‘I can’t be your wife any more and survive, Jay.’

Her words rang with honesty. ‘If anything remains of the love you said you felt for me, you’ll let me go.’

He stood up, a muscle clenching in his square jaw and his voice as low as hers had been when he said, ‘If anything remains? Hell, Miriam, you’ve got no idea, have you?’

‘Don’t—don’t do this.’

‘What? This?’ He pulled her up and into his arms, kissing her hard.

Helen Brooks lives in Northamptonshire, and is married with three children and three beautiful grandchildren. As she is a committed Christian, busy housewife, mother and grandma, her spare time is at a premium, but her hobbies include reading, swimming and gardening, and walks with her husband and their Irish terrier. Her long-cherished aspiration to write became a reality when she put pen to paper on reaching the age of forty and sent the result off to Mills & Boon.

Recent titles by the same author:

THE ITALIAN TYCOON’S BRIDE

THE BILLIONAIRE’S MARRIAGE MISSION

A FAMILY FOR HAWTHORN FARM*

HIS CHRISTMAS BRIDE

THE BILLIONAIRE BOSS’S SECRETARY BRIDE

RUTHLESS TYCOON, INNOCENT WIFE

THE BOSS’S INEXPERIENCED SECRETARY

part of the Winter Waifs anthology

THE MILLIONAIRE’S CHRISTMAS WIFE

BY

HELEN BROOKS

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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CHAPTER ONE

‘ONLY eight weeks till Christmas. Have you decided when you’re going to come up and join us all? I thought it might be nice if you tried to make it on Christmas Eve and then stayed over for the New Year.’

Her mother’s voice held the sort of briskness that said she wasn’t going to take no for an answer. Miriam knew she meant well but the thought of spending several days with her mother and other well-meaning relatives and old friends verged on nightmarish. Everyone would be thinking about what happened at Christmas last year and being intensely careful not to mention it. Or ask any personal questions. Or behave naturally.

Miriam took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry but I shan’t be around this Christmas.’

‘Won’t be around?’ Anne Brown’s voice sharpened. ‘What does that mean? You’re not going to sit and mope in that awful little bedsit, are you?’

‘It’s not an awful little bedsit and no, I’m not going to sit and mope. I’m going to Switzerland, as it happens. Skiing.’

‘Skiing?’ Her mother’s voice was so shrill Miriam winced and held the phone away from her ear. ‘You can’t ski.’

‘I’m going to learn,’ Miriam said patiently.

‘When was this decided?’

‘Clara and I got our tickets yesterday.’

‘Clara? I might have known she’d be at the bottom of this.’ Now her mother’s voice was overtly hostile.

Enough was enough. ‘Actually it was me who mentioned to Clara at the weekend what I was going to do, and she asked if she could come along. I think it was because she feels like you and doesn’t want me to be without company at Christmas.’ Miriam’s voice had an edge to it. Her mother had only met Clara once on the day Miriam had moved into the bedsit in Kensington, but the other girl’s mauve spiky hair, panda eye make-up and Gothic clothes, not to mention her numerous piercings, had labelled her a bad influence as far as Anne was concerned. In truth Clara was one of the funniest, most sweet-natured and generous people Miriam had ever met, and she didn’t know how she would have got through the past ten months without her.

Her mother sniffed. Eloquently. ‘Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you? Does Jay know you’re thinking of spending Christmas in Switzerland?’

Don’t lose your temper. She loves you and she’s concerned, besides which you don’t want her to do the wobbly-voiced long-suffering-mother routine. Forcing a calmness she didn’t feel into her voice, Miriam said measuredly, ‘Why would Jay know what I’m doing or not doing, Mother?’

‘Because he’s your husband, of course.’

