‘Rosie, what is it? And don’t tell me nothing. You’ve gone as white as a sheet,’ Chrissie accused. ‘Is it the sun? You should have kept your hat on; you know how vulnerable you are to sunstroke. You’d better not drive home.’
Numbly Rosie let her sister’s bossy fussing wash over her, for once unable to summon the independence to remind her sister that she was an adult and not one of her children.
‘It’s time we left, anyway. I promised Greg I wouldn’t be late. We’ve got the Curtises coming round this evening, and I want to make sure that Allison and Paul aren’t thinking of going out tonight. I don’t like them going out on Sunday evenings, not with Paul’s A levels coming up and Allison’s GCSEs next year.’
Rosie stayed silent, letting her sister’s conversation wash over her. Jake Lucas…She tried to remember the last time she had seen him—was it four years ago or three?—but she felt too dizzy with shock to be able to concentrate.
He lived on the opposite side of town from her and their paths never crossed. He moved in different social circles, and the partnership he had in a marina on one of the less accessible Greek islands meant that he was out of the country a good deal.
He was closer to Chrissie’s age than her own, although even her redoubtable sister had always been a little in awe of him, despite the fact that she was a couple of years his senior.
He was that kind of man.
Awe didn’t describe her reaction to him, Rosie acknowledged. Fear…dread…pain…panic …anguish; he made her feel all of those, and other and even less bearable emotions as well.
The mere sound of his name was enough to make her go cold with fear and shame, and to see him so unexpectedly, when she was unprepared for it and in such a vulnerable situation, when she was already feeling so off balance, so emotionally open to the anguish of her past and the burden of the pain she had kept a secret from everyone else who knew her…
Silently, she let Chrissie take hold of her arm and firmly make her way through the tightly packed group of people around their host and hostess.
The baby, the Hopkinses’ third, was now contentedly asleep in her father’s arms. A wrenching jolt of pain stabbed through Rosie as she watched him deftly transfer his new daughter’s sleeping weight from one shoulder to the other while he ducked his head to kiss first Chrissie and then her on the cheek.
‘Isn’t it time we saw you holding one of these?’ he teased Rosie.
His teasing wasn’t malicious or unkind. Rosie and both Neil and Gemma Hopkins had all been at school together. Gemma was her own age. She herself was, Rosie reminded herself bleakly, the only one of her peers now who had not experienced a committed relationship of some kind. Some of her friends were even on their second marriages.
She knew how curious people were about her, and could guess at the questions they probably asked one another about her. Always sensitive and by nature an extremely private person, she was acutely aware of how different she was, how isolated from experiences which seemed commonplace to others.
It wasn’t as though she weren’t attractive, as though men weren’t drawn to her, Chrissie had exclaimed in exasperation four months ago on Rosie’s thirty-first birthday, when she had brought up her perennial complaint about Rosie’s dedication to her single state.
‘I’ve watched you,’ she had accused. ‘You freeze the poor things off as soon as they try to get close to you.’
Her mother had been more understanding, but equally concerned.
‘I don’t understand it,’ she had said sadly. ‘Rosie, you were always the one who loved playing with your dolls, who always, from being a small child, talked about getting married and having children. Of the two of you, I always thought it would be Chrissie who would be the career girl. I’m not trying to tell you how to run your life, darling. If being single is what you want…’
‘It is,’ Rosie had told her mother fiercely, but she suspected that her mother knew as well as she did that she was not telling the whole truth.
But how could she explain, reveal to her mother, to anyone, the thing that had made her like this, the guilt, the pain, the shock of self-discovery, the realisation that her degradation and humiliation, her stupidity, had been witnessed by someone else? These had proved so painful to her that the only way she could deal with them was to try to cut herself off from them, from the person she had been before it had happened, to try to create a different person—a safer, better, more responsible, more controlled person.
How could she tell anyone about what had happened? She was too afraid of them condemning her, looking at her, reacting to her in the same way that Jake Lucas had done.
Over the years she had gone over and over it so many times in her own mind, hating herself for having allowed it to happen, for not being more aware, for not realising what was going to happen.
She knew she was not guilty of ever having done anything to encourage him; she could acquit herself of that crime. She had never come anywhere near doing or saying anything to make him think that she might actually want him. How could she have done? She had not had the least conception of what sexual desire was.
She had been a very naı¨ve, protected sixteen, and still far too shy and immature to be sexually aware in any way.
No, she had done nothing to lead him on, but she had had that drink and she hadn’t been able to stop him, and she knew enough about the world now to realise that if she were ever to tell what had happened there would always be those who would wonder…doubt…especially if they were male.
And she could never allow herself to get involved with a man without telling him, without wanting to share with him that secret, shamed, still-hurting part of herself.
And since she was afraid of allowing herself to love a man, only to discover him turning away from her with the same disgust that Jake Lucas had manifested, she had chosen instead not to take the risk of becoming emotionally committed to anyone. It was safer that way, and safety, protecting herself from hurt—these were very important to Rosie. When people commented on her manless state, she told them coolly that she was content the way she was. Normally the coolness she exhibited, the control, was enough to deter them and to protect her, but today was different.
Today she was feeling too vulnerable…too raw inside, too achingly aware of that small, sleeping bundle held protectively against Neil’s shoulder and the man still standing somewhere among the crowd on the lawn, perhaps still watching her…
She shivered, feeling the perspiration break out against her skin, watching helplessly as Neil’s expression changed to one of concern.
‘It’s the heat,’ she heard Chrissie saying. ‘She’s always been vulnerable to it. It’s that red hair and Celtic skin. I told her not to take her hat off.’
There were, Rosie decided faintly as Chrissie led her firmly away, perhaps advantages to having Chrissie for a sister after all.
She quickly changed her mind, though, when Chrissie refused to allow her to drive home.
‘But I need my car,’ she protested.
‘Not now, you don’t,’ Chrissie told her. ‘And if you have got heat or sunstroke, you won’t be needing it tomorrow either.’
‘I’ve got a meeting in Chester tomorrow morning,’ Rosie protested, but Chrissie wasn’t listening.
‘Honestly, Rosie, I should have thought at your age you’d know better,’ she was complaining as she opened her own car door. ‘At times you can be even worse than Paul and Allison…Now get in and I’ll take you home. If we didn’t have the Curtises coming round this evening, I’d take you home with me. I know you…’
Sickly, Rosie closed her eyes. She felt as weak