Payment Due

In addition to its two good-sized bedrooms, the sitting-room, the small room she had turned into her study and the bathroom, the flat also had a kitchen-cum-dining-room, but ultimately Tania hoped to extend the rear ground floor of the building to provide Lucy and herself with a downstairs kitchen with french windows they could open out on to a small courtyard for summer eating.

That, however, was for the future. For the present … Grimly she stared out of her sitting-room window, for once oblivious to the view across the open countryside.

She was furious with Nicholas for involving her in what should have been his strictly private affairs, and how on earth Clarissa could be silly enough to believe his lies about her she really had no idea. The woman must surely realise how much her husband doted on her … but then if she was as jealous as Nicholas had implied, almost pathologically so … Tania frowned. The whole situation repelled her, especially those aspects of it which touched upon Clarissa’s relationship with her stepbrother. Clarissa did seem to have an unhealthy dependence on and absorption with her stepbrother.

Surely he, though, as the elder, as the sophisticated and worldly man he was supposed to be, must have long ago recognised the dangers of Clarissa’s dependence on him? Surely it should have been up to him to gently ensure that his stepsister turned to her husband to satisfy her emotional needs and not to him? Surely it should have been up to him to gently and painlessly put a proper distance between them … ?

Or was she confronting just another example of the male sex’s vanity and weakness? Did James Warren perhaps actually relish Clarissa’s patent adoration of him, despite Ann’s denial of this?

Restlessly she moved away from the window. Twenty-four hours, he had said … In twenty-four hours he would return for her decision. She wondered cynically whether, once he had discovered the truth and his mistake, he would apologise to her for his totally unfounded accusations against her. Privately she doubted it. He simply wasn’t the type. She doubted if he had ever admitted to a mistake in his entire life.

She went to bed early, worn out by the events of the day, acknowledging how much strain she was under with the opening of her shop so imminent. She daren’t even allow herself to contemplate failure. She had to make a success of this venture. For Lucy’s sake if nothing else. She had seen already how much healthier, how much happier her daughter was in their new surroundings. How much less inclined to cling to her.

In many ways it made her heart ache a little that Lucy should be so willing to spend so much time at the Fieldings’, but then she reminded herself of how isolated she and Lucy had always been and how much this had worried her in the past. How much she had wanted security, self-confidence, and happiness for Lucy.

It was a long time before she managed to sleep, only to discover in the morning that not only had she overslept but she also had all the signs of an impending migraine.

Mentally cursing James Warren and all his family, she hurried into the bathroom to discover that she was out of the only tablets she had managed to find which, if taken fast enough, sometimes managed to keep her migraine at bay. She knew from painful experience that once she let the headache take hold nothing would take it away.

Luckily there was a chemist in the next street, who listened sympathetically to the reason for her early morning call and thankfully was able to supply her with the drug she needed, although her errand took rather longer than she had anticipated, principally because the chemist was a friendly man who liked to chat with his customers. Once Tania had explained who she was he announced warmly, ‘Oh, yes, of course. My wife was saying only the other day that it was a good thing that a decent children’s shoe shop had opened up here. She dreads taking our two into the city to kit them out for school. A proper nightmare, she says it is, so I expect you’ll be seeing her once you’re open.’

As a potential customer Tania felt she could hardly cut him short and risk offending him, with the result that it was almost half an hour before she was able to hurry back to her own shop.

As she went upstairs to the flat, she recognised that it sounded oddly silent. Normally as she opened the door she could hear Lucy humming or talking to herself, but today everywhere was silent.

Her heart started to pound heavily. She had always stressed to Lucy how important it was that she never went anywhere without her; that she never talked to strangers, much less accepted lifts from them, that she never did anything or went with anyone unless she, Tania, had expressly told her beforehand that she might.

Hurrying into the sitting-room, calling her daughter’s name, Tania came to an abrupt halt as she discovered a tearful Lucy standing in the kitchen doorway.

‘Darling, what is it?’ Tania asked anxiously, dropping down on to her knees and gathering her daughter close in her arms, cradling her there.

Where her own hair was conker-red, Lucy’s was a slightly lighter colour, more the shade of new chestnuts, silky and burnished, and, unlike her own, Lucy’s eyes were grey rather than tawny. Now those grey eyes looked apprehensive and guilty, and as she looked over her daughter’s shoulder, Tania saw the scattered shards of china on the kitchen floor.

‘I’m sorry. I was just trying to help …’

Tania bit her lip as she recognised one piece of china. As a special treat she had recently given in to a reckless whim and bought a pretty set of breakfast crockery, a real luxury to her since in the past all she had ever been able to afford had been cheap seconds, bought on market stalls.

‘I was just trying to make you a cup of tea,’ Lucy told her tearfully, ‘but the teapot just sort of slipped.’

The teapot. It would have to be that, of course, the most expensive item of the set. But at least it hadn’t been full of scalding hot water when Lucy dropped it.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said as comfortingly as she could. ‘Everyone has accidents.’

And yet, even as she comforted Lucy and told herself that it was after all only a piece of china, she couldn’t help grieving for the waste of money its destruction represented. It wasn’t that she was mean or penny-pinching, it was simply that she couldn’t afford … She sighed faintly to herself. Perhaps it was her own fault … Lucy was just at that stage when she adored ‘helping’ and being grownup. She ought to have recognised the danger, ought to have waited a little perhaps before giving in to the impulse towards such extravagance.

It was a day which seemed destined to be fraught with small difficulties and snags, nothing to do, of course, with her own underlying tension and the knowledge that, before it was over, she would once again by confronted by James Warren.