‘In name only.’ She took a deep breath. ‘And you might as well know I’m going to ask him for a divorce soon.’ She didn’t know why she hadn’t done it before except she hadn’t wanted to contact him and face all the hoo-ha that would result. It had been easier to pretend he didn’t exist while she licked her wounds and attempted to regain her equilibrium. Which she had done now. She was much, much better, she assured herself silently. Back to normal really.

‘So you’re still determined not to believe him?’

How many times had they had this conversation since the day she had walked out of her beautiful marital home and into the bedsit? Too many. Miriam’s voice reflected this when she said, ‘This conversation’s going nowhere and I’m late for an appointment. I’ll ring you at the weekend, OK? Love you.’

She turned off her mobile. Her mother wouldn’t like it, of course, but it would be her poor stepfather who would have to put up with the martyr attitude that would invariably follow. The ‘I’ve got the most ungrateful and stubborn daughter in the world’ scenario.

Miriam shut her eyes tightly for a moment. She didn’t understand—and would never understand—how her mother could still continue to regard Jay as the best thing since sliced bread after what he’d done. But then after one glance from his tawny-brown eyes most women were putty in Jay’s hands. As she had been. Once.

Her mouth firming, Miriam picked up her keys and exited the bedsit after one glance round the bright, uncluttered room. It might, in all honesty, have been termed awful when she had first seen it on a bleak wintry day at the beginning of the year, she acknowledged, descending the steep stairs to Clara’s bedsit on the bottom floor of the three-storeyed Victorian terrace. But plenty of elbow grease, several tins of paint, new laminate flooring and her own furniture had transformed the place.

It was her tiny sanctuary, she told herself, pausing outside Clara’s room. Her cream sofa converted to a bed at night, and her bistro table and chairs set by the large window afforded a panoramic view over London rooftops and the wide expanse of sky above that never ceased to thrill her, night and day. The minute kitchen area in one corner served culinary needs fairly adequately, and the built-in wardrobe and cupboards along one wall—now painted barley-white—meant the room was always spick and span without stuff lying about. She’d learnt very quickly that even a jumper or jacket draped over a chair made the compact space appear untidy.

She knocked on Clara’s door. They cooked each other dinner now and again and tonight was Clara’s turn, but she didn’t think her mother would have appreciated knowing what her ‘appointment’ entailed.

The door opened immediately. ‘You’re bang on time as always,’ Clara said with a note of amazement. Punctuality wasn’t Clara’s strong point. Nor was tidiness, Miriam reflected, picking her way over the floor, which was strewn with clothes, magazines, shoes and umpteen other things, to the kitchen area.

‘Something smells fantastic.’ It was one of Clara’s quirks that she could take a load of ingredients and seemingly fling them together and they always came out utterly delicious. ‘What are we having?’

Clara wrinkled her snub nose. ‘I’d got nothing in so it’s onion and mustard mash with sausages; nothing special. Help yourself to a glass of wine,’ she added, inclining her head at the opened bottle on the tiny breakfast bar which separated the kitchen from the rest of the room. ‘It’s a good one. Dave brought it the other night.’

Since Miriam had known the other girl Clara had had a number of boyfriends, none of whom lasted for more than a month on average. As soon as Clara had got them interested she got bored and yet another hopeful beau was shown the door. The fact that they all fell madly in love with her seemed to be the death knell as far as Miriam could make out. It wasn’t that Clara was shallow exactly, but once the challenge was gone, so was Clara. Dave was two weeks strong at the moment but already a note of disinterest had crept into Clara’s voice.

Miriam eyed her friend. ‘You’re going off him, aren’t you?’ she accused mildly. ‘Don’t tell me he’s talking about for ever already?’

Clara giggled. ‘He wants me to meet his mother,’ she admitted. ‘I mean, can you imagine me meeting anyone’s mother? They’d die of shock.’

