Reunited: Marriage in a Million

CHAPTER TEN

BELLE stirred, turned over and found that she was still lying in Ivo’s arms. She’d slept-not surprising; she rose at four every morning to go to the studio.

But it wasn’t her brief nap that made her feel brand-new. It was Ivo, holding her, being there.

She’d slept and he hadn’t left her.

All her dreams rolled into one. Or as near as they could be and she grinned, madly, stupidly happy.

‘This brings a whole new meaning to the expression “they slept together”,’ she said.

Then, because this felt like the start of something new, something different, rather than an ending, she reached out to lay her hand against his heart.

He caught her wrist, held her an inch away from his skin.

‘Belle…’

She ignored the warning. He believed she wanted more than he could give her and because of that had kept her at a distance. Kept himself at a distance.

He was wrong.

Now she knew the truth a world of possibilities opened up before them. Before her. There were countless children for whom she could make a difference, with her time, her love, her money. There was only one man. And with one arm trapped beneath her, one hand occupied keeping hers captive, he was at her mercy. With her hand neutralised she did what any woman would do and used her mouth to break down his resistance.

She heard the hiss of agony as she laid her lips against his heart, feeling the hammer of it. His skin was warm, like silk beneath her tongue.

He tried to speak, caught his breath as she curled her tongue around his nipple, tasting him, savouring him as it responded, tightening to her touch. The power was all hers and she used it, taking her mouth across his chest to the concave space beneath his ribs. He gathered himself then, made an effort to put an end to this raid on his senses, but he’d left it too late and the soft twirl of her tongue around his navel wrung a groan, more pain than pleasure, from him.

He was a strong-minded man, but his body betrayed him, rising to meet her. She welcomed it with open mouth.

Ivo had swiftly discovered that quadratic equations were no match for his wife when she was set upon seduction. That when he should have been saying ‘No…’, the only word he seemed capable of saying was ‘Yes…’ That when she straddled him, leaned forward so that her luscious breasts stroked against his chest, sheathed herself on him, as she said, ‘I love you. Love me, Ivo…’ that the small warning voice hammering away somewhere inside his head was wasting its time.

Afterwards, when they’d made love with no secrets, no barriers between them, she cried. He wrapped his arms around her and held her close.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, dashing her tears away with the back of her hand. ‘I don’t do this…’ Then, smiling, if somewhat shakily, ‘You didn’t bargain on this when you dropped by with that package, did you?’

‘I might start sending them to you myself if this is the welcome I get,’ he said. Then, ‘Or you could just come home.’

She stiffened. ‘I can’t. I can’t go back there…’ Then, ‘Did you hear something?’

A crash, then the sound of the front door being slammed, the feet pounding down the stairs, made denial impossible and Belle catapulted out of his arms, grabbed a dressing gown, clutching it around herself as she wrenched open the door.

‘Oh…’

She sounded as if she’d been punched, as if the air had been driven from her and he didn’t stop to pull on his pants, but followed, coming to an abrupt halt in the doorway of the small third bedroom that Belle had converted to a wardrobe and dressing room.

The dress that she’d worn for the awards ceremony, the lace evening coat, had been reduced to litter. Mere shreds of material.

Daisy.

How long must it have taken her? How long had she been home? Seeing his coat hanging beside Belle’s, the shut bedroom door, standing there, listening to the sounds made by two people lost to the world as they made love.

He looked up and saw that the scissors she’d used had been flung at the mirror.

His instinct was to reach for Belle, protect her from this, but she twitched away from him, rejecting a gesture of comfort that an hour before she’d begged for, the kind of gesture that was fast becoming second nature to him.

‘Something’s happened,’ she said. ‘Something bad.’ She turned on him. ‘She needed me, Ivo, and I wasn’t there for her.’

He drew in a breath, hunting for something to say, anything to help reassure her. To reassure himself. The painful reality was that sometimes there were no words.

‘She’ll have gone to the squat.’

‘Why would she do that? She knows it’s the first place I’ll look for her.’

He wondered if the switch from ‘we’ to ‘I’ was conscious, or whether Belle had slipped instinctively into self-preservation mode in anticipation of what was to come, already anticipating the worst.

‘She wants you to find her, Belle.’ He indicated the coat stand where she’d hung the expensive quilted jacket that her sister had bought her alongside his overcoat. ‘She didn’t take a coat.’

Because she wanted to punish her sister, but he kept his thoughts to himself.

‘She’ll be freezing.’

‘Come on, I’ll drive you-’

‘No!’ Then, more firmly, ‘No.’

