A Most Desirable Marriage by Hilary Boyd Read Free Book Online

on the bed, holding her hand. Her face was pale and pinched with worry. Jo struggled to speak, clutching her daughter.
    ‘I’m so sorry, darling.’
    ‘Don’t be sorry. You were ill. The doctor said you probably had a virus and just to keep an eye on you. But you seemed so far gone, Matt was on the verge of calling an ambulance last night.’
    Jo attempted sitting up, but her body seemed to have lost substance, her limbs floppy and recalcitrant when she tried to instruct them. Eventually, with Cassie’s help, she heaved herself into a sitting position, her head against the wall. Cassie grabbed another pillow from the chair and propped it behind her.
    ‘Would you like some tea?’
    Jo nodded. While Cassie was making it, Jo tried to make sense of what had happened, but her thoughts blurred. All she was aware of was a powerful desire to slide back into that other world where nothing touched her, nothing was expected of her.
    The mug of chamomile tea was warm and present between her palms. She took a sip and the liquid seemed to blaze a path through her lethargy, bringing her cells to life.
    ‘I’ve never experienced anything like that before,’ she murmured.
    ‘Mum . . . the doctor thought . . . she said it might be a virus, but it also might be the result of . . . well, a sort of delayed shock—’
    ‘Shock?’
    ‘I told her about Dad.’
    Jo just stared at her daughter. The first she was aware of the tears was Cassie moving to embrace her, holding her close. Jo usually found crying hard, the tears squeezed reluctantly from her with effort, her face contorted. But now they flowed copiously and without help, reaching inwards in their stream to touch the hard, dry stone of grief she had shut away and barely acknowledged since the night Lawrence left.
    ‘Oh, Mum,’ Cassie muttered into her hair. ‘You mustn’t keep things bottled up. You always say Dad is bad at expressing himself, but you’re just as crap.’
    Jo pulled away, wiping away the tears as best she could. ‘I didn’t know what else to do. I mean what are the rules for dealing with these things?’
    Cassie shook her head. ‘None, I suppose. I’m not criticizing you. It’s just, I think it’s better to talk about it than not.’
    ‘But then you only burden everyone else, and they don’t know what to say.’
    ‘It’s not what
they
say, it’s what you say . . . just getting it out in the open is the trick.’
    Jo wasn’t so sure, but she didn’t have the will to debate the point.
    *
    It was another five days before Joanna sensed some vitality beginning to return. In the interim she felt like an old lady for the first time: weak and fractious, alarmed by her inability to take charge of her life.
    ‘I don’t know how to thank you both,’ she told Cassie and her son-in-law the night before she was due to go home. They had all found a sort of peace together since she’d been ill, tacitly avoiding contentious issues, instead talking about books, politics, health, anything that wasn’t too close to someone’s heart. ‘What a nightmare. Your mother comes for a three-day visit and stays ten, raving and incapacitated. You’ll never ask me again.’
    Matt chuckled. ‘Just glad it wasn’t permanent . . .’ then obviously realizing his remark could be taken the wrong way, he quickly added, ‘You being ill, I mean . . . not the staying here bit.’
    ‘Well, either would have been grim,’ Jo conceded with a smile.
    ‘Are you sure you’re OK to go home?’ Cassie asked. ‘You can stay as long as you like, you know that.’
    ‘Thanks, but I’m quite sure. I don’t feel a hundred per cent, but that’ll take a while I think. I need to get home, get on with my life.’

Chapter 4
    14 August 2013
    ‘OK, I’ve got this gorgeous man who’s dying to meet you.’ Donna’s grin was deliberately bright and fixed, no doubt fully aware of the reception she’d receive.
    ‘Very funny.’
    They were walking along Shepherd’s Bush Road towards the