One Husband Required!

‘Well, come to that—neither do you!’ she retorted. ‘I thought we were there to work—not have in-depth therapy sessions!’

‘Tough, was it?’ he queried softly.

‘Parts of it,’ she hedged, because she didn’t want him thinking she felt sorry for herself. ‘My mother was a widow—and her whole life was spent juggling jobs in order to provide for me and Amber. She was worn out most of the time, and every single penny counted, so a birthday party would have been right out of the question. But Mum sometimes used to make a cake and stick a few candles in it, and the three of us would finish the lot!’ There was a long pause. ‘The last time she made a cake, Amber was about Katy’s age.’

‘And then?’

She stared at him. ‘You want to hear the whole thing?’

‘Don’t you want to tell me?’

Ursula hesitated. ‘When we were in our teens my mother got sick,’ she said baldly. ‘She was ill for a long time. She died last year.’

‘And you cared for her, I guess?’

She looked at him in surprise, then nodded. ‘Yep. Nursed her at home until just before the end.’

‘I see,’ he said slowly. ‘That explains a lot.’

‘Oh?’ Her fingers moved up to check the mother-of-pearl slide which clipped back a great handful of black hair. ‘Like what?’

‘Your kindness. Your maturity. Other things, too, but you’re right—’ he gave her a gentle smile ‘—this isn’t a therapy session. Let’s go and have that drink now. You look like you could use it.’

‘That sounds good.’ But she hadn’t found his questions invasive at all. It had been almost a relief to tell him. Sometimes you locked away the bad, sad bits of your life so that they festered, like a sore.

She followed him from the hall into one of the reception rooms, where leaded windows gave the room an old-fashioned look which was enhanced by the blaze of colour from the garden beyond. The style of the room remained as simple as the large hallway they had just left—with polished floorboards strewn with rugs, and carefully chosen, non-matching pieces of furniture which gave the room a very modern appearance.

There was an already opened bottle of champagne on ice, and Ross gestured towards it. ‘Like the best boy scout, I came prepared. How about some of this?’

Ursula wasn’t really the kind of person who drank chilled champagne before the sun had even gone down, but she certainly wasn’t going to ask him for a glass of beer!

‘I’d love some,’ she said.

He poured them both a flute and handed her one, and Ursula took it over to the open French doors, to have a better look at the garden. It was large enough to require both passion and dedication to have it looking as good as that, she decided.

‘So who does the gardening?’ she asked him. ‘You or Jane?’

‘Oh, Jane hates gardening,’ he told her, with an odd kind of laugh. ‘She likes cut flowers bought from expensive florists and wrapped in pretty paper! She has an aversion to mud and bugs!’

‘And what about you?’ she quizzed curiously. ‘Do you have an aversion to mud and bugs?’

He smiled. ‘On the contrary—I like the feel of the soil on my hands. There’s something very satisfying about planting something in the ground and watching it take root and grow. No, my excuse for employing someone else to do the garden is that any free time I have, I prefer to spend with my daughter.’

He had moved slightly closer to her, and Ursula could detect the faintest trace of aftershave—a combination of musk and lemon which somehow seemed more heady out here in the open air than it ever did in the office. He must have been in the shower shortly before she arrived, since his hair was still very slightly damp.

Ursula shivered, in spite of the sun still beating fiercely down on their heads. She began to long for someone else to arrive, almost as much as she hoped that no one would.

She took a hurried mouthful of champagne. ‘So is anyone else coming to the party?’

‘You mean more children?’

‘I meant more adults.’

‘Just Jane,’ he told her. ‘And whoever she decides to invite at the last moment—which leaves the field wide open.’

She ignored the caustic tone in his voice. ‘No grandparents?’

‘No. Like you, my parents are both dead. And Jane’s are divorced—she doesn’t see her father, and her mother lives in Australia.’

‘No godparents?’ She saw the tightening of his features. ‘I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to pry.’

