Guilty Love

CHAPTER TWO

AS THE next weeks passed and summer deepened into richness, the gardens full of roses, lavender and the hum of bees, trees in full, green leaf, Linzi’s sense of uneasiness deepened, too.

Since the afternoon when Ritchie Calhoun seemed to become curious about her and asked all those questions, their relationship had changed in an indefinable way. He began calling her Linzi, instead of Mrs York, and told her offhandedly, ‘You might as well call me Ritchie, by the way.’

That had shaken her. When she first began working for him he’d taken care to let her know that he liked a formal boss-secretary relationship, and that had suited her, as well. It still did.

Working every day with a man was an intimate business; you spent hours together, often alone; you couldn’t help getting to know each other well, and there were obvious risks in that, especially if your marriage was unstable and you were lonely or unhappy. She had been relieved that Ritchie Calhoun was so distant.

It seemed to her unwise to drop that formality, but she didn’t quite like to argue over it. That might make it seem too important. So she let him call her Linzi, but when she spoke to him she usually still called him Mr Calhoun, pretending not to notice the dry look he gave her every time she did so.

He was very busy with a project on which he’d been working for weeks. A new road was to be built to bypass a small town half an hour’s drive from Leeds. There were other construction companies competing for the contract but Ritchie felt sure he had the edge on them because it was the sort of job his firm had often handled in the past and he already had a lot of the machinery required, and a very good workforce, so he could keep his estimate low without taking the risk of cutting dangerous corners on the price of materials. If his firm was awarded the contract it would fit in very usefully with other work they had to complete during that period. It would mean, in fact, that he wouldn’t have to lay off any of the casual workers he hired for specific jobs, and Ritchie Calhoun was the sort of employer who liked to be able to offer his employees job stability.

He might be a tough boss who insisted things were done his way, but he was popular with his men. He got his hands dirty, too; he thought nothing of working side by side with them, drinking in the pub with them, and knew all their first names. He could do any job on site and had forgotten more about building than most of them had yet learned. They thought he was a great guy and would work themselves to a standstill for him.

Linzi had learnt to respect, him, too, which was another reason why she didn’t want to change jobs, if she could help it.

July was very hot; nobody wanted to work much, everyone wore as little as possible, and had deep tans; dogs lay about, panting; beaches were crammed with people. Linzi had to work, though. She managed to get time off to go swimming in the local pool some days, but she had to work late every evening for a week, and Barty bitterly resented it.

On the Friday evening Ritchie finally finished the long presentation he had been dictating to her for hours, which she keyed in to the computer while he walked about behind her talking. He came to a halt behind her, massaging the back of his neck.

‘God, I’m tired! That’s it, Linzi. You might as well get off home. You can print that out on Monday morning.’ Then he looked at the clock. ‘Is it that late? And you haven’t had a bite to eat since lunchtime? Why didn’t you say something? We could have had sandwiches brought in.’

‘Never mind, I’ll cook myself something when I get home.’ She had been sitting in one position for so long that when she got up cramp knotted her leg muscles and she staggered slightly.

‘Are you OK?’ Ritchie put an arm round her and for a second she leaned on him and was suddenly aware of his strength: it was like leaning on a rock. She felt intolerably weary at that instant; she wanted to put all her weight on him, cling, like ivy. She hadn’t been able to lean on anyone else for so long. She had had to be the strong one in her marriage ever since Barty’s accident. Oh, she’d told herself she didn’t need to lean; she could stand alone, could cope with whatever life threw at her, and no doubt she had this strange yearning only because she was exhausted and at the end of her tether.

It didn’t mean any more than that, yet she was stricken, shamed by her fleeting weakness. Face burning, she stumbled away from him.

‘Sorry...I’m fine,’ she lied and was conscious of his sardonic, watchful gaze.

‘You don’t look it. You’re as white as a ghost. I’ve never seen you look so frail. I could kick myself for working you so hard, it was damned thoughtless of me. I’m sorry, Linzi—why don’t we go somewhere and have dinner, a bottle of wine to put some colour back in your face?’

‘No!’ she broke out wildly, and saw his brows rise at her tone. She bit her lip. ‘I...thanks, but I must get home.’

‘What are you scared of, Linzi?’ he drily asked. ‘That I’ll make a pass at you? I won’t, I assure you. I don’t make passes at married women. That isn’t my style. You’ll be quite safe with me.’

She couldn’t even meet his eyes. ‘No, of course not, that isn’t...I just have to get home,’ she stammered. ‘My husband will be worried about me.’

He didn’t argue any more; just followed her out to the car park and watched her climb into her red Ford Sierra.

‘I’ll be working out of the office on Monday morning, don’t forget,’ he told her before she drove away, and she nodded. ‘Have a restful weekend,’ he added.

