Kitabı oku: «The Ultimate Betrayal»

CHAPTER ONE

THE telephone started ringing as Rachel was coming downstairs after putting the twins to bed. She muttered something not very complimentary, hitched six-monthold Michael further up her hip, and rushed the final few steps which brought her to the hall extension—then stopped dead with her hand hovering half an inch above the telephone receiver, her attention caught by the reflection in the mirror on the wall behind the telephone table.

God, you look a mess! she told herself in disgust. Half her pale blonde hair was hanging in damp twists around her neck and face while the rest of it spewed untidily from a lopsided knot to one side of the top of her head. Her cheeks were flushed, her light blue overshirt darkened in huge patches where bathtime for three small children had extended its wetness to her also. And Michael was determinedly trying to wreak its final destruction by tugging at the buttons in an effort to expose her breast. A greedy child at the best of times, he was also tired and impatient now.

‘No,’ she scolded, gently but firmly forestalling his forage by disentangling his fingers from her blouse. ‘Wait.’ And she kissed the top of his downy head as she picked up the telephone receiver while still frowning at her own reflection.

‘Hello?’ she murmured, sounding distracted—which she certainly was.

So distracted, in fact, that she missed the tense little pause before the person on the other end answered cautiously, ‘Rachel? It’s Amanda.’

‘Oh, hi, Mandy!’ Rachel watched pleased surprise ease the frown from her face, and only realised as she did so that she had been frowning. That brought the frown back, a perplexed one this time, because she had caught herself doing that a lot recently. ‘Michael, please wait a little longer!’ she sighed at the small boy grappling with her blouse.

He scowled at her and she sent him a teasing scowl back, her blue eyes alight with love and amusement. He might be the most bad-tempered and demanding of her three children, but she adored him just the same—how could she not when she only had to look into those dove-grey eyes and see Daniel looking back at her?

‘Aren’t those brats in bed yet?’ Amanda sighed in disgust. She made no secret of the fact that she found the children an irritant. But then Mandy was the epitome of made-it-in-a-man’s-world woman. She had no time for children. She was a tall, willowy red-head who strode through her highly polished life on a different plane from the one Rachel existed on. She was the sophisticate while Rachel was the comfortable, stay-at-home wife and mother.

She was also Rachel’s best friend. Well, maybe that was going a bit far, she acknowledged. She was the only friend Rachel had kept in touch with from her school days. The only one of the crowd who now lived in London like herself and Daniel. The others, as far as she knew, had made their lives back home in Cheshire.

‘Two down, one to go,’ she told her friend. ‘Michael wants feeding but he can wait,’ she added, for the baby’s benefit as much as Amanda’s.

‘And Daniel?’ Amanda asked next. ‘Is he home yet?’

Rachel detected more disapproval in her friend’s tone and smiled at it. Amanda did not get on with Daniel. They struck uncomfortably hostile sparks off each other whenever they were in the same company.

So, ‘No,’ Rachel said, adding ruefully, ‘So you’re safe to call him all the rotten names you like. He won’t overhear you.’

It had been meant as a joke, and not a very new one either. Rachel had always given Amanda leave to vent her opinion of Daniel when he wasn’t around. It allowed her friend to get off her chest all those things she would have loved to say to his face only she never quite had the courage to. But this time just an odd silence followed the invitation, and Rachel felt a sudden and unaccountable tension fizz down the line towards her.

‘Is something wrong?’ she asked sharply.

‘Damn,’ Mandy muttered. ‘Yes. You could say that. Listen, Rachel. I’m going to feel an absolute heel for doing this, but you have a right to—’

Just then, a pair of Postman Pat pyjamas came gliding down the stairs, the small figure within making out he was a fighter pilot, firing his forward guns. Michael shrieked with glee, his eyes lighting up as he watched his big brother come hurtling down towards them.

‘Drink of water,’ the pilot informed the questioning look in his mother’s eyes as he reached the hallway, and flew off in the direction of the kitchen.

