The Mistress's Child (11 page)

Later that morning, after she had deposited Tim and some of the leftover party food at Rachel's house, Lisi walked into the agency to find Philip waiting for her.

His face was unsmiling and his eyes looked very green as he nodded at her coolly. 'Hello, Lisi,' he said, speaking as politely and noncommittally—as if this were the first time he had ever met her.

Marian was sitting at her desk looking a little flustered. 'Here are the keys,' she said. 'The owners are away.'

Her heart sinking slightly, Lisi took them. She had hoped that one of the divorcing couple would be in. At least the

presence of a third party might have defused the atmosphere. She could not think of a more unpalatable situation than being alone in that big, beautiful house with Philip.

Unpalatable? she asked herself. Or simply dangerous?

'We can walk there,' she told him outside. 'It's just up the lane.'

'Sure.'

But once away from Marian's view, she no longer had to play the professional. 'So you're going through with your threat to buy a house in the village,' she said, in a low, furious voice.

'I think it makes sense, under the circumstances,' he said evenly. 'Don't you?'

Nothing seemed to make sense any more—not least the fact that even in the midst of her anger towards him—her body was crying out for more of his touch.

Was that conditioning? Nature's way of ensuring stability? That a woman should find the father of her child overwhelmingly attractive? No. It couldn't be. Rachel had completely gone off Dave—she told Lisi that the thought of him touching her now made her flesh creep. But then Dave had run off with one of Rachel's other supposed 'friends'. - Lisi reminded herself that Philip was not whiter-than-white, either. He had been the one who had been attached— more than attached. He had actually been married, and yet his anger all seemed to be directed at her. His poor wife! It was, Lisi decided, time to start giving as good as she got.

Her rage was almost palpable, thought Philip as he looked at the stiff set of her shoulders beneath the starchy-looking suit she wore. He suspected that she had dressed in a way to make herself seem unapproachable and unattractive to him, but if that had been the case, then she had failed completely.

'This is in the same direction as your house,' he observed as she took him down the very route he had used last night.

She stopped dead in her tracks and gave him a coolly questioning stare. 'You didn't know?'

'I've only seen the details.'

'It's just down the bloody road from me!'

'Handy,' he murmured.

She didn't want him making jokey little asides. That kind of comment could lull you into false hopes. She preferred him hostile, she decided.

Her breath caught in her throat as they walked past her cottage to the end of the lane, where, beside the old grey Norman church, stood the beautiful old rectory. And her heart stood still with shock.

The place was practically falling down!

The yew hedge which her mother had always lovingly clipped had been allowed to overgrow, and the lawn was badly in need of a cut.

'Not very well presented,' Philip observed.

'They're getting divorced,' explained Lisi icily. 'I don't think that house-maintenance is uppermost in their minds at the moment.'

He turned away. People sometimes said to him that death must be easier to bear than divorce. When a couple divorced they knowingly ripped apart the whole fabric of their lives. Only anger was left, and bitterness and resentment.

'At least Carla died knowing that you loved her, and she loved you,' his mother had said to him softly after the funeral and then, like now, he had turned away, his face a mask of pain. What would his mother say if she knew how he had betrayed that love?

And the woman who had tempted him stood beside him now, mocking him and tempting him still in her prissy-looking worksuit. He would be tied to Lisi for ever, he realised—because children made a bond between two people which could never be broken.

'Philip?' Her voice had softened, but that was instinctive rather than intentional for she had seen the look of anguish which had darkened the carved beauty of his features. 'Shall we go inside, or did you want to look round the garden first?'

He shook his head. 'Inside,' he said shortly. Lisi had not been inside since the day when all the packing crates had made the faded old home resemble a warehouse. She had perched on one waiting for the removals van to arrive, her heart aching as she'd said goodbye to her past. Tim had lain asleep in his Moses basket by her feet— less than six months at the time—gloriously unaware of the huge changes which had been taking place in his young life.

Unbelievable to think that this was the first time she had been back, but Marian had understood her reluctance to accompany clients around her former home. Until Philip Caprice had swanned into the office and made his autocratic demand Lisi hadn't set foot inside the door. Until today.

