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

they fixed on the loafers for a couple of seconds before he looked back up at me and smiled. ‘You look so … different!

I decided to take his comment as a compliment. ‘Thank you! I love your shirt, Tom.’

‘Paul Smith.’ He winked and stroked the fabric of his sleeve. ‘It’s a gift from Bridget. She spoils me rotten!’

Bridget appeared, a forced smile stretched across her face. ‘Well, we had to do something about those God-awful clothes you were wearing. Jill! How nice to see you.’

With tremendous effort I managed not to react, bristling from her thinly disguised jibe. Tom must have told her I’d bought him new clothes for his release.

She wore a cream chiffon top, nipped in at the waist, and skinny jeans with impossibly high ankle boots that made my knees ache just to look at them. Had I not known her, I’d probably have guessed her to be in her late thirties.

‘You look very nice, Bridget,’ Robert simpered, air-kissing her. ‘So youthful!’

I felt like kicking him in the back of the knees. The creep. He was all Mr Nice Guy to her face, but it was a different story back at home when he was ranting about their age difference.

‘Thank you, Robert. I think it helps working with young people,’ Bridget said.

Helps bagging yourself a ridiculously young husband, too! I’d have loved to have added.

‘I like to keep up with the latest fashion,’ she continued. ‘It’s so easy to slide into dressing like a fuddy-duddy without noticing, isn’t it?’

Suddenly my conspicuous red loafers felt clumsy and dated.

Tom and Robert started talking together in low voices, which put me on edge. It was difficult for those two to pass the time of day without a full-scale row ensuing.

I pushed away my troubled thoughts.

‘Thanks for asking us over for dinner, Bridget,’ I said.

‘You’re very welcome. I thought it might help seeing as we got off on the wrong foot last week.’

Said as though it was all my fault entirely!

‘How are you feeling, Mum?’ Tom looked at me with concern. ‘Dad’s told me you went to see the doctor yesterday.’

I glanced anxiously at Robert, but he’d made himself busy hanging up his coat.

‘I’m fine. It was just a routine visit,’ I said briskly.

The doctor had reviewed my prescription medication and made a couple of tweaks as I’d been so stressed recently but I wouldn’t be sharing that with Bridget. That was Robert all over, talking about something so intensely personal at a dinner party.

‘And who’s this handsome young man?’ Robert said.

I noticed a figure hovering behind Bridget, and then a skinny young woman wearing neon-pink lipstick stepped in front of him and blocked our view. I realised it was Coral. Ten years after I’d last seen her, she looked nervous and tired.

‘Ellis, go into the other room,’ Coral hissed, her face puce. Another person who obviously didn’t want to be here.

Bridget either didn’t hear or she purposely ignored her. ‘This is Ellis, my grandson.’ She turned to look at him. ‘Say hi to Jill and Robert, Ellis.’

A surly boy dressed in a hoodie and clutching a portable games console shuffled forward. So this was the son Jesse had never got to meet. He stopped moving and pressed himself back against the wall as if he were trying to make himself invisible. Jesse’s arrogance shone in him all too clearly.

‘Hi,’ he murmured.

‘And this is Coral, who’ll you know of course, Ellis’s mum.’

Coral chewed the inside of her cheek and avoided eye contact with all of us.

‘Hello, Coral,’ I said. ‘Nice to see you again after all this time.’

‘Hello again, Coral,’ Robert said, full of nervous energy. He was trying far too hard to fit in and say all the right things. ‘I remember you from the dad taxi service I provided more times than I can remember.’

Coral had been to our house a few times when Tom had had friends over for a barbecue or a movie night, and Robert, when he was feeling generous, would sometimes ferry them to the cinema or pick them up from some bar or other.

Coral wasn’t a very memorable sort of person, but she’d been Jesse’s girlfriend and now she was the mother of young Ellis, so I guessed it suited Bridget to keep her around.

She pressed her lips together and glanced at my face for a split second. Her eyes flashed. ‘Hello,’ she said quietly, choosing to speak only to me, and that was when I realised with a jolt that she wasn’t nervous at all, but quietly seething and trying her best to control it.

‘Is that your black Mercedes parked outside, Bridget?’ Robert turned his back on me. ‘Very smart. Very sexy, I think the word is these days for something good, isn’t it?’

I cringed. He thought he was so down with the kids, it was embarrassing. But I heard Bridget giggle and agree with him.

‘And that’s my “sexy” BMW right behind it,’ Tom said, mocking his father. ‘Another present from my generous wife. What do you think, Mum?’

I glanced out of the window at the silver car Tom was proudly pointing out. ‘It’s lovely, Tom. Very nice indeed,’ I said.

Tom gave me a hug, pressed his cheek next to mine.

‘I really appreciate you coming over, Mum,’ he said. ‘I know it can’t be easy for you.’

I closed my eyes and breathed in his subtle cologne. My head filled with an image of him as a child, running excitedly into our house on the day Bridget picked him up from school because I worked late at the library. All the things I’d planned for us to do together when he was released from prison drifted through my thoughts like a thin trail of smoke that led to nothing.

Behind us, Robert’s conversation with Bridget faded out. Tom’s arms fell stiffly down by his sides and I realised I was still holding on to him.

‘Jill,’ Bridget said softly. ‘It’s been far too long. I hope this can be the start of us rebuilding our connection.’

I