Chapter 18.

'What the h.e.l.l did you say to her?' demanded Ben, as soon as his father walked into the enormous drawing room of his rural home in Dundonald, on the south-eastern fringes of Belfast city. He'd built the modern mansion for himself and Ca.s.sie when they'd married four years ago. Ben thought the house, with its gla.s.s walls and minimalistic decor in neutral tones (without a single splash of colour to relieve the monotony) was cold and unwelcoming. A bit like Ca.s.sie.

'I don't know what you're talking about.' Alan, who'd just come in and was still wearing his outdoor wool coat over a suit, had kicked off his shoes at the door. He shrugged off the wet coat, raindrops glistening on the shoulders like jewels, and threw it carelessly over a black leather sofa with chrome legs.

Ca.s.sie, with hair like Dolly Parton and a chest to match, teetered in after him (she always wore heels), draped in a floor-length black jersey dress and a flowing grey cashmere cardigan. Ben acknowledged her presence with a nod. Ever since Alan's sixtieth two years ago, when Ca.s.sie had thrown a huge surprise birthday party to which she'd invited half of Northern Ireland, but not Ben, they'd both dropped the pretence of being friends.

'I'll have a large one,' said Alan gruffly, falling heavily onto the sofa, his pot belly straining against the b.u.t.tons of his shirt. Wearily, he lifted his feet onto the gla.s.s coffee table and placed his hands, palms down, on the cool leather. Ca.s.sie went over to the curved gla.s.s and chrome bar, lifted the lid on the beaten metal ice bucket and stood with tongs poised like a dagger over the ice. 'Can I get you a drink, Ben?'

'No thanks.' Ben sat down on the matching sofa placed at a right angle to the one Alan occupied, and tried to calm himself by staring at the view beyond the floor-to-ceiling triple-glazed window. The sodden green pastureland of County Down rolled away from the house like waves and sheep dotted the smudged landscape like daubs of white paint in the distance.

Something had happened between Alan and Jennifer at the wedding. He was sure of it. In the car on the drive back to Ballyfergus Jennifer had been withdrawn and reticent and, two days later, he'd only just managed to persuade her to see him. He was planning to go over to her house, tonight, on New Year's Eve, after he'd finished at the restaurant. He'd wanted to spend the whole evening with her they'd been invited to a party at Donna's house but of course he had to work. He hated the intrusion Carnegie's made into his private life. He couldn't even spend New Year's Eve proper with the woman he loved. But he planned to make it up to her. Nestled deep in the pocket of his navy corduroy jacket was a Bulgari ring he'd just picked up from the premier jewellers, Lunn's, in Belfast. The ring matched the bracelet he'd given her for Christmas and, on Valentine's Day, he planned to complete the set with the matching necklace.

He'd given girlfriends expensive things before he had little need of money himself and it gave him great pleasure to spend on other people. But never before had a woman been so surprised, so wowed by a gift as Jennifer had been with the bracelet. He couldn't wait to see her face when she saw the ring, because never before had he wanted to please a woman so much. But first, he had to deal with his father. He would not permit him to upset his beloved Jennifer.

Ca.s.sie clip-clopped her way across the specially imported maple wood floor, and handed Alan a crystal tumbler of straight whiskey. Then she scooped up Alan's coat and retreated from the room.

'When I left the table at the reception,' said Ben evenly, 'Jennifer was perfectly happy. When I came back fifteen minutes later she was suddenly unwell and wanted to go home. I can't help but think that your conversation might have had something to do with that.' He gave his father a hard stare and folded his arms across his chest. 'Why do you not like her?'

'I don't dislike Jennifer,' said Alan, his gaze sliding off to the left. 'Quite the contrary. She's a very pleasant, attractive lady.' He brought his gaze back to Ben and smiled. 'I wouldn't say no to a roll in the hay with her myself.'

Ben stiffened and Alan said, quickly, 'Relax, I'm only teasing.' The smirk fell from his face, and he stared into his drink for a few moments, then turned his grey eyes, as hard and cold as his surroundings, on Ben. 'Tell me, is she just a pa.s.sing fancy, Ben? Or something more serious?'

'I love her,' Ben said easily.

'That's what I feared,' said Alan with a grave expression, swirling the amber-coloured whiskey round in the gla.s.s. 'Let me ask you something. Who's going to take over the business, Ben, if you don't produce an heir?'

'Are you trying to tell me who I can and cannot date on the basis of fertility?' said Ben incredulously.

'You can date whoever you like, Ben. Just don't marry a woman too old to give you a family.'

'I'll marry who I d.a.m.n well like,' said Ben, standing up and walking over to the window. Cold spits of rain splattered the gla.s.s. His heart was pumping fast now, like this morning when he'd upped his pace on the run out to Ballygally and back along the coast road. Alan had told him what to do all his life. But this was one step too far. He shoved his shaking hands deep into his pockets and tried to retain his composure.

