Unguarded Moment
Sara Craven
Former journalist SARA CRAVEN published her first novel ‘Garden of Dreams’ for Mills & Boon in 1975. Apart from her writing (naturally!) her passions include reading, bridge, Italian cities, Greek islands, the French language and countryside, and her rescue Jack Russell/cross Button. She has appeared on several TV quiz shows and in 1997 became UK TV Mastermind champion. She lives near her family in Warwickshire – Shakespeare country.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
AS the taxi stopped, so did the rain, and Alix Coulter flung the sky an appreciative glance as she paid off the driver. Her three weeks in the sun had been a leisurely delight, but at the same time had spoilt her for the vagaries of the English climate in August. It had been a distinct let-down to descend on London through thick cloud and find a sullen, humid day waiting for her.
Driving through the glistening streets, she’d wondered half humorously, half apprehensively, whether the threatening weather was an indication of what was waiting for her. Bianca had been all smiles when she’d said ‘Au revoir’, but that was no guarantee that Alix would be equally warmly welcomed. Bianca’s moods were—mercurial, to find the kindest way of putting it, Alix supposed. Even the slightest obstacle in her primrose path could bring on a tantrum which might last for days. ‘Artistic temperament’, the directors and producers who worked with her on her films tactfully called it. ‘Sheer bloodymindedness’ was the more down-to-earth description from Lester Marchant, Bianca’s most recent husband, now licking his wounds and ruefully contemplating the divorce settlement in the United States.
Alix sighed a little, She had liked Lester, and was sorry when he finally declared enough was enough and moved out. But as she was the first to admit, it wasn’t easy being a member of Bianca’s entourage. She had worked for Bianca for three years now, and while it was undoubtedly exciting, it wasn’t always enjoyable.
Alix had often wondered, especially when Bianca was being more than usually imperious, why she stood it. She was a good secretary. She was calm, efficient and well organised. She wouldn’t have the slightest difficulty in finding another job—and an employer not nearly as trying and demanding as Bianca apparently took a delight in being. And yet she still stayed, restoring order to Bianca’s hectic social life, smoothing out her travel arrangements, taking her frequent changes of mind in her stride as equably as she did Bianca’s constant changes of clothes.
It must be family feeling, she told herself wryly.
She had been quite shattered to learn that Bianca Layton was her aunt, her own mother’s sister. She could never remember hearing it referred to even once during her childhood, although Bianca was already a name in films on both sides of the Atlantic, celebrated for her outrageous beauty and her love affairs which sometimes, but not always, ended in marriage.
It was incredible even to think of Bianca coming from the same staid background as her mother. All her life Margaret Coulter had stood up for all the virtues that Bianca seemed deliberately to flout. Alix often wondered whether her mother had been ashamed or envious of her amazingly glamorous sibling.
When Alix had at last discovered the truth, learned that Bianca Layton was her aunt and was coming to visit them, she had appealed to her mother, ‘But why did you never tell me? Why have you never said anything all these years?’
Margaret Coulter was a quiet woman, but now she was so silent that Alix was afraid she had offended her in some way.
At last she said, ‘There seemed no reason for you to know. Her world isn’t ours, and I never thought we would ever see her again.’
There was a note in her voice which told Alix quite unequivocally that it was Margaret herself who had desired the separation. She looked at her mother uncertainly, at the greying dark hair cut and waved neatly into the same style for the past ten years, at the figure, no longer youthfully slender but blurring into comfortable lines, and realised that Margaret was probably dreading the inevitable comparisons which would be made.
Margaret met her gaze and her smile was wintry. ‘No, we’re not alike,’ she said. ‘We never were. No one took us for sisters, even when we were at school. Sometimes I could hardly believe it myself.’
It had seemed even more unbelievable when Bianca finally arrived. She seemed to fill the house with her presence. Her perfume hung exotically in the air. She was charm, she glittered, and she never once by either word or deed gave any indication that she found her sister’s home and her sister’s family drearily suburban and middle class.
She was gracious in a remote way to Alix and to Debbie, her younger sister. She obviously wasn’t used to very young girls; all three of her marriages had been childless.
And when Bianca had departed as dramatically as she had come, and they were left with that inevitable feeling of anticlimax, Debbie had said, ‘But why did she come? What did she want?’
But no one had an answer to that—at least not then. Sometimes Alix found herself staring at the place at the neatly set table with its embroidered cloth and matching china where Bianca had sat and wondering dazedly whether it had all really happened, or whether they hadn’t been victims of some sort of mass hallucination, or one of those dreams where the Queen comes to tea as if she was an old friend.
It had been a fleeting visit, and yet it seemed to have had a profound effect. Margaret Coulter had never been the ebullient, extrovert type, but now she seemed to become more withdrawn than ever, and her family watched her with concern.
One night Alix, who couldn’t sleep, came downstairs for a drink of water and heard her father’s voice, almost coaxing.
‘Don’t worry, Meg. It’s over. It’s past.’
And her mother’s response, her tone throbbing with something like hatred, ‘Or it could be just beginning.’
Alix, unseen and unheard, went back to bed without her drink, instinct telling her that any sort of intrusion would be unwelcome.
What had her mother meant? she wondered as she tossed and turned restlessly. Aunt Bianca had said nothing about another visit. Was this what her mother was afraid of? Constant descents on them, like some goddess coming down from Olympus, with all the fuss and attendant publicity which would probably be inevitable? She