Miriam smiled as she was meant to but inside she found herself envying Clara’s carefree approach to life and love. They were so different, she thought as she sipped at the wine—which was a very good one—but perhaps that was why they hit it off so well. Clara was the original free spirit, which was reflected in the way she looked and the clothes she wore; she, on the other hand, had aspired to be nothing more than a wife and mother since she was a little girl playing with her dolls. Clara was a television researcher, a job that was as varied as it was hard work, and she was brilliant at it. She was secretary to a successful lawyer and loved the fact her job was nine-to-five with no hidden panics or surprises. Clara was quicksilver, she was quiescent, which was probably why Jay had strayed so early in their marriage, she told herself broodingly. She was too dull, too uninteresting to hold a man like Jay Carter.

‘You’re thinking of him again, aren’t you?’ Clara said suddenly. ‘I can always tell. You get this haunted look. Has he phoned again?’

Miriam shook her head.

‘Written?’

‘No, we haven’t been in contact since the spring.’

‘Was that the time you told him you loathed even the thought of him and wished you’d never set eyes on him?’

Clara’s memory was too good sometimes. She hadn’t felt proud of that last conversation when she had said far too much. ‘Uh-huh,’ she mumbled, taking a big gulp of wine.

‘Then what’s prompted the face?’

‘I can’t help my face,’ Miriam said reasonably. And when Clara just raised one pierced eyebrow and waited, she added reluctantly, ‘My mother phoned and I told her about Christmas.’

‘Ah…’ Clara dished up two platefuls of fragrant, steaming mash and added three fat, done-to-a-turn sausages per plate. ‘And she asked if you had told Jay you were spending Christmas with the wild witch of the west, and you told her it was none of Jay’s business.’

It was moments like this that revealed why Clara was so highly regarded in the career she’d chosen, despite her outward nonconformity. Under the mauve hair was an acutely intelligent and discerning mind. ‘Something like that,’ Miriam murmured.

‘Right. We’re going to finish this bottle and open another and forget all about men. OK?’ Clara’s blue eyes held Miriam’s soft brown ones. ‘And then we’re going to talk about Switzerland and what clothes we need to buy for the evenings with all those gorgeous men about.’

‘I thought we were going to forget about men.’

‘Only the ones in the past and present. The future is something else. Oh, no, I’ve just thought of something. I can’t go to Switzerland.’

Miriam sat up straighter at the note of alarm in Clara’s voice. ‘Why not?’

‘How is Father Christmas going to fill my stocking if I’m in a different country?’

‘You’re a nut.’ Miriam smiled, nudging Clara with her elbow. But a very nice nut.

It was gone ten o’clock when Miriam climbed the stairs to her bedsit and she was in a far better frame of mind than when she’d left it earlier. Clara was a tonic, she thought, smiling to herself as she let herself into the room and switched on the lights. She had left her mobile in the bedsit because she hadn’t been able to face the thought of talking to her mother again that night, but as she passed it her conscience took over and she picked it up to check her messages.

There were two. The first one was from her mother, as she had expected, terse and to the point, saying of course Miriam must do as she wanted with regard to Christmas but everyone was going to be terribly disappointed not to see her, and with Great-Aunt Abigail’s health being so poor it might be the old lady’s last Christmas.

Miriam wrinkled her nose. Emotional blackmail. Her mother was a dab hand at it. But, considering she had never liked Great-Aunt Abigail and Great-Aunt Abigail had never liked her, she didn’t think her absence would cause too many tears.

She pressed the button for the next call. ‘Hello, Miriam.’ Jay’s deep, smoky voice was the same one that featured in her dreams far too often for her liking. ‘I think we’ve got things to discuss, don’t you? I’m not prepared for this state of affairs to continue any longer and, in spite of the fact that you don’t want to be on the same planet as me, I suggest we tackle this as adults rather than petulant children. I’ll call again if you don’t call back. Just so you know. Goodbye for now.’

Miriam sat down very suddenly. Jay. For a moment all she could do was repeat his name in her head. Taking hold of her whirling emotions, she forced herself to listen to the message again, and this time the cold, businesslike tone to his voice registered.