He shook his head. ‘That’s okay. It’s natural enough to ask. We’ve never actually had Katy christened. Jane has a horror of organised religion.’ He took a sip of champagne. ‘You obviously disapprove.’

‘My opinion doesn’t matter,’ she told him frankly, then smiled and raised her glass. ‘But I’m honoured—to be the only other adult invited!’

There was a pause. ‘And what if I told you that I had lured you here under false pretences?’

Ursula felt her heart bashing against her ribcage as wild fantasies sprang into rampant life. ‘In what way?’ she croaked.

‘Just that Jane sometimes gets carried away with work, forgets about the time, that sort of thing—’

Ursula suddenly understood. ‘And you needed someone you could rely on, to pick bits of pepperoni up off the floor?’ Someone, moreover, who would not read too much into the invitation—because Ursula was certain that there must have been tens of women who would have been delighted to step into Jane’s shoes for an evening and mastermind a children’s party...

‘Someone with the organisational skills to co-ordinate a game of musical statues, actually.’

Ursula hid a smile. ‘I think you’ll find that ten-year-old girls will find musical statues too “babyish”.’

‘You reckon?’

‘Yes, I do.’

Ross had gone quite pale. ‘Then what do you suggest we do with them for the next three hours? I didn’t bother hiring an entertainer!’

Ursula smiled. ‘Don’t panic! Right now they’re listening to a CD, and at that age they have the capacity to listen to it over and over again—for hours on end! Then they’ll probably want to watch the video while they eat their pizza. They’ll want us adults as far away as possible—they’re quite easy to please, really.’

‘You aren’t a secret mother by any chance?’ he teased. ‘With a brood of children hidden away at home?’

‘No.’ It was an image which stubbornly refused to be credible, but not because she couldn’t imagine herself as a mother. Simply that she had terrible difficulty conjuring up the idea of anyone as the father... ‘But I brought up my sister when our mother became too ill.’

‘But now that Amber has flown the nest...you don’t have anyone to take care of?’ he said softly.

‘I don’t need anyone to take care of!’

‘Oh, yes, you do! You were born to care, Ursula,’ he told her gently, and appeared about to qualify this extraordinary statement, when they heard a key being turned in a lock and then the sound of voices, and muffled laughter.

Silence.

Whispers.

Then more laughing.

‘That must be Jane,’ said Ross abruptly, just as his wife came into the room, closely followed by four men wearing rather theatrical clothes.

Musicians, thought Ursula immediately.

‘Hi, honey!’ smiled Jane breezily, and blew Ross a kiss. ‘Who’s this?’ She narrowed her eyes in Ursula’s direction. ‘Oh! It’s you! The indispensable assistant!’ She gave her a brief nod. ‘Hello, Ursula!’

Ursula pressed her lips together in a smile. ‘Hello, Jane. Nice to see you.’

Jane was very easy on the eye, the kind of woman about whom other women always said, ‘I don’t know what people see in her!’ But Ursula knew exactly what people saw in her. Men especially.

It wasn’t just that she was tall and skinny, or had hair so thick and curly it resembled a lion’s mane. Or a mouth so wide her smile could dazzle you. Not that she smiled very often, mind you—certainly not when Ursula had met her. No, her looks were more than a total of her parts—she had that indefinable quality called style, which could not be bought.

Today she was wearing green velvet hot-pants and a tiny matching bolero, which only just covered her small breasts. Her midriff was bare and smooth—lightly tanned to the colour of cappuccino—and Ursula wondered whether Ross minded his wife walking around the place dressed like that—like a teenager who had worn the outfit for a dare.

Ursula looked again at the four men, whose long hair and deathly pallor proclaimed them as rock stars, and even Ursula—who wasn’t really a star-spotter—sucked in a breath of disbelief when she spotted that one of them was Julian Stringer, lead singer of The Connection, his wild green eyes slitted as he drank deeply from a bottle of beer.

Ursula watched him with fascination, thinking that he had that total disregard for the conventional which only the really famous ever displayed.