‘Look—’ Mandy sounded impatient ‘—I can hear you’re busy. ‘I’ll call you back later—tomorrow maybe. I—’

‘No!’ Rachel cut in quickly. ‘Don’t you dare ring off!’ She might be distracted, but not so much that she hadn’t picked up on the fact that whatever Mandy wanted to say was important. ‘Just hang on a moment while I sort this lot out.’

She put the receiver down on the table then went after her eldest son, her long, beautifully slender legs moulded in white Lycra leggings which finished several inches above white rolled-down socks and white trainers. She was not tall, but she was incredibly slender and her figure was tight—surprisingly tight considering the fact that she’d carried and borne three children. But then she worked out regularly at the local sports centreswimming, aerobics, the occasional game of badminton when she could find the time.

‘Caught you red-handed!’ she accused her six-yearold, who had his hand lost in the biscuit barrel. Rachel sent him a fierce look while he went red, then sighed an impatient, ‘Oh, go on then—and take one for Kate— but no crumbs in the beds!’ she called after him as Sammy shot off with a whoop of triumph before she could change her mind.

The kitchen was big and homely, big enough to house the netted play-pen hugging one corner of the room. She popped Michael into it and gave him something messy to suck at while she went back to the phone.

‘Right,’ she said, dragging the twisted telephone cord behind her as she went to make herself comfortable on the bottom stair. ‘Are you still there, Mandy?’

‘Yes.’ The answer was gruff and terse. ‘Why don’t you employ someone to help you with those kids?’ Mandy asked irritably. ‘They’re an absolute pain in the neck sometimes!’

‘I’ll tell Daniel you said that,’ Rachel threatened, not taking offence. So Mandy was not the maternal type; she could accept that. Rachel was very maternal, and was not ashamed to admit it. ‘And we do employ help,’ she defended that criticism. ‘It’s just that I like the house to myself in the evenings, that’s all. Live-in help feels as though you’ve got permanent guests. I can’t relax around them.’

‘Become any more relaxed,’ Mandy mocked acidly, ‘and you’ll be asleep! For goodness’ sake, Rachel! Will you stop emulating Sleeping Beauty and wake up?’

‘Wake up to what?’ She frowned, totally bewildered as to why Mandy felt this sudden need to attack her.

A harsh sigh rattled down the line to her eardrum. ‘Rachel,’ she said, ‘where is Daniel tonight?’

The frown deepened. ‘Working late,’ she answered.

‘He’s been doing a lot of that recently, hasn’t he?’

‘Well, yes—but he’s been very busy with that takeover thing with Harveys. You know about it, don’t you?’ she prompted. ‘I’m sure I heard you both discussing it the last time you came to dinner…’

‘The Harvey thing was over months ago, Rachel!’ Mandy sighed.

Months? Had it really been months since Mandy had come to dinner? Rachel pouted, thinking back. Michael had been about—three months old, she recalled. That was three months ago! My God, where had the days, weeks—months gone to?

‘Hey!’ she exclaimed. ‘You’ll have to come to dinner again soon. I hadn’t realised it was so long since I’d seen you! I’ll talk to Daniel and see which night would be—’

‘Rachel!’ The sheer exasperation in Mandy’s voice cut her short. ‘For goodness sake—I didn’t call you to wheedle a dinner invitation out of you! Though your dinners are worth attending when you bother to put one on,’ she added, with yet more criticism spicing her tone. ‘Not that I know how you find the time, what with a house and three crazy kids to take care of, not to mention a selfish swine like…’

She was off on her usual soap-box, Rachel acknowledged, switching off. Mandy hated the way Rachel liked to run her home virtually singlehanded, and she thought Daniel contributed little or nothing. She did not understand how busy he was, how hard it had been for him to scramble his way to the top and support a young family at the same time. Nor did she understand that Rachel did not mind the long hours he had to work, that she understood that he was doing it for them, herself and the children, for their future security.