He had turned up unexpectedly a couple of times since the day she had left him and phoned frequently until the day in the spring when she knew she had mortally offended him, but never in all their dealings had his voice carried such an icy chill to it. It seemed she wouldn’t have to be the one to instigate divorce proceedings after all, she told herself sickly. It sounded as though he was ringing to set that particular ball in motion himself. Of course, she could be wrong. Bitter experience was proof she didn’t have a clue what made Jay Carter tick.

Rising to her feet, she walked across the room and made herself a cup of hot chocolate. She needed something to combat the butterflies in her stomach. Then she dialled Jay’s number.

‘Hello?’

The butterflies ignored the soothing effects of the hot chocolate and instead went for gold in the fluttering stakes. Swallowing hard, Miriam said, ‘Hello, Jay. You wanted to talk to me?’

‘Miriam?’

He knew jolly well it was her. ‘Yes,’ she said, her voice clipped now. ‘I’ve been out.’

‘Does that mean you didn’t take your phone with you or you were too…busy to answer it when it rang?’

It was nothing to do with him either way. Ignoring the question, she repeated stonily, ‘You wanted to talk to me?’

‘I think we need to talk,’ he corrected silkily.

Miriam blinked. The snub had been delivered with a smooth flatness but was a snub none the less. Recovering immediately, she said coolly, ‘So talk.’

‘Oh, no, Miriam. This time we do it my way. Civilised, over a meal and a drink. That’s what grown-up people do.’

Her temper was slowly chasing away the last of the butterflies. ‘Really? I take it this is in the same realm as adultery being an accepted social pastime for grown-up men and women?’

There was a pregnant pause before he said, ‘I’ll ignore that. Tomorrow night. Are you free?’

She was but not for the world would she have admitted it. ‘Sorry, already booked.’

‘OK, we could go on like this for hours. When are you able to have dinner with me?’

Ridiculous, because he was only talking about dinner, but his dark, smoky voice was having an unwelcome effect on her equilibrium. Or perhaps it wasn’t so much her mental or emotional equanimity, she admitted with hot shame, as a throbbing warmth spread throughout her lower stomach. How she could still physically want him after what he had done she didn’t know, but it appeared her body was working independently to the rest of her. ‘Let me see…’ She allowed a moment or two to pass, more to gain control over her voice than anything else. A breathless stammer just wasn’t an option.

Today was Tuesday. ‘Friday?’ she said as steadily as she could, considering her whole body was quivering with something she labelled lust.

‘Yep, Friday’s good for me.’

He sounded insultingly relaxed about the wait, she noted with a mixture of hurt and bitterness. But then she had no doubt at all Jay could fill his evenings without any trouble whatsoever. From the first day she had met him she had known women found him totally irresistible. ‘Fine, Friday it is.’

‘I’ll pick you up at eight.’

Now he had got his own way he sounded almost uninterested, but then that was the nature of the beast, Miriam told herself silently. Jay was the ultimate alpha male, the leader, the hunter. How she could have been so incredibly stupid as to get mixed up with him in the first place she still didn’t know, but she had further compounded that mistake by believing him when he’d said he loved her and wanted her to marry him, that the two of them would be a forever witness to the power of true love. Her thoughts prompted her to say, ‘Wouldn’t it be better to communicate through our solicitors? I mean, we’ve said all we can say, surely?’

‘Perhaps.’ It was cold. Chilling. ‘But I’ll pick you up at eight.’

The kicked-in-the-stomach feeling she was experiencing didn’t give her any strength to argue. Suddenly a sense of fatalism was there. Maybe she had to go through the final death throes to emerge whole again, she thought a trifle hysterically. ‘You—you’ve got my address?’

‘I know where you live, Miriam.’

‘Oh, right.’

‘Goodnight.’