Lisi had to stifle a gasp.

When she had lived here with her mother there had been very little money, but a whole lot of love. Surfaces had been dusted, the floorboards bright and shiny, and there had always been a large vase of foliage or the flowers which had bloomed in such abundance in the large gardens at the back.

But now the house had an air of neglect, as if no one had bothered to pay any attention in caring for it. A woman's tee shirt lay crumpled on one corner of the hall floor and a half-empty coffee cup was making a sticky mark on the window-ledge. Lisi shuddered as she caught the drift of old cooking: onions or cabbage—something which lingered unpleasantly in the unaired atmosphere.

She knew from statistics that most people decided to buy

a house within the first few seconds of walking into it. At least Philip was unlikely to be lured by this dusty old shell of a place. She thought of the least attractive way to view it, and she, above all others, knew the place's imperfections.

'The kitchen is along here,' she said calmly, and proceeded to take him there, praying that the divorcing couple had not had the funds to give the room the modernisation it had been crying out for.

She led the way in and let out an almost inaudible sigh of relief. Not only was the kitchen untouched, but it had clearly been left during some kind of marital dispute—for a smashed plate lay right in the centre of the floor. Pots and pans, some still containing food, lay on the surface of the hob, and there was a distinctly nasty smell emanating from the direction of the fridge.

He waited for her to make some kind of fumbling apology for the state of the place, but there was none, she just continued to regard him with that oddly frozen expression

'Like it?' she asked flippantly.

He narrowed his eyes. 'Hardly. Where's the dining room?'

'I'm afraid that it's some way from the kitchen,' she said, mock-apologetically. 'It isn't a terribly well-designed property—certainly not by modern standards.'

'You really don't want me to buy this house, do you, Lisi?'

'I don't want you to buy any house in Langley, if you must know.' And especially not this one. She put on her professional face once more. 'Would you like to see the dining room?'

'I can't wait,' he answered sardonically.

The dining room looked as though it had never had a meal eaten in it; instead there was a pile of legal-looking

papers heaped up on the table, as if someone had been using it for a office. Philip looked around the room slowly, but said nothing.

'Where next?' asked Lisi brightly.

'To the next enchanting room,' he murmured.

Perversely, his criticism stung her, making her realise that she was still more attached to the place than she was sure she should be. How she wished he could have seen it when she had lived here, particularly at this time of the year. At Christmas it had come into its own. The hall used to be festooned with fresh laurel from the garden and stacks and stacks of holly and great sprigs of mistletoe had been bunched everywhere.

The choir would come from the church next door on Christmas Eve, and drink sherry and eat mince pies and the big, wide corridors would echo with the sound of excited chatter, while in the sitting room a log fire had blazed out its warmth.

Fortunately—or unfortunately in Lisi's case—no neglect could mar the beauty of the sitting room. The high ceiling and the carved marble fireplace drew the attention away from the fact that the curtains could have done with a good clean.

Philip nodded and walked slowly around the room, his eyes narrowing with pleasure as he looked out of the long window down into the garden beyond.

A winter-bare garden but beautiful nevertheless, he thought, with mature trees and bushes which were silhouetted against the curved shapes of the flower beds.

Lisi wandered over to the window and stood beside him, past and present becoming fused for one brief, poignant moment.

'You should see it in springtime,' she observed fondly.

He heard the dreamy quality of her voice which was so at odds with her attitude of earlier. 'Oh?'

'There are bulbs out everywhere—daffodils and tulips and narcissi—and over there...' she pointed to where a lone tree stood in the centre of the overgrown lawn '...underneath that cherry, the first snowdrops come out and the lawn is sprinkled with white, almost as if it had been snowing.'

The sense of something not being as it should be pricked at his senses. Instincts, Khalim had taught him. Always trust your instincts.

'You seem to know this house very well for someone who only works part-time in the estate agency,' he observed softly.

She turned to face him. What was the point of hiding it from him? 'You're very astute, Philip.'

