To Have and to Hold (30 page)

He was lucky with Alice. Lucky that she didn’t allow herself to be worn down by him, worn down by the lies until there was nothing left of her at all.

Alice was lucky because she discovered her true self before it was too late. She rediscovered her dream and was able to live it.

Right now it doesn’t look as if Josie’s going to be that lucky. Josie’s still trying to be everything that Joe wants her to be. Josie is, astonishingly, quite as malleable as Alice once was, and even more eager to please.

Look at her now. Poor Josie. Lying in bed staring at the clock, watching the hour grow later and later, every muscle in her body tense as she waits for Joe to come home, already two hours later than he said.

She is fighting not to call him. She wants so desperately to pick up the phone and call his mobile, but she still has a shred of dignity left, and she knows how furious he will be if she does, how he will say he needs a break for a few days, and she won’t be able to go through that again.

As she lies there the knot in her stomach grows ever so slightly bigger, her self-esteem ever so slightly smaller, but it will take many more years before Josie is able to understand the damage Joe has caused, more still before she moves on to allow Joe to start living with the next Josie.

Josie will eventually end up with Al, so there is a happy ending of sorts in store for her. He will make her happy, but she will always feel that there is something missing in her relationship with him. She will never feel that she is head over heels in love with him, but it will not be until she is in her late forties that she realizes that what she has with Al is enough, that the friendship and trust and ease she has with Al make her so much happier than the knife edge on which she was living during those years with Joe.

Nevertheless, a part of Josie will always miss the danger, the excitement, the roller-coaster ride she experienced with Joe.

Luckily, the same cannot be said for Alice. Alice rarely thinks of Joe these days. He gave her the house in Highfield as part of the divorce settlement, and that was it. She didn’t want anything to do with the apartment in New York or the house in London.

And Joe was delighted he got off so lightly. He’d heard all the stories about colleagues who had been forced to part with half of everything they owned. Even his divorce lawyer was amazed, as was Alice’s, who begged her to take the house in London, told her repeatedly that she deserved more, but Alice wouldn’t hear any of it.

A
lice once had a dream of a house in the country, a house with wisteria growing over the front and climbing roses tumbling over the back. She had a dream of acres of land filled with children running and jumping and animals playing.

The wisteria is growing slowly but surely. The roses are climbing and tumbling happily and heartily, and Snoop and Dharma have been joined by a Labrador called Floozy, Calvin the cat, and five chickens named Maisie, Corny, Mealy, Grainy, and Rice.

As for the children, we’d have to ask Harry about that, but Alice is blooming just as steadily as her garden these days, the sparkle in her eye brighter than it has ever been, her hair as luscious and thick as it has ever been, and don’t they always say that’s one of the signs?

Take a closer look at her stomach. Is it our imagination, or is it ever so slightly more curved than we are used to seeing it? It could of course be happiness that is causing her to eat more, but then again, she does seem to stroke her stomach rather more often than she ever has before.

But as I said earlier, that’s a story for another day.

Also by Jane Green

Straight Talking                                      Mr. Maybe                                      Jemima J                                      Bookends                                      Babyville

TO HAVE AND TO HOLD. Copyright © 2004 by Jane Green.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information, address Broadway Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

To Have and To Hold
was originally published as
Spellbound
in the United Kingdom by The Penguin Group.

The publishers gratefully acknowledge permission to reprint extracts from the following: “Let’s Get It On,” Words and Music by Ed Townsend and Marvin Gaye © 1969, Jobete Music Co. Inc./Stone Diamond Music Corp/Cherritown Music Pub. Co. Inc., USA. Reproduced by permission of Jobete Music Co. Inc./EMI Music Publishing Ltd, London
WC
2
H
0
QY
. “This Be the Verse,” from
Collected Poems 1909–1962
by Philip Larkin. Reproduced by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data

Green, Jane, 1968–

Spellbound / Jane Green.

p.                  cm.

1. Married women—Fiction.         2. Connecticut—Fiction. 3. Adultery—Fiction.         I. Title.

PR6057.R3443S67 2004

823'.914—dc22

2003055888

eISBN: 978-0-7679-1228-0

v3.0