When the phone went dead she continued to stare at it blankly for a moment or two. That was it. End of conversation. He had got what he wanted and so there was no need to prolong what had probably been to him a tedious exchange. ‘I hate you,’ she whispered into the silent room. She did, she really hated him.

But did she hate him enough? a separate part of her mind asked disturbingly. Enough to remain strong when they met, enough to refuse to let him walk all over her, enough to show him that she was finished with him for good?

Reaching for the last of the hot chocolate, she drained the mug and rose to her feet. She wasn’t going to do this—the endless soul-searching that she’d indulged in for so long in the caustic aftermath of their separation. It got her nowhere. Facts were what mattered. Jay had slept with another woman just six months after he had stood at the altar and promised to love, honour and cherish her. End of story.

Her mouth pulled tight with pain, Miriam placed the empty mug in the tiny sink in the kitchen area and walked over to the sofa. The beginnings of a headache drummed a persistent tattoo at the backs of her eyes and she pressed her fingers into the side of her forehead.

Perhaps it was as well Jay had phoned tonight, she told herself as she swiftly converted the sofa into a snug bed and got undressed. Once in her nightie she padded along to the bathroom at the end of the landing which she shared with the other occupant of that floor, a young student called Caroline, who was rarely at home since she’d found a boyfriend with his own flat. After a perfunctory wash she brushed her teeth and went back to her room, her mind still gnawing over the events of the last half-hour. Yes, all things considered, Jay contacting her wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. He was right, they couldn’t go on as they were, in a state of limbo. Their marriage was over and the sooner it was made legally so, the better. He had never been right for her; from the beginning she had known she was out of his league. He was far more suited to a woman like Belinda Poppins.

Poppins. She made a sound in the back of her throat. If ever a woman had been misnamed, Belinda had. She was as unlike a magical nanny who made everything all right for everyone she came into contact with as it was possible to be. Tall and elegant, with a perfect figure that looked sensational in anything and everything, Belinda was the sort of private secretary that was every wife’s worst nightmare. The original man-eater.

Miriam stood for a moment in front of the full-length mirror in the bedsit, surveying her reflection critically. Soft brown eyes set in an oval face liberally sprinkled with freckles stared back at her, her shoulder-length chestnut hair and creamy skin completing a picture of gentle benevolence. She was the sort of person babies and animals liked instinctively, her aura of innocent non-aggression drawing any waif and stray within a fifty-mile radius to her side. Most of her boyfriends before she’d met Jay had had something of the lame duck about them once she’d got to know them; she seemed to attract such types. And then Jay Carter had blazed into her life.

She jerked away from the mirror, telling herself to stop thinking about him, but her mind was set on a certain course now and the memories were flooding in.

She’d met him on a wild, windy March afternoon in the middle of a torrential downpour when her umbrella had chosen to turn itself inside out. She’d cannoned straight into him, the force of his hard, unyielding male body almost knocking her over but for his arms coming out to grab her. Corny, but it had been love at first sight. At least for her, she thought miserably, climbing into bed and pulling the duvet up to her chin. With hindsight she now saw, whatever he’d felt for her, it hadn’t been the love she’d believed it was.

They had married three months later after a whirlwind romance during which she’d lived on cloud nine, unable to believe a man like Jay—a wealthy, successful, handsome and charismatic entrepreneur with the Midas touch—wanted her, Miriam Brown. They had honeymooned for a month in Italy at the beautiful villa set in the hills that Jay had bought some years before, before returning home to his palatial apartment in Westminster which overlooked the river.

She had continued at her job in the law firm, not because she had to—Jay was rich enough for her never to work again—but because she wanted to. The thought of sitting at home all day twiddling her thumbs or becoming one of the ‘lunch’ crowd who drank g & ts, nibbled on lettuce leaves and then shopped all afternoon filled her with horror. Once she was expecting a baby she’d consider giving in her notice, she’d decided, but until then she’d carry on as before. Although now, instead of going home to the flat she had shared with three other girls she’d been at university with, she had Jay.

