commitment.
However, she promised herself, once these next difficult weeks are over, I can start to make some real plans.
She celebrated her return to the workplace by going into a small café, and treating herself to one of its massive all-day breakfasts, complete with a mountain of toast and a pot of very strong tea, courtesy of the Sinclair Rescue Fund. She’d been putting the iron away earlier when she’d suddenly remembered the old coffee jar, hidden behind the cleaning materials, where she and Jamie had kept spare cash for any domestic emergencies that might arise.
She had told herself that Jamie would almost certainly have emptied it before he left, but he must have forgotten it too, or been in too much of a hurry, because she’d found an unbelievable sixty pounds tucked away there, which, with care, would take care of her most pressing needs.
It would certainly spare her a visit to the bank, which, she recalled, biting her lip, had totally opposed her investment in the boat charter business, and advised most stringently against it. They probably wouldn’t say I told you so, but they’d almost certainly regard her as a bad risk until she could prove she’d stabilised her finances.
And it would also save her the ultimate humiliation of having to ask for help from Daniel—especially as he’d offered a financial settlement at the time of their separation which her lawyer had described as ‘astonishingly generous—under the circumstances’, and which she, wounded to the heart by those same circumstances, had turned down flat.
She’d added curtly, ‘Please tell Mr Flynn that I want nothing from him except the ending of the marriage. Not now. Not ever.’
And that, she thought, had been the last contact between them, even at third hand, until the horror of yesterday. It was also something Daniel was unlikely to have forgiven—or forgotten.
Sighing, Laine finished the last of the tea and rose reluctantly from the table, aware that the rest of the day stretched endlessly in front of her, and that the prospect of returning to the solitude of the flat held no appeal whatsoever.
She didn’t want to be within eyeshot of that empty bedroom. Didn’t want to start thinking about Daniel again, wondering where he’d been last night, and who he’d been with. Although she knew that was pretty much inevitable—wherever she was and however hard she might try to avoid it. The same questions had dogged her now for two years, and she was totally and miserably at a loss to know how to clear them from her mind.
Maybe deep hypnosis would help? she reflected wryly. Or even a full frontal lobotomy. Anything that would once and for all remove the images that came back so relentlessly to torment her. The latest, of course, being the imprint of Daniel without his clothes that was now permanently etched into her brain.
Oh, God, how I needed that, she thought with irony.
Perhaps a walk would help? she decided, gingerly testing her ankle. A brief visit to some of her favourite haunts might re-establish the fact that she was back in London. Make her feel more grounded.
Not that she’d ever really wanted to live in the city, but after the end of her marriage her options had been limited, particularly as there had been no Abbotsbrook to return to. Her entire life had had to change, right there and then.
So, as the Beaumonts had decided to give up their tenancy of the Mannion Place flat in favour of a retirement apartment on a golf course complex in Portugal, it had seemed the obvious—the only—answer to move in there with Jamie.
Especially when a job as an assistant in a fashionable West End art gallery had been frankly wangled for her by Celia’s father, who had some financial interest in the place.
Which meant, on the face of it, she had everything she could possibly ask for, as she consistently and monotonously reminded herself, while she tried desperately to pretend at the same time that there was no great black
However, she promised herself, once these next difficult weeks are over, I can start to make some real plans.
She celebrated her return to the workplace by going into a small café, and treating herself to one of its massive all-day breakfasts, complete with a mountain of toast and a pot of very strong tea, courtesy of the Sinclair Rescue Fund. She’d been putting the iron away earlier when she’d suddenly remembered the old coffee jar, hidden behind the cleaning materials, where she and Jamie had kept spare cash for any domestic emergencies that might arise.
She had told herself that Jamie would almost certainly have emptied it before he left, but he must have forgotten it too, or been in too much of a hurry, because she’d found an unbelievable sixty pounds tucked away there, which, with care, would take care of her most pressing needs.
It would certainly spare her a visit to the bank, which, she recalled, biting her lip, had totally opposed her investment in the boat charter business, and advised most stringently against it. They probably wouldn’t say I told you so, but they’d almost certainly regard her as a bad risk until she could prove she’d stabilised her finances.
And it would also save her the ultimate humiliation of having to ask for help from Daniel—especially as he’d offered a financial settlement at the time of their separation which her lawyer had described as ‘astonishingly generous—under the circumstances’, and which she, wounded to the heart by those same circumstances, had turned down flat.
She’d added curtly, ‘Please tell Mr Flynn that I want nothing from him except the ending of the marriage. Not now. Not ever.’
And that, she thought, had been the last contact between them, even at third hand, until the horror of yesterday. It was also something Daniel was unlikely to have forgiven—or forgotten.
Sighing, Laine finished the last of the tea and rose reluctantly from the table, aware that the rest of the day stretched endlessly in front of her, and that the prospect of returning to the solitude of the flat held no appeal whatsoever.
She didn’t want to be within eyeshot of that empty bedroom. Didn’t want to start thinking about Daniel again, wondering where he’d been last night, and who he’d been with. Although she knew that was pretty much inevitable—wherever she was and however hard she might try to avoid it. The same questions had dogged her now for two years, and she was totally and miserably at a loss to know how to clear them from her mind.
Maybe deep hypnosis would help? she reflected wryly. Or even a full frontal lobotomy. Anything that would once and for all remove the images that came back so relentlessly to torment her. The latest, of course, being the imprint of Daniel without his clothes that was now permanently etched into her brain.
Oh, God, how I needed that, she thought with irony.
Perhaps a walk would help? she decided, gingerly testing her ankle. A brief visit to some of her favourite haunts might re-establish the fact that she was back in London. Make her feel more grounded.
Not that she’d ever really wanted to live in the city, but after the end of her marriage her options had been limited, particularly as there had been no Abbotsbrook to return to. Her entire life had had to change, right there and then.
So, as the Beaumonts had decided to give up their tenancy of the Mannion Place flat in favour of a retirement apartment on a golf course complex in Portugal, it had seemed the obvious—the only—answer to move in there with Jamie.
Especially when a job as an assistant in a fashionable West End art gallery had been frankly wangled for her by Celia’s father, who had some financial interest in the place.
Which meant, on the face of it, she had everything she could possibly ask for, as she consistently and monotonously reminded herself, while she tried desperately to pretend at the same time that there was no great black
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