She subsided limply. ‘I’m just saying that there’s no need to pretend anything when we get to my parents.’
‘I’m not following you.’ Raoul’s voice was curt, and for a brief moment Sarah was bitterly regretful that she had upset the apple cart—even if the apple cart had been a little wobbly to start with.
She was spared the need for an answer by the sound of little noises from the back seat as Oliver began to stir. He needed the toilet. Could they hurry? Their uncomfortable conversation was replaced by a hang-on-for-dear-life panic drive to find the nearest pub, so that they could avail themselves of the toilets and buy some refreshments by way of compensation.
Oliver, now fully revived after his nap, was ready to take up where he had left off—with the addition of one of the nursery rhyme tapes. He proceeded to kick his feet to the music in the back, protesting vehemently every time a move was made to replace it with something more soothing.
He was the perfect safeguard against any further foolhardy conversations, but as the fast car covered the distance, only getting trapped in traffic once along the way, Sarah replayed their conversation in her head over and over again.
She wondered whether she really should have warned her parents about the reality of the situation. She questioned why she had felt so invigorated when they had been arguing. She raged hopelessly against the horrible truth—which was that maintaining a friendly front was like drinking poison on a daily basis. She asked herself whether she had done the right thing in accepting his marriage proposal, and then berated herself for acknowledging that she had because she couldn’t trust herself ever to be able to deal with the sight of him with another woman.
But what if he did stray from the straight and narrow? What if he found marriage too restrictive, even with Oliver there to keep his eyes firmly on the end purpose? She had attempted to give that very real possibility house room in her head, but however many times she tried to pretend to herself that she was civilised enough to handle it, she just couldn’t bring herself to square up to the thought. Should she add a few more ground rules to something that was getting more and more unwieldy and complex by the second?
She nearly groaned aloud in frustration.
‘I think I’m getting a headache,’ she said tightly, running her fingers over her eyes.
Raoul flicked a glance in her direction. ‘I sympathise. I’m finding that “The Wheels on the Bus” can have that effect when played at full volume repeatedly.’
Sarah relaxed enough to flash him a soft sideways smile. She was relieved that the atmosphere between them was normal once again. It was funny, but although her aim was to keep him at a distance the second she felt him really stepping away from her she panicked.
‘We’ll be there before the headache gets round to developing.’
Sure enough, twenty minutes later she began to recognise some of the towns they passed through. Oliver began a running commentary on various places of interest to him, including a sweet shop of the old-fashioned variety which they drove slowly past, and Sarah found herself pointing out her own landmarks—places she remembered from when she was a teenager.
Raoul listened and made appropriate noises. He was only mildly interested in the passing scenery. Small villages in far-off rural places did very little for him. If anything they were an unwelcome reminder of how insular people could be in the country—growing up as one of the children from the foster home in a town not dissimilar to several they had already driven through had been a surefire case of being sentenced without benefit of a jury.
Mostly, though, Raoul was trying to remain sanguine after her revelation that she had already prejudiced her parents against him.
His temper was distinctly frayed at the seams by the time he pulled up in front of a pleasant detached house on the outskirts of a picturesque town—the sort of town that he imagined Sarah would have found as dull as dishwater the older she became.
‘Don’t expect anything fancy,’ she warned him, as the car slowed to a halt on the gravelled drive.
‘After the build-up you’ve given your parents, believe me—I’m not expecting anything at all.’
Sarah flinched at the icy coldness in his voice.
‘I did you a favour,’ she whispered defensively, because she could think of no way of extricating herself from her lie. ‘It saves you having to pretend.’
‘There are times,’ Raoul said, before launching himself out of the car, ‘when I really wonder what the hell makes you tick, Sarah.’
He moved round to the boot, extracting their various cases, and slammed it shut—hard—just as Oliver, released from the restrictions of his car seat, flew up the drive towards the middle-aged couple now standing on their doorstep to throw himself at them. Sarah was following Oliver, arms wide open to receive their hugs.
Raoul took it all in through narrowed eyes as he began walking towards the house. Her father was stocky, his hair thinning, and her mother was an older version of Sarah, with the same flyaway hair caught in a loose bun, tendrils escaping all over the place just as her daughter’s did, and wearing a long flowered skirt and a short-sleeved top with a thin pink cardigan. She was as slender as her husband was rotund, and she had Sarah’s smile. Ready, warm, appealing.
So, he thought grimly, these were the people she had decided to disabuse. Two loving parents who had probably spent their entire lives waiting for the day their much loved only daughter would get married, settle down … only to hear that the getting married and settling down wasn’t quite the kind they had had in mind.
Making his mind up, he walked towards them. The smile on his face betrayed nothing of what was going through his head.
‘So nice to meet you …’ He slung his arm over Sarah’s shoulder and pulled her against him, feeling the tension in her body like a tangible electric current. Very deliberately, he moved his hand to caress the back of her neck under the tumble of fair hair. ‘Sarah’s told me so much about you both …’ He looked down at her and pressed his thumb against the side of her neck, obliging her to look up at him. Her big green eyes were wary. ‘Haven’t you, sweetheart …?’
What was he playing at? Whatever it was, he was managing to blow a hole in her composure.
The gestures of affection hadn’t stopped at the front door.
Yes, there had been moments of reprieve during the course of the afternoon, when Oliver had demanded attention and when she’d gone into the kitchen to help prepare the dinner with her mother, but the rest of the time …
On the sofa he was there next to her, his arm along the back, his fingers idly brushing her neck, while he played the perfect son-in-law-to-be by engaging her parents in all aspects of conversation which he knew would interest them.
She realised how much she had confided in him about her background, because now every scrap of received information had come home to roost. He quizzed them about her childhood. He produced anecdotes about things he remembered having been told like a magician pulling rabbits from a hat. He recalled something she had said in passing about her father always wanting to do something with bees, and much of their time, as they sat at the dinner table, was taken up with a discussion on the pros and cons of bee-keeping, about which he seemed to be indecently well informed.
Even if she had told her parents the truth about their relationship they would have been hard pressed to believe her based on Raoul’s performance.
He engaged them on every level, and when she showed signs of taking a back seat he made sure to drag her right back into the conversation—usually by beginning his remark pointedly with the words, ‘Do you remember, darling …?’
Every reminder brought back a fuzzy familiarity that further undermined her composure. He talked at length about the compound in Africa, and revealed what she had known from that random communication she had glimpsed ages ago—that he contributed a great deal to the