In Want of a Wife? (19 page)

‘And look at me!’ Louis roared in bewildered, enraged frustration.

‘You throwing money at my parents, in a rescue package that’s not a rescue package, makes me feel soiled!’ she flung
at him furiously. ‘It makes me feel as though you’re
buying
me.’ She dodged past him and headed for her clothes strewn on the ground, although progress was severely impeded by the weight of the duvet.

‘Work that one out for me.’

‘Work it out for yourself!’ She managed to grab her clothes, shed the cumbersome duvet and fly into the
en suite
bathroom in the space of five seconds. Once there, she locked the door behind her and leant against it, breathing heavily and steadying her nerves, which were shot. Any thought of a shower couldn’t have been further from her mind and she just washed her face, making sure not to look in the mirror, and then stuck on her clothes before taking a deep breath. Louis, waiting outside, would be a towering inferno.

But thankfully a clothed one, although the clothing only consisted of a pair of black boxers. He was looming by the window, arms crossed, waiting.

‘I thought that being attracted to you was enough,’ Lizzy told him, making sure to keep a safe distance. ‘But it’s not.’
Because you still think that it’s all about the money.
Instead of expensive gifts, he would give her parents bail-out money. ‘You give my parents money, and for me that would be the equivalent of being bought—and do you really think that I have a price? Did you think that I would have to be forever grateful to you, and therefore you would have the right to enjoy me whenever you wanted?’

‘I’ve never heard so much rubbish in my life! ‘

He made a move as though to get closer to her, and she stumbled back until she had her back to the bedroom door.

‘In the end, it’s all about money for you. What you can buy.
Who
you can buy.’

‘Your parents were in financial difficulties; I am in a position to help them, and I wanted to because you’re in my life.’ He faltered to an awkward stop and half-turned away from her. ‘You drive me crazy,’ he muttered under his breath.

‘You’ve done enough, and I don’t want you giving anything to my parents. I have some savings. I can help out however I can.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. You have no idea the extent of how big your father’s debt has become over time.’

Lizzy pulled open the door and took a backward step out of the bedroom while she continued to watch him warily, the way someone might watch a tiger poised to attack. But he wasn’t approaching her. Already she could feel him letting her go. She was too much trouble. Her heart felt as though it was literally cracking open, but the mantra playing in her head was
it’s better for this to happen now.

Maybe, subconsciously, she had fancied her chances at becoming indispensable to him; maybe her decision to take what was on offer had been more to do with that little seed of hope than a sudden, daring recklessness on her part. Who knew? But she knew now, and conclusively, that she would only ever be one in a line for him, maybe lasting a little bit longer because of her novelty value. He would have bought his expensive, well-groomed, well-manicured women diamonds and exotic weekends abroad—and her? Well, he would buy her her parents financial security because she wasn’t the ‘diamonds and exotic weekends abroad’ type.

‘I don’t need to!’ Was she being selfish? She had no idea just how far into debt her father had dug himself, but she guessed that her paltry savings weren’t going to go a long way to curing the problem. For a few agonising seconds, she was gripped by indecision, but then she rallied. ‘And I don’t want to see you again. It doesn’t matter how enjoyable this…. this.’ she waved her arms helplessly in a sweeping gesture ‘…
thing
we have is. It’s just not enough.’

‘You’re overreacting.’

‘Don’t tell me that I’m overreacting! ‘

‘When you calm down, you’ll see that what I’m offering makes sense; if you feel better, I can construct it as a loan.’

Now he was lowering himself to accommodate her crazy misinterpretation of the situation? Louis could scarcely credit it, and confusion rooted him to the spot.

But Lizzy was on a roll. What filled her mind was the repulsive notion that he was throwing money in her direction with the intention of buying her for however long he wanted. He had clumped her in with all those women whose beds he had shared, women who had been willing to accept gifts from him and disregard the fact that the greatest gift of all—his commitment—would never be on the agenda. And she couldn’t even blame him! She had been as eager to hop in the sack with him as every other woman, so how could he expect her to react differently to his choice of present? Except his choice of present somehow made her feel soiled.

‘I don’t want you constructing it as
anything,’
she snapped in stubborn, blind refusal. ‘Thank you for everything you’ve done, but now I just want you to step out of my life!’

‘There’s something going on here that I’m not getting,’ Louis grated with menacing intent. ‘What is it?’

