Ann Fielding had very kindly invited both of them to join her family for tea, an invitation which Tania had hesitantly accepted, not wanting to take too much advantage of Ann Fielding’s generosity and uncomfortably conscious that as yet she was not in a position to repay her hospitality.
In fact it was an invitation she would probably have refused if it weren’t for the fact that last night, totally out of the blue, just as she and Lucy had been about to sit down, her solicitor, Nicholas Forbes, had arrived unannounced and unexpected, explaining that he was on his way past and had thought he would call.
Tania wasn’t used to having men in her home and neither was Lucy, and Tania had been conscious of a feeling of resentment and irritation which she had tried to repress. After all, Nicholas Forbes was merely being kind, merely being friendly. And yet … And yet …
Was she wrong in imagining that there had been something in the way he had eyed her T-shirt and jeans-clad figure, something that, while not remotely lustful, had not been entirely without sexual curiosity either?
She had come a long way from the inexperienced girl of eighteen who had silently endured the painful fumblings of the much stronger and heavier boy who had been her first and only sexual partner. She knew a good deal more about the human race now at twenty-nine than she had done at eighteen. Sex was something she avoided, something she had cut out of her life. She felt no sexual desire, no sexual curiosity, and had no need of a man in her life in any sexual sense, and that was the way she preferred it.
There had been men who had attempted to change her attitude, but she had always firmly and determinedly rebuffed them, making it clear that they were wasting their time, and she had no idea why on earth a man like Nicholas Forbes with a wife as attractive as Clarissa Forbes should show any interest in a woman like her, who could not afford to dress in anything other than the cheapest chainstore clothes, who could never afford the money or the time to visit a hairdresser or beauty salon, whose hands were serviceable rather than elegant, with short unpainted nails—hands which were far more used to the hard realities of life than the sensual pleasures. Unless it was because she was on her own.
She had come up against that particular phenomenon too often and from too many unlikely sources to be naïve about it any more. The most unlikely men could betray the most unwelcome sexual harassment when it suited them. There had been that teacher of Lucy’s who had called round to the flat on the pretext of wanting to discuss her work. There had been her superior at the shoe shop. There had been countless others, all of them no doubt respectable and well-thought-of men, but all of them, as far as she was concerned, men who were being disloyal to their wives and families, to whom they most owed commitment.
Personally she could think of no reason why Nicholas Forbes should want to spend time with her. She was not pretty, not in the way that his wife was. Tania had seen her once when she had called at Nicholas’s office, bursting into the room and totally ignoring Tania, and she was a pretty, fluffy blonde woman in her early thirties, with a slightly petulant, spoilt expression and the mannerisms of a little girl.
Tania hadn’t been particularly drawn to her. Just listening to her pouting little girl demands as she persuaded Nicholas to agree to her plans for redecorating their drawing-room had confirmed Tania’s initial view that as women they were complete opposites.
She doubted if Clarissa Forbes had ever wanted for anything in her entire life. The clothes she was wearing were expensive designer models, her hair, her hands, everything about her proclaimed that Clarissa was an adored, petted woman whose single most important preoccupation in life was herself and her own needs.
She was barely five feet two with round blue eyes and a pretty-pretty face, making Tania at five feet seven, with her thick, heavy mane of conker-brown hair and her cheap cotton skirt and blouse, feel uncomfortably conscious of the difference between them.
Perhaps because no one had ever told her so, Tania herself was unaware of the classic beauty of her oval face, with its high cheekbones and well defined lines. She had no idea that the length of her neck and the fullness of her mouth gave her a sensual vulnerability that men found fascinating, or that her lack of artifice, her inability to pretend and pout, might be like a much-needed glass of clean, pure water to a man who had come to feel sickened by the syrupy mock sweetness of a wife who could turn into a virago the moment she was opposed in any way.
Because she had no wish to attract the male sex, Tania assumed that they felt no attraction towards her. Certainly she did nothing to attract their attention or desire. Certainly she never encouraged them to believe that she wanted or needed them in any way, and, because she was the woman she was, she genuinely had no idea that her very indifference, her very lack of interest, only caused men to be more attracted to her, more curious about her, more determined to breach the walls she had so obviously put up around herself.
She had got rid of Nicholas Forbes just as quickly as she could, firmly explaining that she considered this particular time of day sacrosanct to Lucy. Undeterred, Nicholas Forbes had offered to take her out for a drink so that they could talk in private, but she had quickly refused.
She felt that she had made it more than plain to him that, while she welcomed his conscientiousness as her solicitor, there could be no personal relationship between them, especially one that involved the kind of discussions about his marriage which she knew could only lead to problems.
Even if the kind of friendship he had been offering her had included Clarissa, even if Clarissa herself had been willing to welcome her to their circle of friends, which she quite plainly was not, Tania doubted if she would have felt comfortable with them. The Forbeses, while not jet-setters, certainly had a very comfortable and affluent lifestyle. Ann Fielding had mentioned in conversation that Clarissa’s brother was an extremely wealthy man and that through his various companies and contacts he had put a good deal of business Nicholas’s way.
‘I was at school with Nick,’ she had added, pulling a face as she commented, ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t say so, but I suspect that, as far as his marriage is concerned, he’s beginning to discover that marrying a rich girl isn’t all a bed of roses. Clarissa is very spoilt. James dotes on her and spoils her to death. It’s amazing how stupid even the most intelligent of men can be, isn’t it? There’s only three or four years between them; James’s father was Clarissa’s mother’s second husband and both of them were killed in a skiing accident just before Clarissa’s twentieth birthday. She went completely to pieces and although legally she was an adult, James stepped in and virtually took the place of their parents overnight, and he’s gone on shielding and protecting her ever since. Too much so, if you ask me. He’s made a rod for his own back in indulging her so much. She’s very possessive about him, and I doubt if she’s ever going to allow any woman he becomes involved with to oust her as number one in his life, which is a shame, really.’
‘Perhaps he enjoys their relationship,’ Tania suggested. ‘Some men seem to get a kick out of keeping the women in their lives dependent on them either emotionally or financially.’
Her comment had earned her a shrewd, thoughtful look from Ann Fielding and the comment, ‘Some do, yes, but I wouldn’t put James Warren in that class. He’s far too intelligent, too … too secure in himself emotionally to need that kind of hold on another human being. No, I think he’s simply grown so used to believing that Clarissa needs him that he can’t see the truth about her, and she, of course, takes good care that he doesn’t see it. She isn’t at all popular locally. Most people feel rather sorry for Nicholas, even though they also feel that he’s rather brought his own misery down upon himself. Clarissa will never be satisfied with anything that Nicky can give her, not while she’s so aware of the difference between the lifestyle she had with James and the lifestyle that Nicky can provide for her.’
‘But they seem very comfortably off,’ Tania hadn’t been able to stop herself protesting, remembering the glimpse she had had of the brand new mock-Georgian house she had seen through its encircling