‘…and I just can’t let it go on any longer without telling you, Rachel. You are my friend, after all, not him. And it’s time someone woke you up to what’s going on under your very nose…’

‘Hey, back up a little, will you?’ Rachel had switched her attention back to what Mandy was saying only to find she had completely lost the thread of the conversation. ‘I think I missed something there along the way. What’s going on right under my nose that you think I should know about?’

‘See?’ Mandy cried impatiently. ‘There you go again! Switching off when someone is trying to tell you something important. Wake up, for God’s sake, Rachel. Wake up!’

‘Wake up to what?’ Like Mandy, she was beginning to get impatient herself.

‘To that bastard you’re married to!’ Mandy cried. ‘Dammit, Rachel—he’s playing you for a fool! He isn’t working late. He’s out with another woman!’

The words cracked like a whip, bringing Rachel jerking to her feet. ‘What, tonight?’ she heard herself say stupidly.

‘No, not tonight in particular,’ Mandy answered heavily, obviously thinking the question as stupid as Rachel thought it. ‘Some nights,’ she adjusted. ‘I don’t know how often! I just know that he is having an affair, and all of London seems to know about it except for you!’

Silence. Rachel was having difficulty functioning on any conscious level. Her breath was lying frozen inside her lungs, as pins and needles—like a deadening drug administered to ward off impending shock—gathered in her throat and made their tingling way down to her feet.

‘I’m so sorry, Rachel…’ Sensing her shock, Mandy’s. voice softened and became husky. ‘Don’t think I’m enjoying this, no matter how…’ She had been going to say how much she resented Daniel and would enjoy seeing the mighty fall. But she managed to restrain herself. Mandy disliked Daniel. Daniel disliked Mandy. Neither of them had ever made a secret of the fact that they put up with each other only for Rachel’s sake. ‘And don’t think I’m telling you this without being sure of my facts,’ she added defiantly to Rachel’s continuing silence. ‘They’ve been seen around town. In restaurants—you know—being too intimate with each other for a business relationship. But worse than that, I’ve seen them with my own eyes. My latest has a flat in the same building as Lydia Marsden,’ she explained. ‘I’ve seen them coming and going…’

Rachel had stopped listening. Her mind had turned entirely inwards, seeing things—pointers that made everything Mandy was saying just too probable to be dismissed as malicious gossip. Things she should have picked up on weeks ago, but she had been too busy, too wrapped up in her own hectic routine to notice, too trusting of the man whose love for herself and the children she had never questioned.

But she was seeing now. His frequent grim moods recently. The way he snapped at her and the children, the many times he had remained downstairs in his study working instead of coming to bed with her—making love with her.

Sickness swam like a wave over her, making her sway, close her eyes, see other times when he had tried to make love with her only to find her too tired and unresponsive. Weeks—months—of bitter frustration when she had been willing enough to give but he had been unwilling to take without knowing he was giving back in return.

But she’d thought they’d sorted that problem out! She’d thought over the last week or two—since Michael had been sleeping through the night and she had been feeling more rested—that everything was getting back to normal again.

And it was only a few nights ago that they had made love so beautifully that Daniel had trembled in her arms afterwards…

God…!

‘Rachel…’

No! She couldn’t listen to any more. ‘I have to go,’ she said huskily. ‘Michael needs me.’ Couldn’t, because she was remembering one other pointer that was far more damning than any weak points of irritability or even poor sexual performances! She was remembering the delicate scent of an expensive perfume emanating from one of his shirts one morning as she prepared it for washing. It had clung to the fine white cotton, all over it. The collar, the shoulders, the two front sections. It had been the same delicate scent she had smelled but not quite picked up on each time she had kissed him when he came home at night—on his late nights. On his lean cheek. In his hair.

Fool!

‘No—Rachel, please wait. I—’

The receiver dropped noisily on to its rest and she sank, leaden-bodied, back on to the stairs. Seeing Daniel. Daniel with another woman. Daniel having an affair. Daniel making love, drowning in another woman’s…

She retched nauseously, a hand going up to cover her mouth, turning into a white-knuckled fist to press her cold and trembling lips painfully against her clenched teeth.

