Illusions of Happiness by Elizabeth Lord

Author:Elizabeth Lord [Elizabeth Lord]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Published: 2013-01-23T16:00:00+00:00

Seventeen

Dull weeks, never-ending weeks, counting each day as though it was in itself a week. An effort to find any pleasure in her normal rounds of social visiting, planning social dinners, going to the theatre with James. It was becoming an effort to maintain her reputation for throwing excellent parties for which she had been and still was, surprisingly, seen as the most exciting of hostesses in a long time, with people hanging upon her invitations. Yet it all seemed so superfluous, pointless.

This February morning, James having gone off to his office, she sat at her bureau, writing to Anthony, unable to contain herself any longer. She had written countless letters at first. But he’d never replied, not to her personally, writing only to his uncle, maybe including her, almost as an afterthought it seemed, merely by hoping she was well, as any nephew might enquire of his aunt.

It hurt, worse than if he hadn’t included her at all. How could he have put her aside so easily, those wonderful times together, how they’d made love, how they would lay in each others arms afterwards, utterly fulfilled. Now he was behaving as if it had never been. A whole year since she’d last seen him, how could he put aside those times so easily – as if they had never been?

Madeleine finally gave up writing letters he apparently refused to answer, and she struggled through this lonely time, surrounded by her social friends, throwing her soirées; she had tried to put her whole self into her Christmas and New Year celebrations, finding no joy in them even though all declared them a huge success, as always. No one noticed how lacking she was in spirit, for she had become adept at hiding her loneliness from the eyes of her world.

Time should have healed the hurt. Instead, it had built up and up, like a child’s building blocks. His silence was having another effect, turning her mind inward to another loss: questions that were keeping her awake at night, more now than ever they had before – where was the baby taken from her all those years ago? How had she fared and what sort of life had she been forced to lead?

In the past she’d had dreams in which she would find her child only to lose sight of her again, would wake up weeping, grateful only that she still slept alone, James in his own bedroom, unable to hear her and tell her in his patient tone that she must try to get over it. As the years passed, the dreams had subsided, but memories of Anthony leaving had begun to return and in full force; almost like nightmares, finding herself running through the streets, people staring at her, and she not heeding them, seeing ahead of her, her baby. Yet no matter how fast she ran, the baby – always a baby – would recede at the same pace even though not seeming to move.

She would wake up

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