Celebrate the legend that is bestselling author

PENNY JORDAN

Phenomenally successful author of more than two hundred books with sales of over a hundred million copies!

Penny Jordan’s novels are loved by millions of readers all around the word in many different languages. Mills & Boon are proud to have published one hundred and eighty-seven novels and novellas written by Penny Jordan, who was a reader favourite right from her very first novel through to her last.

This beautiful digital collection offers a chance to recapture the pleasure of all of Penny Jordan’s fabulous, glamorous and romantic novels for Mills & Boon.

About the Author

PENNY JORDAN is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular authors. Sadly, Penny died from cancer on 31st December 2011, aged sixty-five. She leaves an outstanding legacy, having sold over a hundred million books around the world. She wrote a total of one hundred and eighty-seven novels for Mills & Boon, including the phenomenally successful A Perfect Family, To Love, Honour & Betray, The Perfect Sinner and Power Play, which hit the Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller lists. Loved for her distinctive voice, her success was in part because she continually broke boundaries and evolved her writing to keep up with readers’ changing tastes. Publishers Weekly said about Jordan ‘Women everywhere will find pieces of themselves in Jordan’s characters’ and this perhaps explains her enduring appeal.

Although Penny was born in Preston, Lancashire and spent her childhood there, she moved to Cheshire as a teenager and continued to live there for the rest of her life. Following the death of her husband, she moved to the small traditional Cheshire market town on which she based her much-loved Crighton books.

Penny was a member and supporter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Romance Writers of America—two organisations dedicated to providing support for both published and yet-to-be-published authors. Her significant contribution to women’s fiction was recognised in 2011, when the Romantic Novelists’ Association presented Penny with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

A Cure for Love
Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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CHAPTER ONE

‘ARE you ready yet, Mum? Honestly, I feel as nervous as though I were the one having to make the speech.’

‘I’m not making a speech, merely handing over the cheque to Dr Hanson,’ Lacey Robinson responded to her daughter’s excited chatter.

In point of fact she was guilty of evasion. She was nervous. Helping to raise the money for the research into the rare and devastating disease—which, while carried in the female genes only, manifested itself in physical symptoms in the male sex, like haemophilia and other similar disorders—had been one thing. Standing up in public to hand over to the hospital the cheque for the money they had raised was another.

She had already told herself very firmly that such self-consciousness was ridiculous in a woman of thirty-eight with a nineteen-year-old daughter, but that hadn’t stopped the butterflies at present crowding her stomach.

‘I’m so proud of you, Ma,’ Jessica told her, crossing the kitchen to come and put her arms round her and give her a hug. Of the two of them Jessica was easily the taller, topping her mother’s slender five-foot-two frame by a good four inches, but their colouring was the same. Both of them had the same silky fine dark hair and the same wide-spaced grey eyes, the same unexpectedly full lips, although in Lacey’s case there was a vulnerability about her features which was missing from those of her more ebullient daughter.

‘I haven’t done anything,’ Lacey protested now. ‘It’s the people who donated the money in response to our appeal who deserve recognition and praise.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Jessica agreed. ‘But you were the one who organised everything, who first started the appeal.’

‘Only after I’d heard about little Michael Sullivan at work. It was so heartbreaking. I still don’t know how on earth Declan and Cath have managed to come to terms with the tragedy of it. To have lost two children before little Michael, from the same inherited disorder…’

‘Can Michael ever be cured?’ Jessica asked her quietly.

‘No, not cured, but with the money we’ve raised further research can take place into ways of alleviating the effect of the deterioration of the central motor system, and of course, now that they’ve managed to isolate the gene which causes the disease, a…Well, with the new techniques they have for discovering the sex of an embryo at a very early stage in a pregnancy, the parents can opt to have only girls who, while they carry the disease, are not affected by it.’

‘You mean that now the Sullivans could choose to have only daughters?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I don’t care what you say, I’m still proud of you,’ Jessica told her warmly, adding, ‘I’m glad they decided to have the presentation now, while I’m at home.’

