Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series. PENNY JORDAN

… no, he’s renting somewhere … a house … Oh, he keeps pretending that it isn’t because of Tiggy—he keeps saying that—but I know the truth,’ she told him fiercely. ‘I know it’s just a matter of time before …’

      ‘What about David? Does he know … is he …?’

      Jenny shook her head. ‘No … I don’t think so, unless Tiggy’s told him. He’s out of hospital now but he isn’t at home. He’s staying in a nursing home at the moment. The specialist felt that he needed to rest and avoid any kind of strain, and of course Tiggy agreed. Well, she would, wouldn’t she?’ she added bitterly.

      ‘So it isn’t just Jon who …? Tiggy feels the same way, does she?’

      Guy hated himself for asking such a question when he saw the way Jenny winced and bit down hard on her bottom lip.

      ‘Yes,’ she agreed hoarsely. ‘Yes … she seems to be as much in love with Jon as he is with her.’

      ‘Jen …’ Guy paused delicately. ‘In the shop you said that … at least you implied—’

      ‘That when Jon married me I was pregnant with David’s child,’ she finished tiredly. ‘Yes, it’s true, I was.’ She looked up at the ceiling, trying to control the tears she could feel threatening to fall. This morning the last thing she had intended to do was confide in Guy like this; in fact, she had been dreading his return, passionately wishing that he wasn’t coming back. She had grown unexpectedly adroit at avoiding people recently, at refusing to allow them to get close enough to her to ask questions and offer sympathy. Even Olivia and Ruth had met with a firm rebuff when they tried to sympathise with her.

      She didn’t want sympathy. What she wanted was to have her husband back and her life restored to normalcy and no amount of commiseration was going to achieve that for her. She even found, to her shame, far from welcoming people’s concern, she almost actively resented them for it. It made her feel like … like a beggar forced to accept the charity of others and be openly grateful for it.

      And she had certainly never intended to tell Guy about David’s baby. She started to shiver slightly. She still had no clear idea of why she had done, apart from the fact that now Jon had gone, there seemed no real point in keeping it a secret any longer. It was as though the guilt and shame she had felt, both then and all through the years of their marriage, not in having conceived David’s child, but in having allowed Jon to sacrifice his own life in order to protect all three of them—herself, the baby and, of course, most importantly of all in Jon’s eyes at any rate, David himself—had finally been forced to a head, which had burst this morning like a suppurating wound expelling its poison.

      ‘What’s wrong?’ she demanded fiercely as she saw the way Guy was looking at her. ‘Have I shocked you?’

      ‘No, it’s not that,’ Guy denied quietly. ‘It’s just that I never imagined … you aren’t …’

      ‘I’m not what … not the type?’ Jenny smiled bitterly. ‘No, I don’t suppose I am, but that doesn’t make it less a fact.

      ‘David and I had been dating for some time when I found out that what I’d thought was love was in reality nothing more than a silly teenage crush on my part and just a way of passing the time before going to university on David’s. We went our separate ways without any animosity, David to university and me back to school.’ She gave a small shrug. ‘My mother had been unwell for a while and then we discovered that her illness was terminal. I was needed at home to help take care of her. Jon and I were … friends, nothing more … just friends. When I found out I was pregnant …’ She paused and bit her lip a second time.

      ‘You told him because he was David’s brother …?’

      ‘Something like that,’ Jenny agreed. ‘Although it was more him who told me. I fainted one day while he was up at the farm. It never occurred to me that I might be pregnant but Jon guessed straight away. When he suggested that we should get married, I was so relieved to have someone take the responsibility off my shoulders, that I agreed.’ She looked at Guy. ‘I know what you must be thinking, that I was selfish … that I used Jon … that I deserve to lose him now, but—’

      ‘No, I don’t think any of those things,’ Guy assured her gravely.

      How old must she have been? Seventeen, eighteen at the most, a very young and very frightened girl whose mother was dying and who had no one she could turn to.

      ‘I knew that Jon didn’t love me … how could he? But he convinced me that it was the right thing to do, that the baby, David’s baby, had the right to be brought up amongst his own blood relatives. He told his parents that he was the father when his father tried to stop our marrying. I think … I always felt that perhaps their mother knew, but if she did, she never said anything. Sarah was very kind to me throughout and she …’

      Jenny swallowed and forced back the aching burn of the tears searing the back of her eyes.

      ‘I was so well all through the pregnancy that I couldn’t believe it when they told me …’ She took a deep breath, her voice choking with tears. ‘They said it was his heart, that the …’

      Jenny had to stop speaking as she relived the pain of hearing the doctor tell her that her baby had died shortly after his birth.

      ‘It was all for nothing, you see,’ she told Guy in anguish now. ‘All for nothing. Jon need never have married me after all, because in the end there was no baby.’

      ‘Jen, please, my darling, don’t …’ Guy begged her, unable to endure her suffering, the unguarded words of tender endearment spoken before he could recall them, but Jenny seemed not to notice.

      ‘Afterwards … after the funeral, I offered Jon his freedom but he wouldn’t take it and I didn’t …’ She raised her head and looked directly at Guy. ‘By then I had fallen in love with him. He was, is … all the things that David could never, ever be and I loved him desperately, but he never really loved me. He never said anything, but I’ve always guessed, always known.’

      Guy could think of nothing to say, could find no words to comfort her.

      Jenny had finished her tea. She looked at her empty cup and then said quietly, ‘We ought to get back to the shop. It’s almost lunch-time.’

      She was curiously light-headed, Jenny realised as she walked towards the door without waiting to see if Guy was following her. She felt empty, purged almost, and strangely separate from herself, as though she had somehow gained the ability to step outside of her body and watch herself as an observer, curiously detached from her own pain, temporarily insulated from it…. Her heart temporarily missed a beat. Temporarily … How apt. Everything in life was, after all, temporary, wasn’t it? Life itself was fleetingly unstable and not to be relied upon.

       14

      David reached for the remote control switch of his television and settled himself more comfortably in his chair. He really ought to be taking more exercise. The specialist had reproved him the previous day when he had called at the nursing home to check up on him. These days, heart attack patients were not encouraged to spend too much time in bed, it seemed, even those who’d had attacks as serious as David’s.

      Mr Hayes had been dubious at first when David had insisted that he wanted to go somewhere else to recuperate instead of going straight home from hospital, but ultimately David had managed to talk him round.

      ‘You’ve had a very lucky escape,’ the specialist had told him.

      A lucky escape. If only that was true. He might have earned himself a respite but that was all. Sooner or later he was going to be called to account. By now, Jon would no doubt have discovered what he had been doing. It would probably have been better if he had not survived, David decided morosely. Had Jon said anything to anyone else yet? He got out of the chair and walked over to the