He sensed Ursula watching him and his eyes widened slightly, and in that moment she understood exactly why women all over the world threw their underwear on stage whenever he was in concert.

He wasn’t really tall enough to be described as conventionally good-looking. He had the hips of an adolescent boy and the shoulders of a man, and his hair spilled untidily around his face and shoulders. But he had a kind of mad, wild beauty, with his too-white skin and bright green eyes, and you could sense the passion which ran beneath that rather twitchy exterior. He wrote savage love songs with haunting tunes. No wonder people fell in love with him, thought Ursula.

He turned to Jane. ‘Want us to play something for your kid, baby?’ he drawled. ‘We’ve got all the gear outside in the van.’

‘Wow! Would you really?’ Jane looked at Ross with excitement. ‘What do you reckon?’

Ursula knew Ross well enough to know when he was angry, and right now she could see that he was absolutely furious.

‘I don’t think that now is the right time for an impromptu gig from The Connection,’ he answered repressively.

‘Oh?’ Julian Stringer scowled like a petulant child. Last summer they had topped the Billboard charts in the States, and he was not used to having his offer to play for free turned down! ‘Like to tell me when is the right time, then, man?’

Jane laid her hand on Ross’s and Ursula saw him tense up. ‘Ross,’ she said softly. ‘It’s a great honour to have Julian and the boys play for us. Think what a treat it would be for Katy! It would be a birthday she’d never forget!’

‘You mean, it would be a birthday you’d never forget,’ argued Ross, then gave a weary sigh as his wife opened her mouth to object. ‘Okay, go ahead. Ask Katy.’

Katy and her friends were ecstatic, and didn’t make any attempt to be cool.

‘Julian!’ they squealed in excitement when they saw him. ‘Can you play “Space in my Heart”?’

Adulation was obviously what Julian liked most. He removed his lips from the vacuum of the empty bottle and grinned for the first time, and Ursula found herself thinking that if she had all his money and teeth that looked like that, then she would invest in a decent orthodontist at the first opportunity!

‘Sure can. I can play you anything you want. Wanna get the gear in?’ he mumbled to the rest of the band.

But the rest of the band were in the process of opening bottles of champagne. They were tired from touring and lack of sleep, and had no intention of doing anything other than getting drunk on this sweltering evening.

‘Give us a break, Julian! It’s too hot, man! Why don’t you just sing something with the acoustic guitar?’ suggested the dark one with the heavily tattooed shoulders and a small diamond studded into the centre of his tongue.

It was, Ursula reflected as Julian tuned up, just unfortunate that he had drunk so much. His voice was flat and out of tune and his phrasing was incoherent. And halfway through his chart-storming hit he actually forgot the words!

Clustered at his feet sat a circle of small girls, looking confused. ‘It doesn’t sound anything like the record!’ whispered one.

Ursula couldn’t decide whom she felt most sorry for. Katy. Or Ross. Or Julian Stringer.

‘Maybe we should ring out for pizza now?’ suggested Ross impatiently, as the number came uneasily to an end.

Jane glared at him. ‘Don’t be so rude, Ross. I don’t think that Julian’s finished playing yet!’

Ross’s face remained calm. He looked at his daughter and her friends. ‘So what’s it to be, girls? Pizza? Or more music?’

They looked at each other like conspirators. ‘Pizza!’ they shrieked in unison.

Jane bent her head to speak. She spoke very quietly, but Ursula heard it all the same as Jane hissed into her husband’s ear, ‘You bastard! I’ll never forgive you for this, Ross!’

And Katy heard it, too. Her mouth trembled.

‘Why don’t you show us all the rest of your birthday presents while we’re waiting for the pizza, Katy?’ Ursula suggested brightly.

Suddenly, she just wanted to go home.

CHAPTER THREE

IT TOOK a few days before Ursula felt back to her normal, cheerful self after Katy’s birthday party. Seeds of discontentment had been sown onto exceptionally fertile ground. She found herself asking why Jane Sheridan didn’t count her blessings and rejoice in having a gorgeous daughter and an equally gorgeous husband instead of behaving like a spoilt child.

