dully. Her marriage to Garth
was over. She knew that. How could it not be.
How could he not have told her. warned her. All these years when
every time he looked at Tara, he must have been remembering Katriona.
Perhaps that was why he hadn't told her--because he wanted to keep his
memories of
Tara's mother sacred, his memories of her conception sacred. Had he
loved Katriona. loved her perhaps more than he had ever loved her?
He must have felt something for her. Was that why he loved Tara?
Because she was her mother's child? Round and round her thoughts went,
faster and faster, spinning out of control, dizzying her with their
intensity and their immense capacity for causing her pain.
Tara. She had to go and collect Tara. The phone was ringing as she
left the house. Numbly, she ignored it.
Cursing to himself. Garth hung up. If Claudia was there, then quite
plainly she wasn't going to answer. If only he didn't have this damned
speech to give this evening.
He needed time to talk to Claudia. to explain. to make her listen,
but how could he talk to her with Tara there and. On impulse, he
quickly dialled the telephone number of Claudia's parents.
As though surprised to hear his voice, his mother-in-law readily agreed
to his request that she come to Ivy House to look after Tara for a few
days while Garth took Claudia away for a surprise short break.
"I know it's short notice," he apologised.
"Don't worry about it," he was reassured.
"I think it's a wonderful idea. Where are you going to take her?"
"Er.-it's a secret," Garth told her, and after all, it wasn't untrue.
As yet, he had no idea himself where he was going to take Claudia, only
that it would have to be a place where they could be completely alone
so they could get this whole sorry mess sorted out.
Too caught off guard to argue and still shellshocked from her
discovery, Claudia gave in numbly when Garth announced his plans. He
had found a small country cottage to rent on the Welsh border not far
from Hay-on-Wye. Claudia sat by his side in frozen silence all the way
there. Not because she was deliberately trying to punish him by not
speaking but simply because it was easier to remain silent than to
unleash the pain she knew was waiting for her once she started to give
voice to her feelings.
The weather had turned cold and wet, and Claudia's face had a pinched,
bloodless look that made her suddenly look very much older. Even the
way she moved was different. Garth acknowledged when they eventually
reached their destination and Claudia got out of the car and walked
slowly towards the cottage without waiting to see whether or not he was
following her.
In the forty-eight hours since the truth had come out, he had cursed
himself a thousand, no, a hundred thousand times for what he had done,
and yet, if it had never happened, there would be no Tara. He could
still put his hand on his heart and swear honestly that he had no idea
how he had ever come to have sex with Katriona. -and that it had
certainly not been a premeditated or even a wanted act on his part.
The cottage had clearly been planned and furnished as a cosy retreat
for two lovers. Down and Betray 323
stairs there was an open fire; upstairs there was only one large
bedroom accompanied by a good-sized bathroom complete with a huge
Victorian bath and discreetly hung mirrors. Every room had candles
temptingly on display, obviously intended to be used, and the whole
ambience of the place was one of sensual intimacy.
He could almost see Claudia recoiling and he suspected that if he
hadn't been on his way back into the cottage carrying the box of
groceries he was fetching from the car and blocking the doorway, she
would have turned and walked out.
/! don't think this is a good idea," she told Garth bleakly as she
watched him carry the groceries into the kitchen.
"We need to talk. We both agreed on that," Garth reminded her.
To talk! How civilised he made it sound. She didn't want to talk.
She wanted to rant and rave, to scream and howl, to beat her fists, her
head, her whole self against the wall in an agony of self-denigration
and loathing that she could ever have been so stupid as not to realise
what had been happening.
"How did you meet her?" she asked him tonelessly.
"How often did you...?"
"I saw her twice," Garth answered quietly.
"The first time was when I woke up to find her going through my clothes
and pulling out the *******s of my wallet. The second was..." He
stopped and carefully bent down to put the milk and other fresh food in
the fridge.