She had been so looking forward to their first Christmas together. Much to Jay’s amusement she’d spent a fortune on Christmas decorations in November and on the first weekend in December had turned the apartment into a vision of gold and red, transforming its rather masculine decor of coffee and dark browns mixed with off-white.

As a child her Christmases had, of necessity, been frugal affairs, her father having walked out on her mother and herself when she was six years old, leaving behind a mass of debt. He had disappeared off to some foreign destination with the woman he’d been seeing on the quiet, leaving her mother to pick up the pieces of their shattered life as best she could. They hadn’t seen him from that day to the time, ten years later, her mother had been notified of his death in a car accident. Her mother had remarried a year later.

Miriam turned over in bed, irritable and annoyed with herself for the trip down memory lane. She didn’t want to think about her father or Jay—they were two of a kind, she told herself bitterly. Egotistical and selfcentred, the sort of men who would never be satisfied with one woman for long. She had always been amazed at her mother’s lack of bitterness where her father was concerned; she’d never spoken ill of him, not even through the years when they’d lived in one flea-bitten dump after another, struggling to get by on what her mother earned as a dental nurse. She’d known, deep inside, that her mother still loved him, even though they’d never spoken of it. It was only after her mother knew he was dead that she ceased to give up hoping he’d come back. Then she’d begun to live again.

Well, she didn’t intend to waste years of her life doing the same thing with regard to Jay. The old adage of ‘like mother, like daughter’ wasn’t an option in this case, Miriam thought darkly. She sat up in bed and gave her pillow a series of thumps. It felt as if it had bricks in it. Lying down again, she stared, unseeing, in the darkness.

Would she have found out about Jay and Belinda if she hadn’t gone to his office the night before Christmas Eve when she had finished work early after the law firm’s Christmas party? She had to admit she had never liked the other woman from the day she’d met her shortly after she had first started seeing Jay. They’d bumped into Belinda and a man friend at the theatre one evening and she had noticed then the way Jay’s secretary had looked at him with hungry eyes. Perhaps it was from that point her unease about Belinda had begun to make itself felt. But she had trusted Jay then. Believed him when he said she was the only woman in the world for him and he would love her for ever and ever.

Full of the plans for the big Christmas Eve dinner party they were giving for family and a few close friends, she had sailed up to his office on the top floor of Carter Enterprises with nothing more on her mind than whether to ask the caterers to cut the Christmas cake before or during the coffee and brandy stage of the meal. Jay had held his firm’s Christmas party that afternoon too and most of the employees had already left, but there had been a light burning in his office as she had walked along the thickly carpeted corridor.

She’d entered noiselessly and so had seen them before they had seen her. Jay had been standing with his back to her, jacketless and with the sleeves of his shirt rolled up, and Belinda had been perched on the edge of his desk, her tight skirt riding up high over her thighs and the buttons of her blouse undone, revealing the skimpiest of lace bras which did nothing to hide her voluptuous breasts. Belinda’s eyes had flicked towards her and whether it was that or whether she had made a sound herself Miriam didn’t know, but suddenly Jay had swung round and saw her.

‘Miriam!’As she had turned to run, his voice had cut through the air. ‘Wait, this isn’t what you think.’

She had reached the lift when he caught her, his hands fastening on her forearms as he had moved her to face him. ‘Listen to me,’ he’d said urgently. ‘Let me explain.’

‘I don’t want you to explain.’ She had been beside herself with shock and pain. ‘I saw enough to know exactly what was happening.’

‘You don’t, that’s what I’m trying to say. Listen, I didn’t know she was there—’

‘She’s your secretary, in your office, half-dressed and you didn’t know she was there?’ she’d all but screamed at him. ‘Surely you can come up with something better than that?’

‘It’s the truth. I’d been working and gone to get myself a coffee—’

‘Since when do you get your own coffees?’

