Free Cruel Legacy by Penny Jordan Page B

you...'
    Did you... did you really, Mother? Philippa wanted to demand. And when was that.. .when did you warn me? Was it after you told me what a good husband Andrew would make me, or before you pointed out that I would be lucky to find another man so suited to me... or rather so suited to the kind of wife you had raised me to be? If
    you really didn't want me to marry him, why wouldn't you allow me to go on to university; why did you insist on keeping me at home, as dependent on you as a pet dog and just as carefully leashed?
    'But then you always were such a very impetuous and stubborn girl,' her mother sighed. 'Robert was saying only this morning how much both Daddy and I spoiled you and I'm afraid he was right.
    'Have you made any plans yet for after... ?'
    'Not yet,' Philippa told her brusquely. 'But don't worry, Mummy; whatever plans I do make I shall make sure that they don't cause either you or Daddy any problems.'
    Philippa replaced the receiver before, her mother could make any response.
    Her palms felt damp and sticky, her body perspiring with the heat of her suppressed anger, but what, after all, was the point in blaming her parents for what they were, or what they had tried to make her? Hadn't they, after all, been victims of their upbringing just as much as she was of hers? This was the way she had taught herself to think over the years. It was a panacea, an anaesthetic to all the pain she could not allow herself to feel.

CHAPTER FOUR
    'T he trouble with long weekends is that they just don't last long enough,' Richard grumbled as he drained his teacup and reached for the pot to refill it. Elizabeth laughed.
    'Fraud,' she teased him affectionately. 'You know as well as I do that you can't wait to get back to your patients. I heard you on the phone to Jenny earlier.'
    Jenny Wisden was Richard's junior registrar and as dedicated to her work as Richard was to his. She had married the previous year, a fellow medic working in a busy local practice.
    'Poor Jenny,' Elizabeth had commented at the time.
    Richard had raised his eyebrows as he'd asked her, 'Why poor? The girl's deliriously in love; anyone can see that.'
    'Yes, she is, and so is he. She's also a young woman on the bottom rungs of a notoriously demanding career ladder. What's going to happen when she and Tony decide they want children?'
    'She'll take maternity leave,' Richard had informed her, plainly not following the drift of her argument.
    'Yes, and then what? Spend the next eighteen years constantly torn between conflicting demands and loyalties, knowing that she's got to sacrifice either her feelings as a mother or her desire to reach the top of her profession.'
    Richard had frowned then.
    'What are you trying to say? I thought you were all for female equality.. .women fulfilling their professional potential. You've lectured me about it often enough..
    'I am all for it, but, once a woman has children, biologically and materially the scales are weighted against her. You know it's true, Rick: once Jenny has children she won't be able to go as far in her career as she would if she were a man. She'll be the one who has to take time off to attend the school concert and the children's sports day. She'll be the one who takes them to the dentist and who worries about them when they're ill, feeling guilty because she can't be with them.
    'No amount of paid substitute care, no matter how professional or good it is, can ever assuage a woman's in-built biological guilt on that score.'
    'Mmm—damn waste it will be too. Jenny is one of the best, if not the best junior registrar I've ever had.'
    'Well, perhaps in future you should remember that and when you're lecturing your students you should remind them all, but especially the male students, what sexual equality really should mean—and I'm not referring to a token filling up and emptying of the dishwasher now and then.
    'Do you realise, Rick, that, despite all this media hoo-ha about the "New Man", women are still