I nod, feeling close to tears. I’m not sure why I’m so upset. Jason’s done nothing terrible really. Looking at a photograph of a woman sent to his phone is hardly evidence of infidelity, is it? He was just—
Window shopping?Sarah pipes up, offering her unwelcome thoughts on the subject.
‘We had more words, obviously.’ Ignoring her, I rush on. ‘Josh heard us and woke up. Jason put him back to bed and then… he slept in the spare room.’
‘Definitely not good then?’ Mum says, her tone soft.
‘No.’ I sigh miserably. ‘He seemed okay this morning. He was tired, but I thought things were okay between us. And then…’ Bracing myself, I turn my attention to Jason’s phone and bring up his messages. ‘I saw these.’
Mum takes the phone, glancing curiously from it to me as she realises it’s Jason’s. She takes a moment, scrolling through the messages, a myriad of expressions crossing her face as she appears to ponder. And then, ‘It’s just boys being boys, Karla,’ she tells me soothingly. ‘Just laddish banter.’
I’m relieved she thinks so, too, but… ‘He’s not a lad though, is he?’ I point out, still unable to quiet the suspicion gnawing away at me. ‘He’s a married man with two children. He scored her, Mum,’ I say bewilderedly, ‘ten out of ten.’
‘And?’ Mum says, and waits for me to get to the point.
I glance down and back. ‘I can’t help thinking he might have sampled the goods, or soon will,’ I admit, hot tears of humiliation and frustration finally spilling over.
Eight
ROBERT
Seeing Karla’s car on the drive as he pulled up, Robert gathered his daughter was visiting. He did hope she wasn’t going to give him grief regarding his attempts to talk some sense into her useless husband. She’d already reprimanded him at the party last night for ‘talking business’, telling him they were supposed to be enjoying themselves.
Diana had certainly been enjoying herself. He’d parted with his hard-earned cash, organising a lavish party with silver service and a live band, which had cost him a small fortune, and she was prancing about with some jumped-up little twerp a third her age on the dance floor, making a complete poppy-show of herself. Robert wondered why he’d bothered. He couldn’t do a thing right in his wife’s eyes. He’d never quite regained her trust after succumbing to his urges and taking what was obviously on offer from one of her friends, a monumentally stupid thing to do with Diana pregnant and their wedding plans already underway. Robert bitterly regretted the tacky affair, which had cost him dearly, financially as well as emotionally. Julie Ferguson had driven a hard bargain in exchange for her silence –one he’d had no choice but to meet, since she’d been in his employ. Thus his decision to include non-disclosure clauses in contracts in future. The last thing he’d needed, having just received his UK Business Entrepreneur of the Year Award, was for her to run off tittle-tattling to the tabloids, as these women do. Diana’s father, town mayor and chairman of the golf club, ergo extremely influential, would not have been impressed.
He would definitely have been unimpressed by the events that followed months after the wedding. No amount of money could bury that unfortunate incident, once it had landed squarely on their doorstep. Fortunately, as their wedding had been featured in several glossy magazines, with a follow-up featuring her as a glowing expectant mother inStylish Homes, Diana had seen the sense of keeping the incident to themselves. Under their own roof, as it were. The timing around her pregnancy had been opportune. Robert had counted his blessings in finding someone as pragmatic and forward-thinking as Diana, who realised that some things were best kept secret in order to preserve his business reputation – and their luxurious lifestyle.
She’d been cool towards him initially, which Robert had understood. Finding herself with two little ones to care for couldn’t have been easy, but they’d jogged along. She’d withdrawn from him completely since the episode in their lives he didn’t care to dwell on, but which Diana, with her barbed looks and long silences, would never let him forget. She had never openly stated she didn’t believe his side of the story – that Sarah had stumbled and fallen that day in the garden – but Robert knew in his heart that she didn’t.
He’d felt bad lying to her, but he’d had no choice but to deny everything, particularly being in the girls’ room that night, inebriated to the point of unconscious. How was he supposed not to? The police would have been involved. He would have been ruined. They might even have taken Karla away. Karla… He regretted, too, that he’d had to convince her she might end up on her own in care. If she loved them and wanted to stay with them, she couldn’t tell tales on him, he’d warned her. It hadn’t been his proudest moment.
A deep sadness washed over him as he recalled the watchful, suspicious gaze he’d often seen in Karla’s eyes thereafter. Robert tried to consign it to history as he let himself through the front door, out of the rain. He supposed Karla would take the opportunity while she was here to accuse him of being ruthless and controlling where Jason was concerned. He was ruthless, to a degree. He’d had to be. Building a multimillion-pound company up from scratch hadn’t allowed him the luxury of indulging his emotions. As for indulging other people’s, that was definitely a recipe for failure. Robert simply didn’t have the patience for sob stories. He preferred to focus on the practical and move forwards, unlike Jason, who seemed content to idle in the slow lane. The man hadn’t got a business bone in his body. God only knew what Karla had seen in him, why she’d become involved with him. Robert dearly wished that she hadn’t. He’d tried everything to convince her not to go through with the wedding. Nothing had been able to dissuade her.
