Virgin on Her Wedding Night Read Free

Siamese cat, Koko, sat like a sentinel on the bench by her side. When Caroline felt a familiar tightening round her brow she knew that one of the nasty migraines she occasionally suffered from was threatening. Soon afterwards she finished off for the night, tidied up and went up to bed.
    Of course by then, even though she’d taken her medication to dull the migraine, she was still too stressed to sleep. Tomorrow she would have to start looking for accommodation, she decided, fighting to stave off a growing sense of panic. Finding somewhere suitable to live would not be easy, because she needed space to work as well. Her jewellery business was currently her family’s only means of support, aside from their small state pensions.
    ‘Caro?’ The next morning Isabel Hales limped painfully into the kitchen where Caroline was preparing breakfast. ‘Do you think Matthew’s parents would be willing to give us a loan for your sake?’ she asked hopefully
    Caroline went pale and tensed. ‘I don’t think so. Settling Matthew’s debts was a matter of pride to them. But they’re not the type to splash out their cash unless it’s likely to benefit them in some way.’
    ‘If only you’d given them a grandchild everything would have been so different,’ the older woman replied, in a sharp tone of reproach.
    ‘I know.’ Stinging tears burned the back of Caroline’s lowered eyes. The Baileys had thrown that omission at her as well while she’d still lived with them. Evidently her failure to produce a child had been her worst flaw as a daughter-in-law, but the Baileys had also insinuated that, had she been a better wife, Matthew would havespent more time at home. She’d had a mad desire to tell them the truth about her marriage, but had mercifully contrived to keep a still tongue in her head. She could not even bear to think about the years she had lost to her unhappy marriage, and nobody would benefit from her talking now about what she had kept hidden for so long. It would only devastate Matthew’s parents and shock and upset her own.
    ‘I expect you never thought about the future,’ Isabel sighed. ‘You were never very practical.’
    Caroline’s troubled gaze rested on her mother’s slight figure as she braced her weight on her walking stick and walked slowly away. The older woman looked horribly small and vulnerable to her daughter. Her parents were already sleeping in a room on the ground floor because of their health problems. Joe was on the waiting list for a coronary bypass. The house really was no longer suitable for them, Caroline conceded ruefully, searching for a silver lining to their situation. But for her parents to be forced out of their home of forty-odd years was a very different matter from making that decision themselves on the grounds of health and common sense.
    Koko coiled round Caroline’s ankles, loudly crying for attention, and she talked indulgently to her pet while serving breakfast. She skipped eating in her eagerness to write down the urgent list of things to be done that was already unfolding inside her head. But the first list only led into the making of a second. Time, cost and location were crucial factors. At their time of life her parents would not want to move out of the area. It would take ages to track down the right property and save up enough money for a standard rental deposit.
    It was fortunate that Caroline adored her adoptive parents. Whilst on one fundamental issue they had once given her what turned out to be very bad advice, they had always sincerely believed that they were putting her best interests first. And now that the elder Haleses were reliant on her financial help, she was happy to repay the debt that she felt she owed them in any way that she could.
    The phone rang while she was washing the dishes. ‘Can you get that?’ she called to her father, who was reading his newspaper in the room next door.
    The phone was answered. An instant later Caroline heard an urgent