Cruel Legacy. PENNY JORDAN

is, of course, and in my position I obviously can’t afford to get involved—not now. No, your best bet is to leave everything in the hands of the bank. They’ll do everything that’s necessary. Look, Philippa, there’s nothing I can do …’

      Nothing you can do, or nothing you will do? she had asked herself after he had gone and she was mentally reviewing her brother’s assets: the huge house he and Lydia owned, the château in France they had bought three years ago which he constantly boasted had now practically trebled its value, not to mention the rental money it brought in from carefully vetted holidaymakers.

      What would he have said if she had told him that it wasn’t his financial help she had actually wanted, but the help, the support, the sturdy male shoulder to lean femininely and weakly on as she had been conditioned to do since birth?

      She had grimaced at herself as she passed the hall mirror.

      What good were a pretty face and even prettier manners going to do her now?

      And from the past, an echo of a pain she had long ago told herself she had never, ever felt, never mind forgotten, had come the taunting words to haunt her.

      ‘Yes, you’re pretty, Philippa, as pretty and prettily packaged as a little doll and just as insipid and lifeless. What I want is a real woman, a woman who laughs and cries, who sweats and screams when she makes love, who is a woman who thinks and feels … a woman who isn’t afraid to be a woman, who cares more about what goes on inside her head than on her face, a woman who thinks it’s more important to nourish her intellect than her skin—in plain fact, a woman full stop, and not a pretty cut-out cardboard doll.’

      A woman who didn’t need a man to lean on and turn to … A woman who could stand alone … A woman such as she could never be … Had never been allowed to be.

      ‘So you’ll stay here at school until the end of term and then we’ll decide what we’re going to do,’ she told the boys now. She had already made up her mind that they would not attend the funeral. It was a farce to dress them up in black as her family would expect her to do, and to grieve for a father they had never really known, never mind loved.

      They were her sons, she decided fiercely, her responsibility, and she would bring them up as she thought best; if that was not the way in which her family approved …

      She saw the headmaster before she left, pleased to discover that he supported her decisions.

      She was a very pretty woman, Henry Carter reflected as he watched her go. The first time he had met her she had been with her husband and the older man had completely overshadowed her. He had thought her pretty then, but docile and slightly boring. Today she had looked different—sharper, more alert, the substance of the woman she obviously was rather than merely a shadow of her husband.

      He had never particularly liked the man and had wondered wryly if he had ever realised how much of his real personality and insecurity he betrayed to others with his hectoring manner and his need to ensure that others knew of and envied his material success.

      Small wonder that he had felt unable to face life without the support and protection of that success. Henry Carter sighed slightly to himself, he might not have particularly liked him but he would nevertheless not have wished such a fate on him.

      The recession was biting deeply into the lives of the boys and the school, with fees unpaid and pupils leaving at the end of one term and not returning at the beginning of another without any explanation. So far Andrew had been their only suicide, but there were other tragedies that went just as deep even if they were far less public.

      It occurred to him as he ushered Philippa to the door that almost as strong as his pity for her was his contempt for her late husband.

      When she reached home Philippa parked the car and climbed out tiredly. Her body ached almost as though she had flu. It was probably delayed shock, she decided distantly; the doctor had warned her to expect it, even offering to prescribe medication to help her overcome it.

      She had felt a fraud then, seeing herself through his eyes, a shocked, distraught wife abruptly made a widow by her husband’s own hand, her grief too heavy a burden for her to bear.

      She had been shocked, yes, but her grief … where was that?

      So far her emotions had been a mixture of disbelief and confusion, the woolliness with which they had clouded her brain occasionally splintered by lightning flashes of an anger so intense that she instinctively suppressed it.

      The house felt cold. She had turned off the heating this morning when she’d left, economising. She had very little idea what personal financial assets Andrew had had.

      Robert had seemed to think that she would be reasonably well provided for, but that did not allay her guilt and concern about what might happen to Andrew’s employees. According to Robert the company was virtually bankrupt.

      That was something else she would have to do: see the bank. Robert had offered to go with her but after his refusal to help her with the far more worrying problems of the company she had curtly refused his offer.

      In the kitchen she filled the kettle and plugged it in.

      The hand-built waxed and limed wooden units and the gleaming scarlet Aga had cost the earth; the large square room with its sunny aspect and solid square table should have been the perfect family environment, the heart of their home, but in reality it was simply a showpiece for Andrew’s wealth. The only time the kitchen, the house, really felt like a home was when the boys were back from school.

      She frowned as she made herself a mug of coffee. She had given up trying to change Andrew years ago, accepting that she would never have with him the kind of emotionally close and loving relationship she had dreamed of as a girl; she had in fact come to realise that such relationships were extremely rare.

      And when she looked around her it seemed that very few of her female acquaintances had fared much better. Love, even the strongest and most passionate love, it seemed, eventually became tainted with familiarity and its accompanying disillusions.

      She knew women who complained that their husbands bullied them, and women who complained that theirs were guilty of neglect. Women whose men wanted too much sex and those whose men wanted too little. Women whose men were unfaithful, sometimes with another woman, sometimes with a hobby or sport far more dearly loved than their marriage partner.

      She had her sons and the life she had built up for herself and for them; the tepid sexual relationship she had had with Andrew had been infrequent and unexciting enough to cause her neither resentment nor pleasure—and besides she had not married him for sex.

      Sex … No, she certainly hadn’t married him for that. Nor he her.

      She had married him because …

      Edgily she put down her coffee-cup and walked over to the answering machine, running back the tape and then playing it. There was a message from the funeral parlour and as she listened to it she wondered idly how long it had taken the speaker to develop that deeply sepulchral note to his voice. Which had come first, the voice or the job?

      As she allowed her thoughts to wander she acknowledged that she was using them as a means of evading pursuing what she had been thinking earlier.

      The second message was from the bank manager asking her to make an appointment to call and see him, to discuss her own private affairs and those of the company. She frowned as she listened to it. Why would he want to see her about the company’s financial affairs? She knew nothing about them.

      Perhaps it was just a formality.

      The tape came to an end. She switched it off and almost immediately the phone rang. She picked up the receiver.

      ‘Philippa … it’s Mummy …’

      Mummy. How falsely affectionate that small word was, making it sound as though the bond between them was close and loving. In reality Philippa doubted that her mother had ever allowed herself to love her. Like her father, her mother’s attitude had been that love was something