Left to Jane, the party would have fizzled out like a damp firework.

Julian’s disastrous solo had produced instant sulking, not just from Jane, but from Julian, too. Ursula had overheard him complaining about Ross—whom he’d blamed for the ‘bad vibes’ which apparently were responsible for him forgetting the words to a song he had written. This had led to all kinds of silent, angry looks being projected across the room by the main protagonists.

‘This is your doing!’ Jane snapped at Ross. ‘You’ve just ruined Julian’s creative flow! You can’t bear to think that somebody else might be the centre of attention, can you?’

‘You mean other than Katy?’ he queried evenly. ‘Whose birthday it happens to be?’

Ursula stole a glance at Ross. She had never seen him quite so angry—even though he was doing a pretty good job of hiding it. But Ursula was an expert on Ross’s face—she’d studied it in so many different guises! And she could see that it was taking every bit of self-restraint he possessed to appear pleasant.

Ursula began to grow impatient with the atmosphere. It was supposed to be a child’s party, for goodness’ sake—not a wake! The Connection had now started drinking red wine, and she dreaded to think how drunk they would get if they didn’t have something to eat pretty soon. She could have wept with joy when she heard the approaching sound of a motorbike as it screeched to a halt outside.

‘That’ll be the pizza!’ she said brightly, and saw Katy perk up. ‘Lead me to it—I’m absolutely starving!’

‘Ye-es.’ Jane raised her eyebrows at Julian. ‘I expect you must be—’

Julian snorted with laughter. ‘Yeah! Right! It takes a lot of fuel to stoke a big engine—am I right, baby?’

Ross narrowed his eyes. ‘I think you’d better—’

‘Ross!’ Ursula’s voice rang across the room, and they all turned to look at her. ‘Don’t,’ she beseeched him. ‘It doesn’t matter what anyone says about me. Honestly.’

But Ross shook his head, his voice full of quiet determination. ‘Oh, yes, it does,’ he contradicted stubbornly. ‘I won’t stand here and have you insulted, Ursula.’

‘But I’m sure that Julian didn’t mean to be unkind to me,’ said Ursula, sending the rock star an innocent look of understanding which soon had him blushing with discomfort. ‘Did you?’

‘Er...no,’ mumbled Julian, fumbling around in his jacket until he found a cigarette and jammed it into the corner of his mouth. “Course I didn’t.’

‘I mean, I do have a very healthy appetite,’ agreed Ursula. She sent a rueful gaze down at her curvy figure in the creamy trousers and matching top. ‘As you can see for yourselves!’

‘Healthy?’ queried Jane archly. ‘Having more than ten per cent body fat is hardly what I’d call healthy!’

‘But I suppose that substituting meals with black coffee and cigarettes is?’ Ross challenged.

Jane’s whole demeanour altered. Perhaps she sensed that out-and-out aggression wasn’t getting her anywhere. Whatever it was, her whole persona seemed to transform itself before their eyes, as she became sex-kitten and super-wife rolled into one. ‘But I’ve stopped smoking, Ross,’ she told her husband in a husky voice. ‘You know I have.’

‘Really? Well, in that case you won’t mind that I chucked away the carton I found hidden in the understairs cupboard?’ he queried innocently.

Jane’s mouth became a thin line that for a brief moment looked almost ugly. ‘Oh, for God’s sake—do you have to be such a control freak?’ she snapped. ‘Going around checking up on me!’

He didn’t react. ‘Tempers seem to be getting a little frayed,’ he observed calmly. ‘So why don’t we all eat something?’

‘Didn’t you say we could eat outside if it was sunny?’ questioned Katy, jumping to her feet.

Ross smiled at his daughter. ‘Of course we can! Why don’t you girls take some rugs out onto the lawn?’

Katy and her friends seemed pleased to have a distraction from the simmering discontent provided by the adults. Ursula helped Ross carry the cardboard boxes of warm pizza out onto the lawn, while Jane and The Connection organised trays of drinks.

