A Daughter's Dilemma
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Miranda Lee
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13
Chapter 1
‘WOULD all visitors please leave the ship immediately,’ came the call along the corridors of the SS Sea Countess. ‘We will be departing in five minutes.’
‘That means me, I guess.’ Carolyn sighed and stood up from where she’d been sitting in one of the cabin’s luxurious armchairs. She walked across the deep-pile blue carpet and bent to kiss the cheek of the very attractive blonde woman sitting on the side of the bed.
‘Have a wonderful honeymoon, Mum,’ she said softly. ‘You deserve it.’
‘Thank you, darling,’ Isabel murmured in return, and cast a shy, almost blushing glance at her husband of three hours.
Carolyn smiled with approval as she turned to face her stepfather, who had also risen from his chair. Fifty-two and going bald, Julian Thornton was not a particularly handsome man. But he had a fine build and intelligent grey eyes, as well as a kind and patient nature. He was, in Carolyn’s opinion, just the sort of man to make her mother happy.
‘As for you, Step-papa,’ she said, giving him a kiss also, ‘I think you’re very naughty depriving me of my mother’s company for two whole months. Just as well you’re leaving me your lovely car to drive around in or I might have been cross.’
He chuckled. ‘Mind you look after it.’
‘Carolyn?’
The plaintive note in her mother’s voice had her swinging sharply around. ‘Yes, Mum?’ Hard to keep the worry out of her voice. Surely nothing was going to go wrong now!
‘Did... did I pack that new hairdryer we had to buy? I just can’t remember...’
Carolyn tried to ignore the instant jab of dismay. She knew her mother’s memory could still be faulty, but she’d been so much better lately and Carolyn had hoped...
Suppressing a sigh, she said brightly, ‘It’s safely packed. We put all your toiletries and accoutrements in here.’ Moving briskly, she picked up the smallest of the green leather suitcases lying against the wall and carried it over to place it gently on the bed beside her mother.
Julian stepped up to the foot of the bed. ‘Why don’t you start unpacking, love,’ he suggested to his bride, ‘while I see my charming stepdaughter off the ship?’
‘All right.’ Isabel’s voice carried that vaguely resigned compliance Carolyn always hated hearing in her once strong-minded mother.
Biting her bottom lip, she was unsure all of a sudden if her mother was in a fit state to be anybody’s wife, even a man as understanding as Julian.
‘Come along, Carolyn.’ His voice was firm. ‘We don’t want you sailing with us, do we? Honeymoons are meant for two, not three.’
She glanced up and saw the bittersweet understanding in his face. ‘Coming. Bye, Mum.’ She gave her mother another parting peck, picked up her bag from the small table near the door and dashed from the room before she did anything stupid like cry.
‘Don’t worry about her so much,’ Julian urged as they walked along the corridor and up the narrow stairway. ‘She’s tired, that’s all. It’s been a long day.’
Carolyn shook her head. ‘You’re so patient with her. So...good.’
‘I love her.’
‘Yes...’ Carolyn swallowed and tried not to think of her mother’s words when Julian had first asked her to marry him six months ago.
‘But I...I don’t love him. I mean, I like him a lot and he’s very kind, but...’
Isabel had turned him down, but Julian was persistent, and Carolyn had to admit that her mother had sincerely warmed to him over the next three months, so much so that, when Julian had asked her again, she had said yes. Nevertheless, Carolyn was sure that their relationship had not yet become a sexual one; a fact which worried her slightly, in the circumstances...
‘Carolyn.’ Julian stopped beside the gangway and turned to take her hands in his. His grey eyes were steely as they peered down into her own frowning blue ones. ‘Let me give you a bit of advice. You’re only twenty-four years old, yet you’ve spent almost ten years being a mother to your own mother. And, while I admire what you’ve done enormously, it’s time you got on with your own life. Your mother’s my responsibility now. You have to let go of the apron strings, cut them or you’ll ruin your own life, as surely as Isabel once almost ruined hers with her exaggerated sense of responsibility.’
Carolyn was taken aback by this last remark till she recalled that Julian believed Isabel’s breakdown had been due to the stress of raising an illegitimate child on her own. Carolyn herself trotted out the same excuse whenever one of her friends questioned her mother’s odd timidity and vagueness.
Julian had eventually been privy to a more detailed version when he’d started taking Isabel out, and he’d been moved by the story of the innocent young Isabel, falling madly in love with her history professor at college—and vice versa; of her becoming pregnant to this much older professor; of his abandoning his childless and unhappy marriage to live with Isabel and await a divorce and his baby; of his dying of a heart attack before either arrived, leaving the devastated nineteen-year-old mother to cope on her own, which she did very bravely and valiantly, till suddenly, when the child was fourteen, she’d unexpectedly cracked up.
It was a touching story. And quite true. Up to a point. Carolyn suspected her mother had by now convinced herself it was the total and real truth. And she’d never contradicted her. How could she? Isabel McKensie had no idea her daughter knew the real reason for her breakdown. And Carolyn had never dared reveal her knowledge for fear of causing a relapse.
‘But she’s fine now,’ Julian was insisting. ‘Much better than you give her credit for. The fact is, you’ve been molly-coddling your mother, Carolyn. Doing far too much, making too many decisions for her.’
Resentment burned inside Carolyn for a moment. ‘How can you say that after what you yourself asked me to do earlier in the week? Doesn’t that entail my making more decisions for her?’