The phone began ringing again. A tired cry coming from the kitchen joined the shrill sound, and she stood up, a strange kind of calmness settling over her as she first picked up the receiver, then dropped it immediately back on its rest. Then, with that same odd calmness which actually spoke of reeling shock, she lifted it off again and left it off, then walked towards the kitchen.

Michael went straight to sleep after his feed. He curled himself up into his habitual ball with his padded bottom stuck up in the air and his small teddy tucked beneath his chubby cheek. Rachel stood for a long time just staring down at him—not really seeing him, not seeing anything much.

Her mind seemed to have gone a complete blank.

She checked the twins’ rooms as she passed by. Sammy was fast asleep with his covers kicked off as usual, arms thrown out across his pillow in abandonment. She bent to drop a soft kiss on her eldest son’s cheek before gently pulling the covers over him. Sam was more like his father than the other two, dark-haired and determined-chinned. Tall for his age, too, and sturdy. Daniel had looked like him at that age; she had seen snaps of him in his mother’s photograph album. And Sam showed a stubbornness of purpose in that six-year-old face—just like his adored father.

Her heart wrenched, but she ignored the ugly feeling, turning instead to go to the other room where she stood staring down at the sleeping figure of her daughter. Kate was a different proposition entirely from her twin. You could come into this room in the morning almost guaranteed to find her sleeping in exactly the same position you had left her in the night before. Kate, with her silky hair like sunshine on her pillow. The apple of her father’s eye. She could wheedle more out of Daniel than anyone else in the family could. He openly and unashamedly adored his blue-eyed princess. And the precocious little madam knew it—and exploited it to its fullest degree.

Would Daniel so much as consider doing anything which could hurt his little girl? Or lower his stature in the eyes of his adoring eldest son? Would he dare place all of this in jeopardy over something so basic as sex?

Sex? A terrifying shiver went skittering down her spine. Maybe it was more than sex. Maybe he couldn’t help himself. Maybe it was love—the real thing. Love. The kind of love men were willing to betray everything for.

Maybe this was all just a stupid lie. A dark and cancerous bloody lie! And she was doing him the worst indignity of all by even considering it as the truth!

Then she remembered the perfume. And the times he had stayed out all night—blaming it on the Harvey contract.

The damned Harvey contract.

She reeled away and walked blindly out of Kate’s room and across the landing into their bedroom where, only last week, they had found each other again. Made love beautifully for the first time in months.

Last week. So what had happened last week to make him suddenly turn to her again? She had made an effort; that was what had happened. She’d been worried about the way their relationship was going, and she’d made an effort. Sent the children to stay with his mother for the night. Cooked his favourite meal, laid the table with their best china and lit candles, and greeted him home in a slinky black dress and with a kiss that promised so much…

So much, in fact, that she’d not even noticed the clenching of his jaw and the sudden twitch of that little nerve beside his mouth which was always a dead giveaway that he was labouring under severe stress. But she noticed it now, with aching hindsight. She closed her eyes tightly in the silence of their bedroom and saw his lean face clench, his tanned skin pale, that little nerve begin to work as she wound her arms around his neck and leaned provocatively against him.

God. The nausea came back, almost overwhelming her, and she stumbled blindly out of the room and down the stairs to their sitting-room, seeing so much—so much that she had been foolishly blind to until now—that she was barely aware of what she was doing.

The tension with which he had held her shoulders, trying to put some distance between them. The pained bleak look in his grey eyes as he had stared down at her inviting mouth. The sigh which had rasped from him and the shudder which had shaken him when she’d murmured, ‘I love you, Daniel. I’m so sorry I’ve been such a pain to live with.’

He’d closed his eyes tightly, swallowed tightly, clenched his lips, and clenched his hands on her shoulders until she’d actually winced in pain. Then he’d pulled her close, hugged her to him, burying his face in her throat, and said not a word, not a single word. No answering apology, no answering declaration of love. Nothing.