‘Don’t forget the cola, Mummy!’ called Katy plaintively. ‘We’re not old enough for wine!’

Ursula thought that they made an ill-assorted gathering, all lying on plaid rugs beneath a sweet chestnut tree and swatting at the occasional wasp which dared to dive-bomb the pizza. The children, Ross and most of The Connection ate heartily, and Ursula limited herself to just two delicious pieces, then sat licking her fingers. But Julian continued to swig from a beer bottle, staring at Jane intently, while Jane ate nothing at all.

Once they had staved off their hunger, the girls began to grow restless.

‘What can we do, Ursula?’ asked Katy.

Ursula had been expecting this. ‘Why don’t you each bring me back seven different leaves?’ she said. ‘And I’ll award a prize to the child who finds the most interesting one! But please don’t take any from a plant which looks already bare!’

‘Bags I look down by the Wendy house!’ yelled Katy. She kicked off her impractical platform shoes and ran barefoot over the grass, looking her true age at last, and not just a scaled-down version of a grown woman.

Ursula hastily excused herself and went off to explore the walled garden, glad to escape the fractured atmosphere herself. She thought how parched the flowers looked against the warm, red bricks. The heat was bouncing off the walls, sizzling behind the sweet peas which were massed in a fragrant blaze of mauve and pink.

She stopped by a sundial and slowly traced her finger round the metal circle of the clock. She was peering closer to see how accurate it was when a dark shape fell over the clock face, and she looked up to find Ross standing there studying her, his expression shadowed and heavy.

They looked at one another in silence.

‘Well, go on, then—’ his voice sounded raw and grazed ‘—say it.’

‘Say what?’

‘What you’re really thinking—or are you afraid it will hurt me too much?’

‘I don’t imagine that the truth would hurt you,’ she said slowly. ‘I was thinking about how hot it was, if you must know, and before that...’

He was very still. ‘Yes?’

‘Before that I was wondering how you could bear to have Jane bring that band to your daughter’s birthday party.’ She shrugged. ‘Though I guess she could say the same thing about me.’

‘The difference is that you’re a positive asset at a party, while Julian and the others are a bunch of self-indulgent idiots! But that’s probably how she’ll seek to justify it,’ he agreed.

Ursula looked at him in bewilderment. ‘You make it sound like a war, Ross!’

‘No.’ His look was sceptical, his laugh bitter. ‘Just a marriage.’

He sounded so disillusioned. ‘But if it’s like that, then...’ ‘Then, what? We have a child, you know, Ursula.’

‘Yes, I know.’ And to children, parents meant stability. Hadn’t she once read somewhere that a child was often the glue which held a marriage together? Was that the case here?

He was still looking at her. ‘Ursula—’ he began. ‘About Jane and Julian—’

‘I know what you’re going to say, Ross, and it doesn’t matter.’

‘How can you possibly know what I’m going to say?’

She pushed a damp strand of hair back off her hot cheek. ‘That you’re sorry if I was offended by any of the many references they made about my weight?’

‘Well, that too,’ he offered drily. ‘It was damned rude!’

‘Don’t worry, I’m used to it.’

‘Oh?’

‘Sure,’ she shrugged. ‘People often tease me. Sometimes the things they say are flattering—like telling me that Rubens would have adored to have painted me. And telling me that skinny women don’t have pure, clear skin like mine.’

‘Well, while we’re on the subject, you do have an extraordinarily fine complexion.’

Ursula smiled. ‘You see?’

‘But what gives people the right to think they can say things like that to you?’

‘It’s because I’m not big enough to be labelled as obese, so they think I don’t care—’

‘But you do care?’

She gave him a steady look. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think that you should wear that colour more often,’ he told her unexpectedly. ‘It makes your hair look sensational.’

‘That’s exactly what my sister told me!’ She screwed up her eyes suspiciously. ‘Unless you’re just saying that to make me feel better.’

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