Sea Glass Summer by Dorothy Cannell

Broom. Understandably Gwen’s father stared at his bowl in perplexity after his first spoonful. In his world view soup was meant to be served hot. And if he said little during the course of the meal and had to be asked twice to pass the salt and pepper, that was also not surprising given the flow of conversation around him. He had always enjoyed sitting back and listening.
    The voices rose and fell, fueled by an energy that seemed on the surface as light and effervescent as the champagne that continued to flow. But beneath the bubbling merriment, the laugher, quips and repartee of a celebratory occasion, lay something more troubling. Initially Gwen assumed that this palpable undercurrent emanated only from within herself as she strove to speak neither too little nor too often to John Garwood.
    But as the meal progressed through poached salmon, saffron rice and green salad to the finale of a crème caramel dessert, even her self-absorption could not prevent her noticing that Charles was too determinedly the perfect host, that Rowena’s witticisms seemed a little fevered, that even her mother appeared overly eager to ‘make the party go.’ In the midst of this artificially elevated atmosphere her father’s silences loomed, not as a rock against which to lean as in days gone by, but one that was slipping beneath the waters stirred by turbulence, presaging a storm that would reduce all their lives to wreckage.
    What dark nonsense! Claptrap! That would have been Great-Aunt Harriet’s word. But Gwen could not shake the belief that John Garwood (must not yet allow herself to think of him only by his first name) remained the one person in the room who had himself completely in hand. For the barest moment she allowed herself to look directly across the table at him. He was speaking to her father, waiting attentively for a response, and there was such a look of gentleness on his strong, dark face that she was overwhelmed by a wave of tenderness such as she had never experienced except for her child. Never, ever for Charles. To be physically attracted to a man other than her husband was bad enough, but to feel herself falling in love with this twice forbidden stranger was intolerable, corrupt.
    To delude herself that he was not unknown . . . that in some incredible way his face, his voice were as belovedly familiar as waking to the morning sun, was weakness. The thought raced through her mind like a rat in a maze:
I must never see him again
. Such was her panic that the impossibility of such a resolve did not strike her. She would dedicate herself to being the perfect wife, offer to travel with Charles on some of his work trips. Equally important was that Rowena should never guess her sister’s inward betrayal; nothing must be allowed to further dishonor that bond. Out of the past came a memory. Rowena touching her cheek and saying lightly, ‘Sweet Gwen! The world is your very own private garden, so naturally you should get to pick the prize blooms.’ Words to boost the self-confidence of the less visible younger sister, readily laughed aside. Untrue then and unquestionably so now. Gwen did not figure in John Garwood’s thoughts beyond a willingness to welcome her as a sister-in-law. She had to,
must
, believe that to be the case with every ounce of strength she had. This infantile sense of their being destined to come together for each to be whole was a one-sided fantasy. The best scenario would be if Rowena and her bridegroom returned to live permanently in New Zealand.
    The rest of the day passed at an agonizingly slow pace. Coffee in the living room. Sonny coming in afterwards to join them, circling his grandparents, eager to tell them a story about Mrs Broom’s cat getting lost for a day and a half and being found shut up in the attic. The rest of those present were reduced to moving shadows on a faded screen, because only by shutting her mind could Gwen get through the hours until