finding the house of their dreams had seemed to seal their fate.
And it had, thought Rachel ruefully, though definitely not in the way they had envisaged. After all, they had been happy in the beginning. Ecstatically so, considering the gamble they had taken, when they didn’t always know how they were going to pay the mortgage.
But it had been so different from the flat they had lived in in London, with a garden for Daisy to play in, and lots of room for Ben to work without being disturbed. Room for their family to grow, too, although that hadn’t happened. Would things have turned out differently if she had been able to have another baby? Would Elena Dupois have come into their lives, if Rachel hadn’t decided to go back to work?
It wasn’t as if they had needed the money. By that time, Ben had had his first advance on the novel he had written about the Falklands War. His agent was already talking about overseas sales and film rights, and Ben was writing furiously, completing his second manuscript.
Rachel had sometimes wondered if the enormity of Ben’s success had in any way contributed to her proven inadequacies. If his first attempt to write a political thriller hadn’t had such immediate appeal, would she have examined her own defeats so minutely? She hadn’t been envious of Ben, but she had felt inferior to him. A feeling she had never experienced when he was a journalist, working for a national daily, and she had been straight out of art school, training with one of the larger auction houses in the West End.
It was pointless going over all the old arguments at this stage. Pointless remembering how shattered she had been when she had miscarried for the second time. There was nothing wrong with her, the doctor had assured her. His suggestion was that she should wait a few months and then try again. But Rachel had refused to do it. She had been too distressed, too drained, too afraid of what it was doing to her own self-esteem to risk another pregnancy. When Ben attempted to persuade her, she accused him of having no feelings; when she told him she wanted to find a job, he accused her of being jealous.
She supposed that was the turning point in their marriage. Ben assumed that being his wife was not enough for her, and she had no convincing answer. She couldn’t explain her feelings. Not to his satisfaction, anyway. A yawning rift opened between them, and Ben was left to draw his own conclusions.
And that was when Elena Dupois came on the scene. Obviously, Ben couldn’t look after Daisy while Rachel was at work, so they advertised for an au pair. Elena answered the advertisement. She had been working for a family in Cheltenham who were moving away, and as she wanted to stay in the district she was able to take up the post immediately.
Rachel’s lips tightened. She supposed she should have seen the writing on the wall. Elena was younger than she was and prettier than she was, and from the very beginning she hadn’t tried to hide her admiration for Ben. It was ‘Monsieur Ben says this’ and ‘Monsieur Ben says that’ until Rachel wanted to scream that ‘Monsieur Ben’ wasn’t the only person who lived in the house.
But she was good with Daisy, and, as her daughter was doing now, Rachel had tended to bury her head in the sand. She hadn’t wanted to see what was happening under her very eyes. She hadn’t wanted to believe that Ben was cheating on her with the doe-eyed French girl.
Until that morning when she had arrived home unexpectedly and found them in what could only be described as ‘compromising circumstances’. Even now, two years later, Rachel could still feel the cold horror she had felt then. She’d felt sick, nauseated; she’d wanted to run away and hide, and come back later, when she could pretend it had never happened. But, instead, she’d disgraced herself completely by throwing up all over the bathroom floor. Her ignominy had been complete when it was Ben himself who cleaned her up and guided her into their bedroom, so that she could lie down for a while. With only a towel to cover his nakedness, she remembered. It was only later she had decided she wanted to kill him.
Of course, he’d tried to talk to her, to explain that if Elena was pregnant—as she claimed—it was nothing to do with him. He’d blamed Elena—Rachel—anyone but himself. It wasn’t what she’d thought, he’d yelled, losing his temper completely when she’d refused to listen, but if he had decided to have an affair—which he hadn’t, he insisted—she’d have only herself to blame.
Which had been a bitter reminder that it was months since they had made love. Afraid of getting pregnant again, Rachel had been unwilling to take any chances. Even his suggestion that she should leave the precautions to him had met with a tearful refusal. In her misery, Rachel had insisted on keeping him at a distance, and perhaps it was her fault that he’d found solace with someone else.
Ben had moved out the next week. Rachel didn’t know that until later. She had gathered up a few of her belongings, and her daughter, and left for London that afternoon. She and Daisy—who had happily regarded the trip as an unexpected holiday—had spent the next two weeks with Rachel’s widowed mother in Kensington. Rachel had used the time to think and plan for the future, only returning to Wychwood when she had been sure of what she wanted to do.
What she had not expected was that Ben should have moved out. After all, the house was his. She had contributed nothing to it, and he had every right to stay there. On top of which, it was obviously much too big for her to maintain on the salary she got from Mr Caldwell, the local antiquarian. Daisy would miss it, it was true, but in Rachel’s opinion they had no choice but to sell.
However, in this instance, Ben had proved decidedly obdurate. After a letter from her solicitors, laying out the situation as she saw it, he had arrived at Wychwood one cold November afternoon, and proceeded to inform her that if she chose to obstruct the arrangements he was making for his daughter’s future, he would oppose the order she was making to obtain custody of the child. He had no intention, he said, of allowing her misplaced bitterness to foul up his daughter’s life, as it had fouled up his own. She would stay at Wychwood, because that was what he wanted, and he would maintain its upkeep, just as he had done in the past. She was a selfish, self-centred woman, he had added, but he was prepared to accept that Daisy would probably be happier with her.
Privately, Rachel had thought that it probably suited him not to have the responsibility for a seven-year-old. To all intents and purposes, he was a free man; a wealthy man, moreover, whose reputation as a writer and an historian was growing in leaps and bounds. What she couldn’t understand was why he didn’t want a divorce. In his position, she was sure she would have.
But perhaps it had suited him, too, to have an absentee wife and daughter in the background. On the one hand, it proved his masculinity, if any proof were needed. And, on the other, it prevented him from getting embroiled in any other serious relationships. There had been several women mentioned in connection with him in articles she had read since they separated. Though Elena Dupois had never figured in any of these articles. He had evidently lost interest in her once the novelty of having sex with a girl half his age had worn off, and the baby she had presumably had was never mentioned.
Perhaps it had been adopted. Perhaps he was maintaining it and Elena somewhere else. Rachel told herself she didn’t want to know. As far as she was concerned, that period of her life was over.
Rachel had sometimes wondered what Daisy really thought of their separation. The explanation she had been given—that Mummy and Daddy had each decided they needed more time to themselves—had sufficed when Daisy was younger, but latterly she had begun to question the reasons why they chose to live apart. This had been especially evident since Simon Barrass had come into their lives. Daisy made no secret of her dislike for the burly farmer, and she had even gone so far as to ask why, if her mother needed a man’s company now, she didn’t just ask her father to come back and live with them.
Sometimes, Rachel wished Daisy had been older when she and Ben split up. It would have been so much easier if she could have explained what had happened, and why the separation had taken place. As it was, she was obliged to deal in euphemisms and half-truths, balancing the need for honesty with her daughter’s fragile expectations.
Which brought her back to the prospect she still faced of telling Ben what she planned to do. Had she really hoped Daisy might have prepared the ground for her? After all, Simon had been around