Four years had gone by since the accident. Four years in which Jennifer had struggled with grief, guilt, the loss of a love affair she could only half recall, and had made flailing attempts to salvage the one she belonged in.
On the few occasions when she had let her thoughts drift that way, she decided that a kind of madness must have overcome her after she had first found those letters. She remembered her manic efforts to uncover Boot’s identity, her misidentification and reckless pursuit of Reggie, and felt almost as if those events had happened to someone else. She couldn’t imagine feeling passion like that now. She couldn’t imagine that intensity of wanting. For a long time, she had been penitent. She had betrayed Laurence, and her only hope was to make it up to him. It was the least he might expect from her. She had bent herself to the task, tried to banish thoughts of anyone else. The letters, those that remained, had finally been consigned to a shoebox.
She wished she had known then that Laurence’s anger would be such a corrosive and enduring thing. She had asked for understanding, for another chance, and he had taken an almost perverse pleasure in reminding her of all the ways in which she had offended him. He never liked to mention her betrayal explicitly—that, after all, implied a loss of control on his part, and she understood now that Laurence liked to be seen to be in control of all parts of his life—but he let her know, daily and in myriad ways, of her failures. The way she dressed. The way she ran their home. Her inability to make him happy. She suspected, some days, that she would pay for the rest of her life.
For the past year or so, he had been less volatile. She suspected he had taken a mistress. This knowledge didn’t trouble her; in fact, she was relieved. His demands on her had lessened, were less punishing. His verbal digs seemed almost cursory, like a habit he couldn’t be bothered to break.
The pills helped, as Dr. Hargreaves had said they would. If they left her feeling oddly flat, she thought it was probably a price worth paying. Yes, as Laurence often pointed out, she could be dull. Yes, she might no longer sparkle at the dinner table, but the pills meant that she no longer cried at inappropriate moments or struggled to get out of bed. She no longer feared his moods, and cared less when he came to her at night. Most importantly, she was no longer eviscerated by pain over all that she had lost or for which she had been responsible.
No. Jennifer Stirling moved in a stately fashion through her days, her hair and makeup perfect, a lovely smile across her face. Gracious, even-tempered Jennifer, who gave the finest dinner parties, kept a beautiful home, knew all the best people. The perfect wife for a man of his standing.
And there were compensations. She had been allowed that.
“I do absolutely love having our own place. Didn’t you feel like that when you and Mr. Stirling first married?”
“I can’t remember so far back.” She glanced at Laurence, talking to Sebastian, one hand raised to his mouth as he puffed on the ever-present cigar. Fans whirred lazily overhead, and the women stood in jeweled clusters beneath them, occasionally patting their necks with fine lawn handkerchiefs.
Pauline Thorne pulled out a small wallet that contained photographs of their new house. “We’ve gone for modern furniture. Sebastian said I could do whatever I wanted.”
Jennifer thought of her own house, its heavy mahogany, the portentous decor. She admired the clean white chairs in the snapshots, so smooth they might have been eggshells, the brightly colored rugs, the modern art on the walls. Laurence believed his house should be a reflection of himself. He saw it as grand, filled with a sense of history. Looking at these photographs, Jennifer realized she saw it as pompous, unmoving. Stifling. She reminded herself not to be unkind. Many people would love to live in a house like hers.
“It’s going to feature in Your House next month. Seb’s mother absolutely hates it. She says every time she sets foot in our living room, she thinks she’s going to be abducted by aliens.” The girl laughed, and Jennifer smiled. “When I said I might convert one of the bedrooms to a nursery, she said that judging by the rest of the decor, I’d probably drop a baby out of a plastic egg.”
“Are you hoping for children?”
“Not yet. Not for ages . . .” She laid a hand on Jennifer’s arm. “I hope you don’t mind me telling you, but we’re only just off our honeymoon. My mother gave me The Talk before I left. You know—how I must submit to Seb, how it might be ‘a bit unpleasant.’ ”
Jennifer blinked.
“She really thought I’d be traumatized. But it isn’t like that at all, is it?”
Jennifer took a sip of her drink.
“Oh, am I being terribly indiscreet?”
“Not at all,” she said politely. She suspected her face might have taken on a terrifying blankness.
“Would you like another drink, Pauline?” she said, when she could speak again. “I do believe my glass is empty.”
She sat in the ladies’ and opened her handbag. She unscrewed the little brown bottle and took another Valium. Just one, and perhaps one drink more. She sat on the lavatory seat, waiting for her heartbeat to return to normal, and opened her compact to powder a nose that needed no powder.
Pauline had seemed almost hurt when she’d walked off, as if her confidences had been rebuffed. The younger woman was girlish, excited, delighted to have been allowed into this new adult world.
Had she ever felt like that about Laurence? she wondered dully. Sometimes she passed their wedding picture in the hallway, and it was like looking at strangers. Most of the time she tried to ignore it. If she was in the wrong frame of mind, as Laurence said she often was, she wanted to shout at that trusting, wide-eyed girl, tell her not to marry at all. Plenty of women didn’t now. They had careers and money of their own, and didn’t feel obliged to watch everything they said or did in case it offended the one man whose opinion apparently mattered.
She tried not to imagine Pauline Thorne in ten years’ time when Sebastian’s words of adoration would have been long forgotten, when the demands of work, children, worries about money, or the sheer tedium of day-to-day routine would have caused her glow to fade. She mustn’t be sour. Let the girl have her day. Her story might turn out differently.
She took a deep breath and reapplied her lipstick.
When she returned to the party, Laurence had moved to a new group. She stood in the doorway, watching him stoop to greet a young woman she didn’t recognize. He was listening attentively to what she said, nodding. She spoke again, and all the men laughed. Laurence put his mouth to her ear and murmured something, and the woman nodded, smiling. She would think him utterly charming, Jennifer thought.