Jessica was in her first year at Oxford, taking a degree course which would one day equip her with excellent qualifications. If Jessica was proud of her, then how much more was she proud of her daughter? Lacey reflected lovingly.

Life had not been easy for Jessica, an only child, a fatherless child…A child without the financial advantages of many of her peers, she could so easily have grown up rebellious and resentful, unhappy and alone, but, almost right from the moment she was born, she had been a sunny-natured, happy child.

It was typical of Lacey that she herself took no credit for her daughter and, as she wryly told friends, she could certainly take no credit for her scholastic abilities, nor her excellence at sports. Those were qualities—gifts—Jessica had received from her father.

‘Come back, Ma. Where are you?’ Jessica teased her now, waving her hand in front of Lacey’s face and grinning at her.

‘You know what I think, don’t you?’ Jessica commented thoughtfully ten minutes later when they were both in Lacey’s small car, driving towards the civic hall where the presentation was to take place. ‘I think that our Dr Hanson rather fancies you, Ma.’

Lacey flushed. She couldn’t help it. That was the curse of her pale Celtic skin colouring.

Jessica saw this betraying reaction and laughed before asking semi-seriously, ‘Why have you never remarried, Ma? I mean, I know you loved him, but after he’d left you, when it was all over and you were divorced…didn’t you ever…haven’t there…?’

‘Been other men?’ Lacey invited wryly.

It was her policy and always had been to be as open and as honest with her daughter as she could, and, although this wasn’t a topic they had ever discussed before, she sensed that, now that Jessica was living away from home, she was beginning to look far more questioningly at her mother’s past, at her life, comparing it perhaps to the lives of other women of the same age.

‘Well at first I was too…too upset…too…’

‘Devastated,’ Jessica supplied for her. ‘I know he was my father, but how he could have done that to you…?’

‘It wasn’t really his fault, Jess. He fell out of love with me. It happens.’

‘And you were never tempted to tell him about me. I mean…’

‘Yes…yes, I was tempted,’ Lacey admitted honestly. ‘But he’d already made it clear to me that he didn’t love me any longer; that he wanted our marriage to end. I didn’t know until after he’d left that I was expecting you; perhaps I should have.’

‘No…no, Ma. You did the right thing…the only thing,’ Jessica assured her quickly, putting her hand over her mother’s and giving her a warm smile. ‘Don’t you ever think you didn’t. I know people whose parents stuck it out supposedly for their sakes. It must be awful to be brought up in that kind of atmosphere, never really knowing if both your parents are going to be there when you get home from school, feeling they’re only together because of you. No, I might only have had you but I’ve never, never doubted that you loved me and wanted me.’

For a moment the two women exchanged looks of shared love and respect and then Jessica reminded her mother slyly, ‘But you still haven’t answered my original question.’

‘No. Well, as I said at first, it was the last thing on my mind, and then as you grew older…Well, to be honest with you, Jess, there just never seemed to be the time, or at least it’s probably more honest to say that there never was a man for whom I wanted to make the time.’

‘Perhaps you were afraid…afraid of allowing anyone to get too close to you in case they hurt you the way he…the way my father hurt you,’ Jessica suggested shrewdly.

‘Perhaps,’ Lacey agreed.

‘Well, it can’t have been because you didn’t have the opportunity,’ Jessica added forthrightly.

She laughed when Lacey flushed again.

‘Oh, Ma…sometimes you make me feel as though you’re the little girl. Look at you! I’ve seen the way men give you a second look, the way they watch you. And it’s not just because you look sexy.’

When Lacey started to object, she overruled her and went on firmly.

‘No, I don’t care how much you try to deny it, you are; but it’s not just that…it’s something else. Something to do with the fact that you’re so small and…and vulnerable-looking.’

‘Well I may be short on inches, but that does not make me vulnerable,’Lacey told her quickly.

