Read Online A Matter of Trust by Maxine Barry - Free Book Online

from the common herd, and his contacts in the media (his father worked for the BBC) would no doubt stand him in good stead for the future.
    Too bad, really, Nesta mused now, with a wry twist of her lips. With so much going for him, she had always suspected that the time would come when he would cheat on her.
    For Nesta had no illusions about men. Some, a very rare few, might have the ability to be faithful to one woman for the rest of his life, of that she was sure. But she’d never truly believed that Rob was one of them. Not even at the beginning, when everything was all rose-tinted glasses and champagne. Even then, there’d been tiny warning bells in the back of her mind every time she caught him eyeing up a curvaceous figure.
    Nevertheless, when it had been merely a suspicion on her part, she’d been able to live with it. She might, after all, be doing him an injustice, and she’d been determined never to let jealousy, that most destructive of emotions, hold sway over her.
    But actually catching him in bed with a beautiful brunette had been quite another matter. The funny thing was, that although it had hurt at the time, now, barely three months later, she could look back on it and, not laugh, exactly, but at least smile ruefully. It had all been so predictable. Ever so slightly tawdry. And so deeply pathetic.
    Of course, Rob had tried to woo her back. Had spent, in fact, nearly a whole month on the attempt. Flowers, entreaties, rash promises. He’d done the lot. Nesta, though, had simply been too sick at heart to give him a second chance. More because of herself, and her cowardly actions, than because of Rob’s behaviour. If she’d really mistrusted him so much, why hadn’t she ended their relationship before? It was a question that still plagued her to this day. Oh, she’d rationalised it all very well at the time, of course. She wasn’t a psychology graduate for nothing!
    She’d very rationally and logically reminded herself that she had no
proof
that Rob had been cheating on her, so what could she have done? Hire a private investigator to follow him? Drill her friends for any gossip about him? Drill
his
friends? Kept on demanding reassurances from him, that she was the only one in his life, thus driving him further and further away?
    What would that have said about her state of mind then?
    Nesta sighed and sipped her tea.
    Instead she’d done nothing, except wait for the other shoe to drop. And was that any better?
    â€˜Oh damn,’ Nesta said softly. Why didn’t she just admit it? For it to have hurt her so relatively little, it had to mean that Rob had never meant as much to her as she’d assumed. Or tried to make out? Ruthlessly examining her own psyche, Nesta forced herself to face some very hard facts.
    True, Rob had been her first lover. He’d been surprised (and full of masculine-like smugness) to find her, at eighteen, still untouched. No doubt he’d gone out of his way to make their time together something special. And at first, it had been wonderful. But now, looking back, Nesta was able to acknowledge to herself that she’d probably, like a lot of teenagers, been more in love with the
idea
of being in love. She’d been so pleased with herself, and her supposed newly found maturity, in taking a lover at last. She’d been so eager to make the leap from childhood to independence that she hadn’t really ever stopped to ask herself, exactly, what she wanted from life.
    Well, from now on, trust was going to be further up on her personal list of ‘must haves’ than ever before. If the debacle of her affair with Rob had taught her one thing, it had taught her that any relationship without trust wasn’t worth a damn.
    Nesta’s lips twisted into a rather bittersweet smile. Well, they say you lived and learned.
    She placed her now empty mug on the rickety bedside table and slipped off her shoes. Within minutes she was