Outside the sun was shining brightly but all Olivia could see was the bleak future that stretched ahead of her.
JON FROWNED as he let himself into the unlit empty house. Where was Jenny? He knew she had planned to visit Olivia but he had expected her to be back at home. No familiar Sunday dinner smells were wafting appetisingly from the large family kitchen, empty now like the rest of the house of the busy noisiness of their growing children and their friends. Ruefully he remembered how often once they were teenagers, he had looked forward to quieter times. Times when he and Jenny would be able to have moments to themselves.
Now that they had... He frowned. If the early years of their marriage had been difficult, these latter few years had more than compensated for that with the happiness and love they had brought him. The discovery that Jenny, who he had married believing she could never love him, had in fact done so right from the start, had brought a sensual late blooming to their relationship which he had quite frankly relished.
Now, though, Jenny seemed not to want him sexually any more. He appreciated that life had become increasingly busy for her. She might have sold her half share in her antique shop to her partner Guy Cooke, but she now played an increasingly demanding role in the Mums and Babes charity his aunt Ruth had established as well as being very involved with their local community and the lives of their children and grandchildren.
Still frowning he dialled the number of her mobile phone. It was out of character for her to go out without leaving any indication of where she was or when she would be back.
'Jenny?'
Answering her mobile, Jenny quickly scanned Queensmead's kitchen table, making sure that her grandchildren were eating the meal she had prepared for them.
'Where are you?' she heard Jon demanding.
'I'm at Queensmead,' she told him.
'Oh... When will you be back?'
Quickly she explained to him what had happened, adding, 'I shall have to stay here until Maddy is well enough to come home, and even then...'
She could tell from the sound of his voice how shocked he was by the news she had given him.
'I'll come over,' he was telling her, adding, 'Why on earth didn't you ring me straight away?'
'I tried to,' Jenny informed him crisply, 'but you didn't pick up. I dare say the business David had arranged for you to discuss with Lord Astlegh was too important to be interrupted.'
As he heard the sharp note in her voice Jon sighed.
He hated there being any kind of disharmony between them and it hurt him that Jenny, whom he loved so very much, could not be as pleased by David's return as he was himself.
'Yes, I'm sorry, I did switch it off,' he acknowledged. 'Freddy loathes them according to David.'
Jenny tensed. Here it was, even now, with Maddy so poorly, Jon was still thinking about putting David first...
'I've got to go,' she fibbed, quickly ending the call before Jon could object.
'MUMMY, this isn't the way to school,' Amelia protested.
'No darling, I know it isn't,' Olivia agreed as she checked the traffic. 'I want to call and see Auntie Jenny before I take you to school.' She wanted to see Jenny to ask if she would pick up the girls from school for her and to see if it was possible for her to have them until she, Olivia, got home from work. Ultimately she was going to have to make proper child-care arrangements but that would take time and until then she would desperately need Jenny's help.
Frantically she tried to run through everything she had to do. The school would have to be told that Jenny would be picking the girls up, of course. It ran an after-school creche which she could book them into if necessary and until she had sorted out a reliable nanny perhaps Jon would agree to her doing her paper work from home.
It would mean rearranging her appointments. Some of her clients weren't always free to see her until after they themselves had finished work which was one of the reasons she was home so late so many evenings.
Jon would have to be told about her and Caspar's separation, if he didn't already know about it, which Olivia suspected he must. She could well imagine how it would be received by certain members of the family.
No doubt Ben would once again compare her with Max—to her detriment! Max, of course, had the perfect marriage, just as he had the perfect everything else.
'Mummy,' Amelia cried out in alarm and just in time Olivia saw the cyclist she had previously been oblivious to, swerving out to avoid him.
'Wait in the car for me,' she instructed the girls when she pulled up on the forecourt to Jon and Jenny's home.
Running as quickly as she could over the gravel, which wasn't an easy feat in her office court shoes and straight-skirted business suit, she pushed open the kitchen door calling out, 'Jenny, it's me, Olivia.'
'Livvy!'
Olivia frowned as she saw not Jenny come hurrying into the kitchen but Jon.
'I—I'm just on my way to work,' Olivia told him defensively, 'I wanted to see Jenny to ask if she could pick the girls up for me this afternoon.'
