The Marriage K.L. Slater (classic romance novels TXT) 📖

The front door opened and I heard Audrey’s voice call out, ‘Only me!’

‘I’m in the kitchen,’ I called back. Robert often wore headphones as he worked, listening to music, but it was typical of him to pretend he hadn’t heard the door.

‘Here you are, love.’ Audrey walked over and handed me a bunch of glorious orange chrysanthemums, their stems wrapped in a floral paper bag. ‘From my garden, with love.’

‘They’re beautiful.’ I sniffed at the flowers. ‘Just what I need to cheer me up. Thank you, Audrey. Look at this.’ I pushed my phone screen towards her. ‘She’s crowing about it already.’

I thought Audrey would gasp in horror, but she didn’t seem fazed. She wrinkled her nose at the wedding photograph, then slipped off her jacket, draping it over a bar stool, and reached for my empty mug. ‘Right, first things first, let’s get you a fresh cup of tea and then you can tell me all about it.’

My heart sank as I placed the flowers down beside me. Even though my head was full of it all and I’d turned to Audrey for a sympathetic ear, it was a different thing altogether to repeat it word for word. It was traumatic.

Audrey bustled around the kitchen, opening drawers and cupboards.

‘So the gist of it is that Tom and Bridget have got married in prison and now he’s gone to live with her, yes?’

I gave a half-hearted laugh. ‘You make it sound so simple.’

She brought the drinks over on a tray with a plate of shortbread fingers I’d had in the cupboard since Christmas.

‘Are these still in date?’ I picked one up.

She rolled her eyes. ‘You’ve got a family crisis on your hands and you’re still trying to control every meaningless detail. For heaven’s sake, relax!’

‘Yes, Mother.’ I took a bite of the biscuit.

‘What’s Robert think about it all?’

I shrugged. ‘Doesn’t seem to give a toss, he’s back in his office at usual.’

‘Maybe he’s got other stuff on his mind,’ Audrey remarked, looking at the biscuits but not taking one.

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know. You’re the one who said he’d been quiet lately!’ She sighed. ‘Look, I know this is the last news you wanted or expected from Tom, but trust me, the best thing you can do now is to accept it’s happened.’

So easy for Audrey to say. She didn’t even seem surprised about what Tom had done! Though we were the same age, she had got no children. She’d had a couple of long-term relationships over the years, but she’d never married. When her elderly mother died, she’d left Audrey a bit of money so she was, in anyone’s book, in a comfortable position.

‘He’s my son, Audrey. I can’t pretend this isn’t happening.’

‘That’s not what I said.’ She took a sip of her tea and leaned towards me. ‘You’ve got to realise that Tom is not the same boy who went into prison. He’s a man now and he’s entitled to make important life decisions.’ She tipped her head and regarded me. ‘Don’t for a moment think I’m agreeing with what he’s done. Frankly, I think it’s appalling. But maybe give him a little space. He’ll soon get fed up of life with a woman old enough to be his mother.’

I reached for my tea.

When Tom had been around five or six, we’d made edible gingerbread decorations for the Christmas tree. We had different-coloured icing, tiny silver balls, glacé cherries in red and green, and even striped ribbon to hang them on the tree. I remembered hovering over his red and green mess, the frayed ribbon, and as I reached out to help him, he’d turned to me and said, ‘No, I can do it, Mummy. I want to do it on my own.’ So I had let him make a mess, and somehow the gingerbread men had still looked cute and festive and everything was perfectly OK.

Now Audrey was suggesting I should do the same thing again. Leave Tom alone to get on with his life, make his own mistakes. But there was something bigger at stake here than broken ginger biscuits. There was a real danger Bridget was playing a much darker game and he wouldn’t realise it until it was too late.

Audrey studied my expression. ‘What is it?’

My hand flew up to my face and clamped over my mouth. I pressed hard and suppressed the wail that had risen suddenly in my throat. ‘It’s not the marriage, it’s not because I want to control him, it’s that I think she’s out to ruin him,’ I said in one long sentence before drawing breath.

Saying the words out loud didn’t bring relief, it only seemed to emphasise my fears, make them appear more real than ever.

‘Ruin him how, love?’ Audrey looked at me pityingly. ‘Remember they’re both adults. She can’t make him do anything he doesn’t want to.’

‘She hated him, Audrey. For years she hated Tom, and me too. When they left the house earlier, she turned and looked at me from the door. She didn’t say a word, just smiled in a loaded sort of way, if you know what I mean. It was a smile filled with triumph, with accomplishment. All of which seemed invisible to my husband and my son.’

‘Hmm. I think it’s easy to read things into non-verbal signals. Sometimes things that aren’t really there,’ Audrey said gently. ‘But one thing is for sure. If you want to maintain a relationship with Tom, you’re going to have to accept that they’re together.’

I knew then that my worst fears were already realised. Bridget Wilson had pulled off a masterstroke, probably years in the making. She had successfully manipulated events to put herself in control of my son, and nobody realised it but me. Nobody suspected it but me.

Worse still, I could do precisely nothing about it if I wanted to keep the lines of communication open between us.

Fifteen Audrey

Later, Audrey fed Soames, her ten-year-old Burmese, then settled down