‘Since everyone’s gone home for Christmas.’

‘Not everyone, Jay,’ she’d shot back, incensed he could think she was so gullible. ‘You’re here and so is she. If you wanted a coffee, couldn’t Belinda have got it?’

‘I thought she’d left with the others.’

‘And you’re telling me you came back and there she was, lying over your desk with her skirt up round her ears and everything on offer?’

Belinda had appeared behind Jay at that moment, her blouse fastened and not a hair out of place as she had purred, ‘Miriam, I’m so sorry,’ as her feline eyes had glittered with satisfaction.

‘No, you’re not.’ She’d stared straight into the carefully made-up face. ‘You’re not sorry at all. You’ve always wanted him, haven’t you? Well, be my guest. He’s all yours.’

The lift had opened right on cue and she had stepped into it, Jay following her a second later. As the doors closed Belinda stood watching them, her face impassive, but the green-flecked eyes narrowed on Jay as he said, ‘You’re not going like this, not until I tell you what happened. Surely you don’t think for one moment I want her?’

She had actually put her hands over her ears at that point. ‘Don’t treat me as though I’m as foolish as my mother, Jay, because I’m not. I saw what I saw.’ As he had reached out to touch her she had slapped his hand away with some force. ‘Don’t, don’t you dare,’ she’d shouted, on the verge of hysterics. ‘I never want you to touch me again.’

‘Stop this.’ His face had been white and shocked but now he was getting angry too, his voice harsh as he’d ground out, ‘I’m asking you to let me explain.’

‘And I’m telling you I don’t want to hear.’ The lift doors glided open in Reception and now she lowered her voice, aware of the one remaining receptionist on duty as she said, ‘I suggest you get back to her because I don’t want you.’

‘This is ridiculous.’

‘Ridiculous or not, that’s the way I feel.’

‘I’ll take you home. Wait while I get my jacket.’

‘I’m not waiting for you, Jay. I thought you knew me well enough to understand that word doesn’t feature in my vocabulary. I watched my mother waiting for my father for years and years.’

‘You’re being unreasonable. I’m asking you, telling you to wait here for two minutes while I get my jacket, OK? If you’re not here when I get down there’ll be hell to pay, Miriam. I mean it. We’re going to talk this through and it’s not going to ruin our Christmas.’

Ruin their Christmas? She stared at him with huge eyes. Was he mad? She’d just caught him with another woman and he was talking about ruining their Christmas? What about the rest of their lives?

As soon as he had disappeared into the lift she left the building, hailing a taxi which had—miraculously in the circumstances—passed by empty. Once in the apartment she threw a few things into a suitcase, working purely on automatic and praying all the time Jay wouldn’t arrive before she had left. She had just exited the apartment block and crossed the road when a taxi screeched to a halt outside the building. Melting into the shadows, she watched as Jay leapt out of the car. It had been too dark to see his face clearly but she hadn’t had to to know he was furiously angry. It was evident in every line of his body.

Once he had gone inside she had made her escape. She hadn’t gone to her mother and stepfather, knowing that was the first place he’d try, but instead had booked into a hotel for the night. From there she had phoned her mother and told them the dinner party on Christmas Eve was off and why, and asked her to let everyone know. It was only when her mother had become somewhat tearful that she’d promised she’d go and see them the next day and stay over Christmas. Then she had had a long hot bath and cried enough tears to fill it twice over before falling asleep exhausted at some point in the evening.

When Jay had turned up at her mother’s the next day she hadn’t been surprised; he’d been phoning her mobile every few minutes but she hadn’t taken the calls. He’d given the same explanation, adding Belinda had had too much to drink at the Christmas party, which was why she’d acted as she had. He wasn’t excusing her, he’d said crisply, but apparently she’d gone to sleep in an empty office somewhere and then arrived in his while he was getting himself the coffee. He had walked in to find her reclining on his desk, half-undressed. She could believe him or not, but that was the truth. She’d said she chose not to believe him and he had left after telling her not to be such a little fool and to take time to think logically. He wasn’t going to beg and plead, he’d added. Trust was an essential ingredient in any marriage and it was about time she grew up and realised that.