But they had made love beautifully, she remembered now, with an ache which echoed deep into her being. Whatever else Daniel was getting from this other woman, he could still want her with a passion no man could fake—surely?

Or could he? she wondered now. What did she know of men and how their sex-drives worked? She had been just seventeen when she met Daniel. He had been her first lover—her only lover. She knew nothing—nothing about men.

Not even her own husband, seemingly.

Her eye was caught by her own reflection in the mirror set above the white marble fireplace, and she stared numbly at herself. She looked pale, she noted, a trifle tense around the mouth, but otherwise normal. No blood evident. No scars. Just Rachel Masterson nee James. Twenty-four years old. Mother. Wife—in that order. She smiled bitterly at that. Facing the truth of it in a way she had never allowed herself to do before.

You wanted him, she told her reflection. And my God, you got him—and all in the space of six short months, too! Not bad going for a sweet naive seventeen-year-old. Daniel had been all of twenty-four. Far too worldly-wise, surely, she mocked her reflection cynically, to be caught out by the oldest trick in the book!

Then the cynicism left her, because it had not been a trick, and she had no right denigrating herself by calling it one. She had been seventeen and utterly innocent when she met Daniel at her very first visit to a real nightclub, with a crowd of girls from school who thought it hilarious that she was frightened they would ask her her age and discover she was not old enough to enter their establishment.

‘Come on, Rachel!’ they’d mocked her. ‘If they ask you, you lie, like we do!’ And they had given her a new date of birth which she repeated over and over to herself until she was safely inside the glittering dimness of the nightclub. And even then she had jumped like a terrified rabbit every time someone so much as brushed by her, half-expecting to be thrown out by one of the big burly bouncers dotted around the place. Then, slowly, she had relaxed, begun to enjoy herself along with the rest of them, dancing to the disco music and sipping white wine and feeling less inhibited as the evening went on.

She was aware of Daniel from the moment he stepped into the club. He carried that kind of charisma with him. A big, lean man with neat dark hair and the kind of clean good looks film stars were made of. The others noticed him too, and giggled when he seemed to be taking an inordinate interest in their dancing group. But it was Rachel he was looking at. Rachel with her long, pale blonde hair billowing in its natural spiralling curls around her shoulders and pretty face, expertly made-up by the far more experienced Julie, and her slender body encased in one of Julie’s tight black mini-skirts and a red cropped vest top which gave tantalising glimpses of her flat stomach as she gyrated to the disco music. If her parents had seen her dressed like that, they’d have died of horror. But she had been staying with Julie while her parents went off to visit relatives that weekend, and they had no idea what their only child, born very late in their lives, was up to while they were away.

And it was to Rachel that Daniel came when the music changed to a lazy smooch, his hand light on her shoulder as he turned her to face him, his smile, like the rest of him, smooth, confident, charismatic. Aware of the other girls’ envy, she let him take her in his arms without a word of protest, could still remember those first tingles of shy awareness that fizzed up inside her at his touch, his closeness, the hard smooth line of male brushing against soft and sensitive female.

They danced for ages before he spoke. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked simply.

‘Rachel,’ she told him, shy-eyed and breathless. ‘Rachel James.’

‘Hello, Rachel James,’ he murmured. ‘Daniel Masterson,’ he announced himself. Then, while she was still absorbing the sexy resonance of his beautifully modulated voice, he slid his hand beneath the cropped top, making her gasp at the hot stinging sensation of his smooth touch against her bare skin, and pulled her closer.

He made no attempt to kiss her, or talk her into leaving with him instead of her friends. But he did take her telephone number and promised to call her soon, and she spent the next week camped by the phone, waitingyearning for him to call.

He took her for a drive on their first real date. He drove a red Ford. ‘Firm’s car,’ he explained, with a wry smile she never quite understood. Then gently, but with an intensity which kept her on the edge of her seat with breathless anticipation, he made her talk about herself. About her family, her friends. Her likes and dislikes, and her ambitions to take art at college with a view to going into advertising. He frowned at that, then quietly asked her how old she was. Unable to lie, she flushed guiltily and told him the truth. His frown deepened, and he was rather quiet after that while she chewed on her bottom lip, knowing achingly that she’d blown it. Which seemed to be confirmed when he took her back home and just murmured an absent goodnight as she got out of the car. She’d been devastated. For several days she’d barely eaten, could not sleep, and was in dire danger of wasting away by the time he called her again a week later.

