For Better For Worse. PENNY JORDAN

was too used to being her own boss. And looking for another partner? The way the thought made her flinch was its own answer. Louise’s defection was too new and raw for her to even think of risking entering another partnership. The reason she and Louise had worked so well together was because they operated in different but complementary fields. To find another partner like that would be time-consuming and probably impossible. No, she would be better off working alone.

      Louise had disappeared after making her announcement. No doubt to inform Paul that she had broken the bad news, Eleanor reflected bitterly.

      Why hadn’t she realised what was happening… guessed what lay behind Louise’s recent odd behaviour? It had never occurred to her that Louise might want to end their partnership. Nor had she realised that Louise felt resentful because she thought her languages were of more benefit, contributed more to the partnership than did Eleanor’s own. Paul’s handiwork, no doubt. But she couldn’t put all the blame for Louise’s perfidy on Paul’s shoulders; Louise herself must bear some of the responsibility, and so perhaps must she.

      She was uncomfortably aware of how blind she had been to what was happening. As blind as she had been to Tom’s fear that somehow her relationship with Marcus threatened his place in her life; as blind as she had been to the fact that, with her marriage to Marcus, Vanessa would turn against her.

      What was happening to her?

      Had she been guilty of being over-confident of successfully handling all her diverse roles? Twice in the space of a few short days she had been forced to confront the knowledge that she had been completely unaware of what those whom she had thought of as being closest to her were really thinking.

      Her heart thumped uncomfortably. She was beginning to feel as though she was losing control of her life and what was happening to it. The problem was that she had so little time and so many demands to meet.

      How long was it, for instance, since she and Louise had shared an evening or even a lunchtime together, excitedly discussing their plans and their business? And yet once those occasions had been so much a part of the fabric of her life.

      And how long had it been since she had been able to spend any real amount of time alone with her sons, concentrating on them exclusively?

      These days her weekends seemed to flash past in a blur of frantic organisation for the following week, her conversations with her sons seemed to be limited to terse discussions about the need for football kits and enquiries about the whereabouts of the partners of the four or five odd socks disgorged from the washing-machine with monotonous regularity. And that was on a good week.

      Take this evening, for instance… She would be working until six and then she would have to drive across the city to the boys’ school to collect them and take them home for supper. She was lucky in that their school ran after-lessons sports and activities groups every evening, but it was not perhaps an ideal situation… Not like the one Louise had described so lyrically and which her children would enjoy.

      Fresh air. The space to run free in proper open countryside, the security of a small close-knit community.

      Only last week she had had to refuse Gavin’s request that he be allowed to have some school friends over on Saturday because Marcus’s daughter had been coming and there would have been nowhere for them all to play. Things were difficult enough with Vanessa as it was. Eleanor could imagine her reaction all too well had she arrived to find ‘her’ bedroom full of eleven-year-old boys.

      Suddenly she ached almost physically for Marcus, and then guiltily she reminded herself that she had promised herself when they married that theirs would be an equal partnership and that she would never fall into the trap of using him as an emotional prop.

      Tiredly she pushed her hair back off her face. Only another hour and she would have to leave to pick up the boys, and she still had this translation to finish.

      ‘Marcus, what is it? What’s wrong?’

      Eleanor had just come downstairs from putting the boys to bed and had found Marcus standing in front of the window, staring into space.

      He had been slightly withdrawn all evening, speaking curtly to Gavin when he and Tom had started arguing during supper.

      ‘You aren’t annoyed about last night, are you?’

      ‘Last night?’ He turned round to look at her, frowning.

      ‘The dinner party, and then Tom.’

      He shook his head.

      ‘No, of course not. No… I had a phone call from Julia this afternoon. She’s been offered a part in a film which necessitates her spending a month or so in Hollywood during the summer holidays. She wants me to have Vanessa.’

      ‘Oh, no. How can we?’ Eleanor protested. ‘We haven’t got the room, Marcus!’

      ‘No, I know,’ he agreed. He was frowning again, Eleanor noticed.

      ‘Unfortunately, though, there isn’t anywhere else for her to go. And after all, she is my child.’

      Eleanor winced, sensitively aware of the slight edge of defensive irritation creeping into his voice. Was he privately thinking that had it not been for Tom and Gavin there would be room for Vanessa?

      ‘Did you explain to Julia how difficult it would be for us to have her?’

      ‘I tried,’ he told her drily. ‘But Julia has the gift of hearing only what she wants to hear. And it seems that she’s already announced to Vanessa that she’ll be coming here.’

      Eleanor closed her eyes in helpless dismay. She felt no personal animosity towards Marcus’s ex-wife, nor any deep jealousy of the relationship they had once shared-after all, she knew enough from what Marcus had told her about his first marriage to accept that he meant it when he said that the marriage had been a disaster from start to finish and that they had been so wildly incompatible that they should never have married in the first place. In a different moral climate they would probably have contented themselves with a brief affair, he had told Eleanor, but in those days such things were not as permissible or acceptable.

      However, she was bitterly aware that when it suited her to do so Julia was inclined to feed Vanessa’s suspicion and resentment by casting her in the traditional role of wicked stepmother, and if they refused to have Vanessa now, no doubt she would be blamed for that refusal.

      ‘Oh, Marcus…’ she protested helplessly, and then to her horror she did something she couldn’t remember doing in years. She burst into tears.

      ‘Hey, come on,’ Marcus told her gently as he took her in his arms. ‘Things aren’t that bad…’

      ‘No,’ Eleanor contradicted him, as she looked up with a small sniff. ‘They’re worse than you think. Louise told me today that she wants to end our partnership. She and Paul are going to live in France. In a château…’

      Half an hour later, having calmed down enough to have told Marcus the full story, she sipped the glass of wine he had poured her and asked him quietly, ‘Marcus, what am I going to do? I can’t afford to keep on the office and I can’t work from here. There simply isn’t room.’

      ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘We don’t really have much option, do we? We’re going to have to find somewhere bigger, and soon. We’d better start making a trawl of the estate agents and arrange to have this place valued.’

      ‘Oh, Marcus… I’m so sorry. I know how much you love this house.’

      ‘Not as much as I love you,’ he told her firmly, coming over to her and removing her wine glass from her hands as he took her in his arms.

      ‘What do you think of our chances of remaining uninterrupted?’ he murmured against her mouth as he kissed her. ‘These days whenever we make love, I feel as though I’m holding my breath, wondering if we’re going to make it. A race against the all too likely arrival of one or other of our offspring. When we do find a another house, I intend to ensure that our bedroom is fitted with an early