Julian sighed. ‘I agree your mother still has some limitations, but my request was more to keep my project a secret, rather than because Isabel is incapable of making some simple decisions. I want to present a brand new home to her, fully furnished and decorated, as a surprise when we get home. Perhaps I put it badly when I asked you to oversee the finishing touches for me, to veto anything you thought your mother might not like. If I did, I’m sorry. Look, if you feel it’s too much of an imposition on your time—’
‘No, no,’ Carolyn cut in, overwhelmed by guilt that Julian might think her unwilling to help out when he’d been so good to her and her mother. Impossible to explain that it would take more than a few stern words to make her stop worrying about Isabel. He hadn’t been around ten years ago when she’d had her nervous breakdown. He’d never witnessed the sort of woman she’d been beforehand, as compared to afterwards. The difference had been staggering. She shuddered inside at the memory, but kept her face unreadable. No point in worrying Julian at this late stage.
‘I’d like to do it. Really,’ she reassured. Then smiled. ‘And you’re quite right. I’m going to stop fussing over Mum and leave that up to you.’
Julian beamed. ‘Good.’ He fished two business cards out of his jacket pocket and pressed them into her right hand. ‘Now here’s the names, business addresses and phone numbers of the architect and interior decorator I’m using. Both of them are going to be really famous one day, you mark my words. They have adjoining offices in Wollongong and, though they’re not actually partners, there’s an unwritten agreement that, if you hire this architect to design a house, you hire this decorator as well. Having met the man, I can understand why. He’s a fanatic about his houses. Apparently has nightmares over acquiring some scatter-brained client with lots of money and no taste ruining one of his masterpieces with ghastly decor.
‘His words, not mine,’ Julian added with a chuckle. ‘Anyway, since you have excellent taste, Carolyn, you shouldn’t have any trouble with him. But watch yourself. He’s in his early thirties and extremely good-looking, but apparently not into marriage. Or so he implied one day when I was talking about the subject. I wouldn’t like my stepdaughter getting mixed up with an inveterate womaniser. I want her finding herself a husband, not a lover. Why are you looking so surprised? You did tell me you wanted half a dozen children, didn’t you?’
‘Julian,’ she laughed. ‘I said one day I’d like half a dozen children, not this week, or even this year! And let me assure you that, from the sound of him, your architect is certainly not my type, either for a husband or a lover!’
‘Believe me, love,’ Julian said drily, ‘Vaughan’s every woman’s type.’
‘Not mine. I can’t stand men who...’ Carolyn broke off, doing a double take when the architect’s Christian name really sank in.
Vaughan?
She resisted succumbing to an irrational burst of panic. It was an unusual name, but not that unusual, she reasoned. It couldn’t be the same Vaughan. It just couldn’t... could it?
‘Don’t worry, you should be pretty safe,’ Julian prattled on, ‘since I’m fairly sure our architectural Casanova and the interior decorator have a thing going. Miss Powers is very attractive in an offbeat sort of way, and they’re very intimate in their manner towards each other. But better safe than sorry, so make sure you put that gorgeous hair of yours back up into its usual plait thing when you meet him. And dress like you do for the office. That creation you’ve got on today is a definite no-no!’
Carolyn glanced down at the scarlet crepe sheath she’d worn for her mother’s wedding. Isabel’s choice, not hers. As was her wearing her waistlength honey-blonde hair loose.
‘Whatever you say, Julian,’ she agreed lightly, but her right hand was tightly closed around the business cards lying within her palm. One quick look and she’d be absolutely sure if Julian’s Vaughan and her Vaughan were one and the same. One quick look...
Why, then, wasn’t she taking it?
The answer was quite simple. She already knew the ghastly truth.
The picture Julian was painting of this particular Vaughan coincided too well with the picture that was burnt indelibly in her brain. As well as the two men’s both being architects, there could be no mistaking the other similarities. The man’s age... his magnetic sex appeal... his self-centred ambition... his ego...
Carolyn felt all the blood begin to drain from her face.
‘Go looking like the secretary in the Beverly Hillbillies,’ Julian laughed, not noticing her pallor under her make-up. ‘That should do it! Now, you’re to ring Vaughan’s office to make an appointment to see both parties this coming weekend. They’re already au fait with your role in this and my wish to keep the house a secret from Isabel. Here’s my petrol card as well...’
He extended a plastic card from his wallet and handed it over as well. ‘That car of mine is a real gas-guzzler, so don’t hesitate to use this to fill up. No, don’t argue with me. I insist. I’m the one who’s asking you to travel over fifty miles down the south coast every other weekend, so I’m the one who should provide the transport, free of charge. It’s all tax deductible anyway.’ He smiled.
How she managed to smile back remained a mystery to Carolyn. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening. God, what was she going to do?
Nothing at the moment, she realised as Julian bent to kiss her goodbye. ‘Thanks again,’ he said. ‘Keep well, and don’t worry about your mother.’
Don’t worry about your mother...
Carolyn was still shaking her head over the irony of those words as she watched the liner pull away from the pier and slowly make its way across Sydney harbour towards the bridge. If the surname on the architect’s card in her hand was the surname she believed it was, she would do nothing else but worry about her mother over the next two months.
Slowly, as though her palm contained a deadly funnel-web spider, Carolyn lifted her hand and opened the fingers. The card in question was the first on the pile. Plain white, with black lettering. Its wording was simple.
Carolyn didn’t know whether to laugh, or cry, or be sick.
In the end, she was simply furious at fate, and stuffed the card in her bag with the others before she ripped it into a million pieces.
‘Vaughan Slater,’ she muttered aloud through gritted teeth.
Vaughan Slater, who ten years ago was a student in architecture at Sydney University and living in their home as a boarder during his final year.
Vaughan Slater, nine years younger than her mother back then. Only twenty-four to her thirtythree. But old enough to take advantage of a woman alone. Old enough to seduce her, sleep with her, make her fall in love with him, then tell her it was ‘only sex’ to her face and just walk away.
Vaughan Slater... the single and sole reason for her mother’s breakdown all those years ago.
