A Perfect Family. PENNY JORDAN

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ no one else seemed to know …?

      Not sure. Of course you’re sure, an inner voice scorned her. You just don’t want to accept it, that’s all. You just don’t want to face up to the truth.

      What truth? She only had to close her eyes to be back in her parents’ bedroom, to see the disarray, clothes everywhere, that smell … Her stomach started to heave.

      ‘What is it?’ Caspar demanded anxiously as she quickly turned to get out of the car.

      ‘Nothing,’ she denied.

      When David heard his brother’s footsteps outside his office door, he reached for the file he had been studying and quickly pushed it out of sight beneath the leather blotter on his desk.

      As Jonathon walked in, out of the corner of his eye David could see his bank statement next to the telephone.

      Trying to be unobtrusive, he angled his arm across it. He could feel the heavy, uneven thud of his heartbeat.

      ‘I was looking for the Siddington Trust file,’ Jonathon said, smiling. ‘There’s a query from the accountants and—’

      ‘Oh, I must have left it at home. I was doing some work on it the other night. I’ll bring it in on Monday.’

      ‘You took it home, but—’

      ‘It looks like young Max is going to get his tenancy,’ David broke in, overriding his brother.

      ‘Yes … yes … it does,’ Jonathon agreed. ‘Although, of course, it isn’t always wise to take these things for granted.’

      ‘I’ll bet Dad can’t wait to start bragging to Hugh about it,’ David declared, ignoring Jonathon’s concern. ‘There’s always been a bit of rivalry between them on that score, at least in Dad’s eyes.’

      ‘I’m sure Uncle Hugh doesn’t see it that way,’ Jonathon objected. His uncle had been particularly kind to him when they were growing up and Jonathon suspected that any rivalry between the two half-brothers existed more for his father than it did for his uncle.

      ‘Well, Hugh wouldn’t, would he?’ David countered. ‘He’s—’

      ‘It will be good to have the family together,’ Jonathon commented, unwilling to pursue the matter.

      David waited until he was quite sure that Jonathon had gone before retrieving the file he had hidden beneath his blotter and placing it in his briefcase. His fingers trembled slightly as he locked the case. He felt faintly sick and dizzy. It was this damned heat.

      He picked up his bank statement and studied it in fresh disbelief. How could they have spent so much? He had warned Tiggy only last month that they simply could not afford to continue spending as they had been doing. He had even threatened to take away credit cards, but of course she had wept and pleaded and in the end he had given in.

      It was all very well for Jonathon, he decided bitterly. His brother had never had expensive tastes and had always been careful with his money. Added to that, Jenny must be earning a very useful amount from that business of hers.

      Not that he had ever envisaged Jenny as becoming a successful businesswoman all those years ago when they had first known one another. She had been such a shy, diffident girl, so different in every way from his wife.

      He had first seen Tiggy perched on the counter of an exclusive and fashionable London wine bar, surrounded by a crowd of admirers whom she was inciting to vie with one another for the chance to take her out.

      David had still been playing with the group then and they had just been featured in one of the countless trendy magazines that had mushroomed into existence during that era. Someone recognised him—one of the other models who had been in the wine bar with Tiggy—and she had attached herself to him.

      He could still remember the sharp frisson of excitement and challenge he had felt when he glanced across the narrow room and saw Tiggy looking back at him, knowing that she was deliberately ignoring all the other men who were clamouring for her attention.

      Impossible then and now, of course, to ever imagine Jenny posing negligently on a bar top wearing one of the shortest skirts ever made, revealing acres of long, coltish leg, her pouting mouth painted in the palest of frosted pink lipsticks, her face deadpan pale, her eyes enormous in their thick rim of black lashes and even blacker kohl.

      Jenny never pouted, and had she worn kohl eye make-up her father would have made her wash it off. Her legs were sturdily and sensibly constructed to carry her over the fields of her father’s farm, not delicately thin and fawn-like. Where Jenny was healthily robust, Tiggy had been fragile, delicate and vulnerable. Where Jenny had stoically contained and controlled her emotions, Tiggy had gone from tears to laughter and back again in the space of a heartbeat. Where Jenny had been familiar, safe and dull, Tiggy had been deliciously different and dangerous.

      And nothing had changed, he reassured himself. He had seen the expression, the envy, in other men’s eyes when they looked at Tiggy and compared her with their own dully comfortable middle-aged wives.

      Tiggy was the kind of woman who flirted by instinct, who appealed to everything that was male in a man. She certainly had done to him. He had been completely bewitched by her. Bemused. Besotted.

      They had gone on from the wine bar to a nightclub, a whole crowd of them, Tiggy giggling as she openly bought a small handful of ‘uppers’ and insisted that he take one of them.

      It hadn’t been any particularly big deal—everyone took drugs in the sixties; it was part of the London scene—only unfortunately the senior members of the chambers where he was in pupillage hadn’t seen it that way.

      There had been his late arrivals and early departures and the days when he had never made it into chambers at all, waking up late in the afternoon in Tiggy’s small flat and her even smaller bed to while away what was left of the day in her arms. This behaviour had ultimately cost him his career.

      He had to make a choice, the head of chambers had told him sternly when David had been summoned to his room to account for himself. The Bar or Tiggy and the life he was leading with her.

      There had been no choice to make, really. He already knew what was expected of him, what his grandfather would expect of him.

      He had been given twenty-four hours to think it over and he had gone back to Tiggy’s flat to tell her what had happened and to collect his things. Only when he had arrived there he had found Tiggy in a flood of tears—and pregnant with his child.

      The sight of her vulnerable face and childlike body, her copious tears, had swept aside all his carefully prepared speeches. He loved her. He couldn’t live without her. She was having his baby. His grandfather would understand. He would have to understand.

      They were married three days later at Caxton Hall.

      As he kissed his new bride, David had told her sternly that henceforward there were to be no more drugs, no more partying all night and sleeping all day. They had their baby to think about.

      Docilely Tiggy had agreed, wrapping her arms around him and kissing him passionately whilst she told him how much she loved him.

      It was a pity that he wasn’t still going to be a barrister, she told him. He would have looked so deliciously СКАЧАТЬ