Act Of Betrayal

‘You already have a job—here.’ He glared at her. ‘My God, Laura, I thought you had some gratitude in you. I take you in when you’re on your knees, and just when I most need your help, your support, you threaten to walk out.’

‘Am I supposed to have no feelings at all?’ she asked hoarsely.

‘Feelings? Don’t talk to me about feelings when the whole future of Caswells could be at stake.’ He threw himself back in his chair. ‘They want to use the new Fibrona in both these projects they’re committed to locally. If they do, and they like it, it could be worth a fortune in advertising for us. My God, Laura, the stuff isn’t even properly in production yet—the lab still want to do more tests on the fireproofing element—yet somehow Tristan Construction have heard about it, and they’ve beaten a path to our door. I’ve always said Fibrona was revolutionary, and this proves it. It will the saving of Caswells, I tell you.’

Laura said urgently, ‘But it isn’t the only fibre we produce—and we have other customers besides Tristans. Aren’t we putting all our eggs into one rather chancy basket? Supposing we invest heavily in the production of Fibrona, and then Tristan Construction decide they don’t want it after all. What then?’

‘Of course they want it,’ he said. ‘Why else would they have come to us?’

He made it sound unanswerable, but Laura had an uneasy feeling that it was not.

She said quietly, ‘Uncle Martin—I only wish I knew,’ and left the room, closing the door quietly behind her.

From the windowseat in her room, she watched the cars begin to arrive for the party. She had no choice. She’d rung Alan’s cottage twice in the intervening period, but had received no answer. So—she would wait up here until she saw his car, and persuade him to slip away quietly, without getting involved.

She’d done a lot of hard thinking while she was waiting, but none of the conclusions she’d reached were very happy ones. Uncle Martin was a worried man, and had been for sometime, and like other worried men he was prone to clutch at straws. But that didn’t mean that Jason had walked back into their lives with a lifeline.

He, she thought soberly, had no reason to love Caswells, or wish to do them any favours.

She had tried many times to blot out of her mind the agonising bitterness of that last scene between them. No-one should pay too much credence to things said or done in savage anger, she told herself. But that didn’t alter the fact that one of the last things Jason had said to her was that he would make Martin Caswell pay for his role in the breach between them.

She tried to reassure herself that it had simply been said in the heat of the moment. Tried to tell herself that however cynically immoral his behaviour, Jason was not a vengeful man.

Or was he? What did she know of him, after all? What had she ever known? she asked herself despairingly.

In the early days of their relationship, she’d probed, trying to establish details about his childhood, upbringing, education, family—all the things which had contributed to make the man she’d fallen in love with. But he’d always blocked her questions abruptly, telling her the past didn’t matter—that it was only the present and the future which counted.

In fact, she’d assumed he had no family—that his reluctance to discuss his former life stemmed from the fact that he’d been brought up in a children’s home, or similar institution.

The discovery that his parents were both living had only been the first of the shocks which had torn their married life apart.

And now, he was back and in a position of power. A position where he could hurt Caswell as easily as he could extend a helping hand.

It would be fatally easy for him to encourage her uncle’s company to rush Fibrona into production, then back out at the last moment. Easy—and potential financial devastation for Caswells.

If he wanted revenge for the humiliation that the discovery of his double life, and the subsequent divorce must have caused him, then the weapons for that revenge were at his fingertips. He was a man who kept his secrets well, she thought bitterly. This time, his motives and intentions would all be locked in his mind, safe from any form of investigation.

All she had to go on was a gut reaction that nothing was as simple as it seemed. And Uncle Martin was a hard-headed man. Did he really suspect nothing? Whatever miracle qualities the chemists might claim for Fibrona, she couldn’t believe they were sufficient to have brought Jason Wingard back into their lives.

And she was no longer naïve enough to think it could just be coincidence either.

People were arriving all the time. Celia had been busy. She seemed to have invited half the neighbourhood as well as the members of the Caswell board, and the Tristan executives.

She could hear the faint hum of voices from downstairs each time the drawing room door opened, and Celia’s laugh floating above them all, as sparkling as springwater.

Laura had watched her go downstairs. Celia had looked dazzling, all the stops pulled out, in a dress of midnight blue taffeta, with a huge stiffened collar framing and accentuating her blonde hair.

She tried to tell herself that for once Jason might have met his match in Celia, but she didn’t believe it in her heart. Whether or not Celia deserved it, she felt anxious for her.

She’d even considered seeking Jason out—not here, but at whatever hotel he was staying at and telling him bluntly that she didn’t believe he wanted to bury the past.

She wanted to say, ‘Whatever residue of bitterness remains, let it stay just between the two of us. If you must punish someone for what happened, then punish me, not my family. My uncle only acted as he did to protect me, because he loved me.’

She tried to imagine his reaction to her words. Tried, and failed.

It was a relief to see Alan’s red Mini backing carefully into a space between two far more opulent vehicles. She snatched up her bag and wrap and flew downstairs just as the doorbell sounded, calling, ‘I’ll get it,’ to Mrs Fraser.

Alan was smiling broadly as she opened the door. He handed her a cellophane box. ‘Happy restaurant opening.’

The box contained flowers—freesias tied with a bow of silver ribbon.

She heard herself say, ‘How lovely. No-one’s ever brought me flowers before.’

Except once, her memory reminded her relentlessly, and they were freesias too. Bought from a street stall on your wedding day as you walked together to the registrar’s.

She said, ‘I’ll put them in water.’

Alan looked surprised. ‘You’re supposed to wear them, I think.’

‘But if you do, they die almost at once, and it’s such a shame.’ She put the box down gently. ‘Do you mind if we leave at once—have our drink in a pub after all? My cousin’s having a cocktail party—business and very boring. I don’t really want us to be caught up in it.’