LITMIR.BIZ

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had known the moment she said it that she was being unfair, but it was too late to call back the words, and besides, what difference would it have made? James no longer loved her; she was sure of that.

      Confirmation that she was right came six months later, when James did not come home at all one night.

      Halfway through the morning the phone rang. Win recognised Tara’s smooth-as-cream voice immediately.

      ‘If you’ve been worrying about James, there’s no need,’ she told Win smoothly. ‘He spent last night with me…’ She paused delicately and then added, ‘you do understand what I’m saying, don’t you, Win?’

      Win had replaced the receiver without answering. Sickness filled her body, her head pounded with pain, while her heart ached with the most acute anguish she had ever experienced. She had put Charlie in his pram and walked him for miles, the tears running down her face, and then when James came home she had told him she wanted a divorce.

      He had tried to argue with her, but she refused to listen to him, or to mention his affair with Tara. She had too much pride for that—too much pride and too much pain.

      She had realised when she’d listened to Tara’s revelations just how much she actually did love him. Too much, she acknowledged as she kept her back to him and repeated her demand for a divorce.

      Oddly, her family counselled her against her decision, pointing out that she had Charlie to consider now, but she had been adamant, demanding that James move out of the house immediately and then refusing to see him.

      The sound of a plane overhead brought her sharply out of her thoughts. She moved uncomfortably in her seat, frowning a little. It had been a long time since she had allowed herself to recall so much of the past, to think about it so deeply. Normally the moment any old memories of her brief marriage surfaced she pushed them aside, suppressing them, and now with adult hindsight she was uncomfortably aware of how very immature she had been, how very selfish and spoiled in some ways.

      Her frown deepened as she dwelt on this new image of her younger self, surveying it with the maturity and knowledge she had gained in the years that had passed.

      Her family had been right; she had been too young for marriage and for motherhood. Now, for instance, there was no way she would not immediately question the kind of hours James had claimed he had to work; no way she would behave with such childish petulance and such short-sightedness, no way she would allow her pride and self-respect to become so diminished that she neglected herself or her home, no way she would not leap at the opportunity to broaden her horizons.

      No way, either, that she would become so totally engrossed in her child that she didn’t merely neglect its father, but virtually abandoned him as well.

      Win moved uncomfortably in her seat. It was odd how plainly she could see now how her own actions must have contributed to the rifts that had developed between them.

      James hadn’t been ready for the commitment of children. He hadn’t wanted Charlie. In fact, she suspected with hindsight that all he had wanted was simply a sexual relationship with her, and that because of this he had convinced himself that he loved her.

      Whatever the original reasons for their marriage, it was over now, and had in fact never really existed. The kind of relationship she and James had shared was certainly not what she now considered to be the kind of relationship she wanted with a man.

      She had been so subservient, so clinging, so pathetic in many ways. She would never be like that now. Motherhood had changed her, forcing her to put someone else’s needs before her own.

      As the youngest of the family, she had been indulged. Her brothers had sometimes treated her more like a pet dog than a fellow human being, she reflected wryly, and that was as much her fault as theirs.

      They didn’t do so now.

      Win smiled to recall how surprised they had been by the way she had changed, by her new authority, her new awareness of herself and others, her calm claiming of her right to their respect as well as their love. No, she would never make the mistakes again that she had made with James the next time.

      The next time…Win’s heart thumped heavily. She still hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell Charlie that Tom had proposed to her. She hadn’t even made her own mind up whether or not she intended to accept him.

      She liked him; she admired his drive and what he had achieved, even if sometimes his aggression and occasional lack of sensitivity made her wince. What she had no doubts about at all was the fact that he loved her.

      Did she love him?

      She stared at the skyline. Three months ago, while Charlie was away on a school trip—finding time to be alone together with a sharp-eyed thirteen-year-old about was, she had discovered, virtually impossible—she and Tom had made love.

      For her it had been the first time since James. Perhaps it was because she was older, wiser, less inclined to see things through rose-coloured glasses that the experience had somehow not really lived up to her expectations.

      Tom had been considerate and caring enough. He had taken time and care, and he was certainly far from inexperienced. She had not expected, as she had with James, that there would be immediate fireworks, but she had certainly expected to feel rather more than she had—a lot more, given her knowledge of how easily James had aroused her.

      Neither of them had said anything about it, of course, but she had sensed that Tom was disappointed, and if she was honest with herself it was almost a relief that Charlie’s antipathy towards him and constant presence meant that they had not had any opportunity to repeat the exercise.

      But then, as she had remarked quite recently to Heather, there were far more important things in a relationship than sex—or at least there were in the kind of relationship she wanted—and Tom, fortunately, had not pushed her.

      Perhaps things would get better with practice and custom. But then when did they get the opportunity? Win was well past the age when she welcomed the idea of making love impetuously in a car on the way home from a date.

      She winced a little, suddenly remembering doing exactly that with James. They had been out to dinner, and on the way back she had touched his thigh, tensing as his muscles clenched, staring at him wide-eyed, her heart pounding when he abruptly stopped the car and turned towards her.

      Perhaps she was just past the age of being capable of that kind of sexual intensity, she reflected as she restarted her car. And if she did agree to marry Tom, would that have the effect of driving Charlie closer to his father? If only Tom could learn to be a little less hard on Charlie, a little more understanding, and if only Charlie wouldn’t always be so belligerent, and if only he would not constantly bring James’s name into the conversation whenever Tom was there.

      She winced as she remembered Tom’s angry comment that he was thankful James was living in Australia. ‘If he’s as wonderful as Charlie seems to think, I’m surprised you’re still not married to him,’ he had told her sourly.

      ‘He is Charlie’s father,’ Win had felt obliged to point out in defence of her son.

      And when she had tried to suggest to Charlie that it might not be a good idea to mention James quite so often when Tom was there, Charlie had demanded, ‘Why shouldn’t I? He is my dad.’

      The problem was that Charlie was starting to grow up and that he seemed to be getting as over-protective of her as her brothers had once been.

      Well, she had learned her lesson, and no matter how much she loved her son he must accept that she had a right to her own private life and to her own friends, even if he himself could not always like them. That was a lesson he must learn for his own sake, and for the sake of the woman who would eventually share his life, as well as for hers.

      However, it was one thing to get him to accept her right to have Tom as a friend. To get him to accept him as her husband and his own stepfather was quite a different matter.

      As

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