Free Sylvia Garland's Broken Heart by Helen Harris Page B

felt furious. Of all the thoughtless and hurtful things Sylvia had ever done, that was the worst. No, it wasn’t. Even back in Saudi, the first time Jeremy had taken Smita to visit his parents, the signs had been there. Of course, Smita had taken no notice then, she had given Sylvia the benefit of the doubt. Because, even though she had been privately pretty sure that she and Jeremy were going to get married, she had assumed that she would never have very much to do with her blundering rhinoceros of a mother-in-law. She lived in Riyadh after all.
    There had been that excursion to the old ruined city in the desert: she and Jeremy, Sylvia and Roger and those ghastly friends of theirs, Nikki and Nigel Palmer who hadtreated Smita as if she were someone really exotic, newly arrived from the Amazon rainforest. She was from
Leicester
, for Christ’s sake.
    Just as they were all getting ready to leave, in two cars, Sylvia had suggested, “Let’s do girls and boys, shall we?” And Nikki had exclaimed, “Ooh yes, let’s” and even though Smita had looked desperately at him, Jeremy had blushed but said nothing and, as a result, Smita had been stuck in one car with Sylvia and Nikki while Jeremy suffered separately with his father and Nigel. Of course it was petty, it was insignificant and it was not a long drive. But it showed Sylvia’s game so clearly; right from the start, she had weighed her own wishes against Smita’s and she had made sure that, thanks to Jeremy’s weakness, she won every time.
    Then there had been that horrible incident right before the wedding when Sylvia had suddenly taken it into her head to warn Jeremy off Smita, belatedly to raise the subject of ‘cultural differences’. Jeremy had only told Smita about it long afterwards, as if he had been worried that it might scare her off. It didn’t scare her but it did harden her heart against Sylvia and it also made her wonder apprehensively what Sylvia might have in store for her, having failed on that all-important issue to make Jeremy do what she wanted.
    What she turned out to have in store were insincere good deeds, Girl Guidey English doing her duty by her daughter-in-law and, even though Smita should probably have been grateful – it could have been so very much worse – she resented every insincere good deed, everydutiful charade. While in time she had grown quite fond of boozy old Roger, as far as she was concerned, Sylvia could never ever make good.
    So really Smita should not have been at all surprised by Sylvia’s move. It was utterly in character; high-handed, inconsiderate, impervious to other people’s feelings. But still it had shocked her. After all that they had done for her, after all the time poor Jeremy had spent traipsing around apartments with her, without a word to either of them, she had suddenly gone off on her own and signed a year’s lease on a flat off Kensington High Street. It was so
mean
. Now Jeremy was going to have to waste hours and days travelling to and fro across London to visit her. If he went at the weekend, then their weekends would be spoilt; if he went in the week, he would be worn out. There was no way
she
was going to go; if Sylvia wanted to see her, let
her
make the effort.
    And what were they supposed to do when the baby came? Put her in her little car seat and drive, doubtless with the baby screaming her head off, halfway across London and back? When Smita’s own mother had already said, several times, that she would come down from Leicester every single weekend that she could to help out with the baby? No
way
. By her selfish move, Sylvia had simply reduced her likely involvement in her granddaughter’s life. And, who knew, maybe she had actually done it on purpose? She had never been that interested in her own son when he was small, had she? What if all this fuss about the marvellous timing of her first grandchild’s arrival was just another goody-goody charade?
    When they had asked her, in