Daisy had helped to bring them closer, to open up, let light and air into the dark core of suffering that they’d chosen to bury, but she was a loose cannon and, in her need, was just as capable of driving them apart.

Forced to choose between them-and Daisy would make her choose-Belle, driven by guilt, would sacrifice anything to convince her sister that she was loved. Him. Her own happiness.

All he could do was hang in there. Do whatever he could to make it easy for her. Starting now.

‘She’ll want to shout at someone. Blame someone for the fact that when she needed you, you were in bed with me. If I’m there she can use me as her verbal punch bag,’ he said.

‘I wanted you, Ivo. This isn’t your fault.’

‘This isn’t about us. She needs you, Belle. I’m dispensable.’

The squat had been secured against intruders-he’d called the property developers himself to make sure it was done quickly and they’d made a solid job of it.

Daisy had clearly tried to kick her way in-there were footprints on the new board-but, beaten, she was now sitting, hunched up, shivering, her hands stuffed into her sleeves, on a low wall.

Belle said nothing, just handed her the coat she’d left behind and was invited, in the most basic of terms, to go away. Her response was to take off her own coat, lay the two of them side by side on the wall and sit down beside her.

‘Do you want to tell me what happened?’ she asked matter-of-factly.

‘Like you care.’

‘If I didn’t care I wouldn’t be here. What happened?’ she repeated quietly.

‘You weren’t there!’

Daisy sounded more like a petulant child than a grown woman, Ivo thought, but she’d been through a lot. Would need a great deal of help, counselling, endless amounts of that unconditional love that Belle talked about, to build up her self-esteem. He knew from experience that it was a full-time job.

‘When wasn’t I there?’ Belle asked patiently.

‘This morning when the agency phoned.’

‘I was at work, Daisy. You know that.’ Calm, steady. He knew how hard that was and he was desperately proud of her. ‘What did they want?’

‘They found my dad.’

‘What?’

Belle, doing her best to remain calm, composed, controlled, was shaken to her foundations and Daisy finally looked at her.

‘They called this morning to tell me that they’d found him.’

‘But they shouldn’t have…’ She’d given express instructions to the agency.

‘What? Told me? Why? He was my dad.’

‘I know, but…I wanted to be there when they talked to you. You shouldn’t have been on your own.’

‘It’s nothing new.’

‘That was then. This is now.’

‘Right.’ Disbelief. A glance in Ivo’s direction that said it all.

‘I can’t believe they told you. Wait until-’

‘They thought I was you. One Miss Porter is pretty much like another on the telephone. They had news; I wasn’t going to say call back when my big sister’s home, was I?’ And, without warning, her face crumpled. ‘He’s dead, Bella. My dad died six months ago. I went to see his grave. I took flowers. It was horrible. There was no headstone. No name. Just a number.’

‘Oh, darling,’ Belle said, putting her arms around her. ‘You shouldn’t have been alone.’ And she never would be again. This afternoon she’d seen a different Ivo-someone caring, someone capable of immense feeling, the man she’d glimpsed in those first heady days, the man she’d fallen in love with and she’d wanted him, had pushed him into something he knew was a mistake. Selfish, selfish, selfish…‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Oh, please!’ She shook her off. ‘You don’t care. You hated him, blamed him for everything.’ Belle, Ivo could see, was struggling to find a response that wasn’t going to curdle in her mouth, something to comfort Daisy, but her sister didn’t wait. ‘You hated him and you don’t give a damn about me.’ She looked up, glared at him over Belle’s shoulder and said, ‘He’s the only person you ever think about.’

‘No…’

‘It’s true. He’s always calling you. When you talk to him your face goes all soft and gooey and when I came home he was there, in your room. I heard you! You’re supposed to be separated, getting a divorce, not having sex in the middle of the afternoon!’

Her youthful outrage would have been funny, Ivo thought, but he felt no urge to laugh. Belle’s desperate ‘No…’ had chilled him to the bone. He’d known it would be bad-the destruction of the dress was not the work of a girl mildly irritated with her sister-but this was worse than he could ever have imagined.

And when Belle turned and looked at him, he knew he was right. Knew that she would sacrifice her own happiness, this tender shoot that promised a new beginning to their marriage-anything to make up to her sister for a mistake she’d made when she was fourteen years old. A decision she’d made for the best of reasons. The truth was that Daisy needed one hundred per cent of her sister right now and that was what she’d get.

There was nothing he could do or say to change Belle’s mind. That to even try would be to hurt her more than she was already hurting.

He knew because he’d have done the same for Miranda. Would have sacrificed anything to make her well, make her whole; but her words, as she continued to look at him, still tore his heart from his body.