It was a sensitive issue, this obvious vulnerability she knew she possessed and yet seemed unable to do anything about. Others had commented on it, women friends…men. She knew that it was, like Jessica herself, something that had come with her marriage, or rather with the ending of it. But the last thing she wanted to do this evening was to think about the past.

Even now there were still times when she dreamed about it…about him…and in those dreams still remembered. When she woke up her response to the remembered hand against her skin was so acute, so sharp that the realisation that it was just a dream seemed impossible to accept. And there were other dreams…dreams when she cried out her shock, her disbelief, her anguish, and woke up with her face wet with tears.

Oddly enough those dreams had intensified since Jessica had gone to university. It was almost as though her subconscious self had tried to restrain them while Jessica was there, knowing how much she would hate her daughter to be upset…to know how very intensely she still remembered events which were over months before her daughter’s birth.

At first she had put it down to the fact that she was missing Jess…the fact that she was, for the first time in twenty years, really alone; and yet her life was busy and fulfilled. She had a good job…good friends…and, since she had got herself involved in the fund-raising for little Michael, she scarcely seemed to have had a moment to call her own.

Tonight was the culmination of many months of hard work, bringing Michael’s plight to the attention of the country via the media, raising money through all manner of events for research into ways of alleviating the distressing physical and mental deterioration suffered by children like Michael, children who rarely survived to adulthood—although there were varying degrees of severity and admittedly there had been very rare instances in which male children born to female carriers of the gene seemed to have escaped unscathed but these instances were far too rare to form the basis for any kind of detailed research.

Their small country town was lucky in having a very good local hospital, and now, with the money they had raised, further research could be done. It couldn’t bring back the two sons the Sullivans had already lost, of course, Lacey acknowledged sadly as she parked her car outside the civic hall.

They were halfway across the car park when Jessica, who had been walking a couple of yards behind her, suddenly caught up with her, taking hold of her arm and giving her a small shake as she told her with a soft laugh, ‘There—see—it’s happened again: A man just getting out of the smoothest-looking car you’ve ever seen was really giving you the eye.’

‘Jessica!’ Lacey protested. ‘Honestly. I—’

‘OK, OK, but it seems so wrong that you should be on your own like this, Mum. You’re only thirty-eight. You should marry again…I hate the thought of you spending the rest of your life on your own. One of our tutors was saying the other day that there are women now, career women, who are marrying for the first time in their late thirties and having children…that the mature older woman with young children will soon be more the norm…that people won’t feel so isolated when they get older because they will still have children at home…and—’

‘Ah, I see where this is all leading: you’re worried that I’m going to become a burden to you in my old age. Well, I’ve got news for you, my darling daughter: I don’t need a husband to produce children.’

‘No, but you do need a man,’ Jessica told her bluntly. ‘And it isn’t that. You know that. It’s just that I’m beginning to realise how much you missed out on, and if you want the truth I feel guilty, Ma. If it hadn’t been for me, you could—’

‘Stop right there,’ Lacey told her firmly. ‘If it hadn’t been for you I’d probably have given up and…and done something very, very silly indeed,’ she said quietly and truthfully, watching the shock register in her daughter’s eyes. ‘You were my lifeline, Jess. You were my reason for going on living. Without you—’

‘You really loved him that much?’ Jessica shivered. ‘Oh, God, Ma, I’m never, ever going to let myself be vulnerable to a man like that.’

Lacey felt her heart sink. She had been afraid of this. Afraid that in her honesty she might have warped Jessica’s own attitude to love.

‘Loving someone always makes you vulnerable, Jess, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad.’ She pushed Jessica’s long hair off her face and smiled at her. ‘You will fall in love, you know,’ she told her softly. ‘And, when you do, you’ll wonder how you can ever have believed you wouldn’t, I promise you.’

She prayed that she was right, and that Jessica wouldn’t cut herself off from the happiness that loving someone would bring her just because of her experience.

