The Marriage War. CHARLOTTE LAMB

you have any real problems go to Martha—remember her? Lives across the street, only just five foot, with very short black hair? She’ll help out if something does go wrong.’

      Zoe grinned and nodded. ‘OK, OK. Don’t fret so much. Now scoot, will you, while the monster isn’t looking.’

      Flora was sitting with her back to them, struggling to force a small bear into one of her small plastic saucepans, far too absorbed to notice what was going on behind her.

      Sancha gave her sister a grateful look, then grabbed up her purse and went out on tiptoe. Ten minutes later she was in her car, heading for the centre of town. First she went to the best hairstylist she knew, and managed to get an immediate appointment because someone had cancelled. The man who came to do her hair ran a comb through the thick curls with a grimace.

      ‘This is going to take me for ever!’ he groaned. ‘Any ideas about how you want it to look?’

      ‘Different,’ Sancha said, feeling reckless. What she really wanted to say was, Make me beautiful, make me glamorous, help me get my husband back! If only she could switch back six years, to the way she’d looked before she’d started having babies and ruined her figure!

      While the stylist began thinning and cutting her hair she leaned back in the chair with closed eyes, thinking. But she was still going round in circles, deciding first to do this, then that, and afraid of doing anything at all in case it precipitated a crisis which could lead to the end of her marriage.

      The letter might be a hoax, a wicked lie. She could be torturing herself over nothing. But if it was true? Her heart plummeted and she had to bite the inside of her lip to stop herself crying. What was she going to do? Was Zoe right? Should she confront Mark, show him the letter, ask him if it was true?

      No, she couldn‘t—she was too scared of what might happen next. She felt as if she were standing in the middle of a minefield. Any step she took might blow everything up around her. The only safety lay in not moving at all. Not yet.

      First she had to find out if there was any truth in the allegation. But how could she do that without asking Mark?

      Tonight he was supposed to be having dinner with his boss, Frank Monroe, the man who had started the construction company and still owned the majority of the shares. Mark hadn’t said where they were having dinner, but it was either at Monroe’s house, a big detached place outside town, or at one of the more expensive restaurants.

      She could ring Frank Monroe’s house tonight and ask for Mark, make up some excuse about why she needed to talk to him. If Mark wasn’t there she would know he had lied.

      She sighed, and the stylist said at once, ‘Don’t you like it?’

      Startled, she looked into the mirror and saw how much hair he had cut off.

      Stammering, she hardly knew how to react. ‘Oh...well...I...’

      ‘It will look much better once I’ve blowdried it and brushed it into shape,’ he promised. ‘You can’t see the full picture yet.’

      ‘No,’ she said with a wry twist of the lips. She could not see the full picture yet; she must wait until she could. But Zoe was absolutely right—she had to know the truth. She could not rest, now that the poison had been injected; she could feel it now, working away inside her, like liquid fire running through her veins.

      An hour later she left the salon looking so different that she almost failed to recognise herself in the mirror. Her hair was now worn in a light mop of bright curls which framed her face and made her look younger.

      Before her hair had been blowdried one of the young assistants had given her a facial and full make-up, using colours she would never have picked out for herself: a wild scarlet for her mouth, a soft apricot on her eyelids, a faint wash of pink blusher over her cheekbones. Then, while her hair was being blowdried, she had had her nails manicured, but had refused to have them varnished the same colour as her mouth.

      So the girl had painted them with clear, pearly varnish, and added a strip of white behind the top of each nail. That had given her fingers a new elegance, made them look longer, more stylish. Mind you, how long that would last, under the onslaught of Flora and the boys, the washing-up, the floor-polishing, the cleaning... who knew?

      ‘You look great!’ the assistants had told her as she’d paid her bill, and Sancha had smiled, knowing they weren’t lying.

      ‘Thank you,’ she’d said, tipping them generously.

      Walking along the main street of Hampton, the little English town an hour’s drive from London, she saw the church clock striking the hour and realised it was now one o’clock. Only then did she remember that she hadn’t eaten.

      She would have lunch somewhere really exciting, she decided, feeling free and reckless. She walked along the High Street towards the best restaurant in town, a French bistro called L‘Esprit, and began to cross the road—only to stop dead in her tracks as she recognised Mark on the other side. He had his arm around the waist of a girl he was steering towards the swing doors of the restaurant.

      A car screeched to a halt behind her, its bumper inches away—the driver leaned out and yelled angrily at her.

      ‘Are you crazy? I nearly hit you! What do you think you’re doing? Get out of the road, you imbecile!’

      Automatically apologising, her nerves frantic, Sancha hurried to the kerb and stood on the pavement, realising that Mark had gone into L‘Esprit.

      Who had the blonde been? A client? Sancha remembered Mark’s arm around the girl’s waist, his fingertips spread in a caressing fan.

      The blonde had turned her head to look up into his eyes, saying something to him, her pink lips parted, their moist gleam sensual:

      It’s her, Sancha thought. She had never yet set eyes on Jacqui Farrar, but she was suddenly certain she had now seen her for the first time, and that it was true, the accusation in the anonymous letter. Mark had lied about what he was doing that evening. He wasn’t having dinner with his boss—he was having it with Jacqui Farrar. They would go to her flat and...

      Sancha took a deep, painful breath as her imagination ran ahead and pictured what Mark would be doing.

      She wanted to stand there in the street and scream. She wanted to run into the restaurant, kill Mark. If she had a gun she would shoot him, or the blonde girl, or both of them. She wanted to hurt Mark as much as he had hurt her. She would like to go home and pull all his elegant, expensive suits out of the wardrobe and chuck them on the garden bonfire, watch them burn along with his beautiful designer shirts and silk ties. While she was wearing old jeans and shirts Mark was always beautifully dressed. He said it was necessary for his image as a top executive.

      He frowned at her shabby clothes and unkempt hair, but he had never given her a personal allowance big enough to buy herself good clothes. Oh, he made her an allowance, but most of that money went on clothes for the children. They grew out of their clothes so fast, she was always having to buy them something, and there was never very much left over for her. No doubt that had never occurred to Mark; he left everything to do with the children to her, and never questioned what she did with the allowance he made her. If they went out together she always wore one of the outfits she had had for years, but which still looked smart. At least she hadn’t put on much weight, but all her nice clothes were faintly out of date—not that Mark ever seemed to notice that.

      But for a long time he had been looking at her with those cold grey eyes as if he despised her, was bored by her. She tried to remember when it had started—soon after Flora was born? No, not that far back.

      Around the time Jacqui Farrar joined the firm? Her stomach cramped in pain. Yes, it must have been then.

      The blonde couldn’t be more than twenty-three; her figure hadn’t been ruined by having three babies and her salary was probably good enough for her to afford tight-fitting, sexy clothes which showed off her figure. Mark had said once that she was clever, an efficient and fast-thinking assistant, but obviously it had not been