Secret Sins: A Callie Anson (2 page)

Triona twisted round to stare at him, her dark blue eyes abruptly losing their drowsy look. ‘What on earth are you
talking
about?’

‘My flat. It’s the same old place in Shepherd’s Bush. No nicer than it used to be, and not very convenient for your job in the City. This will be a bit of a commute for me, but…’

He tailed off at the look on her face. ‘Don’t be daft, Neville.’ Triona sat up and wrapped the duvet round her. ‘Neither one of us is moving anywhere.’

‘But…’ He reached for her; she jerked away.

‘It happened,’ she said crisply. ‘It just happened. Okay? And I enjoyed it. I won’t pretend that I didn’t. But it was a one-off. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that we’re back together. Not in any sense of the word.’

Eventually she relented, just a tiny bit. ‘If you want me back,’ she said, ‘you’ll have to prove it. You’ll have to woo me. No more
shagging. We’ll forget all the water under the bridge, and pretend we’ve only just met for the first time.’

‘But we shagged the day after we met,’ Neville pointed out. ‘You moved in a few days later.’

A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. ‘Perhaps we’re not the world’s best example,’ she admitted. ‘But this time it will be different, Neville. If you want a relationship, it has to be on my terms. And my terms are simple. In a word, courtship.’

She’d meant it, too. And he’d been bending over backwards to do it her way. Dinner dates, flowers, the whole bit.

And after weeks of this game, Neville was sick of it. Sick of the artificiality, sick of the frustration. They were going nowhere.

Last night he’d confronted her about it. After dinner—
admittedly
a nice, romantic evening—he’d pressed her to take things a step further. ‘Let me stay the night,’ he’d begged. ‘Don’t you think we’ve waited long enough?’

Triona had been firm, though. ‘No way, Neville. You just don’t get it, do you?’

He’d asked her the question which for him summed
everything
up. ‘Do you want to be with me or not?’

She’d lowered her eyes, turned her head away. ‘That’s not really the point.’

It seemed to Neville that it was exactly the point. He wanted to be with her.
With
her—in her bed, in her arms. God, how he wanted it. But he was tired of playing games. Enough was enough.

Tonight, he decided, he wouldn’t be available. And maybe not tomorrow night either. Let her stew.

He picked up his phone and rang Mark Lombardi.

Jane Stanford had always put great stock in Christmas, busy time that it was for her husband Brian, and tried to make it special for her family.

On a vicar’s stipend there had never been a great deal of spare cash for splashing out on the trimmings, so Jane had to plan
carefully, putting aside small sums of money through the year and using her creativity to make that money go as far as possible. Fresh trees were increasingly expensive; some years ago she’d obtained a very good quality artificial one at a church jumble sale, and had fashioned some decorations for it herself. She’d knit a set of crib figures out of bits of left-over wool, and the wreath for the front door of the vicarage was trimmed with a recycled bow from an ancient flower arrangement and some pine cones she’d found in the park. On Stir-up Sunday she’d made her own Christmas pudding, and the Christmas cake, laced with brandy from a generous parishioner, had been maturing in the larder for even longer than that.

Their parishioners were very generous, Jane acknowledged, especially at Christmas time, providing enough bottles to get the Stanfords through the first few months of a new year. That was how she thought of them:
their
parishioners, rather than Brian’s. She was a partner in Brian’s ministry, proud of her calling as a vicar’s wife, smug in her feelings of superiority to those modern clergy wives who scorned their proper place at the heart of the parish and instead took up jobs outside the home. Or even, in this day and age, went for ordination themselves.

That, inevitably, reminded Jane of Callie Anson, her husband’s curate. Why Brian hadn’t been given a nice young man as a curate was beyond Jane. Up till now the curates had always been young men: some more pleasant than others, some brighter or more capable, but always men. The nicer ones Jane had treated almost like members of her family, like older brothers to the twins,
inviting
them to meals and sometimes even doing their laundry. But much as she’d tried, she just couldn’t warm to Callie Anson.

It wasn’t that she was jealous of Callie—not exactly. She didn’t think that Callie was a wanton temptress, trying to steal her husband away from her. Though, Jane knew, such things were not unknown with vicars and female curates: she’d read one or two accounts in the papers. Proximity fostered intimacy, and when people were thrown together in the course of their jobs, day in and day out, sharing confidences…Well, anything could
happen. It was human nature. Not that she didn’t trust Brian, of course.

Brian had suggested that they might invite Callie to join them for Christmas lunch. That, as far as Jane was concerned, was out of the question. ‘She has her own family,’ she’d pointed out. ‘Her mother lives in Kensington, doesn’t she? And isn’t there a brother? Why would she want to come to us? Christmas is a family time.’

‘I just thought it would be nice to offer,’ Brian had said mildly. ‘I don’t think she gets on all that well with her mother. And when Tom was the curate, you invited him for Christmas at least twice.’

‘That was different,’ stated Jane, though she wasn’t able to explain why. And this year things were going to be different enough as it was.

For the first time, the boys would be coming home for Christmas, back from their first term at Oxford. Jane and Brian had visited them once during the term, taking them out for a meal, but Charlie and Simon hadn’t yet been home.

So their homecoming would be special, and Jane was
determined
that this Christmas would be the best ever for the Stanford family, with no curates or other hangers-on to spoil it.

On this particular evening, Jane was feeling even less
charitable
towards Callie Anson than usual: Brian, having received two tickets to a posh pre-Christmas charity concert, had opted to take his curate rather than his wife. Jane felt she’d done a very good job of masking her disappointment from him; she’d even managed, with a semblance of cheerfulness, to tell him to have an enjoyable evening.