After all, it was quite true. Lacey could have gone on to form another relationship, to have married a second time. The fact that she had chosen not to was…Well, as she had already told Jessica, there had simply never been a man who had made her feel that she wanted to.

Or was it that she had never allowed there to be a man who might have made her feel that way?

Uncomfortably she pushed away the thought. What was the matter with her? She had far more important things on her mind right now than dwelling on the past; on something she should have overcome years ago. It was twenty years since her marriage had broken up, for heaven’s sake. Twenty years. A lifetime, and yet sometimes…sometimes she would see a man in the distance, and something about the way he moved, the turn of his head…would set her heart racing, her stomach cramping, and it would all come sweeping over her again. The elation, the desolation, the joy…the grief…the pain, the anguish…the disbelief and the anger.

She hadn’t realised she had stopped walking until Jessica caught hold of her arm and said teasingly, ‘It’s no use, Ma. Too late to back out now. They’re all waiting for you in there.’ She eyed Lacey’s elegant navy dress with its white collar critically and added, ‘I still think the walking shorts and that snazzy little jacket with the gold stripes would have looked terrific on you…’

Recalling the eye-catching outfit Jessica was describing, Lacey grinned at her and retorted, ‘For someone your age with endless legs maybe; for me—never!’

The civic hall was packed, the sea of faces confronting her as people turned their heads to register her entrance, panicking her for a moment, even though she had thought she was prepared.

She had never liked crowds, preferring solitude, anonymity—a legacy from her childhood at the children’s home where she had grown up after the death of her parents—and she suspected that without Jessica standing behind her and blocking her exit she might almost have been tempted to turn, run and disappear.

Thank goodness for Jess. How humiliating it would have been if she were to give way to that silly juvenile impulse…and now Ian Hanson was coming towards her, smiling at her…

As Jessica had so sapiently remarked, had Lacey indicated that she would welcome it he would probably have been keen to take their relationship to a more personal level.

As it was she liked him, just as she liked her boss, Tony Aimes, but for neither of them did she feel the emotional, or sexual, desire that might have encouraged her to respond to their overtures. Both of them were divorced, both of them had children, both of them were kind, attractive men, but, much as she liked them as people, as men they left her completely cold, completely untouched…unaroused.

Because she deliberately chose to stay that way? Because she was afraid? Angry with her train of thought, she tried to remind herself why she was here. Tonight was most certainly not the night for that kind of immature and self-centred soul-searching.

Tonight was Michael’s night; Michael’s and the night of all those who had given so generously to their cause.

She had been very apprehensive at first when she had been nominated by the other members of their fund-raising committee to be the one to publicly hand over the cheque to the hospital, but rather than cause a fuss she had unwillingly agreed to do so.

Tony Aimes had suggested that after the presentation they might go out together somewhere for a celebratory meal, but she had gently refused, just as she had refused a similar invitation from Ian Hanson, explaining truthfully that, since she saw so little of Jessica now that her daughter was at Oxford, she intended to spend the evening with her.

The trouble was that, while she liked both men as friends, and while the last thing she wanted to do was to hurt anyone’s feelings, she knew enough of the anguish of loving someone and then finding out that the love they professed to feel in return was only a cruel sham to ever wish to inflict that kind of pain on anyone else, so she had no wish to have a more intimate relationship with either of them.

She had known Tony Aimes for many years. She had originally moved to this part of the world following the break-up of her marriage.

Housing here had been relatively cheap then, and as Lacey had been a divorcee with a baby on the way—and very little money—that had been an important consideration.

When Jessica’s father had announced that he didn’t love her any more and that he wanted a divorce, he had told her that she could keep the marital home, that all he wanted was his freedom; but her pride would not allow her to do that, and so after the divorce had become final she had sold the house and scrupulously forwarded to his solicitor half the proceeds of its sale.

She had never received any acknowledgement of his receipt of the money but then she had not expected to do so. From the day he had walked into their kitchen and announced that he no longer loved her he had also walked out of her life, and her only contact with him had been via their solicitors.