When she got home Barty was out. He didn’t get back until midnight and by then Linzi was asleep. She had tried to stay awake but her body was too weary. She woke up when Barty fell over something in the sitting-room of their small flat. The crash, followed by swearing, shocked her awake; she sat up just as the bedroom door opened and the light blazed on, blinding her.

‘Oh, there you are, you little tramp!’ Barty muttered thickly, glaring at her across the room. She could see at once that he had been drinking heavily; he was unsteady on his feet, his face flushed and blurred with drink, his eyes bloodshot.

Alarm leapt up inside her; she tensed, very pale. When he was this drunk he sometimes became violent and started hitting her. Next day he was always horrified, would cry and beg her to forgive him, and she always did.

You couldn’t stop loving someone because they were going through a very bad period, and she had loved Barty for as long as she could remember. They had both been through so much together; the bonds of pain bound them as strongly as the bonds of passionate love had done long ago.

‘I’m sorry I was late again, Barty,’ she said quietly, hoping to placate him. ‘But it won’t be so bad next week because we won’t be quite so busy. We’ve been preparing a presentation for this new contract...’

His lip curled as he stared at her. ‘Don’t give me that! I know what you’ve been doing with him. I thought this time you were staying with him all night—that’s the next step, isn’t it? You’ll want to spend all night with him, lovers always do. Or has he got a wife who might object?’

Linzi was too tired to cry. Wearily she said, ‘Don’t start that again, Barty. How many times do I have to tell you there’s nothing personal between me and Ritchie Calhoun?’

Barty lurched towards her. ‘Liar!’

‘Stop it, Barty!’

He leaned over her, swaying on his feet. His brown hair was dishevelled, he had lost his tie, and his shirt was open. He still looked so young, she thought, watching him unhappily—there was a lot of the boy left in him. He was too thin, painfully thin, although there was a puffiness around the jaw and eyes that came from drinking, his skin was always sallow and his hazel-brown eyes had heavy shadows under them, but she could still trace the old Barty there.

‘I’m not putting up with it any more!’ he snarled at her. ‘You’re giving him notice on Monday. Do you hear? You’re leaving that job, or leaving me—take your pick!’

Warily she said, ‘We’ll talk about it in the morning.’

‘We’ll talk about it now!’

Linzi could see there was no arguing with him in this state, so she slid out of the bed and picked up her robe from the nearby chair.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Barty demanded.

‘To sleep on the couch,’ she said, suddenly angry.

‘Oh, no, you don’t!’ Barty took hold of her by her long, silky hair, and shook her, making tears start into her eyes.

‘Barty, you’re hurting me!’ she cried out, and he suddenly threw her away from him. She fell heavily across the bed. The edge of the headboard hit her cheekbone and she gave a cry of pain, stumbling up, a hand to her face.

‘Why don’t you just admit it?’ Barty shouted. ‘He’s your lover, isn’t he? Isn’t he?’

‘No, Barty!’ she moaned, her voice rising higher. ‘No, no, no!’

‘Yes,’ he screamed, and hit her hard. She was too shocked to cry. She stumbled backwards again, fell on to the bed, and before she could scramble up again Barty threw himself on top of her, wrenching his clothes off while he held her down with the weight of his body.

‘You’re my wife!’ he muttered hoarsely. He hadn’t tried to make love to her for many months; there had been a time when he’d kept trying, growing more and more humiliated, more and more frustrated. Linzi had tried desperately too, knowing that, physically, it was possible. His doctors had told her that firmly. He would never now be able to father a child, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t make love. The blockage was in his mind—not in his body. She didn’t know if they were right or not; but in the end Barty had given up trying. His ego couldn’t take the constant failures.

But now his desire was spurred by jealousy and rage; Linzi shuddered with misery as he tried again, his face set, flushed, more with hatred and a drive to impose his possession of her, she felt, than passion. She felt no desire for him; she hadn’t for a long time, and although she didn’t resist him she couldn’t hide her lack of a response. All she felt for Barty now was a weary compassion and a tenderness which was mostly old affection and kindness.

If Barty wanted her body, she would let him have it, for old times’ sake, because she was his wife and he had been her best friend all her life. But it was useless, he couldn’t do it. Angrily, more and more desperately, he tried—then he slackened and lay still, trembling like a beaten animal on top of her, before rolling off and lying on his face, his body racked by dry sobs.

Linzi put her arms around him and tried to comfort him, wordlessly murmuring, but he pushed her away.

‘Leave me alone! It’s all your fault. How can I make love to a woman who doesn’t want me? Do you think I don’t know you don’t? Do you think I can’t feel you shrinking away from me? You despise me because I can’t give you a baby, I’m not a real man...’