After all, why should she feel apprehensive … ? Apprehensive … She laughed bitterly to herself; sick with fear would be a more accurate description of her feelings. Not that she intended to allow him to see it. Hateful man. No, he was the one who should be suffering, not her.

She even toyed with the idea of purposely disappearing for the afternoon, but acknowledged this was a cowardly and pointless exercise. She was not playing a point-scoring game against the man. All she wanted was for the situation to be sorted out and the truth revealed so that she could get on with her life and her business, without his unwarranted threats hanging over her.

When after lunch Susan Fielding called round to ask importantly if Lucy would like to go back to her house with her so that they could both watch her daddy making her new stencil, Tania was almost relieved to see her daughter go. Not because she didn’t want her company, but she certainly did not want her on hand to witness any confrontation between herself and James Warren.

When three-thirty came and went without any sign of him she told herself with relief that Nicholas must have revealed the truth and, like the bully that he undoubtedly was, James was too embarrassed by his own error to come round and acknowledge the wrong he had done her.

Well, that suited her fine. The last thing she wanted was to see him again. She still felt inwardly bruised and battered from their previous meeting.

It was just gone four o’clock. She was just about to sit down and make herself a cup of tea to wash down the tablets her still-aching head demanded when she heard the shop doorbell ring.

Immediately she knew who it was, but, even knowing, couldn’t stop the tension invading her stomach as she walked towards the door and saw James Warren standing on the other side of it.

For a moment she was tempted to leave it locked, but then she noticed that one of her neighbours was watching curiously from the opposite side of the road and so reluctantly she unlocked the door and stepped to one side so that he could walk in.

‘Very sensible,’ was his jeering comment as he followed her inside. ‘Well?’ he demanded closing the door behind him. ‘I do hope you’ve made the right decision, because, as I warned you yesterday, I am not prepared to stand by and watch you destroy my sister’s marriage.’

Tania stared at him, and then her heart sank. Nicholas hadn’t told him the truth—either that or he had told him and he had simply chosen not to believe her.

Tightening her lips, she told him coolly, ‘There is no decision for me to make, since I am not having an affair either with your brother-in-law or with anyone else. I don’t have affairs, Mr Warren, and, especially, I don’t have affairs with married men.’

‘No?’ His eyebrows rose, his voice dripping with cynicism as he retorted, ‘I might be more inclined to believe you if you hadn’t already provided the proof of your own dishonesty by the fact that you have an illegitimate child, father unknown—or so you apparently claim.’

The cruelty of it, the sheer ruthless brutality left her breathless and speechless, her shocked expression alone betraying to him just how much damage his words were doing.

When her frozen vocal cords relaxed enough for her to reply to him, she did so as unemotionally as she could, her voice low and uneven as she told him, ‘Lucy was conceived when I was eighteen years old. A very foolish eighteen years old. Eighteen-year-olds can sometimes be foolish and naïve. Unfortunately, when they’re female, that folly can often have consequences that affect the rest of their lives.’ She ached to be able to throw in his face her knowledge that his own precious sister had been carrying a child before she married Nicholas, but she told herself that she was not going to demean herself, that she was not going to lower herself to his level, and, as she held her head high and stared bitterly at him, she had the satisfaction of seeing him frown and check before he smiled dangerously at her.

He said softly, ‘I see. Nicholas has been doing a lot of unburdening of himself to you, hasn’t he? What is it exactly that you’re after, Ms Carter? His money? Without my backing, without the business I put his way, he’d barely scrape a living. His lifestyle? Again, without my help he couldn’t afford that lifestyle.’

His cynicism stunned her and she reacted to it instinctively, demanding huskily, ‘Couldn’t it simply be Nicholas himself that I want? Just because your precious sister seems to hold him in such contempt, it doesn’t mean that I feel the same. In fact, I can’t imagine why she’s involved you in this at all. After all, she’s scarcely been giving the impression of a devoted wife, has she? It seems common knowledge that she prefers your company to her husband’s, that it’s to you that she turns for advice, for companionship, and, of course, for money,’ she added sweetly.

She had the pleasure of seeing his whole face harden with rage and distaste as he listened to her taunts.

He didn’t like what she was saying to him; he didn’t like it one little bit, but then why should he expect to be able to stand there and insult her as much as he wished, without her doing a single thing to retaliate? Let him see how he liked being insulted, being accused, being humiliated.

‘What exactly is it you’re implying?’ he demanded savagely, so savagely that immediately Tania panicked, fear swamping her as he took a step towards her. She could see the violence in his eyes, feel it in the heat coming off his body.

‘I’m not implying anything,’ she told him shakily. ‘Nor am I relying on one person’s idiotic assumptions and mistaken beliefs to make accusations which are totally false. The whole town knows that your precious sister looks not to her husband but to her brother, that she constantly humiliates Nicholas by comparing him to you. If he is looking for affection, for warmth, for love outside his marriage then I doubt that anyone would be surprised.’

‘So that’s your justification, is it? It’s all Clarissa’s fault. Have you forgotten that they have two children, two children who need both their father and their mother?’

‘Just as my daughter needs two parents,’ Tania hurled back at him.

‘Well, with my ten thousand you’ll probably be able to buy yourself a man,’ he told her cruelly. ‘You are going to accept it, aren’t you?’

Tania stared at him.

‘No,’ she told him through clenched teeth. ‘No, I am not and what’s more I wouldn’t accept it if you added another nought to the end and made it one hundred thousand pounds.’

‘One hundred thousand. My God, is that your price? Well, let me tell you—’