‘What did you say, darling?’
‘Nothing,’ he gritted.
Jane stood up, feeling awful. ‘Oh, please! I think I should leave. I know you can’t possibly want me in your home,’ she said to the older woman. ‘It’s not as if I don’t have somewhere to go—’
‘No, dammit!’
‘Nonsense, of course you mustn’t leave.’ Peggy’s mellow voice of reason overrode Ryan’s raw explosion. ‘I’ve never believed in children being responsible for the sins of their fathers.’ This was accompanied by a stern look that, to Jane’s fascination, made Ryan thrust his bunched hands in his trouser pockets, his face darkening except for a thin white line around his compressed mouth.
‘From the sound of it you were as much a victim of your father as I was, so let there be no awkwardness about the past. As for what happened with Ava, well...that’s all water under the bridge now. Isn’t that right, Ryan?’
He jerked his head, his eyes smouldering on Jane’s embarrassed face. ‘I’ve already told her that, but she won’t believe me.’
His mother’s mouth pursed. ‘You do surprise me, Ryan, and after all you’ve done for her, too!’
He set his teeth at her sarcasm. ‘I said I’d look after her and I will.’
‘How magnanimous of you. I hope you don’t expect her to feel grateful.’
Ryan wrenched a hand out of his pocket and ran it through his hair. ‘For God’s sake, Mum, what are you trying to do to me?’
His mother smiled serenely. ‘Just checking, darling.’
Thinking that mother and son might like to have a discussion in private, Jane asked if she could put some personal laundry into the washing machine. Peggy explained where it was, saying that if she needed help in doing anything she only had to ask for it.
She did her small load of washing and spent what remained of the afternoon and on into the evening leafing through the kind of fashion magazines she could no longer afford to buy, talking with Peggy in the kitchen and watching Melissa try to come to terms with her mother’s kindness towards the enemy.
Whenever Ryan appeared his mother gave him a task to perform that involved them all, and at dinner he found himself at the opposite end of the table to Jane. Melissa cheered up at this evidence that her mother’s kindness might be of the killing kind, and after dinner decided it was safe to drive down the road to party with a group of friends.
After she and Ryan had done the dishes, Peggy suggested a film that was showing on television—another luxury that Jane could no longer take for granted—and the three of them settled down to watch, Ryan exiled to a chair while the two women shared the couch. The film was a thriller with a strong thread of romance, and whenever there was a love scene Jane had to force herself to keep her eyes on the screen, conscious of the brooding looks Ryan was sending her way. As soon as the credits rolled he sprang to his feet and declared that Jane was looking tired and that he would see her to her room.
He had tugged her out of her comfortable seat and hustled her as far as the door when the arrival of an international call thwarted his intentions, and he scowled impotently as Peggy blandly offered to escort their guest upstairs while he took the call—since, if Jane was so tired, she wouldn’t want to wait around heaven knew how long for Ryan to finish h
is business...
‘I’m sorry for putting you to all this extra work while your housekeeper’s away,’ said Jane awkwardly, after her hostess had tactfully helped her to change into the baggy T-shirt she had taken to sleeping in. The older woman then produced some large rubber kitchen gloves so that Jane could wash her own face, an idea which, to her chagrin, had never occurred to her—not that Great-Aunt Gertrude appeared to have possessed any gloves—or to Ryan, who was supposed to be so clever! But, of course, it had been in his interests to encourage her continuing dependence on him!
‘I’m enjoying it,’ admitted Peggy, watching Jane sit down at the dressing table and begin gingerly brushing her hair. ‘It’s about time Ryan came to his senses. I warned him that he would regret it if he let his desire for revenge get out of hand, but of course he claimed that that would never happen. Now I think he’s finally realised that two wrongs don’t make a right!’
‘That’s not what Melissa thinks—’ Jane winced as the bristles caught on a knot and the handle of the brush yanked free of the gentle grip of her left hand.
‘Here, let me do that,’ said Peggy, picking up the brush and taking over where Jane had left off. ‘Melissa still sees everything in black and white. She doesn’t see that there might be wider issues at stake or extenuating circumstances. To her, there are no shades of grey.’
‘And I’m a very grey area,’ said Jane wryly.
‘Oh, a veritable grey hole.’ Peggy’s eyes twinkled in the mirror.
Jane swallowed. She had to say it. ‘I don’t know why you’re being so nice to me. I mean, after what I did to Ryan...those awful lies I told to break up the wedding... the scandal...you must have hated me...’
Peggy put down the brush and sighed. ‘Hate is such a self-destructive emotion. I was shocked, certainly, but to tell you the truth when Ava returned Ryan’s ring I wondered if it wasn’t all for the best.’
‘But Melissa told me you were heartbroken that Ryan didn’t marry Ava.’
The older woman sat on the bed. ‘Melissa exaggerates. What I wanted—what I still want—is for Ryan to be happy. I don’t know how much he’s told you about himself, but revenge was the driving obsession of his life for over a decade. The need to make your father pay for what he did shaped his ambitions and absorbed all of his emotional energy.
‘When he found out that your father was dying and forced himself to relinquish his obsession I was very proud of him—no revenge is more honourable than the one not taken. But it meant that suddenly there was a huge emotional void in his life, and I think he instinctively sought to fill it with the utter antithesis of the ugliness, the greed and corruption that had obsessed him for so long...someone soft and quiet and gentle whom he could cherish and protect and never have any desire to hurt.
‘He has very highly developed protective instincts where women are concerned—a legacy of being suddenly made the man of the family so young, I suppose—but he also has a deep respect for female strength, which I flatter myself is because of me. I may be small and delicate-looking but I’m tough—I had cervical cancer when Melissa was a baby, but it was caught early and I’m a fighter; I faced up to it and beat it. I think when Ryan met Ava he saw a woman like me—someone delicate, gentle, and with a core of steel that he could rely on in adversity. But the way that Ava acted at the wedding, and afterwards, well... I suspect that Ryan might have mistaken quietness for depth, and that she wouldn’t have had the resilience to cope with Ryan when he was in a towering temper, which is not infrequently, or to stand up to him when his arrogance needed taking down a peg or two. Would that be an accurate assessment of her, do you think?’