Karen drew out her cigarette-case and helped herself to a cigarette, but her mother’s first words startled her so much that she almost dropped it.
“Have you seen Paul lately?” began Madeline, in a contrivedly casual tone.
“Paul?” Karen felt as though she was playing for time. Time to gather her suddenly shocked senses together. With trembling fingers she lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply, savouring the nicotine in her lungs, relaxing. “No,” she replied slowly. “We never meet, and you know it. Why do you ask? Oh … I suppose you saw the notice of his engagement in The Times.”
“Yes, I did see that,” agreed her mother slowly. “Ruth Delaney, I believe that was her name. Some American girl, a tycoon’s daughter, if I remember correctly.”
“You’re in complete possession of the facts,” remarked Karen rather dryly. This was no casual remark. “Well, Mother, why should I have seen Paul?”
Mrs. Stacey shrugged. “I thought perhaps he might have telephoned to object about Sandra going out with Simon.”
Karen’s eyes widened. “Simon!” she exclaimed. “Simon Frazer is going out with Sandra? But he’s married; you must be joking.”
“I only wish I were,” said Madeline stiffly. “I don’t joke about things like this, Karen. I’m at my wits’ end. She refuses to give him up, even though I’ve begged her to do so. You know how unmanageable Sandra has always been, how headstrong and self-willed.”
Karen frowned. “You have only yourself to blame for that,” she said coolly. “You’ve always given in to her.”
Madeline’s lips thinned. “Thank you,” she exclaimed furiously. “And what would you have done if you had been left alone with two young children to bring up?”
“I would have treated them both alike, instead of coddling one and making a rod for my own back,” retorted Karen. “Anyway, Mother, that’s hardly relevant now. I agree that Simon Frazer is no fit associate for any young girl, let alone an impressionable idiot like Sandra! How did you find out about them? I don’t suppose she told you.”
“Oh, no; not a word. A friend saw them dining together last week and couldn’t wait to telephone me to let me know. Sandra is only seventeen, Karen. Simon Frazer must be over thirty; after all, Paul is thirty-seven, isn’t he?”
“Ah, yes,” Karen drew on her cigarette. “Where does Paul come into all this?” She shivered. “Simon is only his brother, you know.”
“As I’ve already said, I asked Sandra to stop seeing Simon. She simply laughed at my arguments and refused to take any notice of me. She says she is perfectly capable of taking care of herself. Both you and I know how foolhardy that statement is with a man like him. Something has got to be done. I think Paul is the only person able to do that something.”
“So?” Karen’s voice was dangerously quiet.
“I want you to get in touch with Paul and ask him to speak to Simon –”
Karen sprang to her feet. “No!” she exclaimed abruptly. She ran a restless hand over her shoulder-length straight hair. “I won’t do it. Paul and I parted in the divorce court two years ago and I just couldn’t contact him now. It’s out of the question.”
Madeline frowned. “So your own pride is greater than your sister’s downfall? She is your sister, Karen, your seventeen-year-old sister!”
“Stop play-acting, Mother,” cried Karen, inwardly seething. “It won’t work. I refuse to do it. Sandra is seventeen, as you’ve said. She’s not a child. She must make her own mistakes. After all, I was only eighteen when I met Paul.”
“And look what happened to your marriage,” taunted her mother cruelly. “Five years and it was all over. Here you are, twenty-five years old and already a divorcee. Not that there’s any question of marriage in the circumstances. As you’ve said, Simon is married. That makes everything so much worse.”
Karen was pale. This conversation was raking up all the painful past that she had tried to bury these last two years. She had always known that her mother had resented her break with Paul for purely selfish reasons, but to fling it all in her face now almost brought Karen to tears. How could Madeline be so unkind? But tears were a luxury that Karen had never indulged in and she did not so so now. She had always been an independent sort of person, like her father, and Madeline had clung to the baby, Sandra, and spoiled her utterly when their father was killed in an air crash a long while ago.
Karen knew that Madeline wanted to save Sandra from herself and she did not care if she hurt her elder daughter in the process. Karen was tempted to leave immediately and let them work it out alone, but she knew if she did so, she would never be welcome here again. As her mother had said, she and Sandra were Karen’s only blood relations and to cut herself off from them would leave her completely alone. How could she do such a thing?
“Well?” exclaimed her mother. “Are you going to let your sister’s life be ruined?”
Karen sighed heavily. The ultimatum had come and she was not ready for it. What could she say? How could she explain that it was not merely pride that kept her from contacting Paul? That she was frightened of her treacherous emotions and afraid that he might see how disturbed she was.
But Simon, too, had a wife whom he never considered and although Karen had never liked Julia Frazer, she was still involved. Perhaps Paul might be glad to break up the affair. After all, he had no reason to love the Stacey family.
“All right,” she agreed at last. “But why should you imagine that Paul will take any notice of me? Let alone speak to Simon.”
“Paul used to be very fond of Sandra,” replied Madeline, inwardly exulting at Karen’s surrender. “And he knows what kind of a man Simon is.”
Karen stubbed out her cigarette and thrust a hand into the pocket of her slacks. She was committed to speaking to her ex-husband. God, weren’t memories hateful enough without reinforcing them with reality? How could you meet a man with whom you had shared the tenderest intimacies of marriage without feeling a knife turn in your inside? She supposed dully that it should have been easier, but they had been so much in love and now …
She had been eighteen when she met Paul Frazer. He was then the chairman of the board of the Frazer Textile Industries whose head office was in London, and Karen was a very junior designer working for the company. She had worked there for almost two years without ever dreaming she would come in contact with the young dynamic tycoon whose named spelled “Success” with a capital S. She had heard plenty about him from her colleagues, but he did not concern himself with the small fry like them. Still a bachelor at thirty, he was the most sought-after man in London, and the social papers and magazines splashed stories about him wherever he went.
For all this, Karen had secretly believed that the man could not seriously add up to his image. It had amused her to listen to the girls raving about him, but she had not been particularly interested. Men had always been attracted to her and she had plenty of admirers in her own sphere without looking on to a higher, much more futile, plane.
And then she produced, as much to her surprise as anybody else’s, a design for a carpet which was quite brilliant. The Frazer Combine produced various ranges of textiles and the carpet design was a completely original piece of work.
To her embarrassment, she was sent for by the man himself, and had to go to his office on the sacrosanct top floor of the Frazer building. She had been not so much nervous as embarrassed, but when the chief designer introduced her to Paul Frazer she found herself completely absorbed by his overwhelming charm and personality. Far from over-estimating the man, she found him absolutely more devastating than his reputation and was therefore astonished when later in the week he rang her office and invited her to dinner.
She accepted, of course, much to the envy of her friends, and found to her amazement that he was actually interested in her as a person, and not as a designer.
Within