That I’m in love with you
, Lizzy thought bitterly.
Hence I would have given you anything you wanted—but the second you put money on the table it feels like an ugly trade-off …

‘I
wanted
to sleep with you,’ she told him in a more subdued voice, picking over the truth and extracting the bits of it she could share. ‘I was willing to finally admit the attraction between us and not run away from it. I
knew,’
she was compelled to stress, ‘that we weren’t suited on any level except the physical, but I was willing to overlook that. But your offer, your
kind and generous
offer to bail my parents out of their debts, felt like a down payment on my body, and I’m sorry but I can’t deal with that. You are who you are; you can only think of people in terms of money—and please don’t tell me that I’m being ridiculous.’

She drew in a deep breath and waited for his continuing fury but instead he half-turned away from her.

He said, over his shoulder, in the tone of someone voicing an afterthought, ‘Fine. We gave it a shot; it didn’t work. I’ll make sure to avoid you whenever possible. If you leave details of your school’s email address and anything else relevant I might need, I’ll make sure my accountant deals with my donation. Unless, of course, you’d like to object to that as well. No? In that case, you know how to find your way out.’

H
AVING
caused enough stress and worry to last a lifetime, Leigh, now Mrs Dale, was keeping a low profile. Much to Maisie’s disappointment, she no longer had her party buddy for whenever she returned home. But, six weeks after the story of the hasty marriage unravelled, Maisie had bounced back, although much to her parents’ delight she was no longer in need of constant supervision. She had been sobered by Leigh’s marriage and by the startling fact that Leigh seemed to be taking her new-found responsibilities seriously. Studies were back on with a vengeance, it seemed, and plans were enthusiastically afoot for finding premises for the new business venture.

Nicholas and Rose were ecstatically engaged and the church was booked. They were to tie the knot as soon as possible—so soon, indeed, that an engagement seemed a bit surplus to requirements. The hunt was therefore on for the perfect dress and, although Rose tried her hardest to involve Lizzy in the search, Lizzy couldn’t summon up the necessary levels of energy for the project.

News and updates were being received via her mother or one of her sisters. Safely tucked away in London, she could involve herself, but only as far as she wanted, and there was no chance that any of them could ferret out her fragile state of mind from a disembodied voice down the end of a telephone.

So, while she languished miserably on the sofa in front of her television, with a stack of exercise books waiting to be marked and proving an ideal distraction, she listened to her mother tell her about Leigh and Freddy’s first sheepish visit to the family house after they had returned from Las Vegas.

She exclaimed with appropriate delight at Nicholas’s romantic marriage-proposal and the rather large diamond now sitting proudly on Rose’s finger. She listened to Maisie whinge about Leigh growing up and getting boring, then awkwardly muse that she, too, was getting sick of the same old parties. She spoke to Rose virtually every other day and, whilst she was genuinely happy for her sister, she couldn’t help wallowing in a certain amount of sadness and self-pity every time she listened to yet more arrangements being made for The Big Day.

It made her wonder how her life had managed to get so comprehensively derailed when she, out of all her sisters, had always been the most practical and level-headed. She hadn’t breathed a word to anyone about Louis. She knew that, if she had chosen to tell Rose, her sister would have gently pointed out that she might have been too hasty, might have let her prejudices rule her and been too proud to look back.

Whenever Lizzy heard those imaginary conversations in her head, she reminded herself that Louis had behaved appallingly and that he had somehow tried to buy her.

Which didn’t stop her wondering how he was and what he was doing. His image was so deeply seared into her consciousness that she couldn’t get him out of her mind. Several times she fancied she spotted him striding in front of her, and she felt her heart begin to thud and her pulses begin to race, but it was never him.

She knew that he had made a massive donation to the school, and the principal was in a state of high excitement at the prospect of being able to get some really decent equipment into the classrooms and the outside playing area. The
roof was going to be mended and there was even talk of a separate computer-block being built.

In fact, a special dinner was held for him in his honour, but she declined to go on the spurious grounds of not feeling very well. Just the thought of actually seeing him and hearing the sound of his voice brought her nervous system close to a state of meltdown.

Not that Lizzy expected to avoid him for ever. He would be at Rose and Nicholas’s wedding, and there was no way that she could decline
that
invitation on the spurious grounds of not feeling very well.

