SHE spent the following day going around London looking for an unfurnished flat, and finally found one in a Victorian house in Finchley, a northern suburb close to the wooded heathland of Hampstead.
The flat had two rooms: a small bedroom with a cubicle of a bathroom leading off it, and a sitting room which housed a minute kitchen and dining room area on one side of it. After the spacious elegance of Lambourne the flat seemed tiny to her, but she had lived in smaller places in the past, she knew she would get used to living here.
There was an antique shop on the corner of the street. Passing it on her way back to her hotel, Samantha spotted a Victorian chaise-longue in the window and pulled up on impulse. She parked and went back to the shop just as the owner was getting ready to close.
He was amiable enough to stay open a while longer while Samantha inspected the red velvet covered chaise-longue. She bought it and several other items which she felt matched it: a Victorian oak sideboard and a round table of the same golden wood and the same period, and a faded and rather threadbare Persian rug.
"Will you deliver these tomorrow?" she asked as she handed him her credit card, and the shopkeeper looked doubtful, scratching his head.
"Depends where you live."
"Ten doors down from here," Samantha said, smiling.
"Oh, in that case, sure." He took her signed voucher and grinned back at her. "Morning or afternoon?"
"Late afternoon? Around four to six? I've got a lot to do tomorrow."
On her way out she noticed a basket chair, but decided she had bought enough furniture for the sitting room. The less she had in that room, the more spacious it would seem.
"You can have that at half-price," the shopkeeper said. "It's a Lloyd Loom chair with the original cushions in it." He smilingly watched the struggle in her face, murmured, "It's a bargain at that price," and saw her weaken.
"I'll write you a cheque for it," she said in wry defeat.
"You can pay me when I deliver the stuff tomorrow," he said, waving her out of the shop and locking up after her.
She had an appointment with the personnel department next morning. Jude had fixed it; Jude was surprisingly efficient when he put his mind to something.
Samantha was going to be using her maiden name, and she gave as her address the flat in Finchley, Jude had obviously ordered the personnel manager not to be too inquisitive.
He knew Samantha was Darius's wife but that fact was never mentioned; indeed, the man gave no sign of curiosity, nor did he stare or seem particularly interested.
Samantha gave him full marks for discretion and professional ability.
"We'll want three references," Mr Scott said, handing her a printed form to fill in. "Standard practice, I'm afraid. We need to be sure we're taking on someone trustworthy.
Samantha gave three references: Jude, her sister-in-law and her lawyer in Sussex. She listened carefully as Mr Dilney explained the contract she would be asked to sign, and also such matters as tax and national insurance stoppages from her monthly pay cheque, all of which came as novelties to Samantha.
Life was rather more complicated than she had realized. She had jumped into this without thinking it out, or having any idea what it would entail, but she was becoming hourly more sure she was doing the right thing.
She might have gone on for years down in Sussex, drifting further and further away from Darius without knowing what was happening to them. She would have been desperately lonely and unhappy, and heaven knew what the final outcome would have been. Divorce? Yes, probably.
She could have talked to Darius, but what good would that have done? He wasn't going to change the way he lived and worked; he was obsessed with building this company. He would have soothed her, perhaps, or been irritated with her for making such a fuss.
He would have jumped to the conclusion that she was angry because he hadn't turned up for their twelfth anniversary; he would impatiently have explained why he had had to go to Wales. Even if she had said that she understood that, and that it hadn't been the root cause of her decision, merely the trigger which made her realize that her marriage was virtually over, Darius wouldn't have believed her or taken what she said seriously.
He hadn't taken her seriously for years; she had merged with the wallpaper of his life, along with Lambourne, Paris, even his sister. The things that really mattered to Darius were up here, in London. This was where Darius lived. Their home in Sussex was a place he visited, and she and Paris were people he visited; they were peripheral to Darius's real world, the business world in which Miss Porter and Jude belonged and where Darius most truly existed, was most himself, a self Samantha did not know.
She had been living in a fool's paradise, remembering the man she had married twelve years ago, loving him blindly, and blissfully believing that he was still the Darius Sutter of today. He wasn't; her Darius had gone for good, she had come to see that at last, and that was why she was here in London, why she had left Darius. She couldn't live with that phoney marriage a day longer.