Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series. PENNY JORDAN

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СКАЧАТЬ … yes … I’ll be there,’ Jenny promised.

      Olivia passed the ambulance on the main road as she drove tiredly home. After she left Saul, she had absently got into her car and driven mindlessly though the dark country lanes, the tears pouring down her face as she wept out her pain and despair.

      Saul had been so good about everything and so generous, telling her gently that he was the one to blame and not her and that he was a fool for thinking what he had.

      ‘Of course you still love him,’ he had told her quietly, lifting her chin and looking into her eyes. ‘You’re that kind of person.’

      ‘Oh, Saul,’ she had wept. ‘I’m so sorry. How could I …?’

      ‘It’s not your fault,’ he had repeated.

      But he was wrong. It was. She should have known. She had known but had tried to ignore that knowledge, to tell herself that if Caspar could so easily replace her, then she could do exactly the same.

      Only she couldn’t. She still loved him … still wanted him, still ached for him with her emotions and her body even as her mind acknowledged the impossibility of their ever settling their differences, of his ever being able to accept her as the person she was.

      Saul had not wanted her to leave whilst she was so obviously upset, but she had refused to listen to him, and in the end he had been forced to let her go. She had no real idea how far she had actually driven, only that suddenly she realised that she was totally exhausted and needed to get home.

      As she turned into the drive, she saw that the house was ablaze with lights. Four cars were parked haphazardly outside, five including her mother’s. Two of them she recognised. Her stomach started to churn as she got shakily out of her car and started to run towards the house.

      Jenny had seen her arrive and was at the door waiting for her. Olivia knew the moment she saw her face. ‘It’s Tiggy, isn’t it?’ she demanded, and although five minutes earlier she would have sworn that she had no tears left, all at once she started to cry again.

      Jenny wrapped her in her arms and rocked her soothingly in much the same way that Jon had done with Jack earlier.

      ‘It’s all right, Livvy, everything’s all right,’ Jenny crooned calmingly. ‘Come inside and sit down. Jon, put the kettle on, would you?’ she called out to her husband as he appeared in the hallway, but Olivia shook her head.

      ‘I’m fine,’ she whispered. ‘I think I know what’s happened.’

      Behind Jon she could see two other men. One of whom she guessed, vaguely recognised, was the local doctor.

      ‘It’s Tiggy, isn’t it? She’s had another …’ She swallowed and bit her lip. ‘Is she …?’

      ‘Your mother’s got an eating problem, Livvy,’ Jenny told her gently, ‘and Dr Travers feels—’

      ‘Your mother needs specialised treatment,’ the doctor interjected to tell Olivia. ‘I’ve arranged for her to be hospitalised for tonight. With this kind of disorder there’s always a danger of someone choking to death, either on the food they’ve gorged or on their own vomit.’

      ‘I knew … I knew what she was doing, but I tried to pretend it was just a one-off. I didn’t … I should have …’ Olivia looked helplessly at Jenny. ‘I wanted to tell you, but …’

      ‘Livvy, it isn’t your fault,’ Jenny asserted firmly.

      ‘I saw her,’ Olivia continued despairingly. ‘Just after I came home, I found her in the kitchen one night. Caspar told me then that she needed help … treatment … but I … we … we quarrelled about it. I couldn’t believe … I didn’t want to believe. I should have listened to him … done something then. I should have known….’

      ‘People like your mother are very skilled at concealing their addiction,’ the doctor informed her sympathetically.

      ‘Olivia, please believe it isn’t your fault,’ Jenny repeated.

      ‘What … what will happen to her?’ Olivia asked the doctor uncertainly.

      He exchanged a look with Jenny and Jon.

      ‘We’ve agreed with the doctor that your mother should be admitted into a private clinic that deals in eating disorders,’ Jenny replied quietly.

      ‘It’s too early to say yet how well she will respond to the treatment. Bulimia isn’t an easy problem to deal with either for the sufferer or her family,’ Dr Travers explained.

      ‘Your father will have to be told, of course,’ Jenny added, looking at Jon.

      ‘Yes. I’ll have a word with the specialist first, though,’ Jon agreed.

      After the doctor had left, Olivia started to thank Jenny and Jon for what they’d done, but Jenny stopped her. ‘I feel terribly guilty because we didn’t realise what was happening earlier,’ Jenny admitted.

      ‘There was no way you could have known,’ Olivia comforted her.

      Jenny shook her head. ‘Somehow one tends to associate eating disorders with younger people. There must have been signs, though, indications…. We must have been too busy with our own lives to have noticed them. Livvy, are you sure you’re going to be all right here on your own?’ she asked Olivia as she prepared to leave.

      It had already been arranged that Jack would go home with Jenny, at his own request.

      ‘Yes. I’ll be fine,’ Olivia reassured her.

       15

      Jenny only realised that Jon had followed her home as she was pulling in front of the house. She hung back after she had sent Jack inside, wondering what her husband wanted.

      These past few weeks had somehow given him a much more noticeable air of authority; he seemed slightly taller, and as she listened to him talking to the doctor, she’d observed how much more positive and even assertive he was. He had, she recognised, for perhaps the first time in his life, stepped out of David’s shadow, and as a consequence, was being judged on his own merits instead of being dismissed as merely David’s twin. The change suited him, gave him an added air of masculinity and self-assurance.

      She looked away from him as he got out of his car and walked towards her.

      ‘Jenny,’ he asked her, ‘can we talk?’

      Her heart sank. ‘That depends on what you want to talk about,’ she told him eventually, forcing herself to meet his gaze. ‘If by talk you mean that you want my shoulder to cry on because of Tiggy …’ She paused and looked away from him again before continuing huskily, ‘I appreciate the way you feel about her, Jon. I know you … you believe you love her….’

      ‘No … you’re wrong. I don’t. I don’t know which makes me feel more ashamed,’ he told her sombrely as she stared at him. ‘The fact that I fell so easily into the trap that nature sets middle-aged men and so whole-heartedly СКАЧАТЬ