"The only other time was when I went to see her after she had contacted
me to tell me about... about Tara." He straightened up, then slammed
the fridge door, ignoring Claudia's stony silence.
"Claudia, it isn't like you think," he insisted emotionally.
"I don't even remember having sex with her.
She--' "You don't remember." Claudia swallowed a splintering, savage
barb of angry laughter.
"What was she like. Garth? Much, much better than me, of course. Did
you talk about me, the pair of you, laugh about me?"
"Claudia, don't," Garth groaned.
"You don't--' " I don't what. I don't understand. " She laughed
again, the sharp sound reminding Garth of something shattering,
breaking.
"Of course I understand. I understand that you had sex with her. That
she conceived your child. That you and she... Where did it happen.
Garth? m our flat... in our bed?"
She could feel herself starting to shake violently from head to foot.
The same nausea that had overwhelmed her before seized her again, but
this time she managed to control it.
"Claudia, I promise you it just wasn't the way you're imagining it,"
Garth declared huskily. It was vital she should understand what he
could piece together of what had happened. How he had woken to find
Katriona in the flat and how she must have taken advantage of him while
he was the worse for drink. Even to his own ears his words sounded
suspect. But he was struggling to explain dearly what was still, to
him, just a vague memory, a hazy dream.
He could see that Claudia had taken in very little, if anything, of
what he'd said. Was refusing, almost, to let his words touch her.
"I
don't want you to say any more," Claudia told him icily.
All that was turning over in her head was the brutally painful thought
that Garth had taken Katriona into their home, their bed. He had made
love to her in the same place where he had loved her, touched her, no
doubt in exactly the same way as he had touched her, perhaps even told
her that he loved her.
Claudia had thought that the pain of losing her unborn child and then
all her hopes of any future children would be the worst pain she was
ever going to be called upon to bear, but she realised now that she was
wrong. That had been pain, but it had, even in all its searing agony,
been a clean, sharp wound. This. this was something different. This
was a slow-acting poison, a corrosive acid--a gangrene that was going
to eat into her until she was totally destroyed, until all that she was
was consumed in its slow death grip.
"I know how you must be feeling," she heard Garth saying rawly to
her.
"Do you?" she challenged him bitterly.
"How can you know. Garth? How could you do this to me, to ms?" she
demanded brokenly.
"No wonder you didn't object too much when I told you I was keeping
Tara. I'll bet you had a really good laugh about that. Me, your wife,
taking on your ... your child by another woman... loving her..."
"Claudia. I didn't know then that Tara was mine. She could have
been--'
"Anyone's. Any man's," Claudia interrupted him, her voice cold once
more.
"Yes. She could, couldn't she? But knowing that, you still... Did you
love her. Garth?" she asked him bleakly.
"No." His response was instant and immediate, but to his distress,
instead of making her relent, his answer only seemed to increase her
bitterness towards him.
"Then that makes you even more despicable," she accused him quietly.
"If you had loved her, I could have understood, but to have done what
you did without loving her... I can't stay married to you. Garth," she
told him emotionlessly, 'not after this. I couldn't bear to have you
in the same room, never mind. " She broke off and turned away from
him.
"You're overreacting," Garth returned fiercely. He was beginning to
get angry now. She hadn't even heard what he'd said or given herself a
chance to work this through with him. She was ready to believe the
worst of him without even thinking it through, almost as though. as
though. "This is exactly what you've been waiting for, isn't it?" he
challenged her bitingly.
"An excuse to get me completely out of your life. After all, it isn't
as though I've been allowed much of a role to play in it recently, have
I? You don't want a husband, Claudia, and you certainly don't want a
lover. In fact, you don't want a man at all. At least not this man.
All you want is to be a mother. Well, you're not--'
"I'm not what? I'm not Tarn's mother?" Claudia burst out.