He took her to the cinema that night, sitting beside her in the darkness staring at the big screen while she did the same, only without seeing a single thing, her attention fixed exclusively on his closeness, the subtle tangy smell of him, his hard thigh mere inches away from her own, his shoulder brushing against hers. Dry-mouthed, tense, and terrified of making a single move in case she blew it a second time, she therefore actually cried out when he reached over and picked up one of her hands. His expression was grave as he gently prised her fingers out of the white-knuckled clench she had them in. ‘Relax,’ he murmured. ‘I’m not going to bite you.’

The trouble was, she’d wanted him to bite. Even then, as naive as they came and with no real idea of what it meant to be with a man, she had wanted him with a desperation which must have shown in her face, because he muttered something and tightened his grip on her hand, holding it trapped in his own while he forced his own attention back to the film. That night he kissed her hard and hungrily, the power of it taking her to the edge of fear before he drew angrily away and made her get out of the car.

The next time he took her out it was to a quiet restaurant, where his eyes lingered broodingly on her through the meal while he told her about himself. About his job as a salesman for a big computer firm which, by the nature of the job, meant he travelled all over the country touting for new business and could mean his being out of the area for weeks on end sometimes. He told her of his ambition to own his own company one day. How he dabbled in stocks and shares with his commission and lived on a shoe-string to do it. He spoke levelly and softly so that she had to lean forward a little to catch his words, and all the time his eyes never left her face, not just brooding, but seeming to consume her, so by the time he drove her home that night she was in danger of exploding at the sexual tension he had developed around them both. Yet still it was just the one hungry kiss before he was sending her into the house and driving away. It went like that for perhaps half a dozen more dates before eventually, inevitably, she supposed, his control snapped and, instead of taking her to the cinema as they had planned, he took her to his flat.

After that, they rarely went anywhere else. Being alone together, making love together, became the most important thing in her life. Daniel became the most important thing in her life, over her A-levels, over her ambitions, over the disapproval her parents made no bones about voicing but which made no difference to the way she felt.

Three months later—and after he had been away in London for almost two weeks—she had been waiting for him at his flat door when he returned.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asked, and it was only now, almost seven years later, that she realised he had been far from pleased to find her there. His face had been tired and tense—just as it had looked over these last few months, she thought, on another pained realisation.

‘I had to see you,’ she’d explained, slipping her hand trustingly into his as he walked into the flat. Inevitably they had made love, then she made some coffee while he showered and they drank in silence, he lounging in a lumpy old easy-chair wearing only his terry bathrobe, she curled at his feet between his parted knees as she always was.

It was then she had told him she was pregnant. He hadn’t moved or said anything, and she had not looked at him. His hand had stroked absently at her hair and her cheek rested comfortably on his thigh.

After a while, he had sighed, long and heavy, then bent to lift her on to his lap. She had curled into him there, too. Like a child, she thought now. As Kate does when she goes to her daddy for love and comfort.

‘How sure are you?’ he had asked then.

‘Very sure,’ she had answered, snuggling closer because he was the axis her whole world turned upon. ‘I bought one of those pregnancy test things when I missed my period this month. It showed positive. Do you think there could be a mistake?’ she had asked guilelessly then. ‘Shall I go and get a proper test from the doctor before we decide what to do?’

‘No.’ He had rejected that idea. ‘So, you’re only just pregnant. I wonder how that happened?’ he had pondered thoughtfully.

That made her chuckle. ‘Your fault,’ she had reminded him. ‘You’re supposed to take care of all that.’

‘So I was and so it is,’ he had conceded. ‘Well, at least we have time to get married without the whole town knowing why we’re having to do it.’