‘Today was just one of those things that sometimes happens when something important is over, Daisy. Revisiting the might-have-beens. The very-nearlys. But we can never go back.’

Her words were telling him that waiting was not an option, that she had made her decision, that today had meant nothing. But her eyes, begging him to understand, to forgive her for putting Daisy first, were saying something else and, as if she knew that they betrayed her, she closed them, turned away, drew Daisy close as if she were a child.

‘You’re more important to me than anyone in the world, Daisy Porter. No one can ever come between us. You have to believe that.’

There were tears in her eyes as she said it, but Daisy, sobbing out her own grief, for a man she’d never known, who’d never loved her, who’d robbed them both of the life they should have had, didn’t see them.

Life had a way of calling you on bad decisions, Ivo knew. He hadn’t walked away three years ago, hadn’t had Belle’s heart, her capacity for sacrifice. This time, though, things were different. Belle had taught him the power of love, its enduring nature.

She needed this time alone with her sister and he was strong enough to give her the space she needed, for as long as she needed.

‘For as long as we both shall live.’

He repeated the words from the marriage service under his breath, the difference being that this time he understood what they meant. And, more importantly, he believed them.

‘You should have an early night,’ Belle said.

Daisy had her feet up on the sofa she’d chosen-fuchsia-pink velvet, not as practical, but a lot more exciting than the brown suede she’d picked out-watching television.

‘An early night?’ She’d got over her tears, had a bath and a slice of pizza, which was all she seemed to want to eat. ‘I’m not a kid.’

Then stop acting like one, she wanted to yell at her. Grow up. I had to. Ivo had to…

She held it in. This was her fault. If she’d been there, if she’d fought with the social workers for access, visiting rights, maybe it would have all worked out.

If she hadn’t lost all sense today, hadn’t been thinking solely of herself, then maybe, gradually, she could have slowly built on this brand-new fledgling relationship with Ivo.

Instead Daisy, selfish, needy, desperate, had forced her to choose between her sister and her marriage. She didn’t know that she’d already chosen Daisy when she’d left Ivo.

For a moment she’d believed that he could be a part of their lives. But he understood the problems, the sacrifice involved in taking care of someone who had been emotionally damaged, broken by circumstance.

There had been no need for words. He’d made it easy for her, making it clear, when he’d dropped them back at the flat that he wouldn’t be around for a while. Offering some excuse about pressure of business…

She dragged her mind back to her life, said, ‘I didn’t say you were a kid, but it’s my last day on the breakfast sofa tomorrow, Daisy. I’d like you to be there with me.’

‘What?’ For a moment she looked excited, then just plain scared. ‘Oh, no…’ Then she bounced back. ‘My hair!’

‘The make-up girls will fix it for you.’

‘But what will I wear? Can I borrow your…?’ she began. Then, as quickly as it had bubbled up, her excitement evaporated and she sank back into the sofa. ‘Forget it. You don’t want me there.’

‘I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want you there. I want the world to know I have a sister.’

‘Parade me as your charity case? No thanks.’

She was doing it deliberately. For a moment she’d forgotten about the dress. What she’d done to it.

‘You don’t have to punish yourself over the dress, Daisy,’ she said. ‘You did it. It happened. You apologised. Now move on.’ She didn’t move. ‘Okay. Let’s deal with this. Come on.’

‘What?’ But Belle had her by the hand and, before she knew what was happening, they were in the room where all her gowns were hanging on rails, waiting for a carpenter to find time to start work on fitted wardrobes.

Nothing had been touched since Daisy’s attack on her dress. She’d simply shut the door on it, unable to face what it meant. For a brief shining moment it had seemed that she’d been offered a second chance, not just with her sister, but with Ivo. Life, however, wasn’t that simple.

She’d never forgive herself for what she’d done to Ivo, for overriding his natural reserve, common sense, with a promise of something that was not hers to give.

Wanting it all.

She, more than anyone, should know how impossible that was. She’d found her sister. Eventually she’d find herself. And Ivo would, now the barriers had been broken down, find someone else.

Now, like her sister, she needed to live with what she’d done, move on, and she walked along the dress rail, running a finger over the hangers.

She’d cleared out a lot of her clothes, sent them to a charity shop. She was already building a new wardrobe for the different woman she was becoming and had only kept those that she needed for work, the ones that meant something special to her.

Her finger stopped at random and she took the dress from the rail, held it up for Daisy, hanging back in the doorway, to see. It was black, a sizzling strapless gown. She’d never wear it again. Had kept it out of sentimentality.