‘You’re sure you don’t mind?’ Brian had said at the last minute— far too late to have done anything about it if she’d said yes.

‘I’ll enjoy an evening in by myself,’ Jane had assured him.

She’d had a scrappy supper of leftovers; she’d listened to
The Archers
. She’d checked the telly listings and not found anything remotely appealing, then had picked up her library book and tried to immerse herself in it.

But she couldn’t get the picture out of her mind: Brian, enjoying himself with Callie Anson. Listening to the concert, eating the lovely food at the livery company reception, chatting to interesting and important people. Brian would be introducing Callie to them, showing her off. Callie, with her shiny brown bob and her attractive figure, probably wearing a brand new frock.

Deliberately she switched her mind to thoughts of Christmas. Christmas, and the boys.

Dropping her library book, which wasn’t that good anyway, she got up and went to the telephone. On impulse she dialled Simon’s mobile number. A chat with him was just what she needed to cheer her up. Mothers were not supposed to have favourites, especially when it came to twins, and Jane didn’t—not really. She adored both her boys. But Simon was the one who was temperamentally more similar to her, of all people on earth the quickest to understand her moods and most likely to say just the right thing.

‘Mum?’ said Simon when he heard her voice. He sounded surprised. And was it her imagination that he didn’t sound pleased?

‘Hello, darling. I just wanted to say hello.’

‘Umm…Mum. Could I ring you back later?’

Her maternal antennae twitched, sensitive to the tiniest signal. ‘Is everything all right?’

‘Fine. I’m just…This isn’t a good time. Okay?’

‘It’s not important,’ she assured him. ‘Don’t bother ringing back.’

‘Okay, then. Bye, Mum.’ He hung up.

Jane stood for a moment, staring at the receiver in her hand. What on earth was wrong?

Charlie would know. He and his twin brother had always been extraordinarily close. Jane rang his number. He answered after a couple of rings.

Sensitive now, she asked him, ‘Is this a good time for you? I’m not disturbing you, am I?’

Charlie laughed. ‘I’m working on an essay. So I’m delighted at the interruption, Mum. What’s up?’

How could she put it? ‘I was just…wondering about Simon,’ she began. ‘I rang him just now, and he…Well, I just wondered if something was wrong.’

‘Oh,’ said Charlie. ‘I expect he’s with Ellie. Not wanting to be disturbed, if you understand me.’

‘Ellie?’

There was a brief silence on the other end. ‘Hasn’t he…?’ Charlie began. ‘Oh, bother.’

‘Who is Ellie?’ Jane heard a squeak in her voice as she said the name, tasting it in her mouth, knowing instinctively that it would become familiar to her.

‘He said he was going to tell you. Weeks ago, Mum. I thought he had done.’

‘Tell me what?’ Now her voice was calm, deliberately so.

‘About Ellie.’ Charlie sighed. ‘His girlfriend.’

‘Girlfriend?’

‘He met her during Freshers Week. They started going out straightaway. And they’ve been inseparable ever since. He spends all his time with her—I’ve barely seen him for weeks.’ Charlie sighed again. ‘I really thought he’d told you, Mum.’

‘No,’ she said. She played with the phone wire, unkinking a twist in the spiral cord. ‘But why, Charlie? Why didn’t he tell me?’

Charlie spoke slowly, as though choosing his words with care. ‘Maybe he thought you’d be jealous.’

‘Jealous?’ Jane gave a laugh which sounded forced to her own ears. ‘Why would I be jealous? Simon’s always had girlfriends. Both of you have, all through school.’ And they had: it was only natural. Her sons were good looking, red-blooded boys. Of course they’d had girlfriends.

‘Girlfriends, yes.’ Charlie cleared his throat. ‘Ellie’s different, Mum. It’s…serious.’

‘But he’s only known her for a few weeks.’

Charlie gave a dry chuckle. ‘You’ve always told us that as soon as you met Dad, you knew he was the one.’

‘Yes, but—’ Trust Charlie to remember that and throw it back at her now.

‘Ellie’s the one, Mum.’ His voice was gentle, as if breaking bad news to a child. ‘Believe me. She’s the one.’

Neville and Mark met for dinner at a Chinese buffet not far from the station. ‘This worked out well,’ Mark said as they sat down facing each other across a red tablecloth. ‘Callie is out tonight. Out with her boss, the vicar. Some posh do.’

‘You’d better keep an eye on that sort of thing,’ Neville warned, grinning. ‘She’ll throw you over for the boss.’

Mark smiled. ‘I’m not too worried. He’s married.’

‘And you think that will stop him?’

‘Also middle-aged and not exactly a catch. Callie has better taste than that—or at least I like to think so.’

Neville suppressed a small twinge of jealousy. ‘So—things are going well, then?’

‘Yes and no.’ Mark fiddled with his chopsticks. ‘Callie’s great. I really, really…’ He swallowed. ‘Well.’

‘Don’t tell me. It’s the family thing.’

Mark sighed. ‘Always the family thing.’

‘They don’t like her?’

He didn’t look at Neville. ‘They haven’t met her. They don’t even know about her.’

‘Good God, man.’ Neville shook his head. ‘How long are you going to wait till you tell them, then? Maybe when you send out the wedding invitations?’

Mark stood and moved towards the buffet table. ‘We’re a long way from that, Nev.’

Neville followed. ‘Just tell them. Bloody get it over with, man. You’ve been seeing her for months. If you think there’s any future in it, you’re going to have to tell them.’

‘I’d like to think there’s a future.’ He took a plate and regarded the choice of starters, then helped himself to some prawn
crackers, a spring roll, and a spoonful of seaweed. ‘In fact, I can’t imagine my future without her.’