'Oh dear, I'm afraid she's at Queensmead,' Jon told her.
Queensmead. Olivia's heart sank. It would take her a good ten minutes to drive to the other house. But she had to see Jenny. Without giving Jon time to say any more she hurried back to her car.
Jon grimaced as Olivia left. He'd had no chance to explain to her what had happened. He was already late for a very early client meeting. He had missed Jenny's familiar presence in their bed last night and hadn't slept well.
ANGRILY Olivia stabbed her foot on the car's accel-erator. She was going to be late for the office, a fact which Jon would have already noted. That was a great start to her new life as a single parent she reflected bitterly.
Her awareness of her own exposure, her vulnerability, increased her defensive anger. By the time she had negotiated the fast-building traffic and was turning into Queensmead's drive she had worked herself up into a state of furious anxiety.
Stopping her car she got out and hurried towards Queensmead's back door and opened it.
In Maddy's kitchen Jenny was trying to answer her grandchildren's increasingly anxious questions about their mother's absence.
'Livvy,' she exclaimed guiltily as Olivia walked in, her heart sinking as she realised that in her panic over Maddy she had not found time to get in touch with her niece.
To Livvy's eyes the orderly scene in Maddy's kitchen where Maddy's children were being given their breakfast by their doting grandmother was one that made her sharply aware of the difference in these children's circumstances and her own.
'I'm sorry I haven't been in touch,' Jenny began to apologise, 'But as you can see—' She stopped as they both heard Maddy's youngest child crying for her grandmother from upstairs.
Olivia could practically feel Jenny's desire for her to leave. Distraught, with no one to turn to and overwhelmed by a fierce surge of protective maternal love for her own children, Olivia lost her temper and interrupted Jenny angrily.
'Yes I can see that you're very busy Aunt Jenny...far too busy obviously to have time for me!'
The strength of her feelings was making her shake.
'I'm sorry to have bothered you. Of course, I should have realised that you've got far more important things to do than help me....' Without giving Jenny the chance to say anything to her Olivia stormed out of the kitchen, slamming the kitchen door behind her as she left.
Helplessly Jenny watched her, torn between going after her and responding to the increasingly voluble cries from upstairs. But Olivia was already opening her car door and getting in.
As she started her car Olivia was shaking with anger and distress. She had been relying on Jenny, not just for practical help but as someone she could unburden herself to...someone she could confide in, but Jenny didn't have time to listen to her.... Her feelings were threatening to overwhelm her but she had to get the girls to school and then she had to go to work. What had she expected Jenny to do, anyway—throw her arms around her and tel
l her that everything was going to be all right?
A tear trickled down her face. Bitterly she brushed it away. Nothing had ever been all right in her life and nothing was ever going to be!
At the school, whilst the girls went up to join their friends, she went in search of the head teacher to ask if she could enrol them both for the after-school creche.
It was almost nine o'clock and normally she was at her desk far earlier. The now all too familiar sensation of her own anxiety tensed the whole of her body.
'LIVVY, my dear...'
Jon frowned as Livvy turned away from him as she said curtly, 'I'm sorry I'm so late. I had to drop the girls off at school.'
'Good heavens, Livvy, I was expecting you wouldn't come in at all today.... We've heard about Caspar...I'm so sorry.'
'Why?' she questioned sharply. 'The marriage wasn't working...it's a mutual decision.'
Jon's frown deepened. She looked far too thin, her face pinched and pale but it was her attitude that was giving him the most cause for concern. He had expected her to be upset. He knew how hard she strived for perfection in every aspect of her life, how sensitive she was; but this edginess, this angry aggression almost was so unlike what he knew of her and it disturbed him.
When Olivia walked into the office several minutes later the phone had already started to ring. Quickly she answered it. One of her clients was on the other end of the line wanting to make an urgent appointment. Tensely she reached for her diary.
Shaking his head Jon made his way to his own office. Normally the first thing he would have done right now would have been to ring Jenny so that he could discuss what had happened and the best way to help Livvy, but of course Jenny was at Queensmead and he didn't want to add to her problems.
The look of haunted bitterness in Olivia's eyes had shocked him, though. It was almost as though she thought he was her enemy. He was imagining it, he told himself firmly. Naturally she was not herself.