People started to clap as she walked towards the small stage. She could feel the hot burn of embarrassed colour sweeping her skin. At thirty-eight she ought to be long past the stage of blushing like a schoolgirl, she told herself ruefully; long, long past it.

It seemed she was the last to arrive—the others were already up on the stage, little Michael squirming excitedly in his chair as she went to join them.

She couldn’t help it; as she saw him smiling at her her eyes filled with tears, not of sadness, but of joy—joy in people’s generosity and warmth, and joy in Michael’s innocent love of life.

At the moment his illness was in remission; he had received a stay of execution, but for how long?

As she bent to hug and kiss him, she prayed that somehow a miracle could happen and that Michael could be saved; but there were so many other Michaels in the world, so many other children who…

She checked her thoughts, reminding herself that emotionalism did nothing to help Michael, that it wasn’t sitting in a corner crying which had raised the money to further research, but other people’s generosity and hard work.

As she took her place with the others she glanced down into the mass of people gathered in the hall. She could see Jessica sitting in the front row, not far from Tony Aimes.

Was it really almost twenty years ago that she had first started working for Tony as his secretary? Where on earth had the years gone?

During that time Tony had been married and then divorced; Jessica had grown from a baby to a woman; and she—what had she done with her life? What had she achieved on a personal level?

She had financial security, a very pleasant lifestyle, and she knew that many people would have envied her. There were others though, she knew, who looked at her and pitied her for her single, manless state.

That had never worried her. Better by far to live alone in contentment and peace than to suffer the kind of anguish which she knew all too well could come from loving another person. Especially when, like her, one had a propensity to love too well…too intensely, perhaps, and certainly too unwisely.

The chairman of their small committee was getting to his feet, explaining for the benefit of the audience the purpose of their fund-raising. Her stomach muscles knotted and tensed as she waited for her own cue, the moment when she would have to get up and hand over the cheque to Ian.

She had rehearsed her few lines over and over again and was surely word-perfect by now. All she really had to do was to add her thanks to those of the chairman, and then hand over the cheque to Ian.

At the back of the hall people from the local radio station and TV company were busily recording the event, and the movement of the camera, catching the light momentarily, distracted her so that she looked away from the stage and into the audience.

Quite how it happened she had no real idea; quite why she should so unerringly pick out one face among so many, and a face she had not seen in twenty years, moreover…Surely it should not have been possible for her to recognise him so instantly, to know with that gut-wrenching, heart-stopping surge of awareness that it was him, even from that one brief glance; but it was.

Lewis was here. Here in the civic hall…here in her home-town…here in the place, the life she had built so determinedly to exclude him…to exclude everything about him.

Everything bar the child he had given her; and the pain he had inflicted upon her.

Lewis Marsh…her husband…her lover. The only man she had ever loved…ever wanted. The man she had thought loved her in the same way…the man who had told her that he did love her, who had begged her to marry him, who had told her that they would always be together, throughout life and throughout eternity.

Eternity! Their marriage had lasted just over a year.

She started to tremble violently, her heart pounding with sick shock as her brain refused to take in what her eyes were telling her.

It must be a mistake; it couldn’t possibly be Lewis.

She had, out of shock and self-protection, already focused her gaze as far away from him as she possibly could, but now, like a child anxiously searching a darkened room for an imagined monster, she looked hesitantly back, searching the packed hall feverishly, praying that she had been mistaken.

Twenty years was, after all, a long time…long enough for mistakes to be made, for her memory to play tricks on her. The Lewis she remembered no longer existed. Like her, he would have changed, grown older.

The sickness returned. If she had recognised him, then had he…? She stopped searching. Her brain was trying to perform impossible acrobatics with far too many confusing thoughts.

What if by some impossible chance it was Lewis? Even if he had recognised her he was hardly likely to walk up on to the stage and announce to the world that she had once been his wife, was he? Why was she so afraid?

