Afterwards, of course, would come the purging, going on and on until she was satisfied that her stomach was finally empty, her body restored from its temporarily bloated, obscene distension to its normal svelte, almost too thin, delicacy, and then and only then and oh, the blessed relief of it, finally those few wonderful hours when she was relaxed and at peace, sated by her orgy of self-punishment almost like a drug addict after a mammoth fix. Contented, calm, until the whole cycle started again with the frantic need for reassurance that she was loved. The refusal to let him touch her because her body was loathsome was almost immediately followed by what amounted to an almost frenzied need for sex.
Lately, as she was doing now, she had become increasingly sexually aroused during what he normally thought of as his own period of respite from the stress of what she was.
Sex … God, what a joke, and to think that when he had met her, when he had married her, he had wanted her so much….
Now the mere thought of having to touch her, of being touched by her, brought him out, as it was doing now, in a cold, drenching sweat of impotency and a physical rejection not just of her but of everything and anything to do with sex.
Even though he knew that in refusing her he was doing the worst possible thing he could do and that this refusal only served to hasten the speed of the whole appalling cycle of her unbalanced behaviour, he just couldn’t force himself to behave any differently.
It wasn’t simply that he didn’t want her any more, he recognised, he … He what? Loathed her, hated her, resented her.
In the early days before he realised there was no point, that the whole situation … that she was beyond any kind of help, he had tried to persuade her to seek professional advice. Her response had been to threaten to kill herself. She had rung him at work to tell him that he would soon be free of her and he had rushed home to find her sprawled naked and drunk across their bed, an empty bottle of painkillers at her side. He had no way of knowing how many she had managed to take. Fortunately their doctor had been very understanding, but that had been over fifteen years ago and David knew that such a situation would never be handled with such discretion now.
Duncan Flitt had been a contemporary of his father. They had played golf together and been old friends. Between them they were the unofficial keepers of much of the area’s secrets. Today things were different. The local medical practice was serviced by four doctors, all of them several years his junior. It also boasted an acupuncturist, a reflexologist and several counsellors.
Tiggy’s caressing hand had reached his belly. He froze, tensely aware of the resistant slackness of his penis and the fact that it was going to remain in that limp state.
Beneath the bedclothes, Tiggy moved towards him, rubbing her naked breasts against his arm as she did so. David cringed. The odour of her vomit still clung to her skin or perhaps it was being exuded from it, he decided as he swallowed down his own reciprocal nausea. As she leaned across to kiss him, her breath smelled initially of mint but beneath the mouthwash’s sharpness he could still smell the sour taste of her night-time activities. The bathroom would stink of it, as well, and because Olivia was home he couldn’t use the spare bathroom, not without the risk of arousing her suspicions.
Olivia … No doubt it was her arrival that had precipitated Tiggy’s latest attack. Not that she needed much of an excuse any more; anything and everything could set her off. Increasingly, though, she had recently begun to fret over the fact that she was growing older, flirting increasingly openly with younger men, behaving in a way that was totally inappropriate for the wife of a man in his position. As yet he did not think that she had actually gone so far as to have a real affair but he suspected that given the right opportunity …
An affair. Dear God, if only she would. If only she would find someone else to take over from him the unwanted burden of her emotional and physical demands, her constant need for reassurance, her screaming outbursts that he did not love her, her accusations that there was someone else, that he no longer wanted or loved her.
‘Happy birthday, darling….’
Mutely he endured the unwanted intimacy of her kiss, not daring to provoke her by withdrawing from her and yet, at the same time, aching to be able to do so. Her hand had reached his penis now. He cringed.
‘What a poor, sad little boy,’ she was cooing in his ear. ‘Doesn’t he want to come out and play, then …?’
David gritted his teeth.
‘Is he all hurt and sulky, then?’ Tiggy teased. ‘Does he want Mummy to stroke him and kiss him better …?’
David shuddered violently in a reaction of rejection and disgust. ‘We’ve got to get up,’ he reminded her hoarsely. ‘The birthday …’
‘I thought that was what I was trying to do,’ Tiggy countered, pouting, but David was already moving away from her, throwing back the duvet.
‘You said last night that you’d got to help Jenny,’ he reminded her as he pulled on his robe.
David was beginning to look dispiritedly middle-aged, Tiggy decided. He had recently put on weight and that, coupled with the flaccid smallness of his penis, was decidedly unerotic. Unlike her, he seemed to have no interest in looking after himself, in keeping his body fit and his weight down. Surreptitiously she touched her own stomach. It felt reassuringly taut and flat. She breathed out in relief and examined her polished nails. One of them was scratched. She frowned. She must have done that last night when … Hurriedly she pushed the thought to one side.
What had happened last night? What happened on all those dark, frightening nights like last night wasn’t something she wanted or needed to think about during the day. It was over now and best forgotten … a silly habit she had fallen into but which she could break … end … any time she liked. David knew that and she knew it, too. She realised she had been a bit naughty of late, overspending, but David didn’t understand how lonely she felt sometimes. He had his own busy life at work and she was at home here all day on her own.
Of course, she had her girlfriends … but … she wasn’t like Jenny, the kind of woman who could busy herself with good works, children and cooking. She needed more than that. She was not a country person. David should take her out more … make more fuss of her, show her that he loved her. She might be in her mid-forties but she was still a beautiful and desirable woman. All right, Olivia might be younger than her but she would never be as attractive. Why, when she had been Livvy’s age she could have had her pick of a couple of dozen men even though she had been married to David at the time, and a mother.
Her dress was hanging up over the bedroom door, a body-hugging shimmer of silver-shot silk that looked like mother-of-pearl when she moved in it. It was a size eight, a perfect fit; she touched her stomach again. She could hear the shower running. David was still in the bathroom. Perhaps she ought to try it on again, just to make sure …
‘Anything else I can do?’
‘No. I think we’ve just about finished now,’ Ruth assured Olivia as she stepped back to eye the arrangement for the top table, tweaking a couple of stems judiciously.
‘The flowers look wonderful.’
Ruth gave her great-niece a wryly amused smile, hearing the genuine admiration in her voice and guessing what lay behind it. ‘What were you expecting,’ she mocked her gently, ‘or can I guess? Something twee and stilted, overwired flowers that would have looked more artificial than real, poor things?’ She shook her head reprovingly.
Olivia laughed. ‘Something like that,’ she admitted ruefully. ‘Certainly nothing like this.’
She