Perfect Marriage Material. PENNY JORDAN

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СКАЧАТЬ was Bobbie, Ruth’s American granddaughter and her cousin Luke’s wife, who would miss them the most, Olivia acknowledged. For this trip a very special concession was being made for Joss, Jon and Jenny’s younger son who had always been especially close to Ruth, who together with Jack, Olivia’s own brother, was being allowed to go with the older couple and spend some time with the New England side of the family.

      ‘Mmm...I was afraid we wouldn’t make it,’ Saul responded after he had hugged Ruth warmly and shaken Grant by the hand. ‘Robert had another bad night.’

      ‘Oh dear, is he...?’

      ‘He’s fine now,’ Saul assured her, anticipating her question and nodding in the direction of his three children who were huddled in a small group with all the younger members of the family, including Joss and Jack.

      ‘What with Robert’s sickness and Meg’s nightmares, you can’t be getting much sleep,’ Olivia sympathised.

      ‘Nowhere near enough,’ Saul agreed ruefully, ‘and not just because of the kids.’

      But when Olivia looked questioningly at him he simply shook his head. There was no way he was going to enlighten even someone as close to him as Olivia about the fact that his sleep had been broken not just by the children but far more disturbingly by dreams about her weekend guest, dreams of such intense sensuality and sexuality that if he hadn’t been a mature man in his thirties he would have blushed to even have recalled them.

      ‘Oh, Gramps...I so wish I was going with you,’ Bobbie wailed, hugging her grandfather tightly as the notice flashed up to say that their plane was boarding.

      ‘Thanks a lot,’ Luke, her husband, teased her ruefully, looking round for someone to hand their baby daughter to whilst he comforted his wife.

      ‘Here, let me take her,’ Saul offered, deftly taking the child from him and expertly settling her comfortably against his shoulder as his own Meg sidled up to him and slipped her small hand into his.

      ‘Can I have a look at Francesca?’ she asked him. As she studied the sleeping baby. Meg informed him chattily, ‘My friend Grace at school, well, her mummy’s going to have a baby. Will we ever have a new baby, Daddy?’ she asked him, crinkling her forehead.

      ‘Don’t be stupid, Meg. Only mummies can have babies and we...’

      Saul grimaced to himself as Robert overheard their conversation and spoke scornfully to his younger sister.

      ‘I’m not stupid,’ Meg responded heatedly, ‘am I, Daddy?’

      Jemima, his elder daughter, eyed them both with disfavour. His little Jem, Saul called her, and in many ways he felt that the break-up of their marriage had been the hardest for her to cope with. At eight, she was mature mentally for her years and just beginning to grasp the concept of the intricacies of adult relationships and to know that adults were not infallible.

      He had always felt that she was more her mother’s child than his, and it had surprised him to discover how passionately and intensely she had wanted to return to England and to him.

      ‘Our mother won’t have any more babies.’ she informed her siblings sharply. ‘She doesn’t like children.’

      Saul caught his breath.

      What Jemima had said in essence was the truth. Hillary did not like children and she had already informed him that since her new husband did not like them, either, she had decided to be sterilised.

      ‘Something I should have done before I married you,’ she had told him starkly and more than a little bitterly when she had informed him that she wasn’t going to contest his having full custody of the children.

      ‘She loves you,’ he told the three of them now as they watched him. And how could it not be true? Hillary might not like children but surely she must love her own. What mother could not do?

      At eight, seven and five, their three had, he accepted, been conceived too closely together for a woman who was not particularly maternal. He accepted, too, that the larger part of the responsibility for them in their early years, especially Jemima and Robert, had fallen on Hillary.

      With Meg it had been different; their last-ditch attempt to rescue their marriage and cement it together with Meg’s conception had been a sanity-threatening mistake and grossly unfair to Meg herself.

      Six weeks after her birth, he had arrived home one afternoon, prompted by heaven alone knew what paternal sixth sense, to find Hillary on the point of leaving for America—without the children and without apparently having any intention of telling him what she was doing.

      Later that day, having failed to persuade Hillary to change her mind, he had gone to pick the children up from the child-minder and had promised them mentally then that even if he might have failed as a husband and a lover, he would not fail them as a father...a parent....

      ‘When is Louise coming to see us again?’ Meg asked later when they were on their way home, ‘I like her.’

      ‘She doesn’t like you.’ Jemima sniffed disparagingly. ‘She only comes round to see Dad, really.’

      ‘Jem...’ Saul warned her, glancing in the rear-view mirror to give her a stern look whilst he monitored Meg’s quivering bottom lip.

      They were just so vulnerable...all of them in their different ways. Meg with her fear of the dark, clinging to him, Rob who thought that boys shouldn’t cry and who made himself sick instead, and Jem...big, brave, cynical Jemima who wrung his heart with her studied and oh so heartachingly fragile defence of contemptuous disdain mixed with anger.

      Listening to Tullah on Saturday night had reminded him of Jemima.

      Tullah...

      Don’t start that, he warned himself. You’ve got enough problems without going looking for any more.

      

      ‘It’s amazing to think Louise and Katie’s first year at college will be over soon,’ Jenny reflected to Jon as they drove home from seeing Ruth and Grant off.

      ‘I know,’ Jon replied.

      ‘I was hoping that now Louise is at university she’d start to grow out of this crush she’s got on Saul. He’s been so good about it. She worries me sometimes, Jon. She’s so headstrong and so single-minded.’

      ‘Tell me about it,’ Jon returned dryly. ‘She’s a Crighton all right, through and through.’

      ‘I’m afraid she’s going to have a hard life ahead of her if she doesn’t learn to bend a little,’ Jenny sighed. ‘It’s hard to believe that she and Katie are twins. At times they’re so different temperamentally.’

      ‘Not so hard, surely,’ Jon commented. ‘Look at David and me.’

      Jenny glanced at her husband. After all these years and all that David had done, Jon still put his twin ahead of himself even when he spoke about him.

      ‘Do you think we’ll ever hear from him again?’ she asked, referring to the fact that while recovering from a severe heart attack Jon’s brother and Olivia’s father had simply walked out of their lives without any explanation. That was over three СКАЧАТЬ