‘No, Barty, no, darling,’ she assured him, stroking his hair, and pulled him back towards her, holding him tightly, cuddling him against her like a frightened child. ‘I love you, I’ve never despised you, and it doesn’t matter about babies, we can always adopt one. Why don’t we do that? We’re young, we should be able to adopt...’

There was a touch of hope in her voice: if they could have a child maybe this would finally end, this nightmare in which they had been lost for two years? They would be a real family again, love would come back, and Barty would be his old self.

But he lifted his head and glowered at her. ‘I don’t want someone else’s baby! I want my own! The one we were going to have when—’

‘Don’t!’ she cried out in agony, as if he had knifed her to the heart. ‘Don’t talk about that.’

She never had, since the day Barty crashed and the news made his mother collapse with a heart attack and die a day later, just hours before Linzi lost the baby she had been carrying. They had all been in the same hospital that week—Barty in a coma, knowing nothing of what was happening to the two women he loved; his mother dying in the heart ward with Linzi at her bedside when she did so, and later that very day Linzi herself going into premature labour and losing her baby. Linzi had discovered how it felt to be in hell that week.

‘You see?’ Barty said bitterly. ‘You can’t even talk about it! That’s why you don’t love me any more. Your great dream was to have children, a family of your own—do you think I don’t remember how happy you were when you discovered you were going to have our baby? It was all going to come true for us, wasn’t it? And then I crashed and Mum died and you lost the baby, and ever since then you’ve hated me.’

‘I’ve never hated you, Barty, I couldn’t do that, I love you, this is all in your own mind...and Ritchie Calhoun, too, none of that is true, there’s nothing between me and him.’

‘Then why won’t you give that job up?’ he muttered, and Linzi gave a long, weary sigh.

‘Yes. We can’t go on like this, Barty—I see that. I’ll resign on Monday, and get another job.’ She didn’t want to do it, but tonight had been the worst so far. She knew she couldn’t bear much more. She was only human and she was being pushed to her limit. Barty’s outbursts were growing more violent; she would have to talk to his specialist. It was very worrying.

Barty subsided. ‘Right...right...you do that,’ he said, and fell asleep shortly afterwards, suddenly, leaving Linzi beside him, wide awake and dark-eyed. She didn’t get back to sleep for hours.

When she woke up, it was broad daylight and she was alone in the bed. For a second she couldn’t remember what had happened the night before. She looked at the clock in alarm—had she overslept? Was she going to be late for work? It was nearly ten o’clock and she jumped up, only to realise it was Saturday and she didn’t have to work.

She heard noises in the kitchen, and began to remember last night, her colour draining away, her eyes darkening. She was going to have to leave her job. She had promised Barty, and she would have to keep her word.

Ritchie wasn’t going to be pleased; it wasn’t going to be easy telling him. Well, once she had she would never see him again, so what did it matter what he thought? But it did. Her lip trembled and she put a hand to her mouth. She didn’t want to go. She would miss him...

Stop that! she angrily told herself. You have no right to miss him—you’re Barty’s wife and he needs you. Forget Ritchie Calhoun, he’s no concern of yours. If you are starting to have feelings about him it’s just as well you’re giving up the job.

A moment later Barty came in, wearing a black and red towelling robe under which he was naked, carrying a tray of tea and toast.

She sat up, pushing back her dishevelled silvery hair, and Barty halted, staring at her. His face stiffened, went white, his eyes ringed with puffy shadow.

‘Oh, Linzi, what have I done to you?’ he whispered. ‘Your poor little face...’

She looked at him uncertainly, not quite sure how his mood would swing.

He carried the tea and toast over to the bedside table, put the tray down and sat beside her, dropping his head into his hands. ‘I didn’t even remember this morning. Can you believe that? I didn’t even remember doing anything to you.’

She could believe it. It wasn’t the first time he had blotted out the events of the night before.

He slowly lifted his head. ‘I am sorry, Linzi, bitterly sorry...I’ll try, I’ll really try, not to let anything like this happen again.’ His hazel eyes seemed so sincere; dark with regret and sadness.

She nodded, her mouth quivering.

Leaning over, he kissed her bruised cheekbone lingeringly. ‘I won’t ask you to forgive me, I know I don’t deserve it...but just say you know I never meant to hurt you like that? You know I love you, don’t you, Linzi?’ There was despair in his eyes. ‘You won’t leave me, will you?’

You didn’t walk out on someone you had loved just because fate had played a dirty trick on them. It wasn’t Barty’s fault that he was no longer the man she had married; he hadn’t asked to be crippled like this, to suffer these black moods, burst out in violent rage without warning. She knew he loved her.

‘I won’t go,’ she promised.