Robert hadn’t doubted Karla had fancied herself in love with him. He’d very much doubted Jason’s motives in marrying her, however. The more he’d tried to talk sense into him, pointing out the idiocy of tying himself down at such a young age, the more he’d appeared to dig his heels in. He’d been determined to go against Robert’s wishes. More than determined. A man who’s successful in business never mistakes a challenge in another man’s eyes.
Assuming it was Karla’s family fortune he was attracted to, Robert had made a fundamental mistake, one he’d kicked himself for every day since. He could see the cocky bastard now, his dark eyes narrowed quizzically as he’d handed him the cheque, for a substantial sum of money – his, if he did the sensible thing regarding his own future and got out of Karla’s life.
Studying the cheque, Jason had shaken his head and emitted a scornful laugh, as if money meant nothing, and then, ‘Go fuck yourself,’ he’d said, locking eyes full of contempt levelly on his.
Robert had hardly been able to contain his fury as the impudent bastard calmly tore the cheque up in front of him and tossed it at his feet. He’d sealed his daughter’s fate that day. Short of telling her the truth, which would mean losing all that was dear to him, nothing could persuade her not to marry this man who would ruin her life.
So much for his principles: Jason hadn’t quibbled too much when Robert paid for their house, rather than allow his daughter and future grandchild to live in a shoebox of a flat on some common estate while her husband fucked about, attempting to start up a company with nil experience. Having spent his own childhood in such a place, Robert had shuddered at that thought. Karla had talked Jason round, Robert suspected. It was a wedding gift, after all, and being the penniless prat that he was, Jason had been in no position to turn it down.
Robert wasn’t completely heartless where Jason was concerned; he did have a begrudging respect for his efforts to keep his floundering business afloat without adequate financial backing. He’d agreed to offer him a business loan when Karla had asked. She’d clearly found out what a stubborn son of a bitch he was, when, yet again, he dug his heels in. He would change his mind. Jason Connollywouldrealise he had no choice but to swallow his pride and come to him, and then they would get to the real deal on the table: Robert’s silence in exchange for Jason’s. It was that simple. If he truly cared about Karla, Jason would realise the truth could never come out and, finally, he would walk away. He could take the money Robert was prepared to offer him to soften the blow, or he could leave it. That was up to him.
Glancing into the lounge, he noted that Holly and Josh were superglued to some alien thing on the TV. He wasn’t sure it was suitable viewing for an eleven and ten-year-old, but it was more than he dared do to question Karla’s parenting skills. She would jump down his throat in an instant.
She’d been emotionally delicate after Sarah’s death, alternating between withdrawal and raging grief in the months afterwards. Robert had been frightened for a while that she might tell the secret he’d made her promise to keep. She’d finally come to her senses when he’d pointed out that it wasn’t just her world that had been torn apart. His had too. Her mother’s had. Diana wasn’t coping with any of it because of her inability to move on, he’d explained to her carefully.Did she want to lose her mother too?
They hadn’t been as close since then, something that saddened Robert greatly. He’d hoped he might have more time to repair the damage between them, once she qualified at RADA. But then along came Jason Connolly, creating yet more complications. He would be gone soon. Robert consoled himself with that thought.
Deciding to leave greeting his grandchildren until he had their full attention, he shrugged out of his coat, hung it up and carried on towards the kitchen, from wherein wafted the smell of baking. Did the woman ever stop cooking? Robert was sure Diana had developed some sort of obsessive–compulsive disorder. If she wasn’t cooking, she was cleaning. It had started just before the funeral, and she hadn’t let up since. The only time she stopped being the world’s most conscientious housewife – she didn’t like being called that, so Robert tried to remember to avoid it – was when she slept. Back then, he’d lived in fear that she might leave him, not sure what he would do without her. He was confident she wouldn’t leave him now. She was still a fine-looking woman, but it was a sad fact of life that women of a certain age simply didn’t have any options.
He was about to walk into the kitchen, but then he paused, his brow knitted in consternation. Was Karla crying in there? He was sure she was. Because of Connolly? Had to be. What had that bastard done to her? About to march in and demand to know, Robert stopped himself short.
‘But why would he keep a photo of a semi-clad woman on his phone?’ he heard Karla ask tearfully. ‘Why didn’t he delete it? Never mind about me seeing it – one of the children could have. I just don’t understand what he’s thinking.’
Unbelievable.Rage growing inside him, Robert sucked in a deep breath and then expelled it slowly.Well, well, well.A slow smile curved his mouth. Her hero was playing away from home, it seemed. Karla had found some sort of evidence. There was no smoke without fire, as Robert had had pointed out to him. Deliberating, he considered how he might use this information. Jason being as stubborn as he was, it had previously occurred to Robert that Karla might stand by him even through the bankruptcy courts. She’d be highly unlikely to stand by a man who was cheating on her, though.