But as the time drew closer her sense of dread increased. She would be heading back up to Scotland three days ahead of the actual ceremony so that she could help out. There was going to be a lavish reception at Crossfeld, the west wing of which was almost completely renovated thanks to wads of money being thrown at the refurbishment. Vivian would be returning home for a few weeks, and according to her mother would be returning with a guy, a fellow missionary she had met in Africa. It had occurred to Lizzy on more than one occasion that she might end up the last in her family to marry—if she ever did. Given how broken her heart felt at the moment, that didn’t seem to be much of a possibility.

With spring approaching, the weather had lightened, and she arrived in Scotland on the Tuesday to what was an unusually brilliant day for that part of the world, with more to come, if the forecasters were to be believed.

And no sooner was she back in the family home than she was in the thick of it. Vivian filled her in on her travels and she met the boyfriend, Edward McGinty, who in a curious twist of fate was Scottish, had been to the same university as Vivian, although on a different course, and lived just outside Glasgow. He was pleasant and kind and seemed bewildered at the level of activity in the house. Her mother was all over the place, while her father sat it out in his shed at the bottom of
the garden, tinkering with a coffee table he had been making for what seemed like years.

A newly focused Leigh grabbed every opportunity she could to describe her plans for the sparkly future ahead of her, and spent inordinate amounts of time on the telephone to Freddy, who had stayed behind to look over a couple of possible locations for their venture. Maisie drifted irritably from room to room, bemoaning the fact that peach was such a
passé
colour for the dresses, until Rose finally told her to shut up.

There were clothes everywhere, bridesmaids’ dresses, which Lizzy was relieved to discover fitted her and needed no alterations. The bridal dress was hung in Rose’s wardrobe under protective plastic, although she did try it on for Lizzy to see, and was oblivious to the shadow that crossed her sister’s face underneath the admiring smile.

She heard mention of Louis so many times that by the time she retired in the evenings her head was literally throbbing. Unsurprisingly, he seemed to have become flavour of the month, or possibly even the year.

It was only on the eve of the wedding, when everyone had retired to bed for the requisite early night, that Lizzy had a chance to sit and chat to her dad. His appearances over the past few days had been brief, but now he was in the sitting room with his feet up quietly watching the television.

‘Peace. At last.’ He smiled at Lizzy and raised his eyebrows. ‘Not heading upstairs for some beauty sleep? Not that you need it, pet; you’re beautiful enough without it.’

‘It’s mad here.’ She went to sit on the chair next to him and sighed. ‘I bet you can’t wait to get it all out of the way.’

‘I can’t, but you know your mother. She’s in her element arranging everyone around her, and moaning that it was all too rushed to be perfect, although she seems pretty pleased with the outcome so far.’

‘Dad, I really want to talk to you about your financial situation.’ Should she mention Louis and his interference? No; she would pretend that none of that had happened. She didn’t know the precise details of Louis’s conversation all that time ago with her father. He could just have given some helpful advice without having promised any form of financial bail-out. She would assume that.

She opened her mouth to launch into the chat she had had with her bank manager, but before she could get anywhere her father looked at her with a smile.

‘You know that this must remain between us, pet …’ He beamed. ‘And I know that your friend Louis told me to keep this under my hat, but I’m sure he wouldn’t mind you knowing that he’s helped me out of a tight spot. A very tight spot indeed. Of course, it’s on the basis of a loan, but we both realise that the chances of it being repaid in full are very slim indeed. And he did more than that, Lizzy. This whole bash is at his expense by way of a wedding present to the couple. He’s a generous man, that one.’

Lizzy felt sick. ‘When … when was all this sorted out, Dad?’ she asked faintly. Yes, just as she had expected, it had all been sorted out weeks previously. She had struck out at him, told him that she never wanted to see him again, informed him that she wasn’t interested in any donations to her family, and quietly he had gone behind her back and helped her father.

Why? He hadn’t wanted her to be told. She listened to her father wax lyrical about Louis, while her stomach churned and a million unanswered questions sprang into her head and vanished before she could pin any of them down for examination.

Forty-five minutes later, she was virtually pushed out of the room and told to get some sleep. Everyone else in the house was asleep and he wanted to savour a glass of single-malt
whisky on his own, because for the first time in a very long time indeed he felt on top of the world.

Lizzy duly fled, not wanting to risk another eulogy about Louis.