His attitude had shaken her. He had seemed so staunch in what he said, totally unwavering in his explanation of what had happened. By the time she’d returned to work after the Christmas break—the worst time of her life—she had been weakening. Her mother had been insistent she’d made the biggest mistake of her life in walking out on Jay and—mainly, Miriam admitted, because she badly wanted to believe his version of events—she’d begun to think she might have got it wrong.

Then on that first morning back at work Belinda had phoned her.

Miriam sat up in bed. This was ridiculous. She was never going to be able to sleep now and why she was doing a post-mortem at this late stage she didn’t know. Everything was cut and dried and had been for ages. She had made her decision in January and it was irrevocable.

Switching on the light, she reached for a book on the table next to the sofa bed. She read a couple of pages without taking a word in; all she could focus on was the memory of Belinda’s sugary-sweet voice on that morning ten months ago.

She was so sorry, Belinda had murmured, that Miriam had had to find out about the affair the way she had, but she must believe it was over now. She wasn’t returning to work at Carter Enterprises—she had left Jay’s employ—so there was no chance temptation could rear its head again.

Miriam had listened, sickened, as the soft voice had gone on. With the benefit of hindsight she realised she should have put the phone down as soon as Belinda had spoken, but she had been like a rabbit immobilised and horribly fascinated in the glare of the headlights of the car that was going to destroy it.

She just wanted to explain, Belinda had gone on, that she didn’t make a habit of sleeping with married men but, as Miriam had probably realised by now, Jay was irresistible when he wanted something. She’d fallen madly in love with him even though she had known deep down that for him it was only a physical thing and that he was the sort of man who would always take advantage of the attraction he held for women. But she did wish Miriam well…

She had put the phone down at this point but it had been too late. Belinda’s words had burnt themselves like a branding iron into her mind. She had known then that her marriage was over.

Of course, Jay had denied everything when she’d told him what Belinda had said later that day when he had called her to ask when she was returning home. Belinda was a woman scorned, he’d insisted. When he had told her there was no way they could work together again after what had happened she had become abusive, threatening all sorts of repercussions. This was her revenge for his rejection of her. It was perfectly obvious, wasn’t it? Transparent, even.

The conversation had rapidly developed into a fullscale row with things said on both sides that would have been better unsaid. In the end she had told him she was going to see about getting somewhere else to live in the morning; she wouldn’t be returning to the apartment. Ever. There had been a long pause and then his voice had been quiet, almost conversational, when he had said, ‘You must do as you see fit, Miriam. Whatever I thought we had, I was mistaken. You’ve never loved me, not if you’re prepared to bail out the first time we hit a problem.’

It had been the final straw. ‘A problem?’ she’d screamed down the phone. ‘A problem is leaving the top off the toothpaste every morning or forgetting a birthday or not cleaning the bath properly after you’ve used it. This isn’t a problem, Jay. This is a third person in our marriage and it’s one too many for me.’

‘You don’t trust me. You’re prepared to take Belinda’s word against mine. Damn it, you want to believe her.’

Maybe the harsh note of anger and resentment in his voice should have warned her. ‘If that’s the way you want to look at it,’ she’d replied, feeling as though she was dying inside.

‘Then perhaps some time apart is best. When you’re prepared to at least listen to what I have to say, contact me.’ And he’d put the phone down. Just like that.

Miriam slung the book to one side. Sliding out of bed, she fixed herself another mug of hot chocolate and took a couple of aspirin for the headache, switching the TV on and watching an old comedy programme while she drank.

It was nearly an hour later before she settled down in bed again and this time, with the help of the aspirin and not least because she was emotionally exhausted, she fell straight to sleep.

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