She wasn’t afraid, she told herself stoutly. She was just shocked…taken aback…and no doubt she had made a mistake anyway. It couldn’t possibly be Lewis. Why should it be? No; her belief that she had seen him was just a by-product of her nervousness about presenting the cheque.

Presenting the cheque! She tensed, appalled to realise that she had stopped following the chairman’s speech; that, in the space of half a dozen seconds or so, the purpose of her presence on the stage had been totally submerged by the shock of thinking she had seen her ex-husband, and now as she feverishly concentrated on what the chairman was saying she realised that it was almost time for her to stand up and make the presentation.

‘And so now I should like to hand you over to our chief fund-raiser, without whom this whole appeal would never have been launched—Lacey Robinson.’

Lacey stood up. She had reverted to her maiden name after the divorce, and now, for some reason, as she got to her feet her glance darted almost guiltily towards the packed hall, almost as though she expected Lewis to stand up and announce that she was masquerading under a false name; and yet, even if by some extraordinary mischance it was Lewis, why on earth should he object to her reversion to her maiden name? It was he after all, who had brought their marriage to an end…who had announced that it was over, that he no longer loved her…that there was someone else…

This time as she scanned the hall there was no familiar male face, no malely autocratic profile, no sleek, well-groomed dark head—no one in fact who remotely resembled the man she had married, the man who had fathered Jessica, the man she had loved to the point where without him her life had no purpose, no reason other than that somehow she must keep on going for the sake of their child, the child he hadn’t even known she had conceived; the child he had already told her he wouldn’t have wanted.

‘You want domesticity…children…I don’t,’he had told her flatly, ignoring her feeble attempt to interrupt him, to protest that when he had told her how much he had loved her, how much he had wanted her as his wife, he had said how much he wanted her to have his children, how much he shared with her a longing for the domestic family life neither of them had ever really known—she because of her parents’death, and he through the divorce which had split up his parents while he was still very young.

Somehow or other she managed to make her short speech and hand over the cheque, although her hands were trembling violently when Ian took it from her.

Afterwards, when it was all over, Jessica came hurrying anxiously towards her, asking her if she was all right.

‘You had such an odd look on your face when you were on the stage. I even thought for a moment you were just going to get up and walk out. I know you were nervous, but I hadn’t realised…Anyway, it’s over now,’ she comforted her.

Lacey gave a vague smile.

‘Never mind, Ma, you were brill, despite your nerves,’ Jessica told her, tucking her arm through her mother’s. ‘And now how about that meal you promised me, before one of your admirers pounces on you and persuades you to let him join us?’

Lacey gave her a wan look. In reality the last thing she felt like doing was going out to eat. Her stomach was still performing somersaults and her heart felt as though it had literally been squeezed in a vice.

She felt both sick and shaky, like someone suffering from the aftermath of a nerve-shattering shock. She told herself that she was being ridiculous; that she was a grown woman, and surely long past the stage of reacting like that simply because she thought she had seen a man whose memory she ought to have put behind her years ago.

‘Quickly,’ Jessica hissed. ‘Tony’s heading this way.’As they headed for the exit she added drily, ‘Honestly, Ma, I don’t know why you don’t marry poor Tony. He adores you, you know, and he always has. Think of the life you’d have—he’d spoil you to death.’

‘I like him, but I don’t love him,’ Lacey told her, surprising herself as much as her daughter, who stopped and turned to look at her. ‘Is that so very shocking,’ she asked Jessica defensively, ‘that at my age I should consider love a prerequisite for marriage? I suppose to someone of your age it probably is.’

‘No…you’ve got it all wrong. Of course I don’t think you’re too old to fall in love. I was just surprised that you should want to. I’ve always had the impression that because of what happened with…with my father that we…that you’d written sexual love out of your life so to speak. I thought that you’d actually prefer the kind of relationship you could have with Tony—him spoiling you…pampering you…’

‘That wouldn’t be fair to him,’ Lacey told her quietly.