‘I wore this dress to my first awards dinner years ago,’ she said. Remembering the night. How nervous she’d been. How startled she’d been when she’d seen the glamorous photographs in the gossip mags the following week. Thinking it couldn’t be her. It wasn’t her…She turned to look at her sister. ‘I wasn’t nominated for anything. I was just a B-list celebrity there to make up the numbers. I can remember waiting for someone to call me on it. Ask me what the heck I thought I was doing there.’

She picked up the scissors, still lying where they’d fallen, gouging a lump out of the surface of the dressing table, and hacked it in two, discarding the pieces so that they fell to the floor to lie with the shreds of cream and gold. Ignored Daisy’s gasp of horror as she continued running her finger along the rail.

‘Now this one,’ she said matter-of-factly, picking out a low-cut scarlet gown, ‘was the dress I wore to some fancy affair involving bankers.’

Newly married, she’d been planning to wear something sedate in black, but then Manda had stuck her oar in, warning her not to make an exhibition of herself and what was a girl to do? Ivo hadn’t said a word. His eyes had done the talking and, later, his fingers had done the walking.

‘Billionaires, Daisy, drool just like normal men.’

Her sister whimpered as the scissors flashed and it joined the black dress on the floor.

Moving on.

She worked her way along the rail, picking out special favourites from these treasured gowns, recalling for her sister the special occasions on which she’d worn them. Birthdays, anniversaries, galas. Shutting her mind against the afterwards, when Ivo had unzipped, unhooked, unbuttoned each one, sometimes slowly, sometimes impatiently, always with passion.

By the time she reached the end of the rail Daisy was in tears and she was very close to them, her eyes swimming as she reached for the last gown.

A simple pleated column of grey silk, it was the first vintage gown she’d bought. Chanel at her most perfect. It was the gown she’d been wearing on that evening in the Serpentine Gallery.

Cutting this one would be hardest of all and yet it would be a symbol, a promise to her sister, even though it was one that Daisy would not understand. A promise to her sister, a demonstration that none of this mattered. That nothing would come between them ever again.

As she raised the scissors, Daisy caught her arm.

‘Don’t,’ she sobbed. ‘Please don’t.’ Then she sank to her knees, picking up tiny pieces of gold lace, holding them together as if she could undo the destruction. ‘I’m sorry, Bella. So sorry.’

‘It’s only a dress, Daisy,’ she said, letting the scissors fall to her side, almost faint with relief, sinking down beside her. ‘It’s not important. I just wanted you to understand that there is nothing more important to me than you.’ She lifted her chin, forcing Daisy to look at her. ‘You do believe me?’

‘You looked like a princess that night,’ she said, wiping her cheek with the palm of her hand. ‘I was in the crowd outside the hotel, waiting for you to arrive. I wasn’t going to ever come to you, mess up your life, but I wanted to see you and when you got out of the car everyone just sighed.’

‘I was shaking with nerves.’

‘Shaking? No! You were so beautiful. So perfect. And then you looked right at me and blew a kiss. Silly, you didn’t know I was there…’

‘I was thinking of you.’

She looked up. ‘Were you?’

And Ivo…

No. She wouldn’t, mustn’t think of him. She’d never forgive herself for what she’d done to him, but he was a man. Strong. He’d be hurting, she knew that, but he’d survive without her.

Daisy would not.

‘I thought you might be watching,’ she said, pushing the thoughts away, concentrating on the girl in front of her. The future. ‘I hoped, if you were, that you’d know it was just for you.’

‘I should have trusted you. I thought…’

‘I know what you thought. I let you down, wasn’t there when you really needed me, but that will never happen again. Whatever happens, whatever you do, I will love you, be there for you.’ Then, ‘Tomorrow we’ll see about getting a headstone for your Dad, hmm?’

For a minute they held each other, clinging on to each other amidst the wreckage of their lives, and Belle knew that a crisis had passed. Not the last crisis, but perhaps the biggest.

Ivo stayed at home to watch Belle’s last morning. Every minute of it: the news, the papers, a celebrity interview, a fifty-year-old cab driver who’d written a book, a woman with cancer who was campaigning for some new treatment, the weather.

All the usual ingredients, Belle the glue that held it all together with her warmth, her charm, a little touch of steel that he’d somehow overlooked. Or maybe that was new. Something she’d found in the Himalayas. Something that made him love her all the more. He just hoped her wretched sister understood how lucky she was.

Today, her last day, the editors had put together a montage of her ‘best bits’ to end the programme. Her famous ‘telethon’ moment of discovery. Her first day on the set, making a hash of the weather. An interview that had gone hilariously wrong. Belle, eyes wide with excitement, at the wheel of a double-decker bus on the skid pad.