‘I’ll never drink like that again, never,’ he said, and she wished she could believe him. Oh, he meant it, right now, at this minute—he had meant it many times before when he made this same promise, although never before had he been so violent.

At least he was sober enough to listen now, so she repeated, ‘Barty, there is nothing going on between me and Ritchie Calhoun, I swear that to you—but, all the same, I will give notice on Monday.’

‘No, don’t,’ he said, and she looked at him in disbelief, her eyes wide. ‘I believe you, Linzi, of course there’s nothing going on between you and your boss. It’s just my crazy jealousy, but I’m going to be different from now on. I won’t ever let that happen again.’

When she saw herself in the mirror in the bathroom later she was shocked. Her face was badly bruised, along the cheekbone, above the eye, around the mouth—she looked terrible. Last night, she hadn’t realised just how badly Barty had beaten her. No wonder he had looked shaken when he came in with the tea and toast.

Maybe it would finally snap him out of this dangerous cycle of mood swings? Linzi closed her eyes and prayed. Oh, please, let him stop drinking, let him be the Barty I knew and loved and married. Take away this dangerous stranger, who sometimes seems to hate me; and give me back my love.

When she went into work the following Monday everyone stared. ‘Linzi, your face! What on earth happened?’

She had a story ready. ‘I tripped coming downstairs, I was lucky not to break any bones.’

She sounded so casual, laughing, that they all seemed to believe her. Ritchie Calhoun wasn’t there, he was working out of the office that morning, but he walked in later, just before she was due to leave for home.

She had forgotten her bruises and looked up in surprise as her office door opened and he appeared.

He was smiling, but the smile died as he saw her face. ‘Good God!’ he broke out, his brows dragging together.

She remembered then, and put a defensive hand up to her cheek, bit her lip. ‘Oh...I...’ For a second she couldn’t remember the lie she had invented for everyone else who had asked. Stammering, she finally managed to say, ‘I fell downstairs. It isn’t as bad as it looks.’

Ritchie strode over to her desk and she flinched as if he might hit her, and saw the flash of his grey eyes as he observed the betraying little movement.

‘Well, it looks terrible!’ he said and pushed her hand down, touching her cheek with his own hand.

She began to tremble, her body pulsating fiercely. His skin was cool against her hot face; he gently touched the bruise and seemed to draw the pain out of it, then his fingertips slid down her cheek to explore her bruised and swollen mouth.

She drew a long, deep, shaky breath. He touched her so lightly, like the brush of a moth in the night; her skin tingled afterwards. It was hard to believe that so tough a man could be so gentle.

‘Have you seen a doctor?’ Ritchie brusquely demanded, as if accusing her of something, and she was snapped out of her trance-like mood.

‘No, of course not, it isn’t that serious.’

‘I think it is,’ he snapped.

‘It happened two days ago! If I had anything seriously wrong with me I’d have noticed by now!’

‘Two days ago?’ he repeated. ‘On Friday night?’

‘Yes,’ she said, wishing he wouldn’t stare. It was like being under a searchlight; there was nowhere for her to hide, no way of disguising from him what she was feeling.

‘When you got home, after we worked late?’

The question hit her like a bolt from the blue and she went white then red as she realised he had guessed what had really happened.

She invented rapidly, feverishly. ‘On the way home,’ she said. ‘As I got out of the car. I tripped and hit my head on a wall.’

Drily he reminded her, ‘You said you fell over coming downstairs—which was it?’

‘What is this? An interrogation?’ she threw back at him resentfully.

He sat down on the edge of her desk and watched her closely. ‘Isn’t it time you talked about it, Linzi? What’s going on? And don’t insult my intelligence by telling me nothing is...we both know that isn’t true. You aren’t happy, something is very wrong with your marriage, and now you start coming in to work with bruises on your face? It would help to talk about it, you know.’

‘No, it wouldn’t,’ she said. ‘It wouldn’t help at all. Please drop the subject, Mr Calhoun. My private life is none of your business.’

‘Maybe I’m making it my business!’ he retorted, his face grim.

‘In that case I’ll have to resign,’ she said in a quiet, cool tone.

The grey eyes flashed; for a second she was afraid he wasn’t going to accept the warning, but then he got up and walked away without another word.

That evening, when she got home, Barty told her that his firm were sending him on a training course to Manchester for a week, and the stimulation of a break in his routine was good for him. He was more cheerful for the rest of the week. He left on Sunday night and Linzi slept well for the first time in months.

The next few days were the most peaceful Linzi had had since the accident. She felt oddly younger, lighter, a sense of freedom in everything she did while she didn’t have to look over her shoulder all the time in case Barty should suddenly turn nasty. It helped that Ritchie was out of the office, too, that week, working on the site of his latest project.