Reluctant Wife(27)

‘Goodbye. Thank you for everything.’





CHAPTER FOUR





Roz stirred restlessly and came back to the present with a sigh.



She could still hear sounds of revelry coming from downstairs and was surprised to see it was not yet midnight. She got up and glanced out of the window, to see that there were still three cars parked in the drive, Amy’s, Angelo’s and Richard’s, and she was happy for Nicky that they had come to spend the evening with her, because she was pretty sure her sister-in-law had something rather weighty on her mind.



Just as I had, she thought, when I got coerced into going back to stay with the Howards after the hailstorm. Well, I hope Nicky’s problems aren’t as bad, and I don’t see how they could be. If only I’d known!



She sighed again and sat down in the pink velvet covered armchair, plucking at the cording around the arm and letting her mind drift back again to the days after the hailstorm …



The move had been accomplished without much fuss—Mrs Howard was like that, bright and bubbly but with a streak of competence and practicality that surprised one sometimes. She was also opposite in character to Mike’s father, a dour man in whom the qualities of honesty and uprightness were clearly visible although a sense of fun was not. But he now owned his own fencing business and could afford to put Mike through college and live a moderately affluent life, although he had barely attended high school himself.



And despite his contempt for Roz’s grandfather’s passion for gambling, he had been a good neighbour over the years, one couldn’t deny that. But the act of going back to stay with the Howards, to Mr Howard’s visibly growing disapproval of his son’s infatuation for Roz despite Mrs Howard’s attempts to lighten the atmosphere, was a mistake, Roz knew, and she found herself regretting that night very much as she got ready for bed.



It had been an uncomfortable evening during which Mike had taken her for a walk after dinner, but when they got back it was as if Mr Howard knew that his son had taken her in his arms and kissed her fervently, and asked her to marry him.



Fortunately, she had made Mike see that it was something they couldn’t rush into and made him promise not to mention it to his parents. But the truth of the matter was that she didn’t know what to think herself, especially when out of the blue, as she was getting ready for bed, she found herself wondering whether the tragedy that had befallen her had tripped Mike’s emotions into overdrive.



‘Oh, God,’ she whispered, ‘what made me think that? He’s been so wonderful and it’s been … well, I suppose we’ve been drifting towards this, but in other circumstances we wouldn’t have … we’d have been content to wait at least until he’d finished college, then got engaged perhaps and probably hoped his father got to like the idea better in the meantime.’



She rubbed her face wearily and sat down on the edge of the bed, wishing desperately that she was at home, spending an evening like she had the night before …



She caught her breath and thought, how strange that Adam Milroy should have come into her life twice, fleetingly, and that they should both be such memorable occasions. Because at fourteen, when most other girls had been worried about puppy fat but she had been gawky, he had driven into the stable yard to see her grandfather about a horse, and she had been struck virtually dumb.



She remembered it so clearly—the scarlet jumper she’d been wearing that Mrs Howard had knitted her, the patched jeans that were a bit too short for her, the long fair ponytails done up with red bobbles … the bright cold day it was, the shiny foreign car, the tall, dark, handsome stranger wearing brown corduroy trousers and a tweed sports jacket over a black sweater who had climbed out of it. How he’d looked around and then his gaze had fallen on her with a bucket in one hand and a brush in the other, standing transfixed, and he had walked towards her and smiled that brilliant, crooked smile …



At least, she amended to herself as she sat on the Howards’ spare bed brushing her hair, that part she could remember so clearly, but the rest of his visit had passed in a sort of blur. She knew she’d hardly said a word, she knew she’d never felt more awkward or gawky as she’d led the horse around for his inspection, but that was all.



And what she had least expected was how from that time on, Adam Milroy would haunt her girlish day-dreams and how she would for months build impossible fantasies around him.



Her grandfather hadn’t helped, because after that visit he had enthusiastically sung Adam’s praises and painted a word-portrait of him that had unknowingly fuelled Roz’s dreams—-he’s worth a mint now, but when I first met him … all the same, he was impressive even then, you could see he was going to amount to something, I could anyway … knows horses inside out … I think he was married once but it didn’t last, plenty of ladies in his life, though …