Garth swallowed hard and stared at her. That wasn't what he had been
going to say at all. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying, her
face so pale she looked ill. In the eyes of the world, she might never
have looked less physically appealing, but so far as he was concerned,
he had never loved her more, never wanted to show her that love more,
never wanted. The cottage was small and all it took was a couple of
strides to take him to her side, his arms going round her as he cradled
her protectively against his body, murmuring over and over again,
"Clo... my love, my dearest love..."
"Don't call me that," Claudia cried, tilting her head back to look up
at him, but Garth was beyond recognising the fury and rejection in her
voice. All he wanted to do was to cement the bond he still believed
existed between them, to show her in the only way he knew that she was
his woman, his only woman, that she always had been and always would
be.
Bending his head, he lifted one hand to cup her face, the weight of his
body pushing her back against the wall, the intensity of his passion
catching her completely off guard as he started to kiss her almost
frenziedly, using his mouth to smother any objection she tried to make
as he kissed her over and over again.
Claudia felt so infuriated that she almost wanted to hit him--she, who
had never been or wanted to be physically violent or aggressive in her
entire life. She could feel the hot, hard weight of his body burning
into her own and it shocked her how easily her own body responded to
its familiarity despite everything that she had learned.
Angrily, she lashed out at him, striking a blow generated by the
deepest, most primitive, most primeval source of her feminine emotions,
wanting to hurt him, to damage him, to destroy him as he had done her
by betraying her love.
She heard, felt, the shocked gasp of air leaving his lungs as her fists
pummelled fiercely against his chest--a puerile, impossible attempt to
wound him and an act that didn't even give her the satisfaction of
emotional relief, she acknowledged as she felt the hot rush of acid
tears stinging her eyes.
"I hate you Garth... I hate you." She screamed the words at him and
was still screaming them ten seconds later when he grabbed hold of both
her wrists in one hand, scooped her up off the floor and across his
body in a fireman's lift and carried her still pummelling and kicking
towards the bed.
Afterwards, Garth swore both to her and to himself that all he had
intended to do was to dump her on the bed and leave her there until he
had calmed down, but as he did so, he saw her tear-streaked face and
the compulsion to reach out and touch it swamped him, flooding him with
remorse and anguish.
"Claudia, it wasn't the way you think," he started to say, but Claudia
had heard enough.
She raised her hand towards his face, intending to draw her nails
savagely across it, to do anything . anything to silence those words,
those lies, he was telling her.
"Claudia.-no!" Garth exploded, reaching for her wrist, locking his
hand with hers in a parody of the intimacy shared by a pair of lover's
entwined hands. Enraged, Claudia leaned forward, closing the
fractional distance between them, desperate to find an outlet for her
emotions. Then, acting purely on instinct, she sank her teeth into his
bottom lip.
Garth felt the sharp bite, the brief sting of pain, tasted the hot gush
of blood that followed it, saw the shocked exultation in Claudia's eyes
as she realised what she had done. And it was that, the sight of the
look in her eyes, the knowledge that she had enjoyed hurting him that
breached the fragile ramparts of his own battle-torn selfcontrol.
He was nearly a foot taller than her and far, far heavier. Add to that
his training as a soldier, and what surprised him was not how easily he
overpowered her but how long she continued to fight him. What shocked
him, though, was how physically arousing, how physically erotic it was
to wrestle with her on the bed; to feel the soft warmth of her body
beneath his; to know that above and beyond the anger they were both
unleashing, there was for him in what was happening between them a very
sharp and totally male awareness of the sexual heat being generated
between them. It was a heat and urgency he had al n most forgotten
what it felt like to feel as he held her down beneath him and watched
the way her body, her breasts, rose and fell with the exertion of her
breathing. In his imagination, he was already removing her clothes,
already laying bare the honey gold intimacy of her body to the touch of
his hands and his mouth.
Lying pinned beneath Garth on the bed, Claudia saw the way he was
looking at her and felt her body's response to that look--a look as old
as the one Adam had given Eve, a look as old as the one Eve had tempted
and taunted Adam into giving her. One shudder and then another went
through her as she recognised that while her mind might loathe what was
happening between them, physically and sexually her body was aroused by
it.