However, the following morning, her thoughts were all over the place. Cars had been hired for delivery to the church and then on to the grand reception at Crossfeld. She would be sitting in her long peach dress in a car paid for by the man with whom she was hopelessly in love and whom, she sickly feared, she had dismissed for reasons that had to do with her and not with him.

She observed her family in the detached manner of someone looking at events evolve from a distance. Rose, she noted, looked spectacular—radiant, happy and unbearably beautiful. Leigh was calmer than she ever had been, looking forward to seeing Freddy. Vivian was no longer as hectoring as she had been before she had gone to do her stint abroad. She was holding Edward’s hand in the car, and Lizzy saw that love had invested a certain amount of tranquillity in her. Even Maisie, always the most hyper of the lot, was smiling and pleasantly subdued. None of them were having to cope with thoughts rampaging through their heads like an army of fire ants. No, that was
her
lot.

And because she had made a mistake—a series of mistakes. She had tried to shove Louis into a box, and when he hadn’t fitted in snugly, she had proceeded to carry on with her misjudgements and preconceived misconceptions nevertheless. Instead of asking herself the fundamental question: if he had been so monstrously unacceptable, then how was it that she had managed to fall in love with him?

She was in a state of feverish excitement by the time the cars pulled into the wide gravelled courtyard outside the church.

Whatever the outcome, she would have to put things right or else how would she ever be able to live with herself?

The church in the early spring sunshine brought back a host of memories. It was the church her parents had always attended, and she could remember following in their wake as a child, sitting in the back pews with her sisters fidgeting next to her, trying to stifle her yawns. She had never appreciated how picturesque it was, with its background of rolling fields, and its warm, mellow stone, aged over many decades.

The little church was reduced to standing-room only and all heads swivelled as the organ heralded the arrival of the bride. Lizzy, walking behind Rose and her father, kept her eyes fixed firmly ahead of her but her fingers were clutching the bouquet of flowers as tightly as if she was on a white-knuckle ride.

As they neared the pulpit, Louis swam into focus, standing to one side, his eyes observing the procession dispassionately.

In his formal black suit, he looked drop-dead gorgeous, but when she tentatively looked at him it was to find him coolly stare back before looking away, not a flicker of emotion on his face. Doors had been very firmly shut, she thought miserably, and she had no one but herself to blame.

It took a great deal of will power to focus on the ceremony and to appreciate that it was her sister’s day, and that whatever attention she had would have to be directed at Rose and Nicholas, rather than inwards onto her own frame of mind.

But it was hard, and she was relieved when it was over and Rose was stretching up to Nicholas with a blissful smile on her face, kissing him.

And then there was very little time to focus on Louis as photographs were taken, bouquets were tossed and people jumped into cars to begin the journey to Crossfeld. Louis, she noticed with a sickening lurch in her heart, was not travelling alone. A pretty brunette was with him, and together they climbed into a silver Maserati. Lizzy had to look away
because she knew that, whilst she had been busy wallowing in her unhappiness, he had obviously picked up the reins of his life and got on with the business of moving forward.

It should have been enough to construct the foundations for feeling a sense of some self-justification, but it didn’t, and she followed him anxiously with her eyes as Crossfeld House swelled with guests.

The brunette might not have been the sort of blonde bombshell she had expected, but there was a level of warmth and familiarity between them that made her want to run away and find a quiet spot somewhere so that she could take refuge from her unhappiness.

Only when the food had been served did she finally find the courage to seek him out, and it took some doing. Maybe he was a little fed up with being surrounded by so many people, because when she finally located him it was purely by accident and in a place she least expected, in a large room far from the crowds which appeared to be in the process of renovation. The walls had been stripped of wallpaper, the carpet had been pulled out and sheets of plastic covered the items of furniture. He had pulled off some of the plastic over a chair by the fireplace and was sprawled in it, his head resting back, his eyes closed.

He was holding a full glass in his hand but he looked done in, and Lizzy paused for a few seconds in the doorway before walking in without making a sound to announce her arrival so that she was literally standing over him when he finally sensed her presence.

‘I know I’m probably the last person in the world you want to see now,’ she began.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I … I wanted to talk to you.’

‘I’m done talking to you, Lizzy.’ Louis stood up abruptly and she fell back, alarmed at the thought that he might just walk away from her and she’d be left with all these unspoken
thoughts whirling around in her head, making her life a never-ending round of regret and self-recrimination.