CHAPTER TWO
AS THE date of Louise’s wedding drew closer, Jenneth found herself regretting more and more that she had agreed to go. It was not that she didn’t want to see her friend married and wish her and her new husband good luck; she did, and, had Louise chosen anywhere but Little Compton as the venue for her wedding, Jenneth knew that she would have been anticipating it with a glad heart, and more than a touch of delighted curiosity about the man who had so radically changed her old friend’s determined stance on the joys of the single state.
As it was, even with Louise’s reassurance that Luke would not be attending the wedding, she was increasingly conscious of the fact that there would be other people there who remembered her younger self, and her love for Luke; they would remember their engagement and Luke’s subsequent marriage to someone else; and then, in the manner of village people the world over, they would look at her ringless hands and speculate among themselves as to the reasons for her unmarried state.
Standing in her studio, she gave a tiny shudder of revulsion at the thought of their curiosity and pity, wishing that she had the courage to telephone Louise and tell her firmly that she could not attend the wedding. There were, after all, half a dozen genuine reasons she could conjure up for not attending, and one of them was in front of her now on her desk, she acknowledged ruefully, frowning over the preliminary sketches she had been asked to prepare for a large mural to cover the walls of the children’s ward in one of York’s large hospitals.
The commission had come to her via a client of hers, who had spearheaded a campaign to raise funds to support the specialised ward, which had been in danger of collapsing.
An exceedingly large donation from a millionaire local businessman had resulted not only in the ward being fully re-equipped with several vital pieces of advanced technology, but there had also been sufficient money left over for her ex-client, who was chairwoman of the fund-raising committee, to announce briskly that they could afford to do something about the almost institutionalised drabness of the ward’s emulsion-painted walls.
She had approached Jenneth, who had been delighted to accept the commission, which she had offered to do at much less than her normal rates, and in return she had virtually been given carte blanche with the design.
The problem now facing her was what to choose to catch the imagination and attention of children suffering so desperately, and of such very disparate ages.
Her lack of concentration in favour of worrying about the ordeal of Louise’s wedding didn’t help, and she was still frowning over the vague notes she had scribbled down when the studio door opened and Kit came in.
Jenneth watched him walking towards her with the familiar loping stride that both he and his twin had inherited from their father, her heart as always caught up in a wave of mingled love and apprehension…Love because they were both so very dear to her, and apprehension because guiding two exuberant and very high-spirited boys through their teenage years had not always been easy.
Their A levels now behind them, and the long summer holiday just begun, Jenneth realised anew with almost every day that passed that they were now virtually adult. Certainly both of them were emotionally mature and wellbalanced, something for which she modestly refused to take the credit, putting it down to the fact that their parents had provided them all with a stable and loving background during their early years.
Kit grinned at her as he advanced towards her and asked, ‘Any chance of borrowing your car? I’m playing tennis over at Chris Harding’s this afternoon, and Nick’s taken the Metro.’
The rather battered but roadworthy Metro that Jenneth had bought them as a joint eighteenth birthday present had done sterling service in the six months they had owned it, but, although they were twins, her brothers enjoyed different hobbies and had different sets of friends. So far she had ignored the broad hints she had been given about the necessity for another car. The hints had been good-humoured, both boys being well aware that, although their father’s insurance policies had provided a roof over their heads, and a small but steady income, any luxuries had to be paid for out of Jenneth’s commissions.
Since they were both sensible and very good drivers, she had no qualms about loaning them her own car when she wasn’t using it, but on this occasion she shook her head with genuine regret and explained, ‘I have to go in to York with some paintings for the gallery, and I promised Eleanor I’d do it this afternoon. I could drop you off on the way, if you like,’ she offered obligingly.
‘Only if you let me drive,’ Kit countered with a grin. It was a standing joke between them that Jenneth, inclined to daydream, especially when her work engrossed her, was sometimes rather an erratic driver. She blushed even now to recall the occasion on which she had been so deeply involved mentally in the mural she was working on that she had driven down the narrow lane that led from their house to the main road and straight into a ditch, necessitating an anxious call to their nearest neighbour, a local farmer, who obligingly came out with his tractor to haul her sturdy Volvo estate car back on to the lane.
Kit and Nick knew all about Louise’s forthcoming wedding and, although she hadn’t said so to them, both of them were also aware of Jenneth’s reluctance to attend, just as they were both also fully aware of her inner withdrawal whenever the subject of Little Compton and its inhabitants came up.
Both of them were far too fond and protective of their sister to probe, but both of them were also curious. Although Jenneth herself was unaware of it, they had taken on bets on whether or not she would attend the wedding, and Kit, who had bet his twin that she would, intended to make use of the drive to his friend’s house to ensure that she did.
Not very long ago he and Nick had put their heads together, and decided that before they left for university they would have to do something about their sister’s future.
‘She needs to get married,’ Kit had announced, causing Nick to lift his eyebrows and jeer ‘chauvinist’ at him. But Kit had shaken his head, and replied, ‘I don’t mean it that way…Sure, financially she can support herself—after all, she’s supported us for long enough—but don’t you sometimes think that it’s almost as though there’s a part of her missing somehow? She needs a husband and a family.’
‘To take her mind off what we’re getting up to?’ Nick suggested with a grin.
Although physically identical, emotionally they were very different, but on this occasion both of them had agreed that they had somehow or other to sort out their sister’s life for her, so that when they left she would not be on her own.
To this end they had conducted an exhaustive survey to find a man they considered suitable to become Jenneth’s husband, and their brother-in-law.
Their hopes had risen to a high-water mark after the incident of Jenneth’s accidental journey into the ditch; Tim Soames was virtually their next-door neighbour, single, comfortably off, the right age—a pleasant, easygoing man, with broad shoulders and a ruddy face.
He obligingly assisted them by asking Jenneth out, but after a couple of dates and several visits to the house he had suddenly stopped calling and, when pressed, Jenneth had told them calmly that although she liked him she didn’t want to get involved.
That was the whole trouble, Kit reflected, darting a quick glance at his sister as she slid into the passenger seat beside him. She didn’t want to get involved. But she needed someone in her life…someone who would care for her and protect her. Someone who would see beneath the calm surface to the real person below.
They had the car windows open because of the heat; the countryside was in a rare spate of perfect June weather, and the draught caught at her hair, tangling its silky smoothness. Jenneth lifted her hand to push it out of the way, reflecting irritably that she really ought to have it cut and that shoulder-length hair on a woman of twenty-nine was an absurd and foolish clinging to a youth long gone.
Watching her, Kit grinned to himself, remembering a jealous girlfriend of Nick’s who had bitterly refused to believe that Jenneth was their