She knew even before Garth had lifted his hand to push aside her
clothes and reveal the hard-tipped fullness of her breasts just what he
was going to do and how she was going to feel when he did. Not only
was there anger, bitterness and contempt, there was desire, as well, in
the hot, liquid, wrenching feeling that pulsed inside her.
As his hand curled round her naked breast and his mouth found hers, she
could taste the warm salt shock of his blood on her own tongue.
Behind her closed eyelids, black and red whorls of colour mingled
violently together, reacting with her swirling emotions. Rage, pain,
desire, need. They were all there and others, too, that she couldn't
bear to acknowledge.
They made love quickly and fiercely, Claudia tearing at Garth's clothes
as she would have liked to have been tearing at his flesh, ripping,
shredding, hurting, raking his back with her fingernails as he thrust
deeply into her, hating him for the way he was making her want him
physically at the same time as she hated him so much emotionally, the
dagger points of her nails shredding his skin and yet also driving him
to thrust even deeper within her.
Their coming together was shattering and incredibly sensual. Claudia
shocked herself with her own angry aggression that manifested itself in
a need to make Garth reach orgasm deep inside her wave upon wave as
though she was somehow subconsciously drawing from him all of his
maleness, all of his 'seed', leaving him empty and drained, unable ever
again to give to anyone else that which should only have been given to
her, even though her body couldn't process it, couldn't use it.
couldn't grow a new life with it. Her own orgasms were the most
intense she had ever known, more of a pain than a pleasure, flooding
her body with convulsive explosions so powerful that afterwards her
body felt as light and empty as though she had been given a powerful
emetic. But, as she discovered in the months that followed, if its
purpose in her own subconscious had been to rid her of all her feelings
for Garth, it had not worked, not by a long way.
To the outside world, their divorce was quiet and amicable.
"I can't live with you any more Claudia had told Garth distantly.
"I
don't want you in my life, Garth. "
Garth had given in with a heavy heart. Despite all his attempts to
reason with her, she had remained obdurate. She could not stay married
to a man who had made the whole concept of their marriage a mockery and
a sham.
Tara, it was agreed, would live with her mother, with Garth remaining
very much a strong presence in her life.
/! can hardly refuse, can I? " Claudia had acknowledged at their final
private meeting, giving him a bitter smile as she added painfully, "
After all, she is your daughter. "
"And yours," Garth had insisted.
But Claudia had refused to look at him, and he had known that when she
turned her face away from him, it was because she was crying. He had
known, too, that any attempt on his part to go to her and comfort her,
to reach out and hold her as he so much longed to do, to tell her how
very, very much he loved her and always would, would achieve nothing
and probably make her hate him even more.
As she drove through the London traffic, it was Tara who was in
Claudia's thoughts. When she and Garth had broken the news to Tara
that they were divorcing, her shock and tears, her pleading with them
to stay together. Tara.
Had the circumstances been anything other than what they were, Claudia
knew that she would have relented then and given in to Garth's pleas
that they keep their marriage going. But how could she when every time
she looked at him, every time he touched her, she could only see
Katriona? Every time she saw him with Tara, she would be thinking of
how and with whom her precious daughter had been conceived.
Gradually, Tara had come to accept the separation, and Claudia had
stuck to her word that Tara could see as much of her father as she
wished had stuck to it despite the pain it caused her. Tara. Tara at
fourteen. sixteen. eighteen the age Katriona had been when. And now
her daughter was a girl no longer but a young woman, a young woman
poised on the edge of her own adult life, a young woman whose life
could be soured and spoiled as Claudia's own life had been by
betrayal.
But not the betrayal of a woman by a man. No, the betrayal she would
have to suffer would in its way be even worse--the betrayal of a child
by her mother.
04-10-07, 04:09 PM
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