The Marriage Replay Read Online Free PDF

it clear that, in spite of the situation between herself and Reece, her baby would be very much loved and cared for.
    â€˜Of course you do, darling! But the fact remains that your timing stinks! What has Reece got to say about all this?’
    Sorrel didn’t like to reveal that they were barely talking. Two wounded strangers sharing a stunning ‘magazine cover’ house—going through the motions of a relationship that was clearly failing at every turn. The realisation made her feel both ashamed and a failure—especially when Melody’s ten-year-old marriage to her stockbroker husband Simon was still thriving.
    â€˜He wants to do what’s right,’ she replied quietly, catching a sudden sight of her pale, anxious reflectionin the glass of the patio doors that led onto the terrace. God, she looked like a ghost!
    â€˜Of course he does! He might be wrapped up in his career a bit too much, but the man has never lacked integrity. You walking out on him really hurt him, Sorrel. It’s only natural that he’s going to be angry with you for a while, but eventually he’ll come round. He loves you, darling…you’ll see.’
    â€˜I wish I had your confidence.’
    Running her fingers along the polished surface of the maplewood cabinet in the hall, Sorrel absentmindedly examined their tips for dust. Finding none, she let her hand drop to her side. ‘He’s been angry at me for the whole of the past year, and I don’t see any sign of it waning just yet. Even with the baby coming…’
    â€˜Well, if it all gets too much you can always come back to me for a break. Daisy and Will keep asking, “When are we going to see Auntie Sorrel again, Mummy?” and, “Why aren’t you as pretty as she is, Mummy? Were you the black sheep of the family?”’
    Sorrel laughed out loud—a genuine welling of affection in her heart for her little nephew and niece. ‘They do say the funniest things, don’t they? You should tell them that Auntie Sorrel might be pretty, but their mummy is the most beautiful and accomplished woman in the whole of Suffolk!’
    â€˜Well, as long as Simon thinks so I’m not complaining. I’m serious, though, darling. Just hang on in there, and if the going gets too tough you know where I am, don’t you?’
    After speaking to her sister, Sorrel made an appointment with her doctor and then telephoned her parents in Australia with her news. Having not given them theslightest hint that her marriage was in trouble at any point—not even when she’d moved out to stay with Melody—Sorrel tried to sound appropriately elated. It was so hard. Especially when her mother’s highly emotional and happy response threatened to open the floodgates on her own emotions. And when she finally got to speak to her father, Charles Claiborne started to enthuse over plans to come to the UK in the summer for an especially long visit—to see his two beloved girls and, of course, the grandchildren that he’d been missing so much.
    Instead of feeling her spirits lifted by speaking to her parents, Sorrel’s mood plummeted even lower. In the face of their apparent joy about their expected grandchild, her own deep unhappiness seemed even more heartbreaking and unresolvable than ever.
    Reece was in the huge house somewhere—probably working in his office, she suspected. No change there, then, as far as his priorities were concerned. So she was left yet again to find an occupation to fill the empty hours that stretched towards the warm spring evening.
    Her mind naturally turned to her future. Feeling even more defiant than ever at her husband’s insistence that he didn’t want her to work whilst she was pregnant, she went to her room and carefully extracted the large portfolio of fashion drawings she had been working on for some time now. She’d tentatively shown them to a dress designer friend of