The Veranchetti Marriage(14)

A knock sounded on the door. She knew it was Alex. The knock was a positive joke after the fashion in which he had entered this same room last night. He was framed by the doorway, dark and devilishly controlled. “We can’t continue to fight like this. It won’t benefit our son to see us clawing at each other.”

“Did you think of that last night?”

The golden eyes glinted. “Am I to hear of that for ever? We are not children. We were married once. In a few days’ time we will be married again.”

“You took advantage.”

“I wanted you and I had the right,” Alex stated with unequivocal arrogance.

She bent her head. “You didn’t. We’re divorced.”

“I have never felt divorced, I have never felt truly free!” Alex sizzled back in a condemnation that suggested it was her fault. “I did not think of us as divorced from the moment I saw you again.”

It made little difference to Kerry’s feelings. As her hands laced tightly together, another fear occurred to her, and she went pale and then pink. She couldn’t bear it if he had made her pregnant. It was no melodramatic fear. Her previous pregnancy she recalled as a ghastly ordeal. Once she had lost Alex she had had no pleasure from her condition. She had been sick almost continuously, and more depressed than any woman ought to be. Bitterly, miserably, she threw him a glance. “If last night has any…repercussions, I’m not having it. I’m telling you that now. I will never go through what I went through again…not for you…not for anybody,” she swore.

Stark pallor slowly stretched beneath his golden skin. His facial muscles tautened. She assumed that he had not even thought along such mundane lines. A male bent on slaking his lust did not think of consequences.

“Then we must hope that there will be no repercussions,” he replied harshly. “I don’t expect you to undergo something you found so objectionable a second time. Now, the lawyer will be arriving soon with the contract I mentioned. When it is signed, the car will take you home.”

She had the weirdest suspicion that she had cut Alex to the bone. Dazedly, she squashed the idea. He had his son. He didn’t need any more children. Nor could he want another tie to her when he had already made it clear that he did not expect them to remain together indefinitely.

The lawyer was elderly. He opened his mouth to explain the thick document to her. Alex cut him off after one word. “Just slash an X where we have to sign,” he instructed drily. “I have naturally explained the meaning of the contract to my wife.”

“But as an interested party…” The older man flushed, probably thinking on the danger of offending so wealthy a client. He dutifully penned in the X. They signed. Alex then beamed with positive benevolence upon him. Kerry presumed that the contract tied her up in knots. Why else would Alex smile?

Umberto packed her new clothes. She put on a fine turquoise wool suit with a high-necked white silk blouse. Once more she was Kerry Veranchetti. Kerry Taylor had vanished. If Alex had chosen the clothes, he had fantastic taste. Her own had not been half so elegant in the past. She had pursued fashion with teenage extremity. Her avant-garde appearance must have embarrassed him at least once, but a word of criticism had never passed his lips. With hindsight, she marvelled at his restraint.



VICKIE SWUNG OPEN her door and simply stared. Her eyes roamed in astonishment over the designer suit. “What was that I said about nothing untoward happening between last night and today?” she gibed with a contemptuously curled lip. “Funny, I did think you had more pride. Alex develops some crazy notion to marry you again, and already you’re trotting about in fancy feathers. Anybody would think you can’t wait to get back there!”

Kerry reddened as she followed her tall sister into the lounge. “I did try to phone you before I came to London.”

“What happened?”

Kerry chewed her lower lip. When it came to the point, she couldn’t tell Vickie everything. Somehow she felt that that would be stabbing Alex in the back. He had employed blackmail because he was desperate to gain custody of his son. And last night? She was equally to blame. She hadn’t screamed the place down, had she? She hadn’t thrown a chair through his triple glazing and threatened to embrace death before dishonour either, had she? No, far from it. Only afterwards had she had the decency to regret her behaviour.

“Why the beetroot-red blush?” Vickie straightened, slinging her lighter down and blowing a faint smoke-ring as she exhaled. “Did he use sex? My God, he must have been desperate to get you any way he could!”

The high-pitched, venomous tone grated on Kerry’s nerves. “It was I who broke the marriage up,” she said defensively.