‘No, I suppose not. But there must be times when you feel lonely…when you want—’

‘Sex,’ Lacey supplied bluntly for her, surprising herself a second time.

Jessica gave her a sideways look. ‘Well…yes…although I wouldn’t have put it quite as directly as that,’ she told her a little defensively.

Lacey shook her head, and then wondered if she was being entirely honest. Weren’t there times even now when she woke up tense and aching, her body reminding her that there had once been a time when she hadn’t slept alone, when she had known the caresses of a lover, when she…

‘What I want right now is my dinner,’ she fibbed, completely redirecting the conversation. ‘I’ve booked a table at that new Italian place. It’s supposed to be very good.’

IT WAS—at least to judge from the enjoyment Jessica was exhibiting. For her part, Lacey found that she just simply didn’t have any appetite.

‘Ma, what’s wrong?’Jessica started to ask her, and then broke off to say admiringly, ‘Mm…now that’s what I call a man! Pity he’s too old for me.’

Lacey turned her head in automatic response to Jessica’s comment.

Three men had just walked into the restaurant, but she only saw one of them. This time there was no possibility of a mistake…no doubt. It was like a massive blow to the heart, numbing her body into complete immobility.

Lewis. It was Lewis!

‘Ma, what is it…what’s wrong? You look as though you’ve just seen a ghost,’ Jessica told her worriedly.

A ghost. She gave a deep shudder, her mouth twisting painfully.

Behind her she could hear Lewis’s voice—deep, masculine, so agonisingly familiar, so shockingly clearly remembered.

‘Jess, I’m not feeling very well,’ she said shakily. ‘Would you mind if we left?’

The men had walked past them now, leaving Lacey free to stand up as she kept her back towards them. Small chance of Lewis’s recognising her; why should he? she reflected with an unfamiliar stab of sharp bitterness.

She meant nothing to him. He probably didn’t even remember that she had ever existed. She wondered if he was still with her, the woman he had left her for, or if she too had suffered her fate; if he had gone on to fall out of love with her as well.

She pushed herself free of the table, shivering sickly, glad of Jessica’s warm protective arm around her shoulders as her daughter came to her side and said anxiously, ‘Ma, something’s wrong. Look, let’s get you home, and then I’m going to call Ian Hanson.’

Behind her she was aware of movement, of someone tensing, turning, but she couldn’t look back, couldn’t do anything other than freeze and shiver, aching to escape, knowing it was impossible to explain to Jessica just what was wrong, hating herself for causing her daughter this anxiety and for spoiling their last evening together…but how could she turn to Jessica now and say ‘You know that man you were just admiring? Well, he’s your father’?

She had always been honest with Jessica about her marriage, and told her when she was in her teens that she would never stand in her way if she ever felt she wanted to contact her father, but Jessica had remained adamant that she didn’t, that she wanted nothing to do with the man who had treated her mother so cruelly, even though Lacey had painstakingly explained to her that Lewis had known nothing of her pregnancy…had not realised that she was already carrying his child when he’d announced that he wanted a divorce.

‘You’d better let me drive,’ Jessica announced when they got to the car. ‘You went so white in there. Is something wrong, Ma?’ she asked anxiously. ‘I know you and how you hate me to worry about anything.’

‘Nothing’s wrong,’ Lacey fibbed firmly. ‘I think I’m just suffering a bit of over-reaction to this evening. I was dreading giving that speech. You know what a baby I am about public events. I’m sorry I let it spoil our meal, though.’

‘Well, you certainly look a lot better now. Are you sure you don’t want me to call Ian?’

‘Stop fussing! I’m fine. A good night’s sleep and tomorrow morning I’ll be back to normal.’

She knew that it wasn’t true, but thankfully tomorrow morning Jessica was going back to Oxford. For the first time since her daughter had left home, Lacey actually wanted to see her go. Her mouth twisted bitterly.

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