LITMIR.BIZ

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telling you I couldn’t do any more, Pete went down and asked her. Said he wasn’t having me fretting myself into flinders. Not now.’ Her hand rested fondly against her stomach and Kate was attacked by the most acute sense of pain and deprivation. What on earth was the matter with her? ‘We were happy enough before, I suppose,’ Beth said softly, ‘but there’s nothing like knowing you’re carrying your man’s child inside you. Sort of makes you feel complete, somehow. And as for Pete …’ she gave a warm laugh, ‘well, he’s like a dog with two tails and no mistake. Anyone would think no man had ever had a child before, but then it takes some of them that way, I suppose, and we’ve waited that long.’

      For some reason Kate was glad to escape from the warmth of the farm kitchen, glad of the cold biting wind from the east that burned into her still vulnerable skin and brought the sting of tears to her eyes. What on earth was the matter with her? she asked herself bitterly as she wrenched the car round and headed back towards the road. Just for a moment then in the kitchen she had wished … no, longed, to be able to share Beth’s happiness, to feel Jake’s child inside her, with a feeling just as intense as that she had experienced when she had denied him. She could barely understand her own emotions. It was as though a stranger had suddenly appeared inside her skin, masquerading as her. She hadn’t wanted Jake’s child because she couldn’t bear to think of bringing a child into the world in which they lived—besides, there had been Jake’s arrogant assumption that he could impose his will on hers; that he could simply announce that they would have a child and that was it! He hadn’t so much as consulted her. Treating her like a child, refusing to listen to her views … calling her an idealistic adolescent.

      ‘UMM, YOU MISSED a treat,’ Meg told her when she got back. ‘Rita’s just left. She was full of the man who’s taken over from Henry Cousins at the station. You should have seen her, she was practically drooling over him! According to her he’s superman and Apollo all rolled into one, and very, very macho with it.’

      ‘They should make a good pair, then,’ Kate said snappily. She didn’t care very much for Rita Sutcliffe, the daughter of Woolerton’s wealthiest man. She was reed-slim, blonde, with the instincts of a tigress defending her kill when it came to men, and Kate and Rita had never got on together. Rita had openly taunted Kate for her views about the station. As far as Rita was concerned, it was a new source of men, and since Rita much preferred being a large fish in the very small pool of Ebbdale to living as a very small fish indeed in London, new men were always of interest to her. She was a sensual egotist who made no secret of her enjoyment of the same sort of hedonistic life so much enjoyed by Lyla, and Kate knew that secretly Rita despised her just as much as she disliked the other woman.

      ‘I’m sure they will if Rita has anything to do with it. You didn’t tell me that Kevin is planning to throw a “welcome to Woolerton” dinner party for him? Rita was most put out to learn that Kevin has asked you to act as his hostess for it.’

      ‘Primarily because he wants me to do the cooking,’ Kate assured her dryly.

      ‘Umm. Our dear Rita might be a Cordon Bleu between the sheets, but in the kitchen she’s a real no-hoper!’ They both laughed. ‘By the way,’ Meg added, ‘Rita bought one of the new sweaters. You might not like her,’ she added to Kate, ‘but she’s good for business. We got at least half a dozen sales from the last one she bought. Her father has influential friends all over the Dales, and Rita gets around.’

      ‘In every sense of the expression,’ Kate agreed sardonically. She would have to ring Kevin to find out exactly what arrangements he was making for this dinner party. She grimaced. Rita couldn’t have been too pleased to discover that Kevin had asked her to be his hostess. Until her arrival Rita had looked upon Kevin as very much a member of her court, and she hadn’t appreciated his defection. Not that she needed to worry. Kevin did nothing for her except as a friend. Jake had called her a delightful little sensualist, but that part of her nature seemed to have died with her love for him, and certainly she doubted that any man would see anything sensual about her now, she reflected, studying her reflection subjectively in the mirror which hung in the shop. Small, barely five foot four, her jeans clinging to hips that were almost boyishly slim, accentuating the fullness of breasts Kate had always privately thought too full. Her face, free of make-up, was almost triangular in shape, her eyes large and slightly almond-shaped, a dark, dense sapphire colour, oddly exotic in the creamy pallor of her skin. With her chestnut hair tumbling down round her shoulders she looked closer to eighteen than the twenty-four she would be next month, and Lyla would have a fit if she could see the way she was dressed. Her aunt had always insisted on her wearing sophisticated and expensive clothes. That was one thing she could say about Lyla, she had never stinted when it came to money. Why, the wedding dress she had bought her …

      Kate heaved a sigh. She was dwelling far too much on the past. It wasn’t good for her, especially when she had vowed to put it all behind her. But Jake had been furious about that dress she couldn’t help remembering, saying it was far too sophisticated for her, and demanding to know why pale peach when she had every right to wear white? She could remember how worried she had been, worried about offending Lyla and worried because Jake was so annoyed. She had told him she was still a virgin the day he proposed to her, or rather he had proposed after she had told him. And that in itself ought to have been a warning, only she had been too bemused to see it. According to his views he had probably been doing the honourable thing, marrying her instead of merely making love to her, but in the long run it would have been kinder simply to have taken her innocence, initiated her into womanhood and then gone … kinder and far less painful than a marriage built on desire on one partner’s side and infatuation on the other. Even while adoring him she had resented him, Kate reflected, savouring the knowledge, knowing she had never realised it before. She had resented him for inhabiting a world which was still barred to her, for being adult and experienced, for controlling her as though she were a wooden puppet on a string, for eliciting responses from her body she hadn’t known they could feel … the list was endless.

      ‘Kate, phone,’ Meg called. ‘It’s Kevin. He wants to talk to you.’

      ‘It’s all fixed, Kate,’ Kevin told her. ‘Next Wednesday, if that’s okay with you. I spoke to Harvey myself. He seems quite a pleasant sort, but extremely decisive … Kate? Are you still there?’

      Part of her was, Kate thought numbly, the rest was still trying to come to terms with what Kevin had just said. ‘Did he … do you know his first name?’ she croaked.

      ‘His first name?’ Kevin sounded puzzled. ‘Oh yes, let me see. It’s Jay … or …’

      ‘Jake,’ Kate supplemented, having known the answer long before Kevin gave it. It was too much of a coincidence to expect another man in Jake’s field to share his surname.

      ‘Yes, that’s right … heard of him, have you?’ Kevin chuckled. ‘I’ve warned him about you. Our anti-nuclear firebrand!’ Her palm was moist where it came into contact with the phone. ‘By name?’ she managed through a dry aching throat, ‘or merely by reputation?’

      ‘Oh, by name,’ Kevin told her. ‘He wanted to know who his fellow guests were to be.’

      ‘Yes, he would, and that meant that she could hardly back out now. How he would gloat if she did, knowing that she had preferred flight to fight. Dear God, Jake here! How could it have happened? How could the fates have chosen with such fine irony, destroying the fragile shell she had built for herself? Was Jake planning to turn Ebbdale into a missile storehouse? Her lip curled bitterly. This time she wouldn’t let him toss aside her arguments and destroy all her objections. This time she would show him … And she would start by hostessing Kevin’s dinner. She would show Jake that he couldn’t exert any power over her any longer. She was free and she was adult. Ex-husbands and wives met on countless of thousands of occasions these days; there was nothing of any note in it.

      It was only as she replaced the receiver that the final irony struck her. Rita’s fabulous new man was her husband. So why did she feel more like howling than laughing? And Jake, what was he feeling right now? Nothing, she assured herself tartly, she knew enough to know that in fact he was probably deriving sadistic amusement from

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