'Just observant.' His dark brows winged upwards in arrogant query. 'So?'

I used to live here.' No, that remark didn't seem to do the place justice. 'It was my childhood home,' she explained.

There she was, doing it again—that vulnerable little tremble of her mouth which made him want to kiss all her hurt away.

'What happened?' he asked abruptly.

'After my father died, it was just my mother and me—'

He sounded incredulous. 'In this great barn of a place?'

'We loved it,' she said simply.

He let his eyes roam once more over the high ceilings. 'Yes, I can see that you would,' he said slowly.

'We couldn't bear to leave it. When my mother died, I had to sell up, of course—because there was Tim to think about by then.'

'So you sold this and bought the cottage?' he guessed. 'And presumably banked the rest?'

She nodded.

He thought of her, all alone, struggling along with a little

baby, and he felt the sharp pang of conscience. 'Lisi, why in God's name didn't you contact me? Even if I hadn't been able to offer you any kind of future—don't you think that I would have paid towards my son's upkeep?'

She gave him a look of icy pride. 'I wasn't going to come begging to you, cap in hand! I had to think of what was best for everyone, and I came to the conclusion that the best thing would be to cut all ties.'

'And did you enjoy playing God with people's lives?' She heard his bitterness. 'I thought it would only complicate things if I tried to involve you—for you, for me, for Tim. And for your wife, of course,' she finished. 'Because if it had been me, and my husband had done what you did to her—it would have broken my heart.' She looked at him and her eyes felt hot with unshed tears for the dead woman she had unknowingly deceived. But not Philip—his betrayal had been cold-bloodedly executed. 'Did she know, Philip? Did your wife ever find out?'

'No,' he said flatly. 'Carla never knew anything about it.'

'Are you sure? They say that wives always know—only sometimes they pretend not to.' She stared at him as if she were seeing him for the first time. 'How could you do it? How could you do that to her and live with yourself afterwards?'

Her condemnation of him was so strong that he felt he could almost reach out and touch it, but he knew he couldn't let her stumble along this wrong track any longer, no matter how painful the cost of telling her.

'She didn't know,' he ground out, 'because she wasn't aware. Not of me, or you, or what happened. Not aware of anything.'

She blinked at him in confusion. 'What are you talking about?'

'          

'The night I made love to you—my wife hadn't spoken to me for eighteen months.'

Foolish hope flared in her heart, putting an entirely different perspective on events. 'You mean...you mean that you were separated!'

He gave a bitter laugh at the unwitting irony of her words. 'In a sense, yes—we had been separated for a long time. You see, the car crash happened before I met you, Lisi, not after. It left her in a deep coma from which she never recovered. She didn't die for several months after... after...'

'After what?' she whispered.

His eyes grew even bleaker. 'After I made love to you. You must have been about six months pregnant when she died.'

CHAPTER SEVEN

The sitting-room of her childhood retreated into a hazy blur and then came back into focus again and Lisi stared at Philip, noting the tension which had scored deep lines down the side of his mouth.

'I don't understand,' she said.

'Don't you?' He gave a short laugh. 'My wife—'

His wife. His wife. 'What was her name?'

He hesitated, then frowned. What was it to her? 'Carla,' he said, grudgingly.

Carla. A person who was referred to as a 'wife' was a nebulous figure of no real substance, but Carla—Carla existed. Philip's wife. Carla. It hurt more than it had any right to hurt. 'Tell me,' she urged softly.

He wasn't looking for her sympathy, or her understanding—he would give her facts if she wanted to hear them, but he wanted nothing in return.

'It happened early one autumn morning,' he began, and a tale he had not had to recount for such a long time became painfully alive in his mind as he relived it. 'Carla was driving to work. She worked out of London,' he added, as if that somehow mattered. 'And visibility was poor. There were all the usual warnings on the radio for people to take it easy, but cars were driving faster than they should have done. A lorry ran into the back of her.' He paused, swallowing down the residual rage that people were always in a hurry and stupid enough to ignore the kind of conditions which led to accidents.