'I didn't realise that I wanted children either, Ben,' said Alan, his voice softening. 'But when Ricky came along, and later you, I was glad. Children ...' said Alan, stumbling a little over the sentiment, 'Well, they complete you. That's the only way I can think of to describe it.' He laughed lightly. 'You're the man of words, not me.'

Ben turned around. There was no smile on Alan's face and a deep frown creased his brow as he dug deep for words. 'You and Ricky gave my life a meaning it didn't have before. And I've never loved anyone before, or since, as much as I loved you two.'

A lump formed in Ben's throat. He swallowed and looked at the floor, both moved and embarra.s.sed by his father's extraordinary confession. Though he had never doubted his father's love, he could count on the fingers of one hand, the number of times he'd expressed it openly.

Alan's expression hardened. 'If you continue with this relationship, if you marry her, Ben, I'll have to reconsider my position.'

Ben looked up sharply. The old Alan was back heartless, cold, mercenary. A man not used to being thwarted.

'I'll write you out of the will, Ben.'

Ben laughed, hating his father with the same force that he loved him. 'When you say things like that, Dad, it just reinforces how different we are. How little you understand me.'

'I mean it,' said Alan, grimly.

Ben laughed again. 'I know you do. That's what's so sad about it.' He paused and held his father's unflinching gaze, glad that he was standing and Alan sitting. It made his father seem less threatening. 'Do you actually think a threat like that will stop me seeing Jennifer?'

'It'll make you think twice about it,' said Alan confidently.

Ben shook his head. 'You just don't see, do you? I don't care about the money, I don't give a d.a.m.n about Crawford Holdings. It can be broken up. Sold. And I don't care if I never see a penny of it.'

Alan's face paled. 'You don't mean that.'

'Yes I do,' said Ben, unable to prevent his voice rising, glad to see that he had, at last, unsettled his father. He had never stood up to him like this before. He had never had the strength. Alan rose to his feet. 'If he was still alive, your brother would've been glad to be in your shoes. You're selfish and ungrateful!'

'Me?' said Ben and he stabbed his chest with his index finger, choking over the words, his throat constricted with emotion. 'I'm selfish? I sacrificed my future my dream of becoming a teacher to please you. Every day I drag myself to a job I hate, trying to fill Ricky's shoes. Trying to be the son you want me to be. And not the one I am.'

Alan shook his head, his face puce with rage. He marched over to Ben and stood in front of him looking up, a solid, squat ball of fury. 'It's taken me my entire life to build the business up from nothing,' he spat into Ben's face. 'I won't stand for strangers taking it over. I won't let you break it up.'

'Then find someone else to leave it to, Dad,' said Ben quietly. 'I don't want any part of it. And I won't let you use it to blackmail me either.'

Alan stood there in his socks, his hands clenched tightly by his sides, like a furious soldier under parade ground inspection. And Ben, his own anger spent, felt suddenly sorry for him. His voice softened. 'The things I want in life don't cost money. And your money comes with too many strings attached.'

Alan blinked and his bottom lip quivered slightly. 'You don't know what you're talking about, son. You've never known hunger.' He pressed a clenched fist to his stomach. 'You don't know what it feels like, gnawing at your insides like a rat. You've never walked five miles along snowy country lanes to school carrying your shoes so as not to wear them out, or had to hide when the rent man came calling.'

'I know. And I'm grateful for the life you've given me,' said Ben humbly. 'But I'm not Ricky, Dad,' he said quietly. 'And I'm sorry, but I never will be.'

When Ben finally pulled up at Jennifer's house one and a half hours into the crisp, freezing cold New Year, he breathed a sigh of relief. Jennifer's car was in the drive and the light in the lounge was still on. He hoped Lucy wasn't there. The girl was hard going, bordering on the downright rude. So unlike her brother Matt whom he'd left behind at Carnegie's celebrating the New Year with his work colleagues and the half-dozen bottles of Moet et Chandon champagne Ben had given the staff. There would be a few sore heads in the morning.

The encounter with his father had left him emotionally drained. He wanted nothing more than to hold Jennifer in his arms; to feel her, taste her, to know that she loved him. She gave his life a purpose that it had not had before.

The door was unlocked and he slipped in quietly, clutching a chilled bottle of Bollinger by the neck. The ring he planned to give Jennifer burned a hole in his pocket. He couldn't wait to see her face when he gave it to her. Inside, she was waiting for him in the lounge, still in a sparkly party dress and heels, sitting cross-legged and cross-armed on the sofa. The lights were burning a little too brightly and he was disappointed to see that there was no fire in the grate and no candles lit as he'd imagined. But no matter, it was late. She stood up and he went over and set the champagne on the coffee table. Then he gathered her to him, pressing her against his body, loving the way she felt small and vulnerable in his arms. He kissed the top of her head her hair smelt faintly of coconut and fruit and tipped her chin up with his index finger.

