Faith - Lesley Pearse [86]
‘Oh, Meggie.’ Stuart went over to her and hugged her again. ‘You shouldn’t feel that way. I’ve met women who married for money alone, and to my mind that’s far worse because they are living a lie. You should put all the blame on Vince, he was the one that destroyed your innocence, and your mother is to blame too because she didn’t protect you.’
‘But we are all responsible for ourselves,’ she said against his shoulder. ‘Ivy and Freddy had the same upbringing, but they didn’t turn bad.’
Stuart gripped both her arms and looked right into her eyes. ‘They were not abused by Vince. He was dead by the time they were in their most formative years. And they were sheltered by you. Be proud that because of you Ivy has had a happy life, you gave her that.’
She turned away from him, found a tissue in a drawer, blew her nose and dried her eyes. She was silent for a minute or two, and Stuart realized she was trying to pull herself together again.
She turned back to face him, her lips still quivering. ‘Thank you, Stuart,’ she said. ‘I can hardly believe I’ve blurted all this out to a stranger. Promise me you will never tell anyone, especially not Ivy.’
‘Of course I promise. I didn’t come here to see you to cause trouble. You’ve all had more than enough of that. But tell me, did Laura know?’
‘She suspected, but I always denied it. We Wilmslows are good at keeping secrets, and we can be very plausible liars. Mum knew though, she used to ask me for money with a kind of smirk on her face. I knew if I didn’t give it to her she’d tell Ivy. God, I hate her! I was with her when the news first broke in the papers about Laura’s trial. She was practically gleeful. For years she blamed her for how she ended up, she was like a stuck record saying the same old stuff over and over again. Yet Laura had often sent her money, presents too. Mum never even showed any sympathy when I told her Barney had died. All she said was, “Why should I care, she never invited me to her wedding.”’
Stuart felt he could easily hate June Wilmslow too. To him she was the root of all the unhappiness Laura and Meggie had gone though.
They took the tray out into the garden, and after they’d drunk some wine and chatted about more trivial things, Stuart broached the question about Gregory again.
‘You’ve got to understand first that I never actually met him,’ Meggie said. ‘But I saw photos of him, I went to his house when he was away, and I read between the lines of what Laura told me. He was a control freak, though back in those days we called men like him bullies. He was rich – as you probably know, he owned a toy company. Laura met him when she was demonstrating some of his toys in Harrods.’
Stuart nodded. He did know that much.
‘If it hadn’t been for Jackie meeting up with Roger again, and suddenly spending all her time with him, I doubt Laura would have gone out with him more than a few times. She often told me that they had nothing in common,’ Meggie continued. ‘But Gregory kept wining and dining her, buying her expensive presents and taking her away to nice places. Apparently he was charm itself, very suave and handsome.’
‘How old was she then?’
‘Twenty-three,’ Meggie said. ‘He was in his mid-thirties. She was absolutely gorgeous then, tiny little mini skirts, long hair, that real sixties wide-eyed look. Gregory was under pressure from his family to settle down, and I suppose he saw her as some kind of Stepford Wife, beautiful, sexy, domesticated and utterly compliant. That of course was his big mistake. Laura wanted to help him run his company, she hadn’t planned on being forced to be a stay-at-home wife.’
‘I was guilty of that too,’ Stuart said ruefully.
‘But you weren’t a bully, and anyway, she had Barney to look after then,’ Meggie rebuked him. ‘Gregory asked Laura to marry him around the same time Jackie and Roger got engaged and it wasn’t a coincidence, he knew she’d be vulnerable. He got her a diamond ring as big as the Ritz, and began planning the wedding.’
Meggie slipped back in time, remembering the