‘What you are trying to say,’ Caspar challenged her, ‘is that you’ve made a mistake … committed yourself to the wrong guy. Well, I guess that feeling goes both ways. Maybe I’m not too thrilled to discover that you aren’t exactly the woman I thought you were, either,’ he told her hurtfully.
Olivia stared at him, unable to fully take in what he was saying. ‘Caspar,’ she protested, but as she took a step towards him, he stepped back from her, leaving her standing frozen in disbelief in mid-step as she read the rejection in his body language.
‘Perhaps it’s for the best that we both found out the truth before we got in any deeper.’
The truth. What truth? She loved him … he loved her … wasn’t that all that really mattered? Was it? If she turned round now and told him that she had changed her mind, that she would break her promise to her uncle and return to America with him, was that really the kind of basis she wanted to build her future, their future on? Wouldn’t she in effect be setting a precedent that meant that every time she had to make a decision he didn’t share, that ultimately he would expect her to give in and back down? No matter how small the issue or how large. As a lawyer she knew very well and better than most the danger of setting any kind of precedent. She swallowed painfully.
She had never imagined that Caspar, her Caspar, could be capable of such small-mindedness, such selfishness … that he could quite willingly sacrifice their love. The knowledge physically hurt her and all at once she knew what people meant when they said something felt like a blow to the heart, a heavy weight … a sickening burden. She felt all of those things and more, but at least she had her pride to sustain her, the same pride that had carried her through all the rigours of her legal training without the support and encouragement of her family. She had survived that and she would survive this. Somehow …
‘If that’s what you think,’ she agreed quietly, keeping her voice as low as she could so that it wouldn’t betray her by breaking.
Without waiting for him to make any further response, she walked past him and hurried upstairs. Even though she fumbled for several seconds with the door, he made no effort to catch up with her; to take her in his arms and tell her that he had been wrong; that he couldn’t bear for them to be apart; that he still loved and wanted her.
Perhaps it had all been a mistake, she admitted. Perhaps she had mistaken something far more shallow and ephemeral for love. After all, love—real love, enduring love, the kind of love she believed they shared—surely couldn’t be destroyed so easily.
Caspar watched her walk away from him, her back ramrod straight. He ached to call her back but his pride wouldn’t let him. Listening to Hillary last night as she detailed all her complaints against not just Saul but also his family had underlined for Caspar all the doubts he had felt about the viability of his relationship with Olivia ever since their arrival here in her home town—and if he was honest with himself, reawakened the destructive ghosts of his own childhood.
Here was Olivia telling him he wasn’t important enough to merit her concern, that there was no way she was going to put him first.
To Caspar the obvious emotional closeness that bonded the various members of Olivia’s family together in an acceptance of one another’s flaws and faults in a way that was totally alien to the way his own family network worked was something he instinctively rejected, even found threatening, not just to his relationship with Olivia, but to his deeply held belief that such closeness was at best a self-deluding fiction and at worst a means of control leading to the potential destruction of the individual.
As a child he had seen at close hand how apparently easily the adults around him discarded one relationship to enter into another. From that he had come to believe that human emotions could only be stretched so far, that an individual could only encompass one really meaningful emotional tie at a time. He had seen his father, and his mother, too, form intensely close bonds with their current partners, giving all their emotional support to that partner and the children of that union. Growing up, he had been on the outside of that closeness, excluded from it; as an adult he had no intention of suffering the same fate.
It wasn’t that he was jealous of Olivia’s involvement with her family; it was simply that he could not see the point in wasting his emotions on a relationship with someone who apparently wasn’t prepared to commit herself as fully as he was to it.
Although in returning to America he was returning to his home town and family, the life Caspar had envisaged there for Olivia and himself had involved just the two of them and any children they should have. They would socialise with his family, no doubt, but they would have separate lives and they would not have been allowed to trespass emotionally into Caspar and Olivia’s private life. Just as he had never been allowed to trespass into his parents?
Yesterday when discussing her husband and his family, Hillary had complained that she had never truly felt a part of their lives; that she had always been made to feel different—an outsider. That no allowance had ever been made for the fact that she might have different needs, different desires, different goals from theirs.
‘Saul should have married an English girl, preferably one from Cheshire and even more preferably, one from his own family,’ she had told Caspar bitterly, adding sardonically, ‘Olivia would have been perfect for him, of course.’
Of course. And Caspar had not been oblivious to the look of sensual appreciation and sexual awareness in Saul’s eyes as he watched Olivia.
He went up the stairs and walked past Olivia’s room without stopping.
Inside her room, Olivia released her breath. Let Caspar behave like a spoiled child if that was what he wanted. He hadn’t made any effort to understand her feelings, so why on earth should she kowtow to his?
Jenny tensed as Jon turned over in his sleep and muttered something. She had always been a light sleeper and his restlessness had woken her up. She glanced at her alarm; it would soon be time to get up anyway.
Why had he thrown those bitter comments about Max at her before he went out yesterday evening? Neither of them had ever discussed the deep vein of selfishness and self-interest that ran through Max’s character, setting him so much apart from both of them, but most especially from Jon. Perhaps that was one of the biggest flaws in their relationship—the fact that they did not discuss such things but tended to ignore them. They were both placid, natural peacekeepers preferring harmony to discord, although Jon, she knew, would never shrink from standing up for some moral code he felt was being broken—no matter what the cost of doing so might be to himself.
Jenny not only realised how much stress David’s heart attack had placed Jon under, but she’d also seen how much stress he’d been under before it happened. Did he really think she wasn’t aware of the increased amount of time he was having to spend at work—and couldn’t guess the reason for it? If she had said nothing, it was merely because she knew the futility of embarking on a discussion that might lead to any criticism of David, however slight. And now it seemed that Jon had taken on the role of providing Tiggy with emotional support as well as everything else.
Tiggy. Jenny could still remember quite vividly how wretchedly insignificant and unattractive she had felt beside her the first time they had met. Tiggy had been so glowingly beautiful, the soul of life and enthusiasm, clinging adoringly to David’s arm.
In comparison she had felt lumpish and plain, boringly unsophisticated, a woman who knew nothing of the heady excitement of the life Tiggy and David had lived in London and that Tiggy so obviously still missed.
Even pregnant, Tiggy had possessed that air of fragility and delicacy. She had been dreadfully sick almost throughout her pregnancy and it had been touch-and-go at one stage whether