'Happy New Year,' he smiled.

'Happy New Year,' she said, and he kissed her on the mouth but there was something a little perfunctory about the way she returned his kiss. Gently she pulled away.

She stifled a yawn and said, 'I'm tired. You must be exhausted, working so late.'

But he didn't feel it. He felt as if he could stay awake all night just looking at her, drinking her in, marvelling at the fact that she was with him. 'Shall we just go to bed, then? We can have a mother of a lie-in in the morning and have the champagne tomorrow night.'

She hesitated and looked at the ceiling. 'I'm not sure you should stay the night,' she said, and he imagined Lucy in the room above them, curled up in bed with her disapproval and old-time morals.

'We shouldn't have to sneak around Lucy, acting as if we're doing something wrong,' he said, unable to stop himself.

'Lucy's not here,' she said flatly, going over to the sofa and sitting down. He stood stupidly for a few moments. 'So,' he said at last, sounding thick and slow, 'you don't want me to spend the night?'

She looked him straight in the face then, her miserable expression sending deep waves of fear through him. Immediately he went over and sat down beside her. 'What's wrong? Have I done something to upset you?' He racked his brain but he couldn't think what.

'No, it's not that,' she said with a heavy sigh and looked away once more, sliding her cool, dry hands gently out of his grasp and laying them on her lap. 'I've been thinking of something your father said to me at the wedding.'

'I knew it! I knew he was trying to poison your mind against us.'

Jennifer looked at him sadly. 'But your father's right, Ben. The business is your birthright. You can't turn your back on it because of me. You can't let your family down like that.'

'I'm not turning my back on anyone! He's the one forcing me to make a choice.' He paused and glared angrily at Jennifer, annoyed with both of them Alan for injecting poison into his relationship with her, Jennifer for apparently allowing him to succeed. 'I thought you'd be pleased,' he said, hating the sullen, resentful way he sounded. 'I thought you'd be proud that I put you first, above fortune and family.'

She gave him a small, sad smile. 'I'm not sure you truly realise what choosing me means. It would mean sacrificing more than money, Ben. And you should never underestimate the importance of family. Sometimes, family is all you have.'

'Jennifer,' said Ben, becoming a little exasperated, 'what on earth are you talking about?'

'You love kids, Ben. Look at the amount you raised for the children's hospital.'

'That's because of Emily.'

'And Glenvale. And I've seen you with Emily, that day Jason's wife brought her into the restaurant and I happened to be there.'

'So?'

'You'd make a great father, Ben.' A pause. She lowered her head. 'And I can't make you into one.'

Ben snorted. 'He's really got to you, hasn't he?'

Jennifer lifted her chin and sniffed. 'It's only natural to expect grandchildren one day. Everyone does ...' She blinked at him, her eyes full of tears. 'I can't be responsible for you doing something I think you will one day come to regret. And I can't watch you become estranged from your parents because of me. They've lost one son already.'

'But that's my decision to make, Jennifer, not yours,' he said, his voice hoa.r.s.e with the awful realisation that he was losing her.

His words seemed to fall on deaf ears for she simply shook her head. 'You're wrong about your father, Ben,' she said softly. 'We did talk about these things at the wedding reception, yes, but that wasn't the first time they'd crossed my mind. I've had ... doubts, and though I love you, Ben, with all my heart ... I can't honestly see a long-term future for us. I'd '

'Don't say it!' He raised a hand in the air as if he might parry her words with it like a tennis racquet.

But she pressed on regardless, relentless, as if she'd had this speech rehea.r.s.ed all along. 'I'd rather end it now before we get any more involved.'

His hand dropped to his side, brushing the bulge in his pocket where the Bulgari ring lay, a reproach to his folly, his belief that love could, and would, conquer all. 'You don't love me?'

'Of course I love you, Ben,' she said, the tears spilling over at last and running down her cheeks. 'But I'm ending it, Ben. It's over,' she said, with cold finality.

'No, you can't do this to us,' he said, as a terrible weight pressed down on his chest, making it hard to breathe, hard to think clearly. It was impossible. It was wrong. He came and knelt in front of her on the floor, and put a hand on her shoulder. 'You can't let him win, Jennifer. This is exactly what he wants to happen.'

But she turned her head away and lifted her shoulder, shrugging his hand off as if she couldn't bear his touch. 'It's not just your father, Ben. It's everyone. Everywhere I go I feel as if we're out of place. Like at the wedding. The people around the table were your peers, Ben, but most of them were half my age.'

'You're exaggerating.'

'I felt conspicuous and uncomfortable. I felt as if everybody was talking about us.'

'So you're letting what other people think break us up.'

