Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series. PENNY JORDAN

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      Business had boomed, and if Jon had ever resented being cast as the less able of the pair of them, he had certainly never said so. But then, Jon had never been one for voicing what he thought or felt. Look at the way he had married Jenny so quickly after his own romance with her had ended without ever having said a word to him about wanting her for himself.

      He tensed as he felt Tiggy stirring beside him. He wanted to ignore her but she was already reaching out to touch him, running her fingertips hungrily over his chest. His heart sank even though he knew that her surge of sexual energy meant that today was going to be one of her good days.

      He had come to know her moods so well. They followed a recognisable pattern and he’d learned them almost by heart. All week she had been edgy, highly emotional, clingy, demanding, in tears one moment and so filled with anger and bitterness the next that it seemed her fragile body could scarcely contain such intense feelings.

      He knew exactly what to expect—the frantic bouts of shopping, the purchase of clothes, shoes, make-up, anything to fill yet more glossy carrier bags that would never be emptied but merely hidden away in an agony of guilt and self-disgust as she abased herself in an orgy of remorse, begging for his forgiveness, promising that she would never, ever do it again, theatrically pleading with him to destroy her cheque-book, her credit cards. But what was the use?

      Once he had played her games with her, believing her, hoping that this time she meant it; that in time she would realise what she was doing to herself, to him, to their lives, but why bother destroying a cheque-book when he knew she had others secreted away just as she had other credit cards? But the game had to be played according to her rules and these were simply things he was not permitted to say. She had to be allowed to play out her role of guilt-ridden supplicant to the full, unable to cease berating herself verbally until he had granted her the ‘forgiveness’ she required.

      After that would come the lull … sometimes for a few days, sometimes only a few hours, and then it would start … the furtive disappearance from their bed in the middle of the night, the inexplicable appearance of mounds of food in the kitchen followed by …

      The first time he realised that her bouts of sickness were not caused by any weakness or by the fact that, as he had always thought, she barely ate enough to keep herself alive, but by her huge consumption of food in eating binges that could last for hours before she finally fed herself into a state of emotional and physical stupor, he had been shocked rigid.

      Afterwards, of course, would come the purging, going on and on until she was satisfied that her stomach was finally empty, her body restored from its temporarily bloated, obscene distension to its normal svelte, almost too thin, delicacy, and then and only then and oh, the blessed relief of it, finally those few wonderful hours when she was relaxed and at peace, sated by her orgy of self-punishment almost like a drug addict after a mammoth fix. Contented, calm, until the whole cycle started again with the frantic need for reassurance that she was loved. The refusal to let him touch her because her body was loathsome was almost immediately followed by what amounted to an almost frenzied need for sex.

      Lately, as she was doing now, she had become increasingly sexually aroused during what he normally thought of as his own period of respite from the stress of what she was.

      Sex … God, what a joke, and to think that when he had met her, when he had married her, he had wanted her so much….

      Now the mere thought of having to touch her, of being touched by her, brought him out, as it was doing now, in a cold, drenching sweat of impotency and a physical rejection not just of her but of everything and anything to do with sex.

      Even though he knew that in refusing her he was doing the worst possible thing he could do and that this refusal only served to hasten the speed of the whole appalling cycle of her unbalanced behaviour, he just couldn’t force himself to behave any differently.

      It wasn’t simply that he didn’t want her any more, he recognised, he … He what? Loathed her, hated her, resented her.

      In the early days before he realised there was no point, that the whole situation … that she was beyond any kind of help, he had tried to persuade her to seek professional advice. Her response had been to threaten to kill herself. She had rung him at work to tell him that he would soon be free of her and he had rushed home to find her sprawled naked and drunk across their bed, an empty bottle of painkillers at her side. He had no way of knowing how many she had managed to take. Fortunately their doctor had been very understanding, but that had been over fifteen years ago and David knew that such a situation would never be handled with such discretion now.

      Duncan Flitt had been a contemporary of his father. They had played golf together and been old friends. Between them they were the unofficial keepers of much of the area’s secrets. Today things were different. The local medical practice was serviced by four doctors, all of them several years his junior. It also boasted an acupuncturist, a reflexologist and several counsellors.

      Tiggy’s caressing hand had reached his belly. He froze, tensely aware of the resistant slackness of his penis and the fact that it was going to remain in that limp state.

      Beneath the bedclothes, Tiggy moved towards him, rubbing her naked breasts against his arm as she did so. David cringed. The odour of her vomit still clung to her skin or perhaps it was being exuded from it, he decided as he swallowed down his own reciprocal nausea. As she leaned across to kiss him, her breath smelled initially of mint but beneath the mouthwash’s sharpness he could still smell the sour taste of her night-time activities. The bathroom would stink of it, as well, and because Olivia was home he couldn’t use the spare bathroom, not without the risk of arousing her suspicions.

      Olivia … No doubt it was her arrival that had precipitated Tiggy’s latest attack. Not that she needed much of an excuse any more; anything and everything could set her off. Increasingly, though, she had recently begun to fret over the fact that she was growing older, flirting increasingly openly with younger men, behaving in a way that was totally inappropriate for the wife of a man in his position. As yet he did not think that she had actually gone so far as to have a real affair but he suspected that given the right opportunity …

      An affair. Dear God, if only she would. If only she would find someone else to take over from him the unwanted burden of her emotional and physical demands, her constant need for reassurance, her screaming outbursts that he did not love her, her accusations that there was someone else, that he no longer wanted or loved her.

      ‘Happy birthday, darling….’

      Mutely he endured the unwanted intimacy of her kiss, not daring to provoke her by withdrawing from her and yet, at the same time, aching to be able to do so. Her hand had reached his penis now. He cringed.

      ‘What a poor, sad little boy,’ she was cooing in his ear. ‘Doesn’t he want to come out and play, then …?’

      David gritted his teeth.

      ‘Is he all hurt and sulky, then?’ Tiggy teased. ‘Does he want Mummy to stroke him and kiss him better …?’

      David shuddered violently in a reaction of rejection and disgust. ‘We’ve got to get up,’ he reminded her hoarsely. ‘The birthday …’

      ‘I thought that was what I was trying to do,’ Tiggy countered, pouting, but David was already moving away from her, throwing back the duvet.

      ‘You said last night that you’d got to help Jenny,’ he reminded her as he pulled on his robe.

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