There was a shot of her interviewing the Director of the United Nations too. One of her with a much loved actor a few weeks before he died. That report to camera from the Himalayas with blood trickling down her face.

He’d expected it to end there with the credits rolling over that image, but instead the camera focused on her again.

Belle had a rare stillness, a presence in front of the camera, but today there was something new, something more. A maturity that had nothing to do with her grown-up haircut, more casual clothes. She had, he realised, finally learned to believe in herself and, despite everything, he found himself smiling. Urging her on to new heights, new challenges…

‘I’ve been part of this programme one way and another for nine years,’ she began, ‘and, despite what you’ve just seen, the one thing I’ve learned is that it’s not about me, but about you, the people who take time to tune in each busy morning, whether for a few minutes or an hour. It’s about you, your lives, your news.’ The camera went in close. ‘Today, as you all know, is my last day on this sofa so I’m going to beg your indulgence and use these last few minutes to talk about myself.’ She smiled. ‘Actually, not just about me. I’m going to tell you the story of two little girls…’

He stood and watched as she told the world the story of her life. Of the horrors, but of the love too. And of a sister who she’d lost and had now found.

As she finished, she turned to smile at someone and the camera pulled back to reveal Daisy sitting beside her, sharing her sofa. Skinny as she was, lacking her sister’s curves, she looked, at first glance, amazingly like Belle the day she’d smiled uncertainly up into a handheld camera. No doubt the studio make-up had emphasised the similarities and yet there was something…

For a moment there was complete silence and then the entire crew walked into the shot, applauding Belle, hugging them both.

He couldn’t take his eyes off her, even when the door opened and Manda joined him. ‘I’ve been watching next door. She’s pretty amazing, your Belle, isn’t she?’

‘Not mine.’

Only for a few unforgettable moments yesterday afternoon, when the truth had set them free. When they’d used words that had been locked away.

Until the day he died he’d remember that moment when, poised above him, she’d kissed him, said, ‘I love you…’ before taking him to a place he’d only dreamed of. Not his…

‘But yes, she is amazing,’ he managed, through a throat aching so much that he could scarcely swallow.

‘I was so sure she’d hurt you. I thought…’ He put out a hand to stop her, but she shook her head, refusing to be silenced. ‘I thought all she wanted was your money, but it wasn’t like that, was it?’

‘No,’ he admitted. ‘It wasn’t anything like that.’

‘Don’t let her go, Ivo.’

‘Her sister needs her more than I do right now.’

‘Maybe she does, but Belle will need you too. We all need someone, a rock to cling to when things are bad.’ She leaned against him. ‘Or, in your case, a damn great cliff face.’ Then, when he didn’t respond, ‘Her sister will move on, Ivo. Make a life of her own.’

‘Eventually.’ It didn’t matter. Next week, next year, next life, he’d be there, if Belle should need him. Always be there.

Somehow he doubted that she would.

‘What’s she going to do, do you know?’ Then, ‘What can she do? The sister.’

‘Daisy? I’ve no idea.’ He turned to her, remembering his promise. ‘Actually, I did tell Belle that you might give her a job.’

‘Thanks for that.’ Her standard response when he dumped some tedious job in her lap. He managed a grin, but she shook her head. ‘No, I mean it, Ivo. Really. Thank you. For believing in me. Taking care of me. Saving me…’ And suddenly his spiky, sharp little sister was the one struggling with words. ‘I’ll talk to her. Find out what she’d like to do.’

‘She’s fragile,’ he warned.

‘I won’t break her; in fact she might find it easier to talk to me than Belle.’ She glanced back towards the television set, where Belle, holding flowers that someone had thrust into her arms, was smiling into the camera as the credits rolled. ‘What about Belle? What’s she going to do?’

‘I’ve no idea. She did have an idea for a documentary on adoption and I suggested she form her own production company.’

‘That’s not really her thing, is it?’ Then, ‘I can’t see her heading up a media company. But maybe there is something she could do.’

‘Leave it, Manda,’ he warned.

‘I hear what you say, Ivo, but are you saying “leave it” because you don’t want me involved? Or are you warning me off because you can rely on me to do the exact opposite of what you say?’

‘You’ve grown out of that nonsense.’

‘Have I?’

‘Don’t be clever.’

‘I just can’t help it.’ Then, ‘I’ll have a little chat with Daisy first, I think. But not just yet. I’ll wait a week or two. Give them time to get bored playing happy families.’ Then, ‘Don’t mess things up by sending her flowers or supportive little emails, will you?’

‘If you’re playing reverse psychology, you’ve picked the wrong man,’ he said.

No flowers. No emails.

Just emptiness.