“And you’re going back out of guilt? Alex wants Nicky,” Vickie guessed shrewdly. “You don’t still love him, surely?”

“Of course I don’t.”

“He’s about as lovable as a sabre-toothed tiger, and about as dated.” Her laugh was harsh, her blue eyes intent on Kerry’s perplexed face. “Well, I can release you from the weight of your conscience. Would you like a drink?”

“Too early for me.” She was uncomfortable with the strangeness of her sister’s mood. In her opinion Vickie had already had a couple of drinks.

Vickie jerked a slim shoulder. “You might change your mind in a minute or two. The…the night of the party…or maybe I ought to begin before that.” Her strained gaze was oddly pleading. “I hope that you remember that I didn’t have to tell you this.”

“Tell me what?”

Vickie took a deep breath. “When we were younger, I used to resent you…”

“Me?” Kerry gaped.

Vickie sighed ruefully. “You were always the favourite at home. You worked hard at school, steered clear of too many different boyfriends…you never put a foot wrong. Of course I resented you. But after I’d been away for a few years I felt bad about it. That’s why I let you have my flat that summer. I was ready to play big sister.”

Kerry was completely motionless. She had often wistfully envied Vickie her glamour, her poise and her classic beauty. But Vickie wasn’t confessing to simple envy. Vickie, she sensed, was talking about sincere and bitter dislike.

“I can hardly believe you never guessed. The parents certainly did. You see, I wanted Alex for myself.” There was a crack in Vickie’s stark and shattering admission. “I cast out every lure there was for him. I invited him to my parties and he never came. Every time he saw me, he acted like he didn’t know me. And then you moved into my apartment, and in two months, my eighteen-year-old sister in her ragbag clothes had his ring on her finger, and my God, but I hated you for that!”

Chalk-white now, Kerry’s face was filled with dawning horror. “You were in love with Alex?”

“No, not in love. But he was the man I had set my sights on.” Vickie’s voice wobbled, at odds with her shuttered expression. “I never got close enough to get thinking about love, but believe me, I chased him. Do you know how I felt when he fell for you? Humiliated. He never did tell you, did he? That I fancied him and made a complete ass of myself…”

“Oh…Vickie.” On the brink of sympathetic tears, Kerry sprang up, ready to comfort her. “I had no idea, and I’m sure you didn’t make a fool of yourself.”

“Don’t be kind, Kerry. I couldn’t stomach that at this moment,” Vickie snapped, her composed face contorting with strong emotion as she turned her back. “I took that job in Venice because I wanted to cause trouble. I hated him because he didn’t want me. I wasn’t good enough. I’d been around. Hell, so had he been…but the old double-standard was made by men like Alex.” The words were pouring from her now in staccato bursts. “He wouldn’t have married you if he hadn’t been the first.”

Kerry sank down again, thunderstruck by what Vickie had hidden from her. She recalled Vickie’s pettish refusal to be her bridesmaid, Alex’s unrelenting coolness towards the sister she admired. The facts had been there before her, the suggestion of something that did not ring quite true, but she had been so full of loving Alex, she had been blind. She bled for the pain she had unwittingly caused Vickie. It was one thing not to attract a man, another for the same man to marry a kid sister. And Vickie had never had any trouble in getting the men she wanted. She was a very beautiful woman. Alex’s indifference must have hit her hard.

“I wish you’d told me about this a long time ago,” she said unhappily. “I used to talk all the time about Alex. It must have upset you.”

Vickie stubbed out her cigarette, and immediately lit another with an unsteady hand. “What upset me was the way he felt about you. He was besotted and it sickened me. But he had one Achilles heel. He was scared stiff your feelings were going to change and you were going to grow out of him,” she continued jerkily. “That’s why he was so jealous and possessive. He had worked out for himself that if you never got any rope without him or one of his sisters, you couldn’t get up to much. The night of my birthday when you phoned him, I was listening on the extension…and I heard every dirty label he attached to me. Of course, can you blame him? Even after the wedding, I made it clear that I was available!”