'No,' she said, and she turned her red-rimmed eyes on him. 'Not what other people think.' She paused, gulped back tears and dropped her gaze. And when she spoke again her words were barely audible. 'It's what I think. I don't want you to look back one day and regret not having family. Or look at me one day and wonder how on earth you ended up with an old woman on your arm.'

He stood up then and stared down at the top of her head while she sniffed quietly into a tissue she'd conjured from somewhere. And his compa.s.sion turned to bitter disappointment.

'When I first met you, I thought you were like no woman I'd ever known. Independent, self-possessed, self-sufficient. I loved the way you weren't at all impressed by money or status. You accepted me for who I am and I loved you for that.'

She looked up at him with dark eyes like bottomless pools of grief, but her wretched gaze, even though it tore at his heart, did not soften his anger. 'But you're not what I thought you were, Jennifer. You're weak.'

She flinched as if he'd struck her.

'I'd have given up everything for you, Jennifer, and I still would. If only you had believed in us enough.'

'Oh Ben, it's not like that.'

But he would not listen to her excuses. 'You talk to me like I'm a fool who doesn't know his own mind, second guessing what I might one day want, or regret.' He moved away and stood with his back to her, trembling with sorrow and rage. 'Has it occurred to you that I have thought long and hard about us? That I actually might not want children of my own and that I thought like that long before I met you?'

There was silence broken only by the sound of his blood pounding in his ears.

'I've spent the last seven years trying to please my father. A difficult enough task.'

He paused again to allow a wave of grief to wash over him, so strong he could not speak for some moments. 'But pleasing you has proved absolutely impossible.'

Chapter 19.

Upstairs, Jennifer flicked open a fitted white sheet and stretched it over the single mattress in Matt's old room. When she was done making the bed, she sat down on it and stared out the window at the washed-out blue February sky. It was the colour of the pastel blue shirt Ben had worn the night they'd gone for an Indian after the Ballyfergus Small Business a.s.sociation meeting. An evening she now thought of as their first date. How long ago was that? Only a matter of months, yet it felt like a lifetime. So much had happened and so much had gone wrong.

She smoothed the surface of the red and white striped duvet, exhausted by the exertion of preparing the room, now spick and span, for Oren's stay. Not that the task was especially onerous but, since New Year's Eve a month ago, a sense of hopelessness had settled on her shoulders like the weight of the world. Her life, rattling around this empty house alone, terrified her. A life of unremitting loneliness, work and duty, punctuated with fleeting interludes of companionship in the form of family and friends and her beloved m.u.f.fin. There was no soulmate, no one to share the little highs and lows that defined a life, no one to wake up with in the morning or drift off to sleep with at night. She would not look for that again because no man would ever be able to live up to Ben. Her quest for love was over.

Sadness consumed her like a fever, leaving her dried up, parched. She was barely able to get out of bed in the morning. The simplest of tasks, like cooking a meal or making a cup of tea, required such focus and concentration they left her exhausted. She'd spent the last two days in her pyjamas with a constant headache that pressed against the back of her eyes like her brain was suddenly too big for her head.

She ran her hand through sticky, unwashed hair and thought of what Ben had said on New Year's Eve. He'd been angry but he was wrong. She wasn't weak. Giving him up was the greatest sacrifice of her life, requiring every ounce of strength she had within her. She'd tried to do the right thing by him and by his family, though Ben did not see it that way. Not now. But he would one day and he would be grateful.

So even though it didn't feel like it, she told herself she'd done the right thing. And not just by Ben, but by herself too. Try as she might, she just couldn't picture a long-term future for them. Like Alan said, one day he'd leave her. And she couldn't bear to live with that threat hanging over her.

She looked at her watch and sighed. Oren and Lucy would be here in a few hours and she had so much to do. Wearily, she rose from the bed and went and stood under a hot shower. When it came to selecting an outfit, she reached automatically for her favourite jeans then remembered Oren's views on such constrictive clothing, so settled for a sombre, grey wool dress instead. And she just remembered to don the necklace Lucy and Oren had bought her for Christmas. She liked the stylish wood and bead necklace well enough but hadn't quite got used to the idea of exchanging gifts with Oren. She'd bought him a pair of socks, terribly unimaginative, but what did you buy a man whose only hobby appeared to be G.o.d?

Downstairs, she set the fire for later, and in the kitchen, put a ready-made chicken pie in the oven under the watchful eye of m.u.f.fin who, picking up on her mood, lay in his basket with his ears flattened against his head, and his chin on his paws.

Setting the table for lunch, she paused, clutching a sheaf of cutlery in her hand, and practised a welcoming smile that felt like a mask. Suddenly the phone rang, making her jump.

'How are you, pet?' Donna's voice was so full of concern that Jennifer's eyes welled up with tears. She blinked them back.

'I'm okay. Oren and Lucy should be here in about an hour.'