He's My Husband! - Lindsay Armstrong [11]
Brett did the same, and before long they were seated on a shaded terrace beside the pool, with Ellis Beach below them, stretching northward beside a sparkling sea, sipping aperitifs as the children splashed happily in the water.
As if to make up for the incredible revelations she had unwittingly unleashed, Kim talked non-stop to Nicola while the three men talked cricket.
Then, to Nicola’s relief, Kim drew her husband away to deal with the barbecue and commanded Richard to replenish everyone’s drinks.
Brett said into the sudden silence, ‘All right?’
‘Yes. No. I had no idea...’ Their gazes locked and Nicola found herself going hot and cold again as the truly mortifying thought of people wondering whether she did or didn’t sleep with Brett crossed her mind.
‘No, Nicola, it’s not anything you might be thinking,’ he said, and he scanned the tense way she was sitting. She looked lovely enough to tempt any man, he thought, and then also thought, They’re probably wondering if I’m mad... ‘Because it’s not anyone’s business but our own,’ he added.
‘How...how do you know what I was thinking?’ she asked.
He smiled a little wryly. ‘You looked intensely embarrassed.’
‘I felt it—didn’t you?’
He shrugged philosophically. ‘I’m older and probably tougher. It was also out of the mouths of babes, so to speak.’
‘Isn’t that a euphemism for an uncanny ability to see the truth? I told you she was no fool.’
‘Obviously not,’ he said dryly.
‘You mustn’t be cross with her,’ Nicola responded swiftly. ‘She doesn’t understand the implications of what she said. It’s simply something she noticed and found strange.’
‘I’m not cross with her. Or only for inheriting her mother’s ability to lack any sense of tact or diplomacy.’
Nicola found her lips twisting involuntarily. ‘It’s the kind of situation Marietta would enjoy. By the way, when’s she due home?’
‘When she suffers some pangs of maternal longing, probably,’ he said cynically.
Nicola said nothing for a time. Marietta swooped in and out of her children’s lives like a brilliant bird of paradise. And, unnatural as it might seem, they adored her when she was around and appeared to accept her absence with equanimity. She had a unit in town, where they went to stay with her to be shamelessly indulged, but they cast it all off like a second skin when they came back to their father.
That they’d only been two and one when the breakup of the marriage had occurred might account for it, Nicola sometimes thought. But it was hard to see why Marietta had bothered to have children, unless Brett had insisted...
Yet, so long as she didn’t have to be tied down by them, she was genuinely fond of them. She wrote to them often, rang them from strange places and brought home marvellous exotic gifts for them.
But that’s Marietta for you, she thought as she accepted another drink from Richard Holloway. Kim and Rod did not return, so, while the men started discussing politics this time, she was able to think her own thoughts.
She remembered her father’s bemusement at Brett’s decision to marry Marietta Otway, daughter of his best friend. Brett had been twenty-five, Marietta the same age; Nicola herself had been thirteen.
‘Why?’ she’d asked her father.
‘Well, it’s obvious why. She’s talented, spirited and very beautiful,’ he’d said with some irritation.
‘So why don’t you approve?’
He’d shrugged uneasily. ‘You know her. She was babysitting you for pocket money from the time she was sixteen. She’s—obsessive, wouldn’t you agree?‘
‘About her music, yes.’ Nicola had smiled reminiscently. ‘She gave me my first piano lesson when I was four. But—’
‘And now she’s obsessive about Brett. But I